There’s no way around it: eating healthy is expensive. You could easily pop over to a fast food joint or buy a giant bag of say, pizza rolls, and fill your belly to the brim for the same price (or less) than you could make a salad at home or keep an assortment of fresh fruit on hand for a healthy snack.
That said, childhood obesity is also a real and growing health problem across the Western world.
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has created what he calls his #AdEnough campaign to try to fight it by changing the way junk food is advertised to children, which includes lobbying for a sugar tax that would increase the prices for fatty, sugary, junky food.
“This is a tax for good; this is a tax for love; this is designed to protect and give to the most disadvantaged communities,” he said in a statement.
That said, many people are calling him out for a couple of things.
Jamie Oliver: I'm apolitical
Also Jamie Oliver: poor people shouldn't have pizza
— Who played smiggle (@praxxxxxis) May 16, 2018
First, Oliver has a Cookies and Cream drink that’s served in a chocolate cup and contains 46 teaspoons of sugar (6x the daily recommended allowance for a child).
Second, as pointed out in this brilliant thread by Twitter user Ketty Hopkins, the tax would not help “the most disadvantaged communities” at all, since those are the exact same people who need cheap food in order to survive.
everyone knows my opinion on jamie oliver by now (insufferable bellend) but im still going to weigh in on this whole “make unhealthy food more expensive” thing from the perspective of a girl who was genuinely poor growing up and ate awfully:
— cara delevingne’s sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
Things got pretty bad for her and her family…
from the age of about 6, my dad had to mostly raise me and my brother on his own as my mother cheated, left him and then became too violent and dangerous to even be allowed on our street. now when i say we were poor, i mean very poor. money given to me on birthdays often had to
— cara delevingne’s sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
Like really, insanely, horribly bad…
be spent on food for us to survive. my dad met my mother in a psych ward after he was sectioned when they found him too depressed to function, with no possessions and the intent to die on a park bench near the hospital. so we had no rich relatives to live off growing up either.
— cara delevingne’s sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
Hopkins grew up in a low-income family, and explained, based on her own experience, why eating healthy sometimes (most of the time) wasn’t really an option.
he worked full time, and with two young kids this meant a lot of money was spent on our childcare. so that's more money gone, when we barely had enough to live on cheap food as it was. this meant quinoa and couscous was out of the question. in fact, we usually lived on whatever
— cara delevingne's sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
was in the reduced section. even fruit and veg was too expensive, so my brother and i had to take multivitamins in order to get a lot of the things we needed. im seeing a lot of people go "well tinned veg is cheap, you're just lazy!"
— cara delevingne's sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
But they weren’t lazy. Her father was emotionally devastated and completely overwhelmed.
which is all very easy to say when you're a 20 year old student who has never had a full time job or a lot of bills to pay. when you're a young father with severe depression working countless hours in a tiring job coming home to two young kids while having to fear for your life
— cara delevingne's sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
This next part is just… wow.
because your ex wife leaves you 150 threatening voicemails a day and keeps violating her restraining order, going as far as to attempt to run you over, have your kids abducted and smash the glass in your door, all while struggling intensely financially, would YOU have the
— cara delevingne's sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
Instead of making bad food cost more, Ketty has some pretty good insights – and suggestions – on how to help families and children currently struggling to make ends meet.
energy to cook a nutritious meal from scratch? when you're getting 4 hours sleep a night on an old couch because you're worried if you sleep in your bed that you won't hear if anyone tries to break in? ill answer that for you: absolutely fucking not.
— cara delevingne's sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
Being healthy takes effort, and her father simply didn’t have the energy.
at the end of the day, me and my brother had no significant health problems caused by our diet. my dad always tried his absolute hardest. most working class parents are incredibly conscious about the wellbeing of their children.
— cara delevingne's sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
She also reminds people that judging others for what they’re eating isn’t any more helpful than it is nice – it’s more often than not money, not laziness, that’s at issue.
After all, she points out, if her father had not bought cheap, unhealthy food, their family wouldn’t have been able to afford food at all.
the reason these parents buy junk food is this: because it's all they can afford, and they are TIRED trying to make ends meet which impedes their ability to cook from scratch. many are also depressed/disabled which makes it even harder to cook.
— cara delevingne's sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
if they had raised prices on sugary and fatty foods when i was a kid, we wouldn't have eaten. plain and simple. in my humble opinion, it's much better for a kid to eat a pizza than not eat a damn thing.
— cara delevingne's sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
Better to change the system that keeps people at a disadvantage than to try to keep all food out of their reach, price-wise, in the meantime.
if you GENUINELY want to make a difference in the lives of these families, here are some things you should actually ask the government to do:
-raise the minimum wage so people can live on it
-stop cutting disabled people's benefits so they won't stress so much about survival— cara delevingne's sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
-more affordable housing so they have more money to spend on food instead of rent
-fund more free adult education so that parents who are able can study a skill which will help them earn more money
-stop fucking cutting nhs physical and mental health services, if ill parents get— cara delevingne's sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
access to decent care, they might become more able to cook from scratch
in conclusion: stop blaming poor families for eating unhealthy food you middle class knobs and STOP VOTING TORY peace out
— cara delevingne's sex bench (@sibylpain) May 16, 2018
It’s hard to disagree with her logic, though I’m sure some will!
The post A Twitter Thread Explained Why Raising the Price of Junk Food Might Hurt as Many Kids as It Helps appeared first on UberFacts.