I've been reading lately about controversy swirling around food savvy food stamp recipients spending their food stamp dollars at establishments that focus on quality food, like farmers' markets and Whole Foods. A recent article in Salon.com, titled Hipsters on Food Stamps, has generated a flood of responses from outraged foodies defending their right to buy sustainably produced food products, even with government subsidies. (Many aptly point out that the industrial food system is heavily subsidized as well.)
But the discussion, like so many other others, seems like an unfortunate collection of one dimensional, knee jerk reactions. The Salon.com article uses phrases like "a local, free-range chicken in every Le Creuset pot" and makes reference to "organic salmon". (What is that anyway? If you could control everything going into a salmon's diet it would be a farmed salmon, and no self respecting foodie would want to eat it anyway.)
Although the line often grows blurry, there is a real difference between fussy gourmet food products and honestly produced staples. Both are available at farmers' markets and at Whole Foods, and both tend to cost more than the highly processed industrial foods that are killing and sickening so many people. But there is a real difference between expensive food as a pretentious status symbol, and quality products that happen to cost more than the garbage on the shelves of the typical American supermarket. Fancy food may be a luxury, but good food is a necessity.
1 comment:
As one of THEM, I maintain that using food stamps to buy slightly more expensive (only monetarily in the short term)Real Food saves the social systems $ in the long run. People who eat wholesome real food will be well and less likely to be a drain on medicaid/medicare for diabetes drugs and treatments in the near future. To me, the ability to buy pop, chips and other junk "food" with food stamps is the real travesty.
Post a Comment