Is Julie Gunlock for Real?
Not to beat a dead horse, but come now: griping about the quality of food being served to the homeless? Matt Yglesias, who never misses the opportunity to bring up conservatives’ “hatred of poor people”, gets one part right:
… more perniciously, throughout the piece she runs together the idea of soup kitchens being too “snobbish” about what food they serve with the idea of soup kitchens being health-conscious about the food they serve. This is an important distinction to make, however. When people can’t get enough to eat, they become malnourished. The point of charitable food assistance is to help people avoid that fate. That means, however, that it’s foolish to ignore the nutritional content of what you’re serving. Oftentimes, the situation is so dire that you can’t afford to fuss too much about this. People in Somalia and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa are teetering on the brink of starvation and need food by any means necessary. But fortunately for us, even in this economy the United States is not a drought-ravaged, famine-stricken, war-torn, malgoverned third world state. We’re not facing imminent mass starvation. So it’s eminently sensible for people trying to bring food to those in need to be paying attention to the differential health impact of different meals.
Oh, and guess what? The title of Gunlock’s piece is an arugula joke! Which is, like, so funny! And we can all agree, I take it, that real Americans only serve iceberg lettuce to the starving and destitute …
[...] John Schwenkler: Oh, and guess what? The title of Gunlock’s piece is an arugula joke! Which is, like, so funny! And we can all agree, I take it, that real Americans only serve iceberg lettuce to the starving and destitute … [...]
FWIW, I think the quote that she was reacting to was rather unfortunate — the juxtaposition of throwing away donated food and aiming for the equivalent of $30 meals could easily be taken as food snobbery, even though the broader context (not to mention other articles about the establishment, had she bothered to research) shows that they’re aiming for healthy, not chichi.
I think that’s a fair point, Ken - unless the people they’re serving food to don’t want day-old donuts anyway (which wouldn’t be unreasonable!), tossing them in the trash seems foolish. But as you say, it’s up to Gunlock to actually do the research here; and for heaven’s sake, the back cover of my Alice Waters cookbook has “Remember that food is precious” among the handful of (elitist and condescending, no doubt) guidelines, so it’s not as if these are matters that foodies are insensitive to.
Yeah, the problem really is the tissue-thin “research.” She does acknowledge that these places should try to serve healthy food, but she goes on to discover elitism everywhere when the only evidence is that rather ambiguous quote.
Speaking of which, did you read that the food kitchen she highlights isn’t even receiving money from the federal government?
Bwahahahaha! No, I missed that.
Having volunteered at numerous soup kitchens, the mission of a soup kitchen is much deeper than just providing a “good meal;” soup kitchens also strive to provide people who face countless indignities everyday with some dignity and a real sense that there is someone who cares about them and wants them to succeed. I detest these types of articles that make the assumption just because someone is homeless they should be happy to get any care from other at all and don’t deserve or want the same things everyone else wants.
Also, not only is there a lack of research, there is a willful miss-reading of the quote from the staffer at Miriam’s Kitchen. The staffer is using a simile; he or she is not saying they actually serve $30 meals, but that strive to provide quality service to their patrons. If the author of the article had ever served at a soup kitchen, she would know that soups kitchens encourage their patrons to become self-reliant, a valued conservative trait, by making the small gestures that help restore an individuals self worth.