Warning: exif_imagetype(https://themagpiegazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/page1-388px-Just_enough_for_you_-_about_food_portions_28IA_CAT3130393029.pdf.jpg): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 406 Not Acceptable
in /home/themag22/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 3312
Warning: file_get_contents(https://themagpiegazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/page1-388px-Just_enough_for_you_-_about_food_portions_28IA_CAT3130393029.pdf.jpg): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 406 Not Acceptable
in /home/themag22/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 3334
Warning: exif_imagetype(https://themagpiegazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/page1-388px-Just_enough_for_you_-_about_food_portions_28IA_CAT3130393029.pdf.jpg): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 406 Not Acceptable
in /home/themag22/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 3312
Warning: file_get_contents(https://themagpiegazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/page1-388px-Just_enough_for_you_-_about_food_portions_28IA_CAT3130393029.pdf.jpg): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 406 Not Acceptable
in /home/themag22/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 3334
Warning: exif_imagetype(https://themagpiegazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/magpie2-small.png): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 406 Not Acceptable
in /home/themag22/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 3312
Warning: file_get_contents(https://themagpiegazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/magpie2-small.png): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 406 Not Acceptable
in /home/themag22/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 3334
Warning: exif_imagetype(https://themagpiegazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/magpie2-small.png): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 406 Not Acceptable
in /home/themag22/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 3312
Warning: file_get_contents(https://themagpiegazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/magpie2-small.png): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 406 Not Acceptable
in /home/themag22/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 3334 Skip to content
“Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tua da gloriam.”
“Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory.” — Psalm 115, from the King James Version of the Bible.
As Thanksgiving approaches and family gatherings appear to be limited for the holiday on account of COVID-19, it’s easy to lose sight of the greater problems weighing down many unfortunate people this year, such as hunger and homelessness. People of sufficient means can afford to fret over not seeing friends and relatives in person, or over temporary shortages of goods and services inconveniencing them, but they at least have a warm, secure place to live, and enough food and other necessities to go around. Should they become sick, they have access to quality medical attention.
The cover of a pamphlet from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reminding Americans of the need in a country with plentiful food to be mindful of not eating too much.
What about the people without all those good things to be thankful for this year? The economic disruption of COVID-19 has pushed millions of people into desperate straits this year, most of them workers in the service sector who could least afford to miss a paycheck. While professionals could work from home using a computer and an internet connection, that option has not been available to most service workers, for whom the choice has been to work and thereby expose themselves to the coronavirus or stay home as long as they had a home to stay in and money to buy food. Some have been able to sustain themselves on financial assistance, others have not.
As bad as prolonged isolation can be, poverty is worse. As inconvenient as it can be to have money and not always have goods available in stores to buy, or restaurants to visit for some time out of the house, it is worse to work in those stores and restaurants for low wages and be exposed eight hours or more a day to coronavirus, and yet have to endure the abuse of entitled, spoiled, petulant customers, or to not have a job at all. For all that, there are still ways to say “thanks” this holiday season, and to help someone else along the way.
Rhiannon Giddens performs “Wayfaring Stranger”, with accompaniment on accordion by Phil Cunningham.
Food banks are experiencing greater demand now than at any time in recent memory. The same goes for soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and other charities helping the recently displaced as well as the chronically underemployed. There are safe ways to volunteer, but if that doesn’t seem possible, then help out by making a donation. Hospital staffs around the country are overworked, and they could use the assistance even of people without medical training. Farmers are reporting reduced demand for turkeys over 20 pounds because fewer large groups will be gathering for holiday dinners in their homes. The hungry who can’t afford to buy those larger turkeys could surely benefit by having them bought for them. Help carry the burden of this pandemic by picking up the fallen, and say grace in thanks to whatever faith sees you through another day.
Patrick Doyle composed this version of the traditional Catholic hymn “Non Nobis, Domine” for the 1989 film Henry V, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh. Mr. Doyle appears as the soldier singing at the beginning of the scene, which depicts the aftermath of the 1415 Battle of Agincourt in the Hundred Years’ War.
The federal government sends out mixed signals about dietary health by promoting the establishment of fast food restaurants in poor city neighborhoods on the one hand, and then on the other hand advocating healthier eating by limiting consumption of fast food. It boosts the use of cheese in fast food items, and then suggests consumers curtail their dairy consumption. It works hand in glove with ranchers in the beef industry by leasing grazing rights to federal lands at minimal cost, and then warns the public off eating too much red meat. That’s a lot of taxpayers’ money wasted on bureaucrats working at cross purposes with each other.
The Dane County Farmers’ Market in September 2007 on the grounds of the state capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin. It is the largest producers-only farmers’ market in the nation. Photo by Kznf.
People are so inured to confusing messages about what’s healthy to eat and what isn’t that most of them pay little mind to medical experts and bureaucrats, or rather they take their advice with a grain of salt, and that would be in the form of sea salt or Himalayan salt for foodie elites, and regular old table salt for everybody else. Like everything else in America over the past thirty or forty years, food culture has split into two halves, something akin to the haves and have nots. There are the foodie elites of the professional and upper classes, and then there is everybody else, from the lower middle class which is frantically scrabbling to keep from sliding down into the working class, which is itself struggling to stay one step ahead of poverty.
Americans can make a quick, cheap meal of sorts from a one or two dollar box of macaroni and cheese mix. For some, meals like that are their only option. It’s disgraceful that people of limited means should have to bear the disdain of people with nearly limitless means because their diet is based on calorie value per dollar over nutritional value. The poor and the economically struggling don’t have the luxury of being absolutely sure of their next meal. As to how the well off view their meals, anyone who has ever worked as a table busser or as one of the waitstaff in a high end restaurant can attest to the tremendous amount of food wasted by the patrons, even though they may be spending for one meal what a working class person can expect to earn in a day. The upper classes have that luxury because they have the security of knowing there’s more where that came from.
Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca as The Hickenloopers, Charlie and Doris, visit a health food restaurant in a skit fromYour Show of Shows, with appearances by Howard Morris as another customer and Carl Reiner as a waiter.
Unlikely as it seems, the fast food restaurants scorned by foodie elites as obesity enablers for the great unwashed may hold the key to turning things around for people who can’t afford to buy groceries at Whole Foods, aka Whole Paycheck. Taking their cue to keep promotions of healthier options low key so as not to arouse the suspicions of poorer customers whose purchases are based on calorie value per dollar, yet feeling increased pressure from public health groups to offer healthier foods, fast food restaurants increasingly change ingredients and practices in a balancing act to satisfy both constituencies. No one will ever claim that a cheeseburger and fries are healthier than a homemade meal of vegetables from a farmers’ market, but given the realities of human psychology and the country’s current economic conditions, demonizing those who choose to eat the former more often than the latter is ultimately unhelpful in lessening the obesity epidemic, while reinforcing the widening economic inequality that is driving it.
— Izzy