“you and Michael and others keep stating that fruits and vegetables are more expensive than whatever alternatives are available to the obese.” I don’t remember saying that(?)

WalMart is I think, now carrying organic produce, which is a real game changer. I think that’s great. Supermarkets listing local farmers and organic is also part of the trend, among other things it draws attention to the produce.

I actually think Whole Foods produce, organic or not, is mediocre. If Aidi or Meijer can sell good, local produce, all the better and it shows the market growth. Getting people to eat better won’t involve everyone shopping Whole Foods, or everyone gardening, or everyone going to farmers markets. But I see all of these trends growing together.

People have gardens because they enjoy the pastime of gardening. At any proper valuation of our labor, gardening as a purely economic persuit makes no sense. The productivity of real farmers is simply too high to make that work.

And if people want organic produce, locally grown, and there is a real market for that, it will be provided. It already is being provided. I just walked into a supermarket yesterday (actually, it’s the hypermarket Meijer) and they had a list of all the local farms that they buy from, and what products those farms offer. They also have a large organic produce section.

The poor are consumers just like anyone else. Seeing as how the biggest contributor to poverty is not working, second order effects that Walmart might have (lowering wages, or whatever else the left blames them with) are not relevant to calculating the benefits to the poor from Walmart.

Is that really true?

First of all, would canned or frozen veggies be that bad an alternative?

Secondly, are vegitables of any kind really more expensive than fast food? Fast food is generally meat. Meat is more expensive than fruits and vegitables?

I shop at Aldi. The fruits and veggies are not fresh, they’re packaged (but not processed). It is wicked cheap. Almost trivially cheap. Based on this experience (and Aldi seems to be expanding to cities, they’re common in and around Chicago and Buffalo) I’m saying that a poor person who wants to eat well can do so. Perhaps not Whole Foods well, but well enough.

Back to gardening. This post and a lot of the current publicity around gardening is about low income people, but of course the phenomenon is happening in middle and upper class neighborhoods without as much publicity. A community garden is a group effort while a family garden is private and so not as noticeable, but just as important. And things like farmer’s markets and food co-ops which started in the alternative culture are moving to include middle-class and low income customers.

Today’s home gardens are sometimes compared to WW II victory gardens and there are similarities, but America’s makeup and habits are very different than the 1940’s. Back then, America was largely still rural and agricultural, or Fordist industrial. Or both — where my family was based, on the Ohio-West Virginia border, people lived in small towns with gardens but the men worked in the coal mines. After most of the family moved to California, both sets of my grandparents had gardens, ate from them and canned for the winter.

My step-grandfather looked and acted like John Wayne. A big man for his generation at 6′+, he was gassed in WWI, was a rancher, gold miner, and lumberman (and somehow never made any money, another story). In another time he would have been called macho, but it was unselfconscious. He hunted and got his limit of deer every fall, which went in the freezer and was a large part of my grandparent’s meat for the year. Then when my grandmother’s arthritis got so bad she couldn’t use her hands, he took over the cooking, cleaning and canning — as far as I know without comment. It wasn’t woman’s work, it was work that needed to be done. I learned a lot from him, even though I would have probably disagreed with his politics totally.

If the trend continues, we’re moving back to the fresh, local, more vegetable diet as well as home and community gardens. I think this will have numerous benefits. I doubt I’ll be deer hunting — it’s become an expensive hobby, I haven’t shot a rifle for 30+ years, and the rest of my family is fairly anti-gun which isn’t unusual but too bad in a way.

It is not as if these people don’t want to eat healthier food. They certainly do. They can’t afford to. That is where projects like urban gardens and Pennsylvania’s FFFI step in. Creating access to affordable healthy food will reduce obesity and other health risks in poor neighborhoods. They will stop eating fast food or canned food, if they know they can stop somewhere in their neighborhood to buy fresh food.

The big obstacle for grocery stores from opening up in many inner city neighborhoods are the start up costs. (or some cases developers underestimate the potential of these markets) Start up costs for development is much higher in urban dense areas than in suburban areas, however studies have shown the long term costs make suburban development much higher. It may involve destroying old buildings, diverting traffic, affecting local residents, and the worry about crime. This is why the PA’s FFFI is so beneficial, it absorbs the start up costs, or at least assist with the start up costs.

Buzzcut-please excuse me while I laugh at your comment about WalMart being the greatest anti-poverty program known to man.

True. But as with anything, it is all a matter of degrees.

Look, divorce and out-of-wedlock childbirth are also problems in America. But like obesity, they are much more prevelant the lower down the income ladder you go.

In fact, I think that income itself is an indication of future time orientation. It refects how much you work and how much education you’ve attained.