galesofnovember:

pastimperfection:

Well, a lot of people would choose meat and potatoes over peanut butter and homemade bread.  Me, for one.  

I don’t think this challenge was meant to valorize a cheap meat, cheap oil, and potatoes diet as healthy or delicious.  I think it was meant to point out that, on that budget and for this person, a vegan diet would also look pretty terrible: monotonous, distasteful, and unhealthy.  Just as it isn’t possible to craft a healthy omnivorous menu on any budget for every dietary need, it isn’t possible to craft a healthy vegan menu on any budget for every dietary need.  Fifteen dollars a week and no beans or rice is pretty extreme, but the same problems exist in different degrees for many people.  And I think it’s a good thought problem for any aspiring dietary scold: if I didn’t have any goddamn money, but did have a host of health problems, what would I eat for dinner?  

Yeah, but it’s a poorly thought out answer to dietary scolds.  If only because, like all asinine “show me a food budget” challenges but dialed up to eleven,  it’s completely individualized by location, local cost of living, ability to access transportation, etc.   No. If you only eat two things and only shop at two stores and are unwilling to change that, you probably can’t make a dramatic dietary change.  No shit.

And what does any of this prove? What is someone was able to mathamaticalliy prove that it was possible within this extreme set of limitations it was possible to eat vegan?  And the person still doesn’t want to?  What is someone, as a dozen hipster bloggers are probably doing as we speak,  proves that you can eat vegan organic on only the allotment of Food Stamp money in the most miserly state in the U.S.?  

Why are we all such pushovers that we can’t say, I could but I don’t want to.  Or be honest that we’re not talking about impossibilities but about priorities and that as human beings we get to set our own priorities for how we spend our time and money?  

Why can’t we just say that someone could eat all organic and healthy on the USDA thrifty plan if they methodically rip the leftover meat off a rotisserie chicken,  keep written track of all expenses, spend a significant chunk of time soaking dried beans and eat the same 4-5 things every day but that it’s a waste of human potential and dignity to expect someone to do that when the only other option is that their kids go hungry? 

And, at it’s root, why are we so willing to play along with the idea of the virtuous poor, victims of their own insurmountable limitations who would, if only they could, eat the food that Michelle Obama wants them to eat, when we know that’s a bullshit right wing trap?  Why can’t we allow people the dignity to say, “fuck it.  I want to eat some velveeta shells and cheese.” without making them prove that they have to eat velveeta.  Velveeta’s fucking good.