'Poor people don't know how to cook'

[2ndRateMind]

So, here we have it. The reason why poor people starve. It's not that the poor can't afford food, it's that they don't know what to do with it, when they have it. Clearly starvation is the fault of the poor, and down to their own ignorance, and nothing to do with the wealthy hogging the resources the poor need to stay alive with.

 

2RM's poverty pasta sauce. Serves 4.

Price per serving £0.30p. Maybe $0.50, with you.

 

2 medium onions, chopped

4 Garlic cloves, crushed

2 400g cans of chopped tomatoes.

A good dash of cooking oil.

 

optional extras; bacon, mushrooms, haricot beans.

 

Fry the onions and garlic in the oil 'til fragrant and translucent. Add the tomatoes, and simmer for quarter of an hour. Taste, and salt to taste. Meanwhile cook your pasta - conchiglie, spaghetti, tagliattelli, penne, whatever, according to the packet instructions.

 

Serve with grated cheese (doesn't necessarily need to be parmesan) and fresh ground black pepper.

 

Hope you try it, hope you like it.

 

Best wishes, 2RM.

Edited December 8, 2014 by 2ndRateMind

[Guest MormonGator]

Um, in America one of the leading causes of bad health is obesity. You have to love a country where one of the problems is an overabundance of food. 

 

No, the rich don't "hoard" resources. In fact, if they do they only hurt themselves. Wealth creates wealth. 

Edited December 8, 2014 by MormonGator

[Vort]

So, here we have it. The reason why poor people starve. It's not that the poor can't afford food, it's that they don't know what to do with it, when they have it. Clearly starvation is the fault of the poor, and down to their own ignorance, and nothing to do with the wealthy hogging the resources the poor need to stay alive with.

 

Maybe I'm wrong, but I sense a snarky sarcasm in your tone, and I don't understand it. In my experience, it is almost universally true that the poor do not know how to cook. They are dependent on prepackaged, precooked food. Anything past boiling water is outside their range of experience. I have been in the houses of many poor people, and with a few exceptions, they could not cook, often freely admitted they couldn't, and almost never seemed very concerned with learning how to cook. It's as if the skill of preparing food seemed irrelevant to them -- despite the fact that food they prepare themselves is FAR cheaper, more nutritious, and better tasting (once they learn how to cook it right).

 

"Starvation is the fault of the poor" is the obvious sarcasm in your post, but the fact that poor people almost never know how to cook hardly means that starvation is the fault of the poor. Furthermore, almost no one starves to death in the US. Many are malnourished, but in most cases they're obese, and malnourished because they choose badly in what they eat rather than because they can't get food. This gets right back to the fact that they can't cook.

 

Your final barb, that "the wealthy [hog] the resources the poor need to stay alive with", is false on its face. I'm astounded that any rational person believes such a thing. That is sheer nonsense, as if the fact that rich people have a lot of money causes poor people to die. You cannot seriously believe such a proposition -- can you?

[Guest intra]

aren't we kind of confusing "poverty" and "ignorance" ? 

around here, i can't buy a single clove of garlic for 50 cents, let alone all the other ingredients. a can of tomatoes costs 3 times this amount, but you suggest adding 2 cans. in fact the electricity required to run a stove to cook these things may cost as much as your projected budget. 

2 onions ~ $1
4 cloves of garlic ~$3

2 cans tomatoes ~$3
cooking oil ~$3 for a quantity sufficient for many meals
grated cheese ~$3 (usable for more meals though)
salt and pepper ~$2 (again a quantity suff. for many meals)
box of pasta ~ $1

now excluding the overhead of water, electricity and appliances, starting from scratch your meal costs $15-$16, although granted you will have leftover oil, cheese and spices. 

compare this with $5-$10 spent at a 'fast-food' establishment, and you see how economics, not ignorance, can drive poor eating habits. 

on the other hand, one plain serving of Ramen^© noodles costs about 20 cents, given you have water and heat to boil it. not so nutritious though. 
 

[Guest MormonGator]

I've been poor before and I couldn't afford gasoline, much less going to fast food joints. 

[Guest]

First world problems, I tell ya.

 

We, 3rd worlders, don't have those problems.  Life is fairly simple for us poor folks... if we catch a fish today, we eat.  If we don't, we wait until the next day.  If we catch 2 fish, great!  We may be able to trade one for a cup of rice.  And you think you're poor because you can't figure out what to do with 2 onions???  If you give us 20 cents we sure won't buy Ramen noodles with it.  That's for the rich folks... 20 cents may just be the ticket to be able to give to that dude with the TV to let us watch a few minutes of a picture show... because, you know, that's winning the lotto ticket to be able to do that!  Ahhh, to dream of forgetting our poor life even for just 10 minutes while we feast on the world of the Housewives of New Jersey.

Edited December 8, 2014 by anatess

[2ndRateMind]

Actually, Intra, I had noodles for supper tonight! (just didn't feel like cooking)

 

I am sorry food is so expensive with you. I just took what it would cost me to buy, and the current £ to $ exchange rate, to come up with that figure.

 

For a breakdown; 2 onions; 20p each. Cloves (not bulbs) of garlic, say 4p each. Cans of tomatoes, 30p each.

cooking oil, say 3p; grated cheese, say 10p; salt and pepper, say 2p: total £1.31, divided by 4 servings = £0.33p

 

I didn't include the cost of electricity/gas/whatever powers your cooker. I didn't include the cost of the pasta, either. But I find I can buy enough pasta to feed four for around 60p, max.

 

Best wishes, 2RM.

Edited December 8, 2014 by 2ndRateMind

[Dravin]

Poe's Law in action.

[2ndRateMind]

 

 

Your final barb, that "the wealthy [hog] the resources the poor need to stay alive with", is false on its face. I'm astounded that any rational person believes such a thing. That is sheer nonsense, as if the fact that rich people have a lot of money causes poor people to die. You cannot seriously believe such a proposition -- can you?

 

Yup. Sure do. The world GDP per capita is around $10,500.00 The total world wealth is $241,000,000,000,000, which, divided by the world's population of 7.125 billion, would give each person $33,800 if distributed equally. No one would starve, if they had a net worth of $33800 and an income of $10500 per year. But the world's wealth is not distributed equally. Instead, we find the top 1% of the world own nearly half it's assets, and the 85 richest people in the world own as much as the bottom 3.500,000,000, who are expected to eke out meagre lives on less than $2.00 per day. Google it, you may discover facts that surprise you, and will, I hope, appall you.

 

Best wishes, 2RM.

Edited December 8, 2014 by 2ndRateMind

[Guest]

Noodles with marinara is not a healthy meal. Simple carbs and, granted, vegetables (more carbs). 

[Just_A_Guy]

No one would starve, this year if they had a net worth of $33800 and an income of $10500 per year; although starvation would come back with a vengeance next year when people realized that "eating" was universally irrelevant to "work" and the means of production ground to a halt.

 

Fixed that for ya. 

 

If the Baroness' point is that it is more efficient to buy raw ingredients and cook at home, but that a lot of people don't know how to do this and the burden of purchasing costlier pre-prepared foods falls disproportionately on the poor--I agree with her.  I don't think it's an accident that, if you go to an LDS Bishop's Storehouse, you will find they also distribute a cookbook.

Edited December 8, 2014 by Just_A_Guy

[Vort]

Yup. Sure do. The world GDP per capita is around $10,500.00 The total world wealth is $241,000,000,000,000, which, divided by the world's population of 7.125 billion, would give each person $33,800 if distributed equally. No one would starve, if they had a net worth of $33800 and an income of $10500 per year. But the world's wealth is not distributed equally. Instead, we find the top 1% of the world own nearly half it's assets, and the 85 richest people in the world own as much as the bottom 3.500,000,000, who are expected to eke out meagre lives on less than $2.00 per day. Google it, you may discover facts that surprise you, and will, I hope, appall you.

 

2ndRateMind, I think you must be playing games with me. You seem like an intelligent person, and I have great difficulty believing that you do not understand the basic principles of creation of wealth.

 

If the poor were in slavery to the rich, being forced to work to create things and then having that wealth forcibly extracted from them, leaving them destitute, then I would agree. But as far as I can see, that is not at all the case in today's world.

 

For the most part, and with obvious exceptions, rich people are rich because they produce riches. They create wealth. They create commodities, which they then sell to others. We are all better off because of what the rich produce.

 

You seem to be operating under a model that posits a fixed amount of "wealth" in the world that is unfairly distributed, resulting in people starving to death. But this is (to be polite) an exceptionally naive view. Plain and simple, this is not how the world works, or has ever worked on a large scale.

 

If we both live naked in the jungle, and I gather rocks and sticks to build a hut, our combined wealth consists of a hut. If you then claim that it's unfair that I have all the wealth and you have none -- well, whose fault is it? Mine, for being the oppressive rich man who owns an entire hut?

[Bini]

Yeh someone try to tell a Filipino woman (who lives in poverty) that she can't cook. Good luck with that!

[Guest]

If we both live naked in the jungle, and I gather rocks and sticks to build a hut, our combined wealth consists of a hut. If you then claim that it's unfair that I have all the wealth and you have none -- well, whose fault is it? Mine, for being the oppressive rich man who owns an entire hut?

 

YES!  Because everyone knows you're supposed to make G-strings first!

 

 

Kidding aside... 2RM has some weird views about wealth... I'm not entirely sure it is naïve but more a by-product of a desire to peg the problems of the poor to its simplest solution...  because, come on, everyone knows, especially if you watch HGTV, that $33,800 would get you a hut in California whereas $33,800 in the Philippines would get you a mansion and a half plus an entire farm besides.

Edited December 8, 2014 by anatess

[mdfxdb]

Yup. Sure do. The world GDP per capita is around $10,500.00 The total world wealth is $241,000,000,000,000, which, divided by the world's population of 7.125 billion, would give each person $33,800 if distributed equally. No one would starve, if they had a net worth of $33800 and an income of $10500 per year. But the world's wealth is not distributed equally. Instead, we find the top 1% of the world own nearly half it's assets, and the 85 richest people in the world own as much as the bottom 3.500,000,000, who are expected to eke out meagre lives on less than $2.00 per day. Google it, you may discover facts that surprise you, and will, I hope, appall you.

 

Best wishes, 2RM.

Well, now you are talking nonsense.  If we gave each person in the world $38,000 there would be just as many "hungry" people as there are now.  You clearly do not understand human nature.  

 

Poverty, and hunger in first world countries is a choice.  

 

In fact in the USA the "fight against poverty" is it's own industry with rich politicians who have no real motivation to help poor people.

 

They redistribute wealth in the form of food stamps, and rent assistance, and yet our poverty numbers never seem to go down......

 

Your naivete is astounding.

[Vort]

Yeh someone try to tell a Filipino woman (who lives in poverty) that she can't cook. Good luck with that!

 

True, but the original linked article was not about Filipinas. It was in reference to the English poor, who cannot reasonably be compared with those in third world countries.

 

It's not as easy as saying, "The poor in first-world countries are poor because they choose to be poor." Poverty is a self-perpetuating state that, from our vantage point, people don't ask to be born into.

 

But it's just as false to go to the other extreme and say, "These people are poor through absolutely no fault of their own!" In fact, it's more false, because it prevents people from learning what they need to learn to get out of that situation. It puts them in a permanent state of dependency, where they expect their next welfare check as a right of their existence.

[Bini]

Vort, to clarify, I'm not really that interested in getting involved with this discussion. My comment was between the lines, perhaps like the original post, in that no one can tell a Filipino woman that she can't cook - regardless of if she's poor or rich. It'd be like telling a Jewish woman she doesn't have an opinion, or a woman from the Netherlands, like my husband's side of the family - you don't tell those women what they can and can't do :) It ain't gonna fly.

[mdfxdb]

Regardless of birth, people in first world countries can choose to rise up.  Those that hold them down are those around them.  Nobody in the USA goes hungry unless they want to.  It is a contentious decision.  Food is so cheap in our country, and so available that there is no excuse to be hungry.  

[jerome1232]

Potatoes and rice are my poor times staples.

A 10 lbs bag of potatoes is dirt cheap, I can slice them up, toss in some lard or veggie shortening, throw in half a bag of frozen onions and bell peppers (frozen veggies are also much cheaper, and longer lasting then fresh) and wha la, a delicious skillet. Throw in some apple cider vinager, brown mustard, and brown sugar to give it some jazz. If you can afford some meat sausage tastes great in it. I like kielbasa, it's cheap too.

I have rice, a mystery meat, soy sauce and a bag of frozen veggies I can make a big heaping 10" skillet of fried rice to feed the whole family. Dirt cheap. I might throw in some curry to spice it up. The mystery meat is optional, but spam is amazing.


I think sometimes another factor leading into the poor not cooking food is if you are a poor family, you are more likely than not to also be a single parent family. I can see why time to cook, and time to clean that mess up could also be a big factor discouraging home cooking.

 

[Suzie]

This thread reminds me of a post I saw a while ago in another site where this woman was asking for suggestions how to help this very poor family. And she stated "They are so poor, they cannot even afford gas for their car!".

 

I chuckled a little bit and said to myself: Boy, people NEED to travel more for heaven's sake. And yes, people talk from experience but please let's not generalize  because if your only measure is what you see in the US as "poor", then man.. you are clueless about what poverty really is.

[Vort]

This thread reminds me of a post I saw a while ago in another site where this woman was asking for suggestions how to help this very poor family. And she stated "They are so poor, they cannot even afford gas for their car!".

 

I chuckled a little bit and said to myself: Boy, people NEED to travel more for heaven's sake. And yes, people talk from experience but please let's not generalize  because if your only measure is what you see in the US as "poor", then man.. you are clueless about what poverty really is.

 

The OP referenced an article with an English politician talking about "the poor." In context, this obviously meant the English poor, not starving children in sub-Saharan Africa. It seemed reasonable to generalize this to the socioeconomically disadvantaged in Western democracies. Not sure why this is so absurdly provincial.

 

For that matter, since poverty is always a relative measure and not an absolute, I don't quite see what's so absurdly provincial in your example. If a family is too poor even to afford any gas to power their automobile -- not unable to power it a lot so they can drive all over the place, but unable to power it at all so they cannot use it to perform basic functions like procure food at the grocery store two miles away and thus not easily accessible in two feet of snow -- then compared with a typical middle-class American family, they are indeed quite poor.

[Guest]

Okay, back to food.

 

Here's one way to prevent your family to go hungry for the rest of your life.  This applies to both 1st and 3rd world countries, urban, suburban, farmland, desert or jungle).

 

Find the following:

A small space you can call your own - if you are homeless, you'll have to find a place to squat in

 

Vegetable seeds (good ones are Lettuce, cabbage, Spinach, brocolli, peppers, cucumbers, etc.).

Berry (and other fruit) seeds (like strawberry, blueberry, blackberry, tomato)

A 55-gallon barrel and some scrap pipes and pebbles/gravel

 

Tilapia fry (live baby fish) or whatever fresh water fish that can survive your weather.  Tilapia is very hardy in most weather conditions except for sub-zero temps.  There's also perch or rainbow trout in the colder areas.

 

Coturnix Quail - 1 rooster and 3 hens can feed a person comfortably.

 

Rabbits - 1 male to 3 female rabbits can feed a family of 4 very comfortably.

 

Scrap wood and screen to house your animals.

 

This is plenty to start your own personal small very portable farm.  If you have ZERO money or resources to trade to get these things, go to a Church or stand at a street corner and beg for these things or beg for money to get these things.

 

So, what to do with these things?

 

Build an aquaponic farm using your 55 gallon barrels, your seeds, and your tilapia (google barrelponics to know what I'm talking about).  You may have to wait for rain to get some rain water if you can't find free water anywhere.

 

The main idea is that you take half of the barrel to hold your fish and you take half of the barrel positioned over your fish to hold your plants that wil not have any soil, you can keep plants upright with pebbles or gravel.  You take the water from the bottom of the barrel of fish with a pipe and move it to the plants 3-5x a day while the (same principle is sticking a straw in a glass of water, then putting your finger over the hole on the top, lift it out of the glass and the water from the bottom of the glass stays in the straw so you can then hold it over your mouth, release the top and the water drops into your mouth).  This cleans the water in the fish barrel and uses the fish poop to fertilize the plants.

 

Now, the plants will give you more seeds, so you won't need to beg at the street corner again when eat your produce.  You just save the seeds and plant more.

 

The tilapia will lay more eggs and produce more fries... now Tilapia is better than other fish in this scenario because Tilapia fathers keep the eggs in their mouths until they hatch so it is a lesser chance of other fish killing off the eggs before they can defend themselves.  Tilapia eat detritus (including internal organs of rabbits) and algae... or, if you get good at this, you can trade some of your produce for better tilapia meal.

 

So, then you create a pen for your quail and another for your rabbits.

 

Quail eat worms that you can dig up from anywhere, seeds, kitchen scraps... they lay eggs almost daily that you can eat or save to hatch to produce more quail.  You can eat quail meat every 6 weeks.

 

Rabbits eat grasses and weeds that you can find most anywhere... they love dandelions.  You can even grow some of them in your aquaponic system.  Rabbits produce more rabbits every 6 weeks...

 

Now, rabbit meat is very low in fat so much so that if you eat nothing but rabbits, your will die.  So, rabbits are best paired with tilapia because tilapia has a high fat content.  With the quail eggs and vegetables, you got one nutritious farm...

 

 

With effort, this system will feed your family for free for a long long time.  Note to Americans - you can raise quail and rabbits in an urban neighborhood as they are not considered agricultural animals.  They don't need much space... you can build a workable farm in a 5x5 space.  Tilapia is controlled in certain states - there are certain legal considerations in finding someone who will give/sell you your starter school of fish.

 

But yeah... this takes a good amount of WORK if you don't have electricity (can't use electric pumps) or have no money to buy commercial feed for your animals.  But people who think they should be able to eat without working for it can stay hungry.

Edited December 9, 2014 by anatess

[Palerider]

My son served his mission in Panama. He talked about how poor the people are there. He said they work all day for just a few dollars and in each area he was in there were always several members that would have the Missionaries over for dinner. I asked him if they can barely feed their family how did they have extra money for extra food to feed the Missionaries. He told me they didn't have extra food. They just divided up what they did have to make sure the missionaries had some food to eat. I was truly touched and felt very humbled.

[Backroads]

I'm just always up for a good sauce recipe.

On another note, are we familiar with the notion of food deserts in developed nations? Part of poor nutrition is the tendency of impoverished neighbors to have no decent markets/groceries/farms nearby. It's difficult to cook if ingredients aren't accessible. Now, if there's a will to get to the Wal-Mart marketplace there's a way, but it's still what it is.

[2ndRateMind]

Well, I just don't think some of you 'get' poverty, at all. It is a mind-numbing, soul-destroying, body-rotting condition. It's taking the risk of drinking sewer water, because you can't afford expensive bottled water. It's being unable to work, not because you don't want to, but because you haven't eaten yesterday, or the day before, and your stamina is gone. It's watching your children die of some condition as simple as diarrhoea, because you can't afford the medications that would save their lives.

 

And it's entirely socially constructed, by those who put about the message that the poor are poor because they don't deserve wealth, and rich people do. And entirely within the grasp of this generation to end, if we have the will and grace to do that.

 

Best wishes, 2RM.

Edited December 9, 2014 by 2ndRateMind