Persuasive Reflection

 Eating at the Poverty Line

            “…food no longer seems like the smartest place to economize.” (Pollan, 18)   Over the course of the semester, I have disagreed with the opinions of Michael Pollan, but for once I happen to agree with Pollan’s statement, as quoted above.  Trying to make the consumers responsible in a rough economy doesn’t sound like the best idea.  It’s easy to be a responsible and picky consumer when you come from a place of privilege and money, but for those of us who are tight on money, it can get too expensive to be picky.  It is more practical from a farmer’s point of view, such as Blake Hurst, and as well from the poor consumer, to go about farming in an industrial way.  Blake Hurst refers to Pollan as an Agri-intellectual, a person who doesn’t work on a farm, but has the idea that organic farming is better.  Hurst states, “I’m so tired of people who wouldn’t visit a doctor who used a stethoscope instead of an MRI demanding that farmers like me use 1930’s technology to raise food.” (Hurst, 204)  It makes sense to use more efficient ways to farm to produce more product per crop in an ever growing demand for food. Organic farming might be healthier, but Industrial farming is more practical. Industrial farming feeds everyone and organic farming feeds the privileged.  Many parents struggle with wanting to feed their kids healthy and wanting to feed their kids enough, sometimes it’s easier for them to grab the ninety nine cent loaf of white bread without second guessing their choice.

The “Eating at the Poverty Line” project was supposed to teach students the struggle of trying to buy ingredients for dinner, while trying to be healthy.  So that maybe students may begin to understand the pressure of trying to be a responsible consumer, while staying on budget.  This project had good intentions, which were not transferred in the process of this project.  Teaching students the struggle of eating when poor is a great idea, but needs to be crafted carefully in the project, because I felt that it was very easy to take shopping for granted and lose sight of the lesson that was to be learned from this experience.  As someone who has lived at the poverty line, I feel as though the project did not depict how it feels to actually live at the poverty line.  When living at the poverty line, I learned about substituting ingredients on a list for cheaper off brand ingredients and when I had left over money I saved it. I never went back to buy extra garnishes or ingredients.  Some nights, I didn’t have enough money to go buy food, unless I had change to buy a McDouble at McDonalds.  Some nights I went hungry until I had more income or was invited to dinner.  For those of my classmate who have, fortunately, lived a privileged life, they still might not understand how eating at the poverty line is difficult. And for those of us who know what eating at the poverty line is like, possibly find it offensive to make our living situation seem easy and careless and a menial task.  A better way to go about this project would be to have students budget a minimum wage salary for a week.  Have students plan out a weeks’ worth of meals in the life of a minimum wage worker, so they can have a better grasp of the struggles that a minimum wage worker might run into.  This project might not have been efficient at all. I understand what this project was trying to accomplish, but I do not believe it accomplished those goals.

Works Cited

Hurst, Blake. "The Omnivore's Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals." 2009. Food Matters. By Holly Bauer. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2014. 204-13. Print.

Pollan, Michael. "Eat Food: Food Defined." 2008. Food Matters. By Holly Bauer. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2014. 9-18. Print.