Posted on 03/09/2012 8:07:01 PM PST by caldera599
Among the food-related bogeymen that activists blame for America’s bulging waistlines is the so-called “food desert,” an urban or rural area that has a shortage of supermarkets. At first blush, it might seem like living in one of these “deserts” would to reduce a person’s access to fresh fruits and vegetables. However, there’s little evidence that these conditions are actually preventing people from finding nutritious foods if they want them. Regardless, activists ask for “supermarket subsidies” and restaurant zoning prohibitions. But there’s now more evidence that “food deserts” aren’t causing America’s kids to get fat.
Researchers from the RAND Corporation investigated whether the closeness of various types of food sellers to schools and homes of California children was associated with purchases of various foods. Sure enough, the researchers found no robust correlations. The research team speculated that the absence of a relationship might have something to do with how even the food-desert dweller gets around. As Roland Sturm, an economist who co-authored the study, told The Washington Post:
(Excerpt) Read more at consumerfreedom.com ...
In the old timey days when a frontier town was being built, the first buildings to go up were saloons and churches. As the “bad areas” of a city go down the tubes, the last things LEFT are bars, liquor stores and churches. That and nail salons. But the cowboys of the 1880s weren’t too big on hair extensions and weaves.
With all their food stamp money, if you don’t spend it down by the end of the month, that becomes a problem. They need places convenient to where they live to shop, so they can get food with their food stamps. How racist of you!
Perverts have of course always existed. If you have any evidence the rate of child molestation or abduction has increased, I'd love to see it.
I'm well aware the public perception of this problem has increased, but I've never seen any evidence that the danger of it has.
Most animals go to an area that they don’t frequent to poop. These animals poop anywhere they please and are too lazy to pick it up. They just live among the poop piles.
When all who have morals and a sense of community responsibility realize that the animals have taken over and “trashed” the culture, safety, and self-security of the neighborhood, they move out to some place that is “domesticated” and safer.
They make their bed and lay in it to sleep. No pity on them what-so-ever.
Public perception causes parents to become more restrictive. Gone are the days when a mother put her children outside and told them to go play until lunch. My neighborhood had most mothers home raising their children and looking out for one another. Now they need play dates and times are arranged for those. Yes, there were instances of child abduction back then, but they pale in comparison to the horror stories we have now. Just take a look around, life is not the same as the 50s, 60s, or the 70s. Times have changed, children’s play habits have changed as well.
There is a common perception that children are at greater risk than 25 or 50 years ago.
What I have never seen is any evidence that this is actually true, that the rate of child molestation or abduction has actually increased, as opposed to the media coverage of it.
With quite rare exceptions, in the past abduction was local or possibly state news. Today each is reported nationwide, leading to the perception it happens more often. That perception may or may not be accurate.
While I place the blame for children having no freedom to just play outside on pervs, there are other reasons. Mothers are now working outside the home leaving entire neighborhoods empty. When I was a child there were women home in nearly every house. Today? Not. Families are smaller, less children and those that are there are in day care somewhere. The rare mother home with her children has no playmates for them, thus no gangs of children playing in a neighborhood game of baseball. Very sad state of affairs, children have no idea what they are missing. Exercise being the least of those things. The loss of freedom is something they do not even know to miss.
This would make a great study and book.
I quite agree. You just never see these groups of kids roaming around anymore. Very sad.
The idea of “food deserts,” like all leftist ideas and propositions, never stands up to scrutiny. My wife and I live five miles from the nearest grocery store. I guess there’s just no way we can get food. (smirk)
Believe me, a well placed phone call to the mom of a kid misbehaving in my neighborhood got results. I recall playing bike tag and one of us ran over the flowers of an elderly woman, the one she recognized was me, MY mom got the call. I was in HUGE trouble. I was not the one who trashed her flowers, but the others were too quick to be spotted. There were no fights that a half dozen mothers did not personally respond to. We owned homes there and our parents enforced a standard of rules that we had to abide. We did.
Teachers are impersonal beings and phone calls to a harried mother/father at work too busy to be home does not always go as far.
In our world we teach kids the 'values' of eating in the style of what liberals define as 'fashionable' (for that year) - and 'saving the world' by jumping up and down in place - oops, I meant by 'protesting' with little signs"....
We're earning the horror.
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