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Cheap unsustainable food or sustainably priced food is the decision we all have to make. Unfortunately, the government subsidizes some of the worst food industr

Cheap 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 5y 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.

RugnirViking 5y 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.