While I\u2019d like to say that my minimum wage job provides enough disposable income for my rent, groceries, lifestyle, and savings, it\u2019s still a familiar struggle each month deciding how to allocate my income. Certainly I\u2019m not the only student living in Seattle that feels this monetary pressure, and surely there are people less well off across the country facing the same challenge. So how realistic is it for the majority of the population to afford this diet Pollan suggests?<\/p>\n
Julie Guthman and Norah MacKendrick offer critiques of Pollan\u2019s individualistic approach of simply deciding to make an effort to buy healthier foods by citing how it\u2019s not an individual problem, but a systematic one. Pollan\u2019s diet assumes that an individual must have enough funds to actually \u2018vote\u2019 with their dollar by buying organic\/local products, however this is a misconstrued reality that many may not have the time or money for. For example, families who live on a budget below $100 per week must decide to spend their money on cheaper, more processed foods, or the more nutritious organic produce. The latter, however, is an unrealistic choice when someone is attempting to get food on the table for their family. Similarly, organic products often have a shorter shelf life than processed foods, which poses another problem for families living farther away from supermarkets.<\/p>\n
Another point I found interesting in these critiques was MacKendrick\u2019s argument that this individualization is harmful because it promotes a state of \u201cinverted quarantine\u201d that perpetuates \u201cpolitical anesthesia\u201d in individuals who can choose to avoid certain products, rather than voicing their concern to the government. This keeps potentially hazardous products on the market, which may be cheaper than any alternatives.<\/p>\n
Simply speaking, voting with your dollar may be less of a choice and more of a privilege.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While I\u2019d like to say that my minimum wage job provides enough disposable income for my rent, groceries, lifestyle, and savings, it\u2019s still a familiar struggle each month deciding how to allocate my income. Certainly I\u2019m not the only student living in Seattle that feels this monetary pressure, and surely there are people less well off across the country facing… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,25,13,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industrialized-food","category-other","category-public-health","category-world-hunger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":597,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions\/597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}