World Rankings

bah-I spend half my life walking through icy weather.

and no, the track isn't real world conditions.

got an actual grocery store within this distance to you?

The track has a far better surface than a likely walk to the grocery store. As far as the weights, kettle bells would make a more appropriate simulant for grocery bags. Do you have access to those Dayton?

I'm doing a 3 mile walk with a 55 pound kettle bell on Saturday. Of course, I live a block from a grocery store, and no more than three blocks from a half dozen specialty markets that can collectively also cover my needs.

No.

I could get a couple of 25 lb. plates though. They are round and awkward to haul around and might better simulate the difficulty of bags.

By the way, the track is not paved. It is red dog.

Plates would be good, still don't like the track.

It was in 1934, which fits her narrative just right.

Welcome to my world. No taxi, no public transportation, hazardous walking conditions, etc. That said, the vast majority of people know at least one person who has access to a car for at least an hour or two per week. And if you don't have a car yourself you are probably on SNAP. Somehow everyone on SNAP finds transportation to a place to spend their voucher, and I'm guessing they sell at least a minimal amount of "healthy" food in said location. BTW most of the destitute in Augusta live in urban/suburban areas. Only rich people live far out in the country for the most part around here.

I've been accused of having a "Leave It To Beaver" view of the world. A show I rarely saw and never liked much.

But it seems that a whole lot of the more liberal minded people here seem to think that most of the poor in American today are straight out of the "Waltons".

i.e, hardworking families who just have bad luck and who are nearly bankrupted by a 25 dollar appendectomy for Jim Bob (or was it Ben?)

Interestingly enough, I've watched "The Waltons" a lot (it was one of my wife's favorite programs as a girl and her likes in part have become my likes) and I see very few examples of the family depending on Food Stamps, AFDC, and a whole host of federal and state programs meant to help the poor.

And that was the Depression. You don't see people getting a New Deal program job too often either.

World rankings? Earth is #1.

Well, I was specifically looking for Arkansas, but I hadn't factored in the Wal-Mart Effect. There are still stores like that one in Georgia and Louisiana.

Arkansas looks like such a shitty place on those maps.

Not buying it Garamet.

You are SPECIFICALLY (your word) looking for Arkansas (presumably a store) and what you find is a 79 year old picture???

Bull.

That is like doing a Google search for American presidents images and getting FDR as the first hit.

Google "small rural grocery store Arkansas."

And don't even think you're going to twist your skepticism into weaseling out of the walk.

That challenge is based on the maps, which you've conveniently ignored.

And I'm not going 12 rounds with you the way everyone else here does.

Take the walk, under RL conditions, or don't. I already know you for what you are, so I don't care either way, but I will be watching the weather report in your area, so you won't be able to use that as an excuse indefinitely.

Put up or shut up.

See, everybody, some people are capable of taking empirical evidence and using it to MODIFY their preconceptions.

Some of you ought to give it a try.

That is what I said.

I currently live in one of the poorer counties in this state. I also live in the town with the second highest obesity rate in the state (we got a grant to fight obesity worth 300,000 dollars or so recently). For the first year I lived here, me and my family were the only white residents on the entire street we lived on.

I can't think of ANYONE who lives more than a mile (hell HALF of mile) from the local grocery store that does not have relatively easy access to a car.

Despite being a small town, the community has three separate clinics, three tracks or walking trails, publicly assessable areas for exercise and public access baseball and softball fields. And a local soccer teams is starting up.

So it isn't like there is, "no health care available" and "no where to go" to do things physical in this obese, poor community. And I've no reason to believe this community is atypical of other poor communities in Arkansas.

I think it's more about the quality of food available to the lowest on the economic scale and the limited consumer options. The walking to the grocery store is a minor facet of the greater issue-undernourishment and the education barriers it presents.

Exactly. There is a correlation between poor nutrition and poor cognitive function, starting in utero and determining outcomes well before a kid starts school.

So the thread hasn't gone off the rails so much as it's explored one aspect of a complex problem. More discussion of the points tafkats raised would be helpful, as would Aenea's follow up on what kind of feedback she's been getting to the original article on FB.

The thing to me is that when you feed kids less food and more nutritious but less appealing food you inevitably get more kids bringing even less healthy snacks from outside school. Basically nullifying your entire effort in the first place. Which is why I'm wondering why bother with that in the first place.

Good point. It'll only confirm what we already know.

All true, but for one thing, the guidelines keep changing, and you also have to wonder how much of what’s on the food pyramids is influenced by such not-exactly-objective sources as the dairy and beef industries. For another, do parents actually get these guidelines? Maybe distributing a leaflet to every kid at the start of the school year, starting in kindergarten, would be helpful. Won’t do much to help the kid’s nutritional level prior to starting school, but might help the younger siblings.

Also agreed. There’s an attitude of “don’t get too good for yourself” in a lot of cultures, and then there’s peer pressure. Kids will bully each other for the damnedest things across millennia and across social structures, otherwise Hollywood wouldn’t be able to give us Mean Girls. (For girls in particular there’s always been a sense of dumbing-down to impress the boys, but there are a number of organizations working toward overcoming that mindset.) Then there’s the “Why should I finish school and get a job when I can just work for my uncle or sell meth?” mindset to overcome.

So, yes, it’s complicated. Sometimes I think it’s amazing that as a species we’ve actually gotten this far. But getting through to the kids at other end is a place to start.

(Cool av, BTW.)

"Exactly. There is a correlation between poor nutrition and poor cognitive function, starting in utero and determining outcomes well before a kid starts school." - Garamet

So basically kids are fucked from the git-go BEFORE schools even enter their lives thanks to the fact that somehow parents can't give their kids basic nutrition. And we as a nation can get these parents to give a shit how exactly? And we as a species get quite far - we as Americans not so much. What we consider great hardship are to other people only a minor inconvenience.
And consider this - immigrants who attend the same schools as the kids who have a 50 percent dropout rate do just fine. How do they do so well despite being targets of scorn and ridicule? Could their family and culture be the factor here? Just askin'

THE factor? Not exclusively.

A factor? Certainly. Nobody's saying poverty is the only reason kids have trouble in school. It's a complicated problem with many causes, some of which are interlocking, but not all.

You're presuming the parents don't give a shit rather than can't afford to do any better for their kids. Not even factoring in generational poverty here...

In regards to "most parents" I think that vast numbers of parents think it "just doesn't matter" when it comes to lots of the nutritional value regarding foods.

Oh sure, most know that too many soft drinks and candy are not good and will probably try to restrict that, but most don't give much thought to the very high carbohydrate meals or too much protein and not enough fruits and vegetables.

Big thing being is that most adults don't eat enough fruits and vegetables themselves so they certainly are not going force their children to.

Remember my initial caveat - living in America. I don't think you get just how fucked up things are in many neighborhoods here. Maybe in Canada parents would go without luxuries (and have a reading level above 5th Grade) to buy the best food for their kids. 99.9 percent of "generational poverty" here is self inflicted. If you don't give a shit you are guaranteed to have a shit job (or no job) you raise kids who don't give a shit. And if you really don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, there are many support agencies. Remember, we have a church on every corner, and most have food banks. But they don't have snacks (nor should they) for the most part. But nobody will take you by the hand and instruct you exactly what to buy for your kids. We have SNAP and trust me black/white/Asian it doesn't matter - a lot of people are on it, but if they buy foods of poor nutritional value that's their decision.

Generational poverty has generational causes. Again we could go back to poor nutrition and whether or not pregnant women get the nutrition they need. A simple thing like putting folic acid back into bread products (super-extra-refining strips it out of flour in the obsession to have whiter-than-white Wonder Bread) has cut down incidences of spina bifida remarkably, and that's just one example. If every "pro lifer" howling outside an abortion clinic would instead devote their time to making sure that every pregnant woman and her infant had the proper care, they might actually accomplish something instead of just sucking down oxygen. In the Evul Soshulist UK, pregnant women get home visits to check whether the home is a safe place for the baby, whether the family has the means to provide food, clothing and shelter.

So we're back to cognitive function, and whether people actually know what they're supposed to feed their kids. Guarantee you if I polled WFers - and I'd like to think, despite Castle and Flashlight and EP dragging down their end of the bell curve, we're a little better informed than the average American - the knowledge about nutrition would be spotty at best.

So if generation after generation eats poorly, is it fair to say that's going to affect their ability to make good judgments? If their schools are falling apart and their teachers are time-servers, do they learn anything that will at least prepare them for the job market? And what is that job market where they live? Are there jobs, or have they all moved to the Pearl River delta? So where's the motivation to do anything other than watch TV - which promises a world of luxury cars and big casino winnings and fast cash for gold - drop out of school and get in on the local meth industry?

There will be exceptions, but there shouldn't be. Healthy, motivated, productive kids should be the norm, not the exception. We will not be a civilization until every child has access to the basics of food, clothing, and shelter (do you have any idea how many homeless kids there are in the wealthiest country in the world?), baseline healthcare, and a good education.

This thread started out being about education, or at least about standardized testing. It would be nice if it could get back there. How do we improve schools? I expect the usual responses, but it might be nice to see some exceptions there, too.

Yeah, because it's all about "forcing" kids, not about modeling good eating habits yourself.

BTW, I note the weather's still on your side. Maybe it will give you time to contemplate what it would be like to have to walk to the grocery store at least once a week even when it's 20 degrees and sleeting.

Nah, who am I kidding?

Dayton, to make your task easier, you should put those weights in a "borrowed" shopping cart from a nearby grocery like a lot of the lower income people around here do.

I live about a mile from my local grocery and I've found their carts at the bus stop near my neighborhood.

I love the shopping cart controversy.

When I lived in Staten Island, the supermarkets used to have the carts locked up like the luggage carts in airports and charge customers a quarter to release a cart before they could go into the store. That did not go down well, so now they've all installed those expensive sensing systems that lock the cart wheels if you try to take them out of the parking lot.

In Brooklyn, stores that actually have parking lots have the locking system; others just let the carts run wild and they’re all over the street.

Out here, some stores have installed sensing systems, but others just hire a local guy with a flatbed to drive around collecting carts. He earns a dollar a cart, they get their carts back, and folks who don’t have cars frequent those stores rather than the snooty ones because they have a means to transport their groceries. Simple, common sense solution where everybody wins.

If I see abandoned carts and I'm headed to the grocery store, I'll usually stop and put them in my truck. Depending on which manager is on duty, they're usually pretty grateful (though they've never offered to pay or give me a free pie or anything ). Either way, if it helps to keep costs down (and I'm going to the store anyway) I don't mind hauling them.

Shopping carts are tough! I ran over one at Wal-Mart once. It lifted the front tires of my truck off the ground. I carefully backed up and righted the cart. It wasn't even scratched.