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I think that junk food should be regulated and/or banned!

A person can eat a moderately sized dish of rice and beans, or pasta and beans, (you can't tell that I am an Orthodox fasting for Holy Week, can you?!? LOL) cooked at home, for the same price as eating junk food or going to McDonald's.

I remember how housewives (and I have had to do it myself at times, and you learn quickly) knew how to streeeetch a home made and healthful meal for their family on a budget in the 1960's. It would be healthier for everyone if we went back to eating like this. Families would be closer and people would have less obesity and health issues. At that time in our history, I remember my mom saying how Americans were considered to be among the fittest/slimmest people in the industrialized world!

I also remember how, if you wanted a friend to spend time with you for a play date, you invited them to eat with your family and to share in your family's nightly home cooked meal. Today kids rarely, if ever, eat at another person's family dinner table, unless it is for pizza or take out, or they just get treated to a meal out at McDonald's and other places like that.

I remember growing up, in a borough of NYC, when the only outside/on the go food we could eat as teens was a slice of pizza, or a sandwich or hamburger at a soda parlor or a Woolworth's, and that was always a treat, and usually one we would share, as we did not have the kind of money that kids have today...but, whether we shared a sandwich, an ice cream sundae, a slice of pizza or whaterver, everyone still HAD to go home, or to someone else's home for dinner. There was none of the after school madness of today where, rather than eat a family dinner, people rather be driving their kids here and there until 8P.M...

I remember the first time, in the 1970's, that I saw 'suburban' junk food shopping, when my grandmother was hosting all us cousins at her country house, where a brand new, enormous 'Shop Rite' had just opened in town (there was previously only a country store) and she brought home a big box of cookies and donuts. Until then, a treat was a small pack of TWO individual cookies or cupcakes/yodels/twinkies, etc.that did not come in a family sized box, an ice cream cone, or an individual pastry from a bakery.

Anyway--YES, food WAS expensive back then, but American life was much richer and much better because of it...

Alice, sounding like a nostalgic old fuddy duddy!! wink

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Lawrence I was just referring to the possiblilty of America growing that much food. I wasnt suggesting that we do, Europe should also be responsible as well as the other countries.
No one should go hungry and no one should definately not starve to death.
Stephanos I

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Originally Posted by A Simple Sinner
Careful PR, we may need to start examining our consumption of corn-fed beef in this nation...

Understand it also does not follow that the fields put into corn production for fuel usage would otherwise have been used to grow corn for food...

---

Cattle should be grass fed. Better for everyone.

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The United States now imports more food than it produces. It is no longer the breadbasket of the world.
I was very shocked recently to learn that american food aid is monetized. The government gives a charity the grain, but they must sell it on the open market and then can use the cash as they wish. I would assume that the poor are not helped in this way. If they had money they would have bought food in the first place. It also sounds like it would harm the farmers in the country receiving the aid since it would undercut the prices they could receive for their products,
I remember watching the news years ago during a financial crisis in Argentina. The market was full of fresh produce wilting away because it was too expensive for anyone but the very wealthy to buy. There was no food shortage, but people were going hungry.
The shelves are full in Butte, but the prices are three times what they were last year. Half the yard will be going in to vegetables this spring.

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Opt out of the system and start growing your own produce. I know I'm a beginner here, but I've wanted to do this for some time. It now amazes me when I think of the huge number of people who have the space available on there property to grow there own produce. A guy at my healthclub grows tomatoes in buckets in his apartment ! Self reliance, independence and back to nature !

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Originally Posted by domilsean
I understand that some existing corn fields have been alloted to fuel, so yes, food was taken away to make gasoline. The government probably subsides fuel corn more...

...or the fields could have lay fallow
...of the corn grown could have been used to feed cows for beef production (inefficient and ultimately not likely to be produced to feed the hungry)
...or soybeans could be planted for non-food purposes
...or subsidies to not grow something could have been taken
...of the corn grown could have been used to produce some very tastey whiskey....

It doesn't follow that the growth of corn for bio-diesel production necessarily takes food out of the mouths of hungry people. That being said, I think we are being duped with the promises of ethanal and biodiesel as they are being made now.

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Originally Posted by Lawrence
Opt out of the system and start growing your own produce. I know I'm a beginner here, but I've wanted to do this for some time. It now amazes me when I think of the huge number of people who have the space available on there property to grow there own produce. A guy at my healthclub grows tomatoes in buckets in his apartment ! Self reliance, independence and back to nature !

Even if every backyard (or apartment!) had a few tomato plants (their are varieties developped for indoor growth for us town-housers) that would constitute a very impressive level of production, multiplied by the number of households there are in America.

My grandmother - an avid gardner - had a saying (perhaps based on an old proverb) "you are lucky to have enough friends and family to give all the tomatoes you can grow." Come "harvest time" we all were allocated bags and bags of them.

A small start, but worth considering. Maybe the day will come when canning becomes a more common practice again. All our grandparents did it... A decade ago when I worked in a super-market in college, one old-timer complained that we no longer carried supplies for home canning that she used (we had just a small selection based on actual demand) and she was somewhat frustrated that she had to have her grandchildren either take her accross town or help her order the supplies she needed "on the computer". Maybe this is a custom we will get back to!

I'd love to learn how to do it! My mother canned peaches from the 5 small trees we had in our suburban back yard and we had "peaches on pancakes" (a favorite of the lil sis and I) all year long.

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Start my every home a garden program!
It's very simple every home have a small garden, it doesnt have to be too large, but the larger the better grow all of our own vegtables and if your in the country side have a few chickens.
They will be more nutrious for you and taste better and produce better mental health besides.
Stephanos I
PS I have my veggies growing in among my flowers.

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Feed corn and food corn are actually different crops grown in different regions. Iowa and Nebraska are known for corn production, but almost all of that is feed corn--the corn in the Iowa grocery stores comes from out of state. (I suspect that the bulk of Iowas' corn stays in state to feed hogs, but I don't have any figures).

As for canning, it's beyond time consuming. I gleefully canned from my huge Pennsylvania garden a couple of years ago, but even with the largest pressure pot I could find, I couldn't put in two layers of quart jars at once. For that matter, if I used quart jars on the bottom, I couldn't even put a row of pint jars above them! This limited me to seven quart jars at a time, with a cycle of something like two hours. I can't imagine actually canning in sufficient quantities to impact the grocery budget.

The brandied pears and peaches, however . . . smile

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I seem to recall the canning process in my childhood home being a day-long affair with my mother, her sister, and their mother... I also seem to recall multiple pressure cookers in play! It served - I believe - more of a bonding function as well as an answer to the question "What DOES one do with peaches off 5 trees that abundantly produce?"

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I do find it disturbing that the large stores are rationing rice, but using such hollow sounding reassurances. I would just announce my delivery was delayed or something that would allay fears. It just sounds wrong when they say, " There is absolutely no problem, but you are not walking out of this store with more than 25 pounds of rice."
What I remember of canning it was a major project that went on for days. There is a reason it was abandoned so quickly when commercial canned goods became available. The modern supermarket may well be what gave women the leisure to work outside the home. Years ago cooking and cleaning were indeed all day affairs and one person was needed at home if the family was to function. Even modern washing machines freed up hours and hours for other activities.
Of course it is looking like finding food might become a full time occupation even here and there will be plenty of time for thousands of people to learn to garden and can.

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Dwight a lot of families on here, may remember over in Eastern Europe they would move everything out of the house to do spring cleaning. I think I am lazy biggrin

Anyway, I was talking with my dad today, he is 82, he said this is cyclical. That he has seen it happen many times before in his years. So who knows?

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Originally Posted by Lawrence
I have no problem whatsoever with America feeding the rest of the world if it's done exclusively through charitable efforts. But if people suggest that the resources of one nation somehow belong to the whole world I have a major problem with that.

I agree with you, Lawrence; but I believe the United States should pay take back the moral high ground by paying all of its back dues to the U.N., as well as all current and future dues . . .




in the form of U.S.-grown grain at market value.


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Originally Posted by Priest's Grandson
Originally Posted by Lawrence
I have no problem whatsoever with America feeding the rest of the world if it's done exclusively through charitable efforts. But if people suggest that the resources of one nation somehow belong to the whole world I have a major problem with that.

I agree with you, Lawrence; but I believe the United States should pay take back the moral high ground by paying all of its back dues to the U.N., as well as all current and future dues . . .

in the form of U.S.-grown grain at market value.

Shlomo Lkhoolkhoon,

First as Christians we do believe that all should be shared. As for food aid, the United States is the biggest destroyer of local agriculture. Our policy is to ship food to countries that have the resources to feed it self. We under cut local farmers.

There is not a food shortage, but a distribution problem. Further, we in the West consume more food than we need. That is why we are so fat. We need to reflect on how we can interject Christian principals into our foreign policy.

Poosh BaShlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Yuhannon

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I have no problem at all with people giving to those in the world who are less fortunate, till it hurts. But charity must remain strictly on a voluntary basis, or else it's not true charity.

As for the UN, that's quite a different matter. I don't regard it as the sacred entity that so many do, and so I would love to see us leave it, and it leave our country permanently.

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