>My wife's coworkers are generally jealous of what she eats for lunch re-heated in the microwave at work compared to their lunches they eat at
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My wife is in the same boat, Phatch. And they're always saying "your husband is so good to you." A nice ego booste for me. But it's only leftovers---if they only knew.
One of the problems, overall, is that most of our poor---and certainly all the ones the studies deal with---are urban. Country folk know how to make do, have been doing it for generations. But the combination of urban poor and a system that
doesn't want them off that cycle, leads to all sorts of problems.
I grew up dirt poor, in a tenement structure. But mom always had some pots of stuff growing on the fire escape. Herbs, and maybe a pepper plant, and some cherry tomatoes. And I learned to cook at her knee.
Many of today's poor just don't know how to do those things, and aren't being taught basic nutritional and cooking skills. To do so might give them a sense of self worth, and then they'd want to get off the welfare merry-go-round, and we can't have that.
It was a different time, though. There was no welfare, as such. And we didn't live in today's liberal-dominated world, so there were no concepts like demeaning work. You did whatever it took to make the coon.