Summarizing Two Weeks of Food Desert Eating

Once again - technology has triumphed - I have no idea why this is publishin as a giant chunk of words instead of the beautiful paragraphs that I typed in the draft. When I began this experiment, I thought I'd be somewhat miserable, hungry, and very sad about not having high quality olive oil and vinegar on my salads. Fortunately, those things did not happen. I ate 37 meals at home at an average of $.98/meal. At the end of week two, my remaining inventory of food purchased in just the two weeks of shopping is: 1/2 gallon milk, 1 apple, 8 oz. of cheese, 3 cans of tomato soup, 1 can diced tomatoes, over half the bottle of olive oil blend and 1 pound of pork that I put in the freezer. Nutritionally, food tracked revealed I stayed within range for healthy portions of fat, calories, carbs and protein. The exception to this would be the day I ate a ton of the pork/carrot sloppy joe mix with a load of cheese (I missed cheese!). That day I went over my fat grams. The total cost of the meals I ate at home added up to $36.10. What does this mean? In this rural county, access to a grocery store where affordable healthy foods are available is NOT an issue. Since these are the fundamental definitions of "Food Desert," I believe the term doesn't apply for this particular area. My experiment doesn't reveal what the obstacles to healthy eating really are. A normal family is busy so often fast food is a choice of CONVENIENCE. A family in poverty operates at a level of CRISIS as well. In both of these areas, managing a food budget by careful, strategic planning doesn't occur. It's also been suggested to me that many people truly do not know how to COOK. When I turned my carrot soup into sloppy joe with leftover pork, this wouldn't be something that would be easily done. Certainly COST of food goes up and takes a big chunk out of a budget. Healthy food can also be pricey. However, healthy food generally keeps a person more satisfied than "junk" food or food that is centered around a lot of carbohydrates. If more food is eaten in those scenarios, then healthy food is still less expensive. Since I have a significant amount of leftovers and feel that the point of access and affordability have been made, I'm going to end this portion of the food desert. However, I am interested in learning more about the issues of hunger in this county, as well in other areas. I'd like to end with a story that first impacted me on kids and healthy eating, families in crisis, and how to address these problems effectively and accurately. A local church was having their annual Vacation Bible School. Any child in the area was welcome to participate and since it was almost a full day's schedule, lots of parents took advantage of "free child care" by sending their kids. The kids brought their own lunches. The group I'd been assigned were 7-9 year olds (I think). During the lunch break the first day, one little boy unpacked his "lunch" which consisted of ten colored candy canes. Keep in mind, this was in June. I dug around the church kitchen and managed to get the kid a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The next day, his lunch had three tiny Jimmy Dean sausage sandwiches. Later that day, something happened and the child became completely hysterical. It was awful. He had to be sent home and he wasn't back for a few days. Later I learned this child's story. His mother was dying. There were four other boys in the trailer in which they lived, brothers and half brothers. The dying mother also had her brother and boyfriend living there. It was chaos on a whole different level. The mom died not too long after VBS ended. I went to the funeral and sat by this little boy. I had no words, I just held his hand. No local farmers market will solve this problem. Lower produce costs won't and neither will having free fresh veggies at the local food pantry. How does this problem of poor nutrition and subsequent health problems get solved? I don't know but it looks like getting "our hands dirty" by talking to people we want to avoid may be part of it. And I'm not sure how to even do some of those things, let alone do a blog experiment on it. I'll continue to update this blog periodically as I read and ask questions. As always, your comments are welcome.