Fat people and education

In the middle of an informal gathering, I joined a conversation about the concept of fat tax, junk food tax, or whatever.  The current food demon is sugar, and this particular conversation was about a proposed sugar tax in New Zealand, but I’m pretty sure that wherever you are has had something similar in the not too distant past.

The conversation centered on how taxing any particular food is government over-intervention.  They all agreed the effort was another look for possible ways to get people to eat “healthier”.  I felt an aura of moral obligation by most; it was a well-meaning conversation about improving people’s general eating habits. We all agreed foods have varying levels of usefulness/nutrition/substance to every person.  Food has absolutely no moral value.  It is not good or bad, it is just food.

A repeated suggestion was we need to “educate” people about food, where it comes from and what it’s value.  The implication was that it was poor people in particular that need this education.  That is crap, the wealthy investors want to continue to use any means to increase profits of the genetic foods they produce.  That include slave like labor and abuse.

I believe that all people already understand food.  Let me give you an example.

As I drive each morning to go to work, I pass a Domino's pizza franchise.  The other day I noticed a poster in their window for a meat-lovers pizza. The calorie count was in a font twice the size of the price of the actual pizza. A third of the page was taken up with the calorie count.  It is deemed more important to tell people how many calories are in a pizza than the price of that pizza.  Who actually thinks that anyone who is likely to buy a meat-lover pizza is either ignorant or cares about the calorie count?  Either you’re buying it because it’s dirt-cheap and will fill the bellies of a hungry family, or you just want a greasy pizza and care about calories. You could put the calories in big scary font with flames coming out of it saying that you’ll go to hell for eating it, and people would still buy it, because they want it, or because they have no other option that suits their needs.

I really do have a problem with the concept of educating people about food. Particularly when it’s aimed at poor people, who are statistically the biggest consumers of fast/processed food.  This is because fast/processed food is CHEAP.   The attitude that poor people need to be educated about food is classism.  It almost always comes from the wealthy.

Honestly, I think a poor person knows about food and it’s value, better than any affluent person. As someone who has lived through poverty, I can tell you, we know EVERY single thing about the food we are spending the tiny bit of money we have to fill the stomachs. I would spend so much time looking a price, not nutritional.  I wanted the most filling, calorie loaded food that will last the longest for the least amount of money possible.  Poor people aren’t ignorant, they’re poor. They’re not choosing fast food because they don’t know any better, they’re choosing it because it’s cheap, easy, filling and available.

One person said fat people are ignorant about food, they don’t know which foods are “good” and which are “bad”.  I am a fat man.  I can tell you the approximate calorie count of pretty much any food.  I can probably tell you how many Weight Watchers points it is, whether or not it is allowed on the Atkins diet, what crabs are in it, how many grams of fat, and in most cases, what are the key ingredients.  I have been forcefully “educated” about food since I was about young, and I am now 52.  I have spent decades calculating every little fact about food because I have spent decades dieting and with disordered eating habits.   I bet I am not in the minority of fat people who have been forcefully “educated” about food their whole lives too.  Fat people are the least ignorant people about the nutritional information of food.  Poor people are the least ignorant people about the nutritional information about food. 

I believe if we want to help people eat more nutritious, fresh food we need to make it cheap. First people need a living wage.  If we paid the fast food restaurant worker a living wage, the price may equal that as healthy food.  Imagine if you’ve worked a 16 hour day just to cover your rent and bills, you don’t have time to shop for prepare vegetables. You have kids you have hardly seen, who are hungry, and very little money to feed them, you need something quick, hot and filling available now.  That is probably the high processed and inexpensive food where they just worked the 16 hours day.

Enough ranting.  Seriously it is time for me to be more concerned about being a fat man. My biggest issue is the addictive chemical the low cost food is designed to keep me coming back for more.  Withdrawal symptoms, here we come!

Carry on…