america's health goals!

[abifae]

thank you auntie zilla!! *beams*

i think it's great that some people are able to become useful members of society.

i still think people shouldn't reproduce without being able to afford a healthy pregnancy and to afford to raise the child well. sure, people do it all the time, but it doesn't seem to be a responsible choice.

but i'm pretty sure people are getting fatter and sicker no matter how much money they have. rich people prolong their sick miserable lives longer, and there are more poor so those numbers inflate faster, but i really don't think america's health is a monetary issue.

it is a self righteous not wanting to change issue. it's a misinformed and clinging to wrong but comfortable ideas issue. and it's an instant gratification issue. it is, in all, an american thing.

i know a lot of people who have insurance and money for food who are unhealthy, overweight, and unmotivated to change. not sure why people keep bringing up how much we make. it might be harder in the city when you are broke but then why don't middle class people buy good food in their little suburbs?

i make 800 a month. to pay all my bills. i'm po' and am moving to inner city denver to take advantage of bussing. and i have a MUCH higher chance of living a long healthy life than my well to do current roommates who don't want to make those hard changes.

it's attitude more than social strata.

 

[freemotion]

Well, I was born ten months after my sister. Think I was planned? Responsible? Nope. But hey, who of us hasn't goofed? Fortunately for me, I haven't made any reproductive goofs. Coulda, though. Not so fertile, apparently, as my mom was!

My parents worked hard to move from a tiny inner city apartment where they heard gunshots outside at night. They gradually and painstakingly worked to get us into a slightly better city apartment, and then into a little house with a postage-stamp yard in the 'burbs, without enough space or light for much of a garden. They found an older gentleman with too much garden and traded work for planting space and guidance. The whole family would drive out there and work in that garden once a week or so. I remember those gigantic carrots! They were so cool!

Then they painstakingly worked and saved and we moved into the country. The kitchen had a hose faucet in the sink, the walls were boards with spaces and knots and visible nails, and the toilet didn't flush! The "furnace" was a barrell in the basement converted to a sort of wood stove.....really scary. That first winter, I would wake up to big chunks of frost on the nailheads on the walls in my room.

My childhood and teen years were very rich with real life lessons on grit and determination and hard work and being satisfied with little things and working for what you really wanted. Looking back, we ate some of the healthiest foods at our poorest, not knowing it. Raising our own meat and garden veggies, trading excess for what others had, gleaning in farm fields and foraging for whatever we could find in the wild, and knowing that any skill we needed could be aquired through a booklet from the extension service office!

I wouldn't trade it for all the Easy Street in the world!

 

[bibliophile birds]

*I* think people can eat healthier even in difficult situations. *I* think if you have $5.00 for a bag of Doritos and a Mt Dew, you have money for a bag of dry beans ($1.25) a pound of ground turkey ($1.49) and a bag of carrots ($2) instead. *I* think you may even have enough change for a can of tomato paste. Sounds like chili with a side of carrot sticks for 3 to me instead of a snack for 1.

if you can find those items in an inner city (we're talking real inner city) store, especially for prices like that, i would be completely shocked.

in inner city Atlanta, the only places you are going to find those items are in the extremely rare supermarkets, which you don't want to go in for fear of being shot. in those neighborhoods, supermarkets are where people get checks (welfare, social security, the odd paycheck) cashed and they are NOTORIOUS for being robbed and people getting shot. nutritious food isn't going to do you a lot of good with a bullet in your gut.

 

[hikerchick]

It really is a waste of time trying to explain anything to someone who already knows everything.

 

[hikerchick]

So....here's an idea.....

move to the country.

I tried that Scott. It took 45 years of struggling to get there and it lasted 7 years.

Now I am on my way back to the city. Is it my choice? Not really. But sometimes you just have to accept the reality of your limitations. I got an education, I work very hard. I just can't afford the luxury of having property in the country. Not everyone can.

 

[FarmerChick]

*

 

[hikerchick]

go eat a carrot and your life will be wonderful. I don't think so.

You mean it's not that simple???

 

[FarmerChick]

*

 

[hikerchick]

The problem in the inner city is not just lack of opportunity but it is lack of information. Who is teaching these people how to be healthy? Many of them do not have access to decent medical care. Many do not have access to the internet; and even if they do, many spend 12 hours a day working (like my parents did). They don't have time to sit around all day crusing the internet looking for ways to prove other people wrong. They have other, more urgent concerns. Someone who has never lived it has no idea what they are talking about and no room to judge. The attitude of "I do it, therefore everyone should" is just arrogant and self-righteous.

 

[hikerchick]

go eat a carrot and your life will be wonderful. I don't think so.

You mean it's not that simple???

Well, eat it with "attitude" of course and the magical benefits will astound you....life altering results will happen.

OK - my next batch of sprouts is gonna get some 'tude. Then my life will change forever.