Cynicism comes easily these days...

[elfs]

This morning on the train, I sat across from a signficantly heavyset woman who was feeding her toddling child breakfast. The breakfast consisted mostly of yogurt, which is a pretty good breakfast to get into a toddler, although this was one of those high-sugar varieties. The kid also had a sippy cup full of water, and she was drinking it readily.

Then the mother took out her breakfast: A Starbucks grande caramel frappucino (410 calories, 13 teaspoons of sugar, 15gms of fat), followed by two Pizza Hut fast-food breadsticks (280 calories) slathered in ranch dressing.

I try not to be cynical. I really do. Maybe that's not her usual breakfast; maybe it was an emergency buy on her way out the door. Certainly my own breakfast wasn't much healthier today, since I had my own on-the-go buy of drip coffee (55 calories) and a fast-food sausage sandwich (460 calories, 10gms saturated fat), too.

But it was the badge she wore that caught my eye. A "guest pass" from a local charity food bank. Not "volunteer" or "staff." She spent at least ten dollars on breakfast, but she's headed into the city, and sure enough, she got off at the stop where the food bank is headquartered. With her guest pass.

I'm still trying not to be cynical.

Comments

[l33tminion]

A grande frappuchino is about $4, Pizza Hut breadsticks are $3 for 5 (maybe leftovers?). Is an extra two or three bucks for a sugary, cold coffee drink over a plain coffee really such an inordinate luxury?

Sure, there are long-term health costs to eating so many calories, but there are also long-term health costs to feeling shitty. Among other things, if you're significantly heavy, it may take 600-700 calories in the morning just to feel appreciably full (moderate dieting would involve reducing that gradually, but that still involves some stress and effort, especially if you're in a hurry and have other things to worry about (e.g. the aforementioned toddler)).

There are a lot of ways being poor impacts someone's health, but that doesn't make it fair to hold poor people to a higher standard of asceticism. Eat some pleasurable, quick, filling food for breakfast, use food assistance to obtain some (reasonably) healthy groceries (among other things, to feed your toddler), before (quite probably) heading off to a long shift at a shitty job. It's not optimal, but it's not really that unreasonable or hard to understand.