(no subject)

[brightbluegirl]

Ugh.

I ran out of food today, so I went over to the food court to get something to eat.

All attempts to choose wisely-but-tastily resulted in really stupid decisions and now...

now I feel sick.

I keep thinking "I'll learn from this" but I DONT.

I'd better learn from it this time, cuz dude, I don't know which feels worse, my tummy, my head, my pride, or my self esteem.

And no, I WONT tell you what I ate.

(If I were unhealthy enough to purge this motherfucker, I would. I have never purged, though, and I'm not about to start now.)

Comments

[pfloide.livejournal.com]

Food courts are a bad place to try to eat well, in general.

This falls under "food systems" problems, I think. That is, people have a hard time eating well because the systems which deliver food to them have, well, systematic problems.

It's always difficult when you run out of your own stash of food.

[freakykitten.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the days when the stash runs low are always a problem.

We definitely have a food system problem in North America - I mean, other than the obvious reasons, like people starving while others have a glut, there are things like the fact that low-nutrition food is the most affordable food, and the healthier a food is (i.e. organic, etc), the more expensive it is, leading to healthy food being a priviledge, (whereas I believe it should be, if not a right, at the very least more readily available).

Never mind the fact that farmers are so underpaid, and need to be subsidized by the government to even survive.

On another tangent, what would happen if the propaganda machine started churning out commercials for healthy food? I mean real healthy food, not subway atkins wraps or milk or beef. Would North Americans start buying better, or would healthy food get more expensive, or what? My economics are rusty, so where would supply and demand fit in?

[pfloide.livejournal.com]

Well, the government subsidizes farmers in order to keep certain foods cheap by increasing the supply. Which happen not to be notably healthy foods (e.g. beef) though that's almost incidental.

If something is advertized, it's generally on the assumption that this will increase demand. Increasing demand means (in the short term) that the price will go up. But then, when the supply increases (as other producers try to meet the demand), the price would come down. In the long term, whether the price goes up or down depends on whether there are economies of scale (and how much overhead there is to pay for the marketing). Probably there would be economies of scale, meaning it would be cheaper per, say, pear to produce organic pears when you're growing lots of them.

Many economies of scale in current industrial farms come from using capital-intensive machines (like combine harvesters) on really big farms instead of labour-intensive methods like hiring a bunch of fruit-pickers on smaller farms (not a well-matched example, but whatever) - or like using herbicides instead of paying people to weed a garden. So some economies of scale would not apply to organic food - but some would. Most likely it would end up cheaper.

To answer the question about economics, supply and demand curves measure how many units of X (say organic pears) will sell at a given price. Typically, you use them on the assumption that there's a fixed amount of stuff (or rate of production), and you're varying the price to see how much it changes the amount people will buy or sell - or, contrariwise, that you're increasing people's willingness/ability to buy (say, through advertising, or by giving them more money, or taking some away) and see what happens to the price of pears. Changing the demand curve amounts here to changing the rate and cost of production (more or less - actually the willingness/ability of the producer to sell at a given price, which depends on those things). In this situation, both change: more demand and higher prices stimulate increased production, which brings the price down again. This could mean more revenue for the producers anyway, since they're selling more units (but maybe not enough more to make up for advertising costs sufficient to overcome media saturation advertising other products - some sort of balance like this can be used to explain why this hasn't been done, or for that matter any other situation which might arise, which is why economics isn't really a science).

[sinndar.livejournal.com]

I can't tell you how often that has happened to me lately. I think "comfort" food will comfort, but I just end up feeling guilty and sick to my stomach. Not really worth it now is it?

[dextra.livejournal.com]

the food court in the mall here in cornwall has a great lebanese place. i try to make it there once a week for chicken (or falafel) on pita with hummous, tabouleh, pickled turnips and eggplant. i come back with garlic exuding from my pores, but it's well worth it.

all other food courts suck ass.

Mmm...

[(Anonymous)]

Mmm...ass.

Cam >B)