Grocery stores can stay open, but churches can’t?

I'm not sure I've ever shopped at a grocery store associated with Southeastern Grocers. Their web page has a statement I wish we'd seen from our churches. They stayed open--they were "essential." They also donated a lot of money to food pantries and are supporting a big fund raiser for July 4.
"We are committed to providing the safest and healthiest store experience for our associates, customers and communities.

We will continue to refine our processes and protocols in our stores, with health and safety as our guide, as long as this pandemic remains a threat. You can always count on us."
Southeastern Grocers, Inc. (SEG) is the parent company and home of BI-LO, Fresco y Más, Harveys Supermarket and Winn-Dixie grocery stores. It is one of the largest conventional supermarket companies in the U.S. and is located in 7 southeastern states.

8928 Prominence Parkway, #200 / Jacksonville, FL 32256 / Local: 904-783-5000 / Toll Free: 1-800-967-9105

Maybe they have a parking lot somewhere that a church could meet.

Proximity to healthy food doesn’t mean people will eat healthy

Research published in 2012 debunked the idea that "food deserts" were hurting poor people. You can take people to the best supermarket or freshest farmer's market, but you can't make them eat fewer calories, give up junk food, or buy/eat healthy. The mayor of Baltimore can't control crime increases in Baltimore, so she thinks she perhaps she can force them to eat differently

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-food-desert-20150610-story.html?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/do-food-deserts-matter-do-they-even-exist/2012/04/18/gIQA1B56QT_blog.html

“Results showed that only 15% of respondents shopped for food within their home census tract. Although the closest supermarket was only 2.0 km from home, the mean distance to the primary supermarket was 4.8 km. Nonwhite respondents lived the same distance to the closest supermarket than Whites, but traveled further to their primary store. College graduates lived closer to supermarkets and shopped closer to home than non-graduates. No significant effects were found by income.”

http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/24/1_MeetingAbstracts/lb331

Giant Eagle Holiday Greetings

                       

        

Yesterday I got a notice from Giant Eagle that I had "saved" $320.36 in 2013 by shopping there--$147.01 in fuel perks, $3.15 coupons, and $170.20 weekly specials. I really don't like playing games with my food, but I do have a loyalty card (reluctantly) and buy gift cards, and some bakery specials, or dash in dash out things at the Giant Eagle closest to my home (a mile). I only mention this to remind us how efficiently the private sector manages to keep track of a fraction of the U.S. citizens, but Healthcare.gov still can't even figure a subsidy or a price for a few thousand, but expect millions of currently uninsured. This website was contracted out to many companies (probably political cronies like Michelle's college roommate) with no one in charge of the overall concept. It was designed to fail so Obama could quickly move on the the next step: single payer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/health-care-enrollment-on-web-plagued-by-bugs/2013/12/02/e3021b86-5b79-11e3-a49b-90a0e156254b_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines

Food deserts are a myth

If you're overweight it's not because there's a fast food business near-by and no fresh fruits and vegetables. I didn't even need the research. I have no shortage of information or healthy food. And I don't eat fast food (except an occasional McD's sausage biscuit). But you should watch me go through a block of healthy, white cheddar cheese or homemade buckeye candy (chocolate and peanut butter).

"Living close to supermarkets or grocers did not make students thin and living close to fast food outlets did not make them fat."

http://www.nationalreview.com/home-front/296485/jig-food-deserts/julie-gunlock .

This sort of junk nutrition by social scientists results in a steady stream of government grants from USDA and HHS for public employees for a non-problem. I was looking at one of the "fast food" and stress sites today at OSU and the director (showed a photo) of the program was overweight!

Loyalty cards--invasive and expensive

A friend and I had a "discussion" about loyalty cards today. Actually, it was pretty darn close to an argument. I don't use loyalty cards or coupons at the grocery store; I don't play games with my food. And that's what it is--a game to convince the consumer she's getting something for nothing, that retailers are just in business to please you and give their products away. Whether it's the wooden nickle, the green stamp, the sweepstakes game, the paper coupons in the size of a dollar, or the plastic loyalty card that looks like a credit card, the intent is to get you to buy. What I find so insidious about the loyalty card is not just that they can find out what you buy--they could do that without your personal information. It's that your personal information is sold, and that's more lucrative than knowing 1500 boxes of Betty Crocker 14 oz. mashed potato flakes sold on Nov. 20 in the Main St. store (except to Mrs. Bruce who bought 5 lbs of real potatoes for the same price) or 700 cans of Stokley's green beans without salt. Kroger is part owner of a data mining company. I don't even like it when the register at Meijer's (which doesn't use a loyalty card) spits out coupons for competing products based on what I just bought. I pass them to the person behind me. If you think you are being "rewarded" for loyalty or for purchsing brand x, you need to go back to home economics class or psych class and read up on behavior modification. All that nonsense about it being just like the personal service you used to get 40 years ago at the corner grocery is just that--nonsense. Loyalty plans are a huge industry with its own press releases, and that's most of the sources you'll find on the internet, or in newspapers, which are quite dependent on the advertising revenue from the stores using the loyalty plans. I am not in any way saying this is a bad business--but it is a business and their bottom line, not your feeling warm and fuzzy, is what matters.

Obviously, my friend who will travel around to various stores to take advantage of the coupons sent to her based her buying habits or specials and loss leaders, didn't see it my way. We just changed the subject. Here's a recent item from another blog.

"Today’s loyalty card programs are not designed to reward the faithful — they are designed to help retailers gather incredible amounts of data about their customers. They use the data for supply chain management, for marketing and to figure out ways to change customer behavior. A loyalty card program is expensive to run. It requires a lot of storage for all that data and sophisticated data mining tools to pour through the raw data and turn it into useful information." IT Knowledge

It must be terribly hard for a new product to make its way onto the shelves, even if it is fabulous. For now, I'll continue to shop at stores that don't want to follow me home and peek in my pantry.

Cheating the poor with inaccurate information

Another alarmist article about how the poor can’t afford decent food--need to buy cheaper junk--in USAToday. Really? Tara Parker Pope even said so in NYT last December--comparing only the cost of calories! Nonsense. I just had a wonderful lunch. I had steamed beet tops (we’ll eat the beets for dinner tonight) and a delicious tomato salad of two garden tomatoes (farmer’s market), coarsely shredded carrots (from WalMart), a few sliced green olives (been around for awhile in the frig), and the left over salsa from last night’s restaurant doggie bag. No, it wasn’t “calorie dense” like donuts or cookies, but after I sneak a piece of real cheddar cheese for dessert, I’ll have a pretty good balance, for under $2.00, and it will hold until dinner. After all, how many calories do I need for blogging and napping?

The following article is from 2005, but things haven’t changed that much, unless you’ve been buying corn based products like pop (corn is being grown to burn in cars instead of feeding people and animals which in turn is raising the cost of rice and causing riots in 3rd world countries--thank you, Al Gore).

“In January of this year [2005] alternative health practitioner and self-style “health nut” Colleen Huber made an attempt to do just such a worked-out analysis of processed vs. whole organic food costs.

Colleen made two complete weekly menus, one using processed food and one using fresh foods. She did all her shopping at a single, standard supermarket, and chose mid-priced brands of processed foods (not generics). She followed some reasonable ground rules, and we couldn’t detect any particular bias in the menus she constructed. In addition to the menus, Colleen’s article lists detailed “register tapes” with prices and weights for all the foods she purchased for each set of menus.

At the end of the day, the processed food menu cost USD $123.64, while the fresh, organic menu cost USD $122.42.” Real food cheaper

I make no attempt to buy organic, but do buy a lot of fresh. So my food bill would probably be even lower. Don't let the economic scare mongers tell you what to eat.

Thanks to Janeen who's eating good for the wonderful tomatoes photo.