Food for the Faithful, literally

Faith & Science Conversation
21

My wife and I have a generally agreed on split. I cook and she washes the dishes. It works out very well. I also sometimes cook for the parents who live with me (I bought a house with a kind of split). I also do all the cooking for the extended family every holiday, party and for all events and places we go where we bring food. It helps that I was a sous chef before teaching.

cooking comes easy for me but if people want to eat more nutritious and save money, then it would be wise for them to learn a few basics. Don’t blame the new food guidelines if people don’t want to.

Vinnie

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22

Sounds rough. Not as bad for me in that regard but I’ve had to bathe a in a house with no heat or electric in an old tub during the middle of winter because the lights were turned off again. Not fun going to school smelling or with dirty clothes. Kids were a lot more openly cruel when I was young. My childhood trauma was very high on the psychological end with parents constantly drunk/high and the. fighting (verbally and physically) to the point of trashing the house. I still have trouble talking to my father for more than a few minutes without sliding into anger from what I perceive as his failures as a man to be a father. He now lives with me along with my mom. I don’t know if those wounds will ever heal. They’ve gotten better but those scars run deep in me.

My grandfather on my mom’s side would tell me stories about his childhood and it was really rough. Anytime the kids came across any amount of money they would run to the store and buy bread so they could eat. Lot of no good drunks and lowlifes out there.

My father and his siblings were beaten senseless with belts and anything else their father could find growing up. The beatings were so bad they couldn’t go to school sometimes. They would have been taken away by the state if they lived in today’s world.

Everyone who has kids has a duty and responsibility to take care of them. If you don’t, if you abandon them, if you abuse them, if you are too lazy to raise them proper, my response is not to blame the system but to say firetruck you, take this millstone. Maybe it’s my childhood scars but I give no quarter to people that don’t take care of their children.

The new food guidelines aren’t mean to fix the world, stop inequality or end poverty or make shitty parents better. They are simply meant as a way for a very unhealthy country to move back towards a more nutritious way of life. Some horses don’t drink, for whatever reason, even if you lead them to water a dozen times. Lord knows how many thousands of times I have refused water.

Vinnie

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23

Without knowing more about how much control they have over the exact ads popping up, I wouldn’t be inclined to blame them very much-- given, for instance, how many ads pop up for me on Biblegateway for alcohol, dating sites, skimpy clothing from Temu, etc.

24

If you listen to the show as a podcast, Phil voices the ads. So these are absolutely in their control.

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25

How awful for those of you who have experienced poverty in the ways you have described. Your accounts reinforce the enormity of the privilege I have experienced.

Yet I have no beliefs in the “nobility of the poor” or whatever the term was up thread. The reasons for it are widely varied and the concerns and complications that go with it are as well. I am free of many, many stressors that go with poverty simply because I have a job that offers excellent insurance and I have a reliable car to use for work. So let’s not pretend that the causes for all poverty have to do with laziness, bad choices, or the choice to be poor. And let’s not pretend that the associated nutritional issues are all caused by laziness, etc.

That the US government promotes healthy diets for Americans is nothing new.
Even Biden’s administration did it:
Biden’s National Strategy Focuses on Food Security and Nutrition.
Gasp! And even the Obama administration. Remember all the complaints about whole wheat breads that were used in school lunch programs at the time? And all those salads kids didn’t want to eat? Maybe not. My mom was reporting back from working in the school kitchens.

No one is questioning the value of fresh foods, although the emphasis in the recently unveiled revision of the US recommendations on red meat and dairy protein and the economic ties to farming tell me there is more involved here than dietary science or the well-being of all Americans.
These ties are stated in the press release I linked above. But the emphasis on whole foods and expensive red meats to the exclusion of more affordable, processed foods that are still healthful makes this set of guidelines seem more appropriate for a high end spa.

The questions that were raised early in this thread were about the cost of eating as recommended in this new set of recommendations.

The new food fad – condemning ultra processed foods – might have some value, but not without clear definitions. Verbage like this is not helpful:

Eating real food means choosing foods that are whole or minimally processed and recognizable as food. These foods are prepared with few ingredients and without added sugars, industrial oils, artificial flavors, or preservatives.

The family that might eat a box of mac and cheese because it’s easy to get, affordable, filling and easy to make doesn’t benefit from these guidelines. They are just told that what they’re eating is not healthy. And there are no reasonable recommendations for accompanying nutritious foods that are easy to get, affordable, and easy to prepare. Canned foods! Heaven forbid! They are processed, and have salt, color enhancers and preservatives!

Absurdly (that was sarcasm) a previous administration recommended equally healthy foods, while also including the following goals to make better nutrition accessible to all Americans:

  • improving food access and affordability:
    • Increase number of individuals taking advantage of federal assistance programs.
    • Provide free healthy school meals to all and expand summer food benefits.
    • Expand SNAP eligibility to reach additional underserved populations.
    • Increase funding for the Older Americans Act nutrition programs.
    • Make it easier for individuals to access health and nutrition assistance programs.
    • Leverage housing organizations to increase food access.
    • Improve transportation options to and from food retailers.
    • Reduce barriers to food recovery in order to prevent food waste.
    • Improve access to emergency food.
  • Integrating nutrition and health.
    • Expand access to “food is medicine” interventions and nutrition counseling for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.
    • Support the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes.
    • Support wellness and nutritional care for low-income children.
    • Screen for food insecurity through federal healthcare systems.
    • Incentivize hospitals and healthcare providers to screen for food insecurity and other social determinants of health.
    • Ensure that all medical professionals receive nutrition education.
  • Empowering all consumers to make and have access to healthy choices.
    • Update food labels with front-of-package labeling systems and ensure that “healthy” food labels align with current science.
    • Make nutrition information easy to access when grocery shopping online.
    • Expand SNAP incentives for purchasing fruits and vegetables.
    • Lower the sodium and added sugar content of prepared food.
    • Limit the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages.
    • Increase access to local foods.
    • Expand breastfeeding support and counseling for mothers.
    • Support regular updates to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and provide a national nutrition education campaign.
  • Supporting physical activity for all.
    • Connect more people to parks.
    • Promote active transportation (walking and biking) and land-use policies that support physical activity.
    • Support children’s physical activity.
    • Provide regular updates to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans and increase awareness about the importance of physical activity.
  • Enhancing nutrition and food security research.
    • Increase funding to support research for evidence-based policies.
    • Ensure diversity in nutrition, health, and food security research.
    • Evaluate federal assistance programs and identify areas in need of improvement.
    • Research the intersection of climate change, food security, and nutrition.

So the hype and accompanying propaganda (take a look at the website: https://realfood.gov/) is no better than what has been around for at least a decade, and is impractical for a great many Americans.

And the reasons for that are a whole 'nother conversation we won’t have in public. Go look at demographics on poverty in the US to get an idea.

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26

A similar approach is taken by a local charity group that collects both home made and commercial frozen casseroles and distributes them to the needy, where the prep is done, and all they have to do is heat them up.

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27

Two comments. When the “happy father” called for food to celebrate the return of the prodigal son, it seems he did not ask for the biggest cabbage or melon, but….the FATTEST calf!!!

Second, take a look at the Manhattan Contrarian’s comments. He has been taking note of the US Government diet recommendations for a long time: https://www.manhattancontrarian.com

28

I was thinking more about the new dietary recommendations and particularly the puzzling emphasis on red meat. Red meat has been controversial for decades because, in spite of our cultural love for it, it is a serious source of cholesterol. High cholesterol is related to the health issues that are listed in concerns in the press release for the (on it’s head) Food Pyramid. This seems counterproductive.

But the press release talks about these dietary recommendations supporting American farmers and ranchers. So, it’s clear that these recommendations are at least in part intended to support an industry, rather than the health of Americans.

I also thought about the recent cultural promotion of MEAT eating as manly and anti-woke (whatever is meant by “woke”). I am not the only person to have noticed this. So, the emphasis protein in the diet, and that specifically being animal-based protein, signals a particular political-cultural posture, which has nothing to do with dietary science or the health of Americans.

And there is a similar growing trend among evangelicals in the US to signal a particular form of manliness by including meat-eating as part of men’s ministries, which I have seen at my churches:

Meat and Masculinity in Men’s Ministries

DOI:10.3149/jms.2101.78

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29

Also plays into the anti-creation care stance held by many evangelicals. And, with the cost, it plays to the prosperity gospel as part of God’s blessing, and interlinks a bit with anti-immigrant sentiments. Interesting relationship.

That said, I like beef. And living around ranchers, government policy has little to do with beef prices, which really need no help staying high at the moment. Most of that is driven by low supply which was driven by thinning of herds due to drought and high feed prices. It will take years for herds to build back up, unlike the chicken and hog industry which is more agile due to the reproductive characteristics of those animals. But of course politics often means taking credit for things you didn’t do, and denying things you did.

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30

This is just silly. Maybe you intend it to be, @wbwane.

This is an indication of how momentous the youngest son’s return was, as meat was so seldom available.

For most people, meat was eaten only a few times a year when animals were slaughtered for the major festivals, or at tribal meetings, celebrations such as weddings, and for the visits of important guests (1 Samuel 28:24). Only at the king’s table was meat served daily, according to the Bible.[26] Although most meat was obtained from domesticated animals, meat from hunted animals was also sometimes available, as the story of Isaac and Esau (Genesis 27:3–4), certain Biblical lists (for example, Deuteronomy 14:5), and archaeological evidence indicate. The remains of gazelle, red deer, and fallow deer are the most commonly found in the archaeological record.

See Ancient Israelite cuisine - Wikipedia

Our calorie rich diets are in no way comparable to theirs. The quantity and quality of food available today would have been unimaginable even to the wealthy person then.

Regular drought and famine were regular occurrances and had nearly no remedy. Widespread irrigation, fertilization and pest protection were not possible at that time. Long-distance shipping of any real quantity of food was out of the question. Caloric intake was never in excess for the regular person.

Yet more incongruous is the net calorie gain they experienced, when one considers the physical labor that went into food production, gathering and preparation.

Eating the fatted calf, which would have been split between how many people I wonder, was a rare delicacy. Not something that needed to be considered on the list of Levitical Dietary Recommendations.

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31

Good observation. When our daughter and SIL were doing work in the Saharawi camps, when a goat was killed, the extended family and friends shared, as without refrigeration, the meat spoils in a day or so. When a camel was butchered, the whole community shared for the same reason. When the fatted calf was slaughtered, no doubt it was a party that spilled over into the neighborhood.

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32

this just showed up in my news feed, pretty much in line with comments here.

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33

MAHA? - was that a typo?

[Oh - ok. make America ‘healthier’ again - I get it now.]

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34

Which points to a society where meat was more for festivals and celebrations, not so much oridnary consumption.

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35

I recall that the spies sent out by Moses reported they had found a land flowing with milk and honey.

36

Thanks for highlighting my point again. Women are unworthy of response from some of the forum guests.

37

I don’t know who that is directed at but I feel you restated several things I already mentioned and it is my view that the content of much of this thread was more political than I care to discuss. It seemed a little charged and after the discussion about deaf children I wanted to stay away from things that people get very emotional about.

The image I posted and the comment I made directly stated beans are included in protein. Also eggs. If you can find cheaper sources of protein than those that most Americans will eat, let me know. I keep hearing red meat in here but numerous options were given. Same for the issue of people with lactose intolerance.

The guidelines literally say canned vegetables and canned fruit are okay. But yes, most processed food (including canned ravioli and chicken soup) is generally less healthy and more expensive than cooking things yourself. I think a can of chicken soup has 100% of suggested daily sodium amounts.

I also don’t see dietary guidelines like I see highway guidelines. These are not laws. They are suggestions to healthier options for how a lot of people eat today. I think the health stats are pretty clear a lot of us would be healthier if we ate different, ate less and moved more. Dietary guidelines can never be a one size fits all.

Personally, I am not giving up refined pasta. But I am not going to complain the new pyramid discriminates against Italians.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say it was a society where meat was for people who could afford it. Lamb would be rare but fish certainly would have been much more common (probably not daily) but it was abundant and more affordable.

Vinnie