Posts by Katharine Moody
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Speaker: Are there opportunities within…, in reply to Danielle,
Did you even read Megan’s amazing, beautiful post up there in which she lays out structural changes which have NOT been tried and are not even LIKELY to be tried and yet would make HUGE differences without being at all punitive?
I did - and yes I'm all for all those ideas, but they relate to wider, big picture issues.
With the focus on obesity and health, I also read the link the author of this blog post made to what ought to be and up front, first action point made by WHO is TAX. Second is ENVIRONMENT.
Same points made by Dr Toomath;
Dr Toomath is honest about this. She is not a big believer in free will at the best of times, she says, and especially not in this case.
"The idea that we can describe the problem in terms of personal responsibility, you know, that it can be called a choice, a lifestyle choice, it's crap. There's no choice ... To think that people choose to be obese, and if you educated them better, or if they were more steely and determined, self-denying, that they could not be the shape they are, is just rubbish."
Which screams out at me - TAX and ENVIRONMENT.
Whereas you're advocating EDUCATION.
I'm not losing my f..ing mind - I'm just advocating for what would work..
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Speaker: Are there opportunities within…, in reply to Danielle,
Public health educational initiatives GOOD and EFFECTIVE (probably)
Except that they haven't been so far - as numerous health professionals have pointed out - a punitive tax seems to be the only thing we haven't tried thus far. And given the near total lack of support for such an initiative on this thread, I guess one can see why JK's lot are against it .. it's not just their corporate friends that would scream foul.
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Speaker: Are there opportunities within…, in reply to Emma Hart,
I know the cheapest way to fuel hungry people is hot chips.
Nope. It's the easiest way.
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Speaker: Are there opportunities within…, in reply to B Jones,
baked goods are fetishized by middle class women in particular
LOL.
My chocolate cake has no butter – 1/2 cup of vegetable oil instead. 2 cups of sugar – yes. No, it’s not particularly healthy food but it’s an extremely cheap treat weight/ volume wise if compared to say, candy bars or a store bought cake.
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Speaker: Are there opportunities within…, in reply to JacksonP,
How much sugar they feed their kids is so irrrlevant, to punish them for it is in my opinion its own form of abuse.
But it is not irrelevant - too much sugar is a killer - a slow one, with a whole lot of misery along the way, but a killer. How many carrots can you buy for the price of a 2L Coke? What's the price of a bag of sultanas versus a couple of candy bars? Those are choices we all make regardless of income/wealth. I know, because when I was a kid my mother made them. I recall feeling hard done by at the time - a reminder if you like of my poverty compared to my peers. I remember being embarrassed in the school lunchroom - unwrapping my homemade piece of cake inside my lunch bag as opposed to taking it out and unwrapping it on the table in front of my friends - because they had the store packaged goods with the colourful printed wrappers on their sweets. I recall telling my mother this and pleading for the store bought stuff. Did she sympathise with me - no. Did she criticise me for being selfish - not appreciating what I had in comparison to many others in the world - yes. Did she point out how hard she worked to buy the ingredients to bake that cake - yes. Did I feel sad/bad/ungrateful after this conversation - yes. Did I learn something useful - yes.
None of this small lesson in life was irrelevant.
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Speaker: Are there opportunities within…, in reply to Danielle,
Wait. I thought you guys were telling me to stop thinking so much? You can’t have it both ways.
Deconstructing is not thinking - it's analysing, then criticising - and in this case, it seems to me, for the sake of it.
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Speaker: Are there opportunities within…, in reply to Danielle,
Nope. BUT we should change the government and get one that actually does something, like taxing the shit out of crap. I pointed this out early on in the thread. I see you didn't comment one way or the other on that.
Who'd a thought homemade pasta sauce could become so controversial, eh?
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Speaker: Are there opportunities within…, in reply to B Jones,
Okay, okay - forget the pasta sauce - should we instead move onto the easiest and most delicious chocolate cake ever?
You will have to forgive me, I'm a fanatic in the kitchen.
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Speaker: Are there opportunities within…, in reply to Danielle,
Maybe, if you work some shitty minimum wage job, you don’t want to spend your day off making pasta sauce? Maybe you want to hang with your kids
Kill two birds with one stone. I make a point of cooking and baking with all my grandchildren - they love it - as much as they love eating the finished product. And I've found lots of the tasks improve their coordination skills as well (de-seeding cucumbers was an interesting one the other day .. not that easy for a 10-year old, but he was so proud once he'd mastered it).
I don't think you need to spend as much thought on deconstructing things - in many ways, life is pretty simple and thoughts are straight-forward with no malice, prejudice or deep-meaning intended.
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