I’m leaving for the airport (going from Florida to Oregon via Colorado) in just a few minutes, so I don’t have time for extended commentary – but here are a few links I’ve enjoyed today.
- It’s MLK Jr. day, of course. I thought this post at Feministe was particularly good. And TalkLeft provides a terrific collection of MLK links.
- The New York Times Magazine provides an excellent portrait of “Caroline,” whose life is a story of working hard and remaining poor, “A Poor Cousin of the Middle Class.” And those spunky IWF ladies respond to the article, proving that some conservatives are just as mean-spirited (and fact-challenged) as you imagine they are, in “Caroline’s Whine.”
- Be sure to check out Ms.Musings this week, for her list of ten stories she meant to get around to but didn’t (or didn’t sufficiently) in 2003. Also, check out item number 11, which highlights many new blogs of note. I’m also flattered as heck (and maybe a bit bewildered) to report that Ms.Musings “can’t imagine a world with Alas, a Blog.” (Seriously, thanks, Christine – your blog is great, too!).
- “Sex continues to baffle me, fascinate me, and cause me to be controversial…” A good discussion of sex (and critique of how some feminists have theorized sex) from Jasperboi.
That’s it – I have to go pack up and get to the airport. Posting from me may be slow for the next while. Ta!.
“I’m also flattered as heck (and maybe a bit bewildered) to report that Ms.Musings “can’t imagine a world with Alas, a Blog.””
Either Ms. Musings has zero imagination or you meant “without Alas, a Blog.”
Charlotte’s Whine:
You are an asshole, Charlotte Allen. Thank you, drive through.
Oh, how hard it is for the upper-middle class, having to support all these “parasites”! Oh the wailing and gnashing of teeth over having to pay for student loans and the capital gains tax! (Which is either 10 or 20% of the free money people get for turning over their homes, and is not charged on a home sale done by older people.)
One wonders how the destruction of good-paying factory jobs in the U.S. (which have fled to Mexico or Red China) had to do with situations like Caroline’s. Remember, she was making $6 an hour in plastic-item factories in the 1970s, making items that are undoubtedly made in Maoist China now.
One thing about wealth is that the wealthy are insulated from the effects of either bad decisions or bad luck. Effects of a bad choice of mate, early lifestyle choice, or other, smaller bad decisions echo throughout a poor person’s life, but are struggled through by the middle class and shrugged off by the wealthy. A car breaking down is a nuisance for the middle class, but can cost the poor their job.
Goofing off in college will cost a poor student his or her chance at a better life, but is laughed off by people like George W. Bush, who racked up gentleman’s Cs before being prepped for leadership.
Wow. I don’t think the IWF could possibly have been more mean spirited. Way to miss the point, assholes.
Oh, my. Amp quoted me correctly; it was my mistake. I meant to say “without,” of course. See the effect Alas, a Blog has on me?!
Yeah, I noticed. I just didn’t think it worthwhile to joke further. It does come out pretty ridiculous in that version, though.
Yay! Barry’s coming home :)
That “Caroline’s Whine” could do with a good fisking.
Why waste perfectly good fisk on someone so fucking stupid that they don’t know that “fresh, nutritious food” does indeed “cost more” ? Often a lot more. Just tie them up and read them my High School poetry for twenty minutes. That’ll fix ’em.
Better yet, send them to volunteer for three or four hours at the Oregon Food Bank and do the warehouse tour, preferably in high heels, all the better to feel the pain of others as they stumble across the cold, concrete floor that nonetheless is probably infinitely warmer than their hearts and less dense than their skulls.
One should be able to crack a thesaurus and find “IWF” listed as a synonym for “clueless.”
I’m going to do myself a favor and stay away from the IWF. Thanks for the pointer to the NYT article, though.
God
That IWF link was horrible. I feel meaner for just reading it. its like a decency black hole- no amount of compassion, or pity, or acknowledgment of the basic humanity of others can escape.
I have to be anonymous for a minute here, I apologize, but I’m a regular poster.
Jasperboi is the best link, but probably for personal reasons that most wouldn’t understand.
I hate Ms. Magazine so much. But it’s only because you hated us first. You fetishize the trans men, and you want the trans women dead and preferably invisible while we die. I would never wish such a thing on any of you, how could you be so cruel to human beings? You have blood on your hands, Ms. Magazine, I hope you’re able to wash it off someday.
Okay then. “A poor cousin of the middle class” is, I think, something that many of us have witnessed. Although, thankfully, not been part of. “Caroline’s Whine” was incredible. Did this person read the same article that I did? It’s hard to tell. And it reminds me of the guy in high-school who told boasting stories of him & his dad playing tricks on & making fun of the homeless in NYC.
Jasperboi & Anonymous bring up something very important. Mainly the glaring (IMHO) imperfection haunting many groups within feminism. That is the (to my mind) bizarre bigotry towards the transgendered. I remember being totally bewildered by it when I first heard of it (Michigan Women’s Festival). I continue to be bewildered by it. While I by no means feel that this discredits feminism, I do feel that it is a festering wound. And it is something that makes me feel embarrassed & ashamed. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to the logic behind the bigotry.
But I probably still won’t get it.
This is really old (so, please consider it a historical document), and written from only the MTF-view (because it was in response to The Transsexual Empire, a hate-book that is still being used in some women’s studies classes, but there is also Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch which contains a hate-chapter on trans-women, which is more widely used, and indeed, held in high esteem), but a definitive article from the past is The Empire Strikes Back ( A Post Transexual Manifesto), by Sandy Stone.
Because Ms. Magazine is largely informed by the second-wavers who set up the standards for women’s studies syllabi, it is a response to them, as well, though I don’t believe they are mentioned by name.
Our problem is that, despite the myth, the majority of trans and ex-trans women do not hold any cultural power, and thus have close to zero academic support, including being represented in academia. There is much more support for trans and ex-trans men in academia, but it is a fetisistic support, generally put forth by butch and transgendered (female-bodied and woman-identified, though sometimes transgender-identified, but in a gender-play sense) lesbians. Which is to say that, while the myth is that trans and ex-trans women hold the power to define, it is actually a group of non-trans women who are defining all trans people according to their outsider-views on us, through the lenses of their own transgenderedness, which is not transgendered in the original sense. It is they who have co-opted us and our terminology; perhaps in rebuttal for us stealing their right to own “man” and “woman” and “male” and “female”.
This description, of course, coming from an ex-trans female, and therefore viewed through my own lenses (and through the lenses of my mental illness, so doubly skewed), and is certainly not the entirety of the landscape.
You are right in having a difficult time understanding. None of us understands, least of all those of us who are in the middle of the controversy.
Please understand also, that there is a constant shifting in our analysis. For instance, Kate Bornstein who originally posited that she would never be truly female, because of conversations with feminist lesbian and bisexual women. Later, she rescinded this statement, saying that she was required to believe this in order to be accepted as a friend by these people. Kate Bornstein’s story is one of abuse at the hands of queer feminists, and is probably still ongoing. I’m sorry to say that there is no document I know of that sums-up this story, but it is clear from a reading of Bornstein’s work.
Lastly, someday, (sadly it won’t be me), someone will put to bed the crass and disgusting idea that trans and ex-trans women have “male privilege.” There are very few more insulting misconceptions about us. Unfortunately, the current third-wave feminists use the acceptance of “male privilege” in the trans and ex-trans females as a gatekeeper issue — if we don’t admit to it, we are in denial and accused of refusing to give up our “male privilege”. Circular reasoning at its best.
Therefore, I can’t point out to you any good websites or other places to go, because the metaphorical, academic and literal slaughter of trans people continues to this day.
The IWF piece reminds me very strongly of a long online conversation I once had with a conservative woman who simply could not be convinced that our economy is biased against the poor.
She herself (she claimed) had risen out of poverty during the late sixties and early seventies, and was now a successful professional. She therefore felt that everyone who claimed that they couldn’t succeed because the system was biased against them was just a lazy whiner, and objected to any tax money being used to reward them for their lack of responsibility.
As we continued our correspondence, I came to a clear understanding of the way she, and people like her, view the world: It’s all a big game, and she’s winning, and winning is just not as much fun for her if other people aren’t losing.
I don’t mean that as a metaphor. I mean that’s *really what she thought*. If everyone was doing well in the economy, it would have damaged her pride in having done well herself.
She had nothing but disdain for people who were so inept at the strategy of the game that they would let themselves get pregnant, or marry the wrong guy–these people ought to know better. She’d known better when *she* was growing up! The rules of the game are clear as can be, and if you just follow them, you’ll get your reward, as she did, and if you don’t, you’ll get punished, and that’s perfectly fair and just and makes her believe even more strongly that she’s where she is because she’s virtuous and smart.
Survivor guilt? Or just plain psychopathy? I really don’t know, but either way, it makes me sad.
Good thoughts Evan. I can understand the viewing it as a game thing. Every once in a while I do that myself. Only I don’t feel good about other people losing. I guess that’s because I know how the luck of being born into the circumstances of my life has put me where I am. I make a lot of money (in my view – dunno what others would think), and it’s almost entirely due to circumstance & connection. I’m pretty bright & that helps to keep me where I am economically, but it’s the economic circumstances of my birth that got me in in the first place. So it’s easy for me to imagine where I would probably be now if my family hadn’t been pretty well off. I can see that the game was rigged to favor me (comparatively) from the outset. I suppose I might view it differently if I had pulled myself up by my own bootstraps. But most people who are moderately to obscenely wealthy come from wealth. And they don’t see it as privilege. They tend to see it as their right. Which is even more bewildering than the views of those who escaped from poverty on their own. It seems to me that, in the end, it boils down to selfishness (I want more, I don’t care at who’s expense) & fear (if I don’t acknowledge that poverty is not self-imposed then I don’t have to acknowledge that that could have happened to me). And both of those ways of looking at it are a result of the lack of feelings of social responsibility that happens when one’s community consists of far more people than one can know.
I’m sorry… not taking anyside on the rant. There are points on both sides…
But someone suggested fresh nutritious food is more expensive than pre-packaged processed food. Doesn’t a diet of fresh nutritious food cost less that pre-packaged? I cook most of my food from scratch and I am under the impression I do save money using fresh and sometime frozen food.
Dried beans are about $1-2 a pound. Rice is pretty cheap. Flour is pertty cheap. Oatmeal for breakfast is pretty cheap. Or are these not “fresh”?
No, those are not fresh. Those are easily stored/shipped non-fresh items. And really not a good diet on their own. Fresh includes fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, poultry. One cannot survive well on just rice, flour, oatmeal. They are a decent base for diet but cannot be labeled a diet of fresh, nutritious food on their own.
The NYT article hits way too close to home for me. While I came from a solidly white middle class college-is-mandatory background, my boyfriend hasn’t and is still floundering. He didn’t go to college, wasn’t even brought up on the idea of college, and can’t get any kind of decent job (plus now it takes 9 months to get another one after he loses one). Making minimum wage on a part-time job (none of these jobs are ever offered full time, even if you work over 40 hours at them) makes it impossible to pay even the most minimum number of bills always on time, and certainly doesn’t leave any extra for say, visits to the ER or the dentist. And as for financial aid to get any kind of schooling? Hah.
Well.. I didn’t think rice and beans all alone are a sufficient diet.
But my real question is expense. Is “junk food” cheap? Or more specifically, is it cheaper to eat junk food than to make sensible selections at the grocery stores?
When I prepare bean taco’s topped with made with homemade Curetado (half a chopped cabbage, onion picked in salt vinegar, and spiced with one habanero) is this an expensive meal compared to whatever one supsects “junk food” would be?
Is cabbage expensive compared to Doritos? Carrots expensive compared to Oreo cookies? Baked potatoes expesive compared to potato chips? Beans compared to twinkies?
After all, the original “whine” being criticised with a “come on” above seemed to be criticised for pretty much suggesting that a healthy diet is no more expensive thana junk food diet.
It seems to me that a healthy diet can be cheaper than a junk food diet!
Keep in mind that a cheap, make-everything-from-scratch diet costs more in terms of time, energy and skill. If you have either a lot of skill (i.e., you were raised making that sort of food or picked up how to do it in college) or leisure time, it can be cheap to eat a fairly healthy diet.
A lot of the ways that “fast-food” – say, a $2 dinner at McDonalds – is cheap is in that it takes zero time or energy, and can easily be fit into a schedule between getting out of work and picking up children from school or whatever.
A fresh food diet can be cheaper than a junk food diet. However, a diet of basic carbohydrates is cheaper still (pasta, top ramen, and cheap white bread). The main things a fresh food diet takes that a fast food diet doesn’t take is time (and a functional kitchen) and some degree of skill at cooking. Also, a fresh food diet generally takes more time the more food you are preparing (with some exceptions). And fast food is more pleasurable than ultra-minimalist fresh food (beans and rice).
For poor people, fast food is sort of like living in a pay-by-the-week motel. It is more expensive to pay by the week than to rent, lease or own, but it requires less of a capital investment at the start. Fast food is more expensive per meal, but requires much less energy and time to make, and it requies no capital investment in a decent kitchen.
Of course, most people eat fast food because they like it better than non-fast food.
Spot on.
Also, you need to live in a neighborhood where the local markets sell something other than chef boy-ar-dee–which is the best you can usually find at an inner-city liquor store–or else have a car, bicycle, cabfare, or time to take a bus to the supermarket. (If you work at Wal-Mart, at least, you probably have an advantage on this point; they sell fresh produce and you’re there every day anyway.)
You also need a kitchen with a sink, stove and refrigerator, and a set of pots and pans and dishes and cutlery.
And of course you need an education in money and cooking skills which you may not have gotten from your family, and *certainly* didn’t get from your school. I’ve thought for a long time that the fact that our public schools don’t teach basic economic survival skills is one of the main ways we fail the poor. (And not just the poor, for that matter–a lot of middle-class folks could do with a much better understanding of debt.)
Interestingly, since my questions were triggered by someone who thinks it’s ridiculous for the author of “Caroline’s White” to suggest Caroline might have saved money by preparing her own food rather than eating junk food:
1) One response above conceded that people can buy fresh nutritional food at Wallmart. “Caroline”, woman eating junk food did in fact work at Wallmart during at least a portion of the time when she ate all the junk food.
2) It was suggested that it might be impossible to cook if you have no access to pots, pans, oven etc. Caroline, the woman who ate the junk food,owned a house. (She bought it under a government subsidized program for low incme people.) I would guess that, she probably owned an oven, pots and pans etc.
3) Carolyn lived within walking distance of her job at Wallmart. Even if she didn’t want to buy all her groceries at Wallmart, this suggests her closest location for buying groceries might not have been an an inner city liquor store. (Wallmarts are concentrated in rural areas and suburbs.)
As to food satisfaction: I disagree that fast food is more satisfying than red beans and rice! I prefer my red beans and rice to Mcdonalds hamburgers, and so does pretty much everyone in my family! But that’s a matter of food preference.
lucia,
I also like red beans and rice better than McD’s (but then, I am a vegetarian). However, I suspect that neither of our red beans and rice are ultra-minamilist. When it comes to time constraints, it is also worth noting that red beans and rice takes about 45 minutes to make(if you used canned beans). If you cut costs and improve quality by using dried beans, then red beans and rice takes multiple hours. Also, a diet of red beans and rice would be unlikely to provide adequate nutrition during pregnancy (the context that was relevant in the articles).
Reading through the article, I can see no mention of Caroline’s diet being oriented towards fast food. Indeed, except for poor nutrition during pregnancy, I don’t see any mention of her diet. To assume that poor nutrition = fast food is fairly dubious. I have had periods of poverty and depression induced poor nutrition, and they never involved fast food. It is just as likely that she was living off of top ramen! As I pointed out before, a poor diet is cheaper than a good diet. Vegetables, fruit and meat are all more expensive than pasta, bread, or rice and beans. A home cooked poor diet is cheaper than a home cooked good diet, and an eaten out poor diet is cheaper than an eaten out good diet.
The period when she had poor nutrition was not while she was working at Walmart, it was while she was holding various dead end jobs and involved in an abusive marriage. Nothing is said of the availability of local groceries, nor of the quality of her kitchen during this period. Furthermore, given her abusive relationship, it is possible that her poor diet was further exacerbated by depression and misery.
Post pregnancy, there is no mentioned of her diet. In fact, the snide aside about fresh food being cheaper than fast food is not actually a response to anything in the original article.
Reading through the article, even if her diet currently consists exclusively of fast food (unlikely on an income of $10,000 a year), I can not imagine that that would represent a significant part of her life’s problems. I can’t imagine that her life would be significantly improved by having a diet of purely fresh foods (not that there is any real evidence that it doesn’t currently).
Also, the one major argument for fast food that I mentioned above, time, you didn’t respond to. She is specifically described as working gruelling hours, so the time involved in food preperation might well be a significant issue for her, particularly since she is also taking care of a severely retarded adolecent. Nor does the house and kitchen apply to her current situation, only to one of her previous situation.
The fast food comment in the IWF piece is merely one baseless, snide remark amongst a slew of baseless, snide remarks by a self satisfied, hateful individual. I can’t really see any reason to defend it, particularly since it is an argument with nothing. The author of the original piece never says that fresh food is more expensive than fast food.
“It is just as likely that she was living off of top ramen! As I pointed out before, a poor diet is cheaper than a good diet. ”
Exactly. There was a period in my life (just seven years ago, actually) when grocery money for me was thirty dollars a week. Seriously. I ate a lot of raman and peanut butter.
In no particular order, I want to comment on a few things:
The fast food comment in the IWF piece is merely one baseless, snide remark amongst a slew of baseless, snide remarks by a self satisfied, hateful individual. I can’t really see any reason to defend it, particularly since it is an argument with nothing. The author of the original piece never says that fresh food is more expensive than fast food.
I agree that the IWF piece makes numerous snide remarks. Stating that fast food is more expensive than fresh food is said in snide way. I am not defening the author of that piece.
I also did not say the original author at the NYTimes said fast food was cheap.
I said someone here: (Posted by Amy S. at January 20, 2004 06:51 AM ) said nutritious food is more expensive. (She happened to say it in a snide way — note the attack on people in high heels? But.. maybe that’s not a mean spirited attack on those who wear high heels for their jobs?)
The fact is: I don’t see why anyone here would think a good way to countering the snide IWF woman’s argument is to make a false statement about the relative cost of nutritious food and non-nutritious food!
That is: claiming bad food is cheaper than nutritious food. It is generally not cheaper. At least not what generally constitutes “bad food” in the US.
Fast food, and junk food, is NOT less expensive.
But, I bet Amy’s Oregon food bank would go broke even faster if they stocked it full of Dorito’s, twinkies, top ramen (to add Pauls suggested choice) Coca Cola, and chocolate bars instead of rice, beans, flour, oatmeal, canned tomatoes, cabbage and yes, even meat!
(Although, if it’s cheaper to stock top-ramen than rice, Amy, I suggest you stock it. Ramen is a grain…….)
I use dried beans exclusively. That takes 10 minutes to cook beans. You do need to own a pressure cooker.
And how much does a pressure cooker cost?
I used to cook my beans in a crock pot. That took hours. I just left the pot on while I was away at work. I bought the crock pot at goodwill. While it takes 8 hours to cook the beans, it doesn’t use 8 hours of my time. (This is an important distinction.)
Dare I suggest that leaving a second-hand crock pot plugged in and unattended for hours at a time may not be the safest thing in the world? And dare I also suggest that if Caroline had done that and something had happened (i.e., the house burned down), the IWF would be first in line to take her to task for doing something so irresponsible?
The article never specifically mentioned junk food, it mentioned poor nutrition. When living on a fixed income, especially if you’re paid only once a month as opposed to weekly or bi-weekly, you buy a lot of staples at payday. Pasta, rice, oatmeal, canned goods, and even bread and meat, since these things can be easily stored or frozen and made to last for weeks until your next paycheck. What’s difficult to buy and maintain is fresh produce, and it’s tricky to budget for it, too. Buy it all at the beginning of the month and you’re likely to lose a lot of it to spoilage. Trying to make trips to the market intermittently through the month, but you’ll often find that the money you set aside for just that reason ends up being necessary for other things along the way. And while those staples are essential parts of a nutritious diet, they alone cannot sustain it. Of course, you have to have some knowledge of nutrition to be able to put it into practice, and that’s not as widespread as we might like to believe. Yes, it’s out there, yes, it’s easy to find information about how to eat properly, and yes, a lot of people come to that realization too late. It’s possible to eat poorly and never set foot inside of a fast food restaurant.
What’s most striking about this article is that Caroline was repeatedly faced with making hard choices and she didn’t shirk them, but tried to be responsible. They didn’t always work out, but they weren’t always the bad choice, either! I’d have to say that trying to get an AA degree was a good thing, even though it proved to not be enough to advance her career. (Although I wonder, how the IWF can say that she received a “virtually free” community college education when she ran up $17,000 in student loans?) It’s just that every time one of her choices didn’t pan out, she wasn’t just back where she started, but pushed just a little further back as she had to make up for the poor choice AND STILL try to claw her way back to where she wanted to go.
lucia,
Since the fast food/fresh food discussion has NOTHING to do with Caroline (about whose food preferences we are told not one word), Amy’s comment that under some circumstances fresh, nutritious food is more expensive than fast food seems entirely justified. For the many people who live in rent-by-the week motel rooms or residence hotels (with utterly inadequate kitchens, often simply a microwave or a hot plate), for the many people who live in inner city areas (or rural areas) that lack decent grocery stores, nutritious, fresh food is not merely not cheaper, it isn’t meaningfully available. Whether Caroline was ever living in one of those situations is unclear, but would not be surprising.
When we attempt to relate the IWF snark back to Caroline, it is certainly true that inadequate nutrition (Caroline’s problem during her last child’s pregnancy) can be had for less money than adequate nutrition, even if there are also more expensive ways of having inadequate nutrition as well. Since we know nothing of Caroline’s food choices, it seems uncharitable in the extreme to assume that they were caused by a preference for expensive, unhealthy food over cheap, healthy food.
Also, while Amy is almost invariably snarky, her snark on high heels seemed to be more an expression of hatred for high heels than for those who wear them. She did say “preferably,” not “presumably.” The high heels were intended to make the experience more unpleasant, not to comment on the propensity of the author to wear high heels (as far as I could tell. Frankly, it seemed a somewhat out of left field side note to me).
Have you read Nickeled and Dimed? Ehrenreich goes into a great deal of detail about her problems eating in a healthy way on minimum wage jobs. Since she is a well educated, middle class, generally healthy eating person, her problems stem entirely from the fundamental situation (plus her relative inexperience at eaking out a life in poverty), and not on any imaginary defect in poor people.
If all you are arguing is that it does cost more to eat out than to eat in, I don’t think anyone would dispute that. If all you are arguing is that many people choose to eat poorly, and have poor nutrition through no fault of poverty, I don’t think that anyone would dispute that.
I am confident that your red beans and rice are not spartan, that was rather my point. Spartan red beans and rice (1 can red beans, 1 cup cooked uncle ben’s converted rice (try finding a decent basmati or jasmine or arborio or any brown rice in your average convenience store, or even in a rural NC chain grocery store)) are vastly inferior to a good red bean and rice like yours or mine.
lucia,
By the way, what is your recipe for Curetado? That sounded good.
Charles
CG:
Mostly responses and comments in the order I find questions.. Response to Charles later..
—-
A pressure cooker at Wallmart costs about … $20. It is best not to buy an very old used one because there have been some advances in the pressure release technology since.. uhmmm the 50s.
Many of my friends in rural areas use their pressure cookers to can. (I don’t can. )
I’m not sure why you think a used crock-pot is dangerous. I do make sure there is a UL approval on my electrical appliances….Certainly, a crock pot with a malfunctioning thermostat might be a problem since it could, conceivably, continue to provide heat even though the set temperature is exceeded.
When the controller on my crock pot died, it just stopped heating at all. (Because.. well, the thermostat died. The thermostat is tied into the heating element, and when the thermistor in the thermostat died, the electrical circuit was shorted open.. and electricity couldn’t flow….)
Yes. I’m sure the snarky lady at IWF would complain that Caroline burned down her house if her crock pot DID set the house on fire.
—
About the whole idea of eating a “poor diet” and specifically the idea that poor people eat a poor diet because they run out of money at the end of the month or because they are… well pig ignorant of nutrition. (Ok.. you didn’t use the term pig ignorant… but instead suggest that they are somehow blithely, yet justifiably, unaware of the principles of good nutrition. Is that different from pig ignorant?)
As to running out of money at the end of the week… I would think the earlier suggested alternative (by others not you) that poor people go to McDonalds would be even MORE iffy if you found you money gone at the end of the month.
But you didn’t suggest Mcdonald’s.. you suggested stocking up on non-perishables, at the expense of veggies.
Not all produce perishes instantly. Cabbage, winter squash, potatos and onions have pretty long shelf lives around my house. Carrots last quite some time. Oranges and grapefruit seem to last forever. (I know because I’ve purchased them but find I don’ t eat them. Let me tell you, they last.) Apples last much longer than than a month. (I know because my family would harvest two bushels in the fall when I was a kid. They kept in the garage for at least 3 months as we slowly ate them.)
Your post suggests that meat keeps and can be frozen… well… frozen veggies (right now $1/ lb at Jewel) keep at least as long as frozen meat. Frozen orange juice? Canned tomatoes and canned veggies keep pretty well too. People can, and do stock up on the full food pyramid. (Did I mention I have powdered milk in my pantry? Ok.. ick.. but I use it for hot chocolate which I make by mixing it with cocoa powder and sugar using the recipe I learned in 4-H. I do prefer fresh milk…)
Most poor people I know are aware of these things. Even people who grew up in the projects. Even migrant field hands working in Lake County Illinois during the ’60s. (And I have, knew quite a few when I was a kid.)
So.. in the US, is the main reason for poor nutrition the cost of perishable veggies like lettuce? Or even relying on flour and eggs because winter squash won’t keep? It it the main reason people don’t eat veggies?