nutritional song and dance

so there's a food revolution day thing going around, and some people have taken offense to it.

if more people ate healthily it would relieve an enormous burden on our healthcare systems. it wouldn't suddenly stop poverty but it certainly wouldn't hurt. if lots of people really got serious about eating healthily (and i'm talking about educating themselves about nutrition properly, not getting into fads), we might even do some damage control on climate change...

about five years ago i weighed less than i do now and ended up relying on medical services unnecessarily due to malnutrition that was caused by a simple lack of knowledge - and not just on my part. all of the top diseases that plague north americans in particular are treatable by diet.

as for the relationship to poverty: it is absolutely abominable that some of the cheapest food sources we have are what they are. the sad fact is that the laws of economics dictate that as long as the shitty foods are the most popular, they will be produced en masse and therefore be the cheapest. while nutritional education won't help the poor immediately, if enough people above the poverty line begin eating healthIER then good veggies can move from luxuries to commodities and be accessible. it feels utterly ridiculous to have to think in those terms, but that's what the industrial age has done to us...

... having said that, i just got lectured on food costs by someone who spent a good decade struggling with poverty, and she informed me that eating vegetables and grains is actually cheaper, short-term and long-term, *IF* you avoid the expensive and vastly overrated specially packaged organic non-GMO shit.
not only that, but urban farming is a thing and a little bit of effort goes a long way.

just an aside to whoever mentioned canned beans and corn - those are much healthier than a lot of expensive foods. and certainly healthier than cheeseburgers.

the more educated we are - not you and me individually, but as a society - the more balanced things will be. and when that transformation does become significant, poor people will have access too. so maybe jamie oliver is an asshole, and maybe his little video is stupid, but if it can bring attention to the topic in the mainstream then that's definitely a good thing. now we just need to get the right data into our schools and our governments; the latter have bad habits of supporting and subsidizing things that are not good for us and the former produce the latter...