Yesterday, I covered eco-friendly diets for environmentalists looking to eat sustainably while dropping a few pounds after the holidays. Today, I ran across “The Poverty Diet,” a post by Vanessa Barrington on EcoSalon about how she lost 7 lbs during her vacation — by living with a family in Guatemala, where she was studying Spanish.
Vanessa details the 3 meals she had in a typical day: Very simple menus including a couple eggs, a little beans and chicken, and mostly tortillas. “Though I was hungry some of the time, I was living quite well compared to most Guatemalans,” Vanessa writes.
The menu actually sounds pretty yummy to me, except for the lack of veggies and fruits — but the meals certainly weren’t big, and there were no snacks to be had. What I found especially striking about the Guatemalan “poverty diet” is that it’s so different from what one might consider the U.S. “poverty diet.” While Guatemalans subsist on relatively unprocessed, simple foods, poor Americans — thanks to our skewed agricultural and food systems — often turn to fast food and junk food (both of which are mostly government-subsidized corn).
In fact, the current economic downturn has U.S. dietitians worried that people will pack on more pounds! Time magazine reports that “in a recent survey of nearly 500 registered dietitians and nutritionists, 56% of respondents said they were concerned that the economic downturn would have a negative impact on their patients’ ability to maintain or achieve a healthy weight. The reason? Junk food is cheaper than healthy fare. Plus, financial woes can be so distracting, people don’t pursue nutritional goals.”
The poverty = weight GAIN connection in the U.S. is something The Cancer Project’s worried about too. The nonprofit, concerned that money-crunched people will turn to unhealthy “dollar menu” fast food items, is working to educate people about how to make better diet choices on the cheap.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I guess I’m mainly struck by the fact that the poor in Guatemala seem to be eating more healthfully than the poor in the U.S. Obviously, poverty anywhere is a sad thing (though I’ll bet some readers are now tempted to do a Spanish immersion program to lose weight). Yet while Vanessa seems to have returned to the U.S. in relative good health, many of the poor in the U.S. will likely have to deal with totally preventable diet-related diseases in the future.
Of course, if Vanessa had stayed longer in Guatemala and continued to lose weight, she may not be feeling so good. Read Vanessa’s whole post to learn more about poverty in Guatemala, where “the cost of basic food items has gone up 40% in the past two years, pushing many people into poverty.” And follow blogs like The Ethicurean to educate yourself about the problems with the agricultural and food systems in the U.S. — so you can get involved in reshaping it.
Photos by ShutterSparks and basykes
Update, 4/27/09: How to eat sustainably on a food stamp budget
Hey, thanks for linking and I’m so glad you covered the health aspects of processed vs. traditional diets. I wanted to do that in my post, but ran out of space. It’s very true that processed snack foods are not as cheap for poor Guatemalans as their traditional diet staples, so they haven’t resorted to eating cheap, calorie laden foods as a major part of their diet….yet. My most disturbing vision of the whole trip was seeing a large Mayan family in traditional dress framed by the brightly lit windows of the one McDonalds in the town where I was living. On Christmas night too!
Comment by Vanessa Barrington — January 7, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
Extremely interesting post. I have thought the same thing as well. Fast food is so appealing to the poor especially when you can get a whole meal for $2 at some places.
great post.
Comment by zarah — January 7, 2009 @ 8:14 pm
We recently vacationed in Belize and mostly ate lunch and dinner in town to avoid the high cost at our resort. We rarely felt the urge to snack, except when we were out hiking, and didn’t come home weighing any more than when we left.
I think it’s because the meals we ate were reasonably portioned and contained all natural ingredients. When we ate meat, it was from animals fed their natural diet.
Comment by Aryn — January 8, 2009 @ 9:25 am
I can’t help but be offended by your post with reference to the “poverty diet”. Quite frankly the description for this type of diet was demeaning. Yes I understand that not everyone can afford to purchase processed food and eat organically, gourmet, balanced-meals, but the use of such terms no matter who coined them propagates an image of being inferior or “less than perfect”.
Comment by Sandra — January 8, 2009 @ 11:08 am
Poverty is a sad fact in our world, Sandra, and it’s clearly not used in the post as a demeaning slur. And yes, I do consider both not having enough to eat, or only being able to afford junk food to eat a “less than perfect” situation.
Comment by Siel — January 8, 2009 @ 11:29 am
excellent post!
Comment by meligrosa — January 8, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
I just found your blog today! It’s fantastic! I just wanted to say about this – is it is also amazing when you see how much FRESH FOOD is wasted in the U.S. If you volunteer with Food Not Bombs for just one day, the amount of food they receive that would normally just be thrown away will blow almost anyone’s mind. I also tutor homeless kids at shelters and it amazes me the crap that they’re fed. They live off cookies and other awful food.
Then, once again, to see the fresh food being thrown away….it just…I don’t know…something is wrong here.
Comment by Haley — January 9, 2009 @ 3:14 pm
I just returned from living in Guate for almost 2 years, it is amazing how the pounds have come back onto my body. I will say, when you are handed a plate of food, it almost always is a much smaller portion on it then around here, and seconds are not usually available.
About the Guatemalan family eating in Mcdonald’s, that was probably a once a year occasion.
Comment by jane — May 3, 2011 @ 9:17 am