Prosociality and food poverty

Absolute poverty means people don’t have the means to purchase what they need and have few or no other ways of fulfilling those needs.

Food

Stuff grows and we eat it. So where is the problem?

Well unfortunately there are problems, fortunately, they have simple solutions.

Poisoning. No not about pesticides and suchlike this is about Ultra processed foods (UPF), again. I’ve written about this before but I think that the subject is catastrophically under-reported despite the recent Guardian UK article “Fast food fever: how ultra processed meals are unhealthier than you think”. Cited in the article is King’s College Dr Sarah Berry a nutrition expert in the area of cardio-metabolic health. Dr Berry talks a lot of sense until : “I live a busy life as a full-time working parent, and my children eat far too much ultra-processed food, but I have to be pragmatic,” What is absolutely astonishing is that this expert is compromising children’s health and future well being and longevity and knows it. Come on, is this serious? Then Dr Sarah Berry says “If I was to add to that oatmeal some red wine or some dark chocolate or other kind of polyphenol-rich food, you actually suppress that inflammation, you counterbalance it, so you kind of put out that fire. And ultra-processed foods are lacking those kinds of polyphenols and antioxidants.”

So basically keep the short-term convenience of UPF but add some more stuff in to counterbalance the toxic effects of the original sub-nutritive imitation foods. How can this be a good idea? A long time ago when defending their products a major global fast food chain said that their food was nutritious because it contains nutrients. Dog shit contains nutrients, a bacteria living in a dead rat’s intestines is surrounded by nutrients, would you want to share the feast? ‘Well nourished’ is much, much more than the simple assimilation of some molecules, just ask your microbiome.

The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change has as it’s title “health at the mercy of fossil fuels”. Well yes it is, but it is already being terribly undermined by our toxic diets. We really need to wake up as UPF’s are destroying our health and particularly the health of those households who have low or ultra-low incomes. Bad food is cheap. UPF’s are bad food.

The subject gets me going each time! It reminds me of rabbit starvation, the most famous cases coming from the Klondike goldrush. Stuck with just rabbits to eat you can starve to death and many have. Rabbits don’t have enough carbohydrates and fats to be a balanced food. There were other things that the goldrush people stuck in the mountains for the winter could have eaten but they didn’t know that.

Solution? Well that’s pretty obvious and is the same for most arguments around food poverty, create new common land, plant orchards and perennial food crops, grow more food locally, stop buying in supermarkets, go local and do it fast. It’s better to have less food of higher quality than more ‘food’ of lower quality. I’m not talking about caviar and suchlike, this is about carrots and apples, it’s also about all the nutritive (in a good way) wild food plants that we must reclaim.

This is a photo I took in Izmir, people migrating in from the countryside, in this case to be near their daughter who was going to the University, they went straightway to pull up some paving stones to grow some food. No! Don’t talk to me or them about dogs!

A village had 4 farmers who owned all the farmland around and about. Tractors, machines, hectares of land and they produced NOTHING for the village. It was all sold away to be, for the most part, transformed into UPF’s. Unbelievable really. They had a local market gagging for some good food yet send ALL their products away.

Yes we can do it, you can have what you need and, despite what the system tells you, you don’t necessarily need money to get it. Ultra-local production for local needs. These photo’s are of vegetables but the same is true for mushrooms, honey and for those who need it meat and fish too. Producing and sharing. High quality varied food crops served fresh and full of vitamins and minerals.

Many people have made gardens on roofs, balconies, terraces, abandoned bits of land, I’ve done it myself. People have set up bee hives, raising urban sheep, goats, rabbits, hamsters, chickens, fish …. I remember the first time I helped drive some sheep through a poor urban neighbourhood, people looking on changed and started smiling and laughing and enjoying the moment, it was great.

Food poverty. Local projects often start with the creation of a bulk buying co-op. Then they acquire land or start to use what is around and unused. People are going hungry and others have space that can be used for growing food. Those who are better off can help out no? Use some of their cash to set up the bulk buying cooperative either as a donation or as seed capital that they get back from the members of the coop when they make their purchases, for example. Free up land for food, if the local authority won’t go with the trend shame them and replace them. It’s too late now for messing and fiddling about.

As I pointed out in the last article these schemes not only reduce people’s expenditures they also create employment, stimulate the local economy, give people access to non-toxic food and so much more.

Empowerment is about helping people back to food independence, from there they can go on and change the world.