Jophiel wrote:
I love the straw man of the "white middle class liberal" simply declaring "war" on fast food and calling it a day when the issue of food deserts has been going around for over a decade (probably over two decades at this point).
When one literally gets 1000 times more media than the other and is almost exclusively promoted by white middle class liberals, it's not a strawman.
For the third time, I'm not saying that no one has ever mentioned or addressed other aspects of this issue. I'm saying that we vastly overfocus on fast food as the target of choice and that this therefore distracts attention away from what is really the bigger problem.
Quote:
One of the many issues with gas stations and the like stocking fresh food (generally produce, I'm not ready to buy my pork cutlets from Citgo) is that they can't get supermarket wholesale pricing so they wind up selling apples for a buck each rather than 20¢ each. Which means that people can't afford them as a staple. Forget vegetables; you're lucky to find a shrink wrapped 2-pack of pale pinkish tomatoes for $2.50
Yup. Now find me how many times in the last few years a politician made a major policy movement or even proposal regarding this problem which got more than local media attention? Now go look at the numerous broadly publicized calls for reductions of soda sizes, health information on menus, outrage over kids meals with toys in them, etc, etc, etc.
I'm just pointing out the discrepancy. Fast food is targeted for two reasons:
1. It's an easy target.
2. They're usually sold by largish corporations, so it's a twofer from the liberal perspective.