Food for Change

It’s a topic I’ve been a-blogging about frequently in the last couple of months, so it’s only appropriate that I follow up with these recent more hopeful stories on the topic of making healthy food more available in food desert areas of the city and country.

Yesterday New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand proposed $1 billion in loans and grants Monday to help build 2,100 grocery stores in areas around the nation that lack access to fresh food.

It’s estimated that the proposal would help about four million New Yorkers who live in areas like the Bronx and East New York, where grocery stores are few and far between by providing the funding for more than 350 stores statewide. This proposal has the potential to solve the problem of access to healthy food in low-income areas and that’s the first step, but as I’ve said before, the second (and perhaps most important) step is making those healthy foods affordable—more affordable than junk food. That’s a more complex step that involves our entire industrial food system, but no measure of availability or education/awareness will have complete results until people can afford to buy the food.

There’s been some good news (not necessarily NEW news, but more new-to-me news) in the education/awareness area of healthy eating and cooking. On the heels of the after school cooking program I volunteered at last week, I found this story about a professional chef teaching kids about healthy cooking. I know firsthand how engrained poor eating habits can be in kids, how reluctant they can be to try foods they think are “weird” or “gross” but I’ve also seen how much (boy and girls, small kids, teens) really get into cooking, creating, and learning about new foods. It’s not going to fix the problem or change the world, but it does give you hope.

Undecided “Real” Americans

Two things baffle me in these days so close to election.

1) The fact that McCain’s campaign seems to think it’s a good idea to insult and alienate possible voters by saying that they aren’t American or aren’t “real” if they live in an non-rural area (note to McCain: there’s lots of peeps in the rural areas think you are full of shit too, so your “real America” perspective has a few holes in it).

2) That anyone is actually authentically undecided, or can be swayed by anything that either one says or does at this point. I think that “undecided” people just don’t want to tell you that they are voting for McCain because they don’t want to have to defend a choice that makes such little sense. That or they really want the poo poo platter.

If you can’t afford it…don’t buy it.

It’s hilarious how totally out of touch magazines can be. Like all of these articles about how to save money in the recession.

Step 1: Buy less stuff
Step 2: Still broke? Buy cheaper stuff
Step 3: Still broke? Stop buying stuff
Step 4: No really, when you don’t have money for things, you shouldn’t carry on buying them. And if going out is too expensive, you should stay in.

Sure there are some very stupid rich people, but are any this clueless? These articles condescend so much to assume that there are people in ‘merica unaware of the existence of Wal-mart and Goodwill… Still if you think that advice to buy both an old $9 Gap sweater from Salvation Army, and a $400 cashmere blanket keep you warm and cozy while watching your stocks fall, then, yeah…maybe you need to be condescended to...

Election..blah, blah, blah…

So I watched the last debate last night, and like the ones before it, it had a lot of not talking about the topics, saying wrong shit, and being petty. And really I feel like everyone is kind of just ready to get this over with. I mean, are people seriously still undecided? This effing thing has gone on for longer than most of my relationships. I’m ready to forget (affront to all women) Sara Pailn exists. I’m ready to stop hearing about Joe the Plumber. But just for the hell of it, here are a few notes to McCain or anyone misguided enough to think about voting for him:

1) $5,000 will buy no one health insurance any more than those $600 checks fixed the economy.

2) Not only does saying “drill, baby, drill make you sound like more of a douche than referring to yourself as a “maverick,” but offshore drilling will lower gas prices (at best) by a few cents a gallon for a very short time, and then we’ll be screwed again, not exactly a good solution.

3) As Hilary (Stratton not Clinton) pointed out, Autism does not equal Down Syndrome, and your pandering is so transparent that I can’t believe anyone would fall for it.

4) Nobody is pro abortion, people are pro choice. And for all the talk about the “rights of the unborn” maybe you should do a little more for them once they are born. Anyways, it (like most things in life) reminds me of the Simpsons…

The HIV Morning After Pill and Why No One’s Heard of it

It’s sticky to say that morality and medicine have no place together. Because clearly we want doctors to act in a moral way when dealing with life and death. But moral judgments of health problems that result in withholding information or lack of treatment just seems absurd.

Turns out there’s a drug that can prevent AIDS, basically a HIV morning after pill, much like (but more intense than) the pregnancy morning after pill. But it’s only available in a few states and no one knows about it.

The reason why of course is the childish belief that if you give people a way to potentially remedy risky behavior (abortion, condoms, the morning after pill), society will go buck wild. Of course, this logic over looks two giant facts: 1) People are never ever, ever going to stop having sex no matter what. 2) These drugs are extremely toxic and wholly unpleasant, not exactly something you are going to repeatedly sign yourself up for if you don’t really have to and last I heard abortions were no walk in the park.

As Antonio Urbina, a medical director at St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center's HIV clinic said in the Mother Jones article:

“We don't deny care to smokers or people who didn't buckle their seat belts. It says a lot about the political climate around sexuality and homophobia."

Exactly. People fuck up, mistakes happen. Either you treat it like the preventable medical problem that it is or as a country you deal with the impact of 40,000 people a year infected with HIV (not to mention what this drug could potentially mean in places like Africa).

New York's Sexiest Vegetarian

Let me just preface this with saying I think this whole thing is a bit silly.

First of all how does the fact that you don't eat meat make you more sexy? But most importantly why are only celebrities allowed to compete? What they don't get enough attention?

That said, I think I should totally win "New York's Sexiest Vegetarian" for the following reasons:
1) I am a lot less annoying than most other vegetarians and celebrities
2) I live in New York
3) I have been a vegetarian for 14 years and have never had a piece of KFC on the sly
4) As evidenced by the photo above I am totally sexy

Also, so much for being the capital of the world, turns out New York is only the number four best city to live in as a vegetarian in 'merica (damn you West Coast hippies!)

UPDATE: So PETA has named the Sexiest Vegetarian for 2007: Carrie Underwood (I don't know I think she won 'merican idol or something), all I can say is: LAME!