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Cowspiracy. Seaspiracy, now this? What am I supposed to eat!?! Hyperbole aside, buying food that is actually sustainable and has no ethical concerns seems ver
by galangalalgol 6y ago
Cowspiracy. Seaspiracy, now this? What am I supposed to eat!?! Hyperbole aside, buying food that is actually sustainable and has no ethical concerns seems very difficult.
- hervature 6y agoGo to your local farmer's market, buy what they have. It's not that hard.
- jwilber 6y ago“It’s not that hard.” You hear that, single-mother-of-three? Stop eating unsustainably and just go pay a 20 percent markup for whatever food is available down at the local farmer’s market. It’s not that hard! Just make more money. What about those who find such markets price-prohibitive? Those who live in food deserts?
- trav4225 6y agoWell, if she's a mother of three, we already know her life goal is obviously planetary destruction, so what's a few avocados grown by Big Ag? ;-)
- tjr225 6y agoOr perhaps conservative government made birth control and abortion illegal. Or perhaps she was raped. Come on.
- Fricken 6y agoRaped 3 times? Or were they triplets?
- tjr225 6y agoYou really don’t think that happens? Try even a cursory google search. Come on. https://www.google.com/search?q=raped+multiple+times&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=raped+multiple+times&ie=UTF-...
- sethhochberg 6y agoI'm not trying to downplay the difficulties of helping less privileged people eat well, but you should know many cities have programs that specifically make efforts to put farmers markets in food deserts, and often accept EBT/SNAP at above cash value (or with heavy rebates) - if these kind of programs don't exist where you are, perhaps consider petitioning whatever group runs your local farmers markets to see if they might be possible to introduce.
- ganafagol 6y agoIf those who can afford it would do it, like the well-off people frequenting hacker news, that would be a start. That would drive up demand, make it worth for more farmers to do this sustainably, eventually driving those costs down, and thus making it more affordable for lesser income people. And it's not black and white, in each iteration more people can afford it. Similar to electric cars. It's easy to armchair-philosophise those things away with "oh but poor people wont ever have the money, so screw it". With that attitude we'd never hav gotten electric cars. Or solar power.
- jwilber 6y agoThere’s no armchair philosophy here, nor the defeated apathy you seem to be responding to. GP posted a ridiculous, condescending, one-sentence solution to the issue of sustainable eating. I used hyperbole to try and highlight how out of touch they are. The whole point is that the problem is, in fact, hard.
- megablast 6y agoThe big trick is not to get yourself in the situation of being a single mother with 3 kids for starters. Of course you can’t do the best for your kids with 3 of them on your own.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoBringing up impoverished people every time someone asks what one should be eating doesn’t answer the question and it’s exhausting to watch “Avocados are healthy and—“ “Umm, try living in a food desert with three jobs!” Yes, it sucks for those people, but pointing out poverty doesn’t silence the conversation about nutrition for the rest of us who can afford some cheap vegetables.
- jwilber 6y agoAgreed. But when someone posts a one-sentence solution to a difficult problem, and frames it in the most condescending manner possible (eg “It’s not hard.”), it’s difficult not to respond with a low-effort (and very real) counterexample. I’m curious what the “unsilenced” (???) conversation would continue to look like in your opinion- seems to me like the “not hard” comment of the original response implied not much conversation was left to be had.
- cortesoft 6y agoYeah, but if the conversation starts with “large agribusiness is unsustainable and needs to end”, you can’t propose a solution that doesn’t feed the entire population.
- hervature 6y agoCheap unsustainable food or sustainably priced food is the decision we all have to make. Unfortunately, the government subsidizes some of the worst food industries in the name of providing "staples". We can't feed 8 billion people Wagyu beef for every meal. Yes, the world needs to eat more lentils. We can't complain that eating sustainable is "hard" when we really mean "it is 50% more expensive". Great, Disney World every 7 years instead of every 5. For the families that truly need help (which is the minority), we have programs to assist. But instead of giving them government cheese, let's push for locally sourced ingredients. But again, that's "hard".
- RugnirViking 6y ago> For the families that truly need help (which is the minority) 20% of the US population recieves wellfare payments - and a good proportion of those above this lowest quintile are precarious at best. I would go so far as to say that more than half of people absolubtely cannot afford a 50% price increase on food. Not to mention the additional labour and complexity involved in cooking food from raw & healthy ingredients. It cannot be overstated just how much "brain fog" one experiences growing up and living the life of those less fortuntate - it really is incredibly difficult for someone like this to just decide one day to not have their usual frozen pre-cooked microwave meal and instead learn how to make a vegetarian lentil curry, and a big part of that is the percieved difficulty of cooking and the psychological barrier of learning something new - it really is hard for a lot of people to feel the agency in their lives such that they can simply "decide" to learn something new like that. Now I'm not saying this to simply be contrarian, or to say that we can't do anything about this at all, but rather we need to approach the issue with large quantities of empathy and human understanding. Government funded cooking programmes pointed towards those with little time and money and that helps teach basic skills without talking down to people would be a good start, but realistically something like that would only work if they became popular - it would require a very talented face/crew that have passion for their mission.
- hypertele-Xii 6y agoThere's what I call the "cheap shoes fallacy" at play here. When you buy cheap shoes, they break quickly, forcing you to buy another pair, ultimately costing more over time than if you had just bought good shoes to begin with. The same applies to food. When you buy cheap food, it will nourish you only a little bit, forcing you to buy more of it, ultimately costing more over time than if you had just bought good food to begin with. Cheap, industrial food contains the minimum amount of actual food to pass for grub, and is laden with artificial flavorings to fool your brain into thinking you're actually eating something, when you're not.
- cortesoft 6y agoI don’t think the data backs that up. The percentage of obese people would indicate that food not having enough calories is not the issue.
- hypertele-Xii 6y agoYou don't judge the quality of food by the amount of calories in it.
- giantrobot 6y ago> When you buy cheap shoes, they break quickly, forcing you to buy another pair, ultimately costing more over time than if you had just bought good shoes to begin with. This is only a "fallacy" if someone chooses to purchase the cheap shoes despite having the capability to buy good shoes. Being poor is expensive. If you can't buy good shoes you're stuck in a feedback loop of making do with cheap shoes. The same goes for many items and services. There's not a good option for a lot of people close to their margins.
- hypertele-Xii 6y agoYou can always go without shoes for a while to save up for good ones. A lot of the things people don't even consider giving up are non-essential. There's a strange hoarder mentality where poor people are unwilling to sacrifice anything at all, even if it led to future improvement. It's another fallacy, I think. When you're hungry it wouldn't occur to many to voluntarily fast. Sugars fool humans well. Artificial flavorings fool them even better. Note the core of my argument: $1 of good food sustains you longer than $1 of bad food. What good food is so expensive per smallest unit sold that anyone couldn't switch to it?
- cortesoft 6y agoThere is a very large percentage of the population that does not have access to a farmers market... often times they don’t even have access to full service grocery stores that have fresh fruits and vegetables at all. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5063235/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5063235/
- hervature 6y agoThat study seems to have many deficiencies. First, it is a county analysis. If you look at the distribution of farmer's markets, it seems to follow the population density of counties in general: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2010/geo/population-density-county-2010.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2010/geo/popul... Secondly, the data comes from the USDA which seems highly dubious. For example, Armstrong County in PA has "0" farmer markets for the purposes of the study even though they have 120 farms with direct sales. Even a cursory Google search for a community inside Armstrong has a farmer's market three times a week: https://www.farmersmarketonline.com/fm/KittanningFarmersMarket.html https://www.farmersmarketonline.com/fm/KittanningFarmersMark... . The data and methodology of the study is clearly flawed. Finally, "living in a county with a farmer's market" is not really a measure of accessibility. Just because you live in a county with a farmer's market, it doesn't mean you can get to it easily. Even a neighboring county might be more accessible. Overall, the methodology of the paper is highly dubious. But even if the point remains "farmer's markets are not accessible for many Americans", the takeaway message is not that farmer's markets are a pipe dream. The takeaway should be that the focus on globalization of the agricultural supply chain in search of the cheapest food has put us in a precarious spot as a species that many people can't participate in sustainable food because the roots of society has relied on access to cheap food from elsewhere. It's a red flag warning to change our policies, not a sign to give up. To the other people who down voted my original comment that the solution is easy. It truly is, we simply need to pay more for food. We need to actively choose a more robust system versus the cheapest. I would never ask the government to subsidize farmer's markets, but simply removing subsidies on existing products that would double the cost of specific food items would go a long way for aligning the market to start to grow more stuff locally. We won't solve any climate issues by spending less money.
- coliveira 6y agoIf it is done by big agrobusiness, it is bad for the environment/poor people. This is a constant that won't change. The only good food is done by local farmers.
- barathr 6y agoEven the latter statement has to be hedged, unfortunately (e.g., see the Dust Bowl), though it is more often the case. It really comes down to sustainable vs. unsustainable practices.
- nitwit005 6y agoYes, you have to be careful of people's romanticism around farming. A single small farm may not cause much damage, but millions of small farms can easily.
- barathr 6y agoThe key with small farms is that they have "skin in the game" and also the feedback loop is faster since they are often on the land and see the effects of what they do.
- Calvin02 6y agoI find it hard to believe that large farms don’t have “skin in the game”. I would think that they manage their farm land as an investment. It isn’t easy to move to a different area due to labor, equipment, investment into the ground, etc. If anything, I’d expect a small farm operation to easily relocate should the land become less productive.
- barathr 6y agoSustainability is often about long-term productivity, not short-term productivity. A piece of land that's going to be in a family for multiple generations is a different thing from a corporate operation that is looking for quarterly or yearly gains. Yes there are some in the latter category that are thinking long term, but how often are they thinking one generation out, let alone multiple?
- MomoXenosaga 6y agoEverything is sustainable if you put enough chemicals into the ground and divert a few rivers! Ask the Dutch.
- cigaser 6y agoThe only food with ethical concerns is human flesh. The rest is marketing.
- trav4225 6y agoI can almost guarantee you that recycling cadavers into protein shakes will be one of the "next big things" proposed. To save the planet, of course.
- ganafagol 6y agoThat's the spoiler of a 1973 movie about a green flavor food product.
- samplatt 6y agoSoylent Green is on Netflix, by the way.
- galangalalgol 6y agoWhy ruin the texture? Low and slow with some rosemary garlic and salt. Engineers that drink a lot of beer and live in cubicles are practically Kobe.
- ganafagol 6y agoYour personal ethics are at odds with those of most people I know.
- refurb 6y agoThankfully “most of the people you now” don’t get to force their ethics on others.
- galangalalgol 6y agoA lot of shrimp is shelled and packed by literal slaves. That seems ethically questionable.
- dang 6y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27017728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27017728.