Nutrition education to alleviate the obesity epidemic

Carlisle saw blood in his piss bucket so he called 911. When EMS arrived and discovered that Carlisle weighs more than 500 lbs. they had to call FDNY to help lift him into the ambulance. It must have been a quiet day at the station because soon, twenty firefighters arrived at the scene. Six of them lifted Carlisle into the ambulance. The other fourteen giggled and gawked like they were watching a TLC sideshow.

Carlisle has severe type II diabetes. He has high blood pressure, high cholesterol and asthma. His gut is huge and his scrotum is swollen with fluid.  The two bloated masses have engulfed his penis, but he can't have surgery to repair his genitals because he weighs too much.

Yet, he spends every waking minute in a chair or electric scooter. Even after the boils on his backside burst from too much pressure, he continues to sit. He's making some terrible choices, but I imagine it's hard to change your bad habits when there are so many to change.

It's unfortunate he did not learn healthy habits earlier in life. I am positive Carlisle never received nutritional counseling as a kid. In school, he likely ate corn syrupy, processed cafeteria lunches. The canned vegetables alone would have provided a mountain of salt. Then consider the cafeteria burgers:  Ground up, salted beef parts topped with a few squirts of tomato-flavored sodium gel all stuffed between two slabs of Wonderstarch. For dessert, a stick of frozen, flavored corn syrup.

Like so many other poor people, Carlisle uses his food stamps to buy cola, potato chips, canned corn, Vienna sausages, pork and beans, frying oil, hot dog buns and that silent urban killer, $5 Chinese lunch specials.

When he finally suffered his inevitable health catastrophes, doctors informed him that he must completely change the way he has eaten, drank and moved for the last forty years. Oh yeah? Great idea. But how? 

He had no prior nutritional knowledge. He is on a fixed income so he has learned exactly how much he can spend on food while still paying his rent each month. He doesn't have any financial wiggle room to test out new healthy foods.

So kale is $.99/lb? Enticing. Just a few questions: WTF is kale? What does it taste like? Is it filling? How the hell do you cook it? Why would one ever eat this bitter green crap?

I get why poor people are so often fat. They eat like crap because they lack the necessary nutritional knowledge.

Food stamps are an excellent way to help people live healthier, more comfortable lives. But the government is so lazy when it comes to food stamps! They just give the benefits away without providing any education about eating and living healthily.

Consider these ideas:

• Send every food stamp recipient a book of tasty, nutritional recipes then start an ad campaign that encourages families to cook the recipes together. The recipes could be seasonal or themed. For example: Low-cost, home-made guacamole with carrots and celery for dipping at the Super Bowl! 
• Add healthy-living home ec-style courses to the curriculum at low-income schools. Kids would learn how to shop for and prepare healthy meals on a budget. Teachers would offer tips on how to substitute awful, yet familiar, foods with healthier, delicious choices.
• Offer incentives, like tax breaks or lower interest rates on start-up loans, to stores that promote or lower the cost of healthy items.
• Offer incentives to people who use their food stamps to purchase healthy items! Help shoppers to stretch their money by buy five crowns of broccoli and get the sixth free, for example. 

Instead, the government gives away money with no influence over how people use it.

So succumb to the Mountain Dew ads. Use those stamps to buy chicken gizzards. Bread 'em and fry 'em in palm oil. Eat 'em all! It's cool. In a few years, Medicaid will pay for your ultra-sturdy electric scooter, insulin shots, EMS response, FDNY support, ambulance ride and emergency room care.

Soup, there it is.

Right after Hurricane Sandy, Slate published an article called "Can the Cans" that encouraged people to forgo food drives and donate money to organizations that specialize in obtaining and distributing food to the people who need it.

Basically, you will get the biggest bang for your buck -- help the most people possible -- by writing a $10 check to the Food Bank for New York City or City Harvest instead of buying $10 worth of canned food. $10 might get you eight cans at Key Food, but those organizations will use the $10 to buy many pounds of food at wholesale prices:

All across America, charitable organizations and the food industry have set up mechanisms through which emergency food providers can get their hands on surplus food for a nominal handling charge. Katherina Rosqueta, executive director of the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania, explains that food providers can get what they need for “pennies on the dollar.” She estimates that they pay about 10 cents a pound for food that would cost you $2 per pound retail. You’d be doing dramatically more good, in basic dollars and cents terms, by eating that tuna yourself and forking over a check for half the price of a single can of Chicken of the Sea.

I run a food pantry for tenants in my supportive residence and each month I stock all kinds of canned chicken, mac and cheeses and salty noodles. There's a few stacks of Top Ramen in one box, a pile of Cup Noodles in another. Tenants no doubt appreciate this stuff, but it seems like a waste of donors' money.

Contributing tangible food packages feels good. It's gratifying to think that, later this month, some poor person who used up their food stamps too soon will go to a food pantry and actually eat the thing you donated! Yet, we have to spend our limited money wisely. That means we should identify and donate to effective organizations that will stretch your dollar and purchase giant cases of chicken and 10 lb. bags of rice.

As for the cans collecting dust on your shelves? Donate them already!

My pantry is mostly filled with soup, pinto beans and heavily salted corn, but I also find a bunch of exotic delights hidden among the WWI trench rations.

I imagine someone got a basket of biscuits and confusing spreads for Christmas one year but never found a way to use the organic honey. (Free-range bee vomit is way healthier and environmentally conscious. Duh.) They donated it instead of throwing it away. That's awesome!

People have to swallow their pride before they dip into a food pantry. They don't want to toil on a fixed income and have to eat second-hand food. I think it's great to offer some classy, foodie fare. For example, here's freaking foie gras.

In this case, someone read one of those generic animal rights action pamphlets and learned exactly how we get that duck's liver so plump and delicious. After retching, they donated all their canned poultry parts. 

Finally, East meets West over in my pantry. We recently received a few bags of panko bread crumbs, probably from a new carb-counter who purged their cabinet of all grains. Meanwhile, someone else donated about fifty bags of Nutrisystem meals. Maybe the two donors should have just swapped cupboards.

People shouldn't feel like they have to subsist off the crap no one else wants when they visit a food bank or pantry. I encourage you to donate all that interesting cuisine you'll probably never open.