Ignorance is bliss?

I am enrolled in a class this semester called “Science, Technology and Society” and for our first discussion we had to talk about how technology has positively or negatively impacted our society.  One of my classmates noted that healthcare has come so far that we can now help people live so much longer than we used to.  His comment was inspired by Phyllis Diller’s’ death at the age of 95.  He explained that in his opinion, quality health care is important to the health, well-being and life span, but that it seems that only the wealthiest people have enough money to be able to afford that good health care.

I agree with him completely, and in my comment to him, I stated as much, and then went on to include my feelings on nutrition.  Good nutrition is extremely important.  If a person does not have money for good, healthy food, they are not going to be terribly healthy people.  If all you are putting into your body is junk, you will eventually gum up the works and the body will break down, and develop things like diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.  I went on to say that unfortunately, healthy food is more expensive than the not-so-healthy foods, and the same poor people that cannot afford health care also cannot afford healthy food.

One of my classmates jumped into the discussion at that point and stated that healthy food is actually cheaper than other foods, and that even the poorest person could afford to buy healthy foods if they really wanted to.  According to her, the reason the super poor people buy incredibly cheap food is because that is what they are choosing to eat.  She claims that the poorest people are eating fast food every day and they are choosing to eat cheeseburgers and fries instead of a “cheaper” salad (which if it comes from a fast food place is really not a healthy alternative unless one elects to leave off the bacon, cheese, croutons and the fat-laden dressing-also, it’s not cheaper).  Also according to her, being overweight is a choice.  She stated that every person on this planet would be thin and perfectly healthy if they only made better food choices.

I have so many issues with her statements.  I will begin with her claim that poor people choose to eat unhealthy food and could easily afford to buy healthy food if they really wanted to.  She said that she can buy an apple for $.89.  Let’s do some math here, based on a real-life experience.  Once upon a time, in the fairly recent past, there was a family of 3 that had a food budget of $10.00 per week.  With that $10.00 three (3) people needed to be fed three (3) meals per day for seven (7) days.  That breaks down to be 21 meals per person for the 7 day period.  For $10.  Total.  If we do a little more math, we find that this family could spend approximately $.47 per meal (to feed all three of them).  (To break it down even more, there were a total of 63 meals—3 meals per person, per day, for 7 days.  3x3x7=63.  So that gives us a total of $.15 per person per meal.) 

If this family bought my classmates’ $.89 apple, that takes almost two meals worth of money.  I promise you, that family did not buy any apples.  So, what did they buy?  They went to the cheapest store in their town and bought macaroni and cheese, 3 boxes-for-$1.00 and ramen noodles 12 packs for $3.00.  That’s seven meals for $4.00, a little more than they should be spending, so for the remaining 14 meals there was either nothing (mainly a breakfast option) or more macaroni and cheese.  They had a little money left over and they used that money to buy milk to make the mac-n-cheese.

 According to my classmate, this family was choosing to buy carb-heavy, unhealthy foods instead of apples and other healthier foods.  She swears up and down that family could have eaten healthy foods if they wanted to.  I guess technically she is correct.  If this family wanted to only eat one meal a day, and share one apple among the three of them for their other two meals, they could have eaten somewhat healthier.  But these people chose to have their stomachs mostly full rather than almost starving. 

I tried to engage my classmate in further discussion, but she refused to talk with me anymore,  insisting again that it’s a choice.  I’m sorry, near-starvation sharing one apple amongst three people (and having that count as two meals) or sharing a box of mac-n-cheese twice a day?  We chose the macaroni and cheese.  (Yes, the family in question here is mine.) 

I was also going to comment on her statement that being overweight is a choice.  I will not get into detail right now, but will say that for some people, yes she is right.  Some people do make bad choices and that is the reason they are fat.   I know someone like that.  However not all overweight people are fat because of their food choices.  Sometimes there are other things going on that make it difficult-to-near-impossible for them to lose weight, no matter what they do. 

So, what I would like to say to her and to everyone else who may read this:  Please be kind when judging other people.  We don’t know what is going on in their life that has led them to make the choices they make.  It’s not really our place to judge others anyway.  Also, if someone challenges our opinions, we should be open to at least listening to them.  They may not be correct, or we may disagree with them, but it may also be us that needs to be set straight.