Food Snobs in the Soup Kitchen?
Julie Gunlock complains at NRO that “food snobs” are ruining America by serving unduly fancy food at soup kitchens. It’s actually rare that conservatives get to combined their hatred of poor people with their hatred of “cultural elites” in a single argument, so Gunlock gets so busy dishing out the sarcasm that she can’t quite seem to deliver the “so what?” point where we see who is being harmed by this alleged trend.
But 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.
78 Responses to “Food Snobs in the Soup Kitchen?”
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May 15th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
As long as the food as publicly-spirited calories and vitamin clerks what’s the difference?
May 15th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I’m wary of the tone of this article.
We should be feeding these folks the same sort of food everyone else enjoys. No slop because conservatives think it’s all they deserve, and not rice-cakes and whole-grain bread because liberals want to get paternalistic.
May 15th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Wait, I’m confused. Is the author a stay-at-home-mom, like her byline suggests? Or is she a work-from-home-mom, like the fact that she has a column at the NRO suggests?
May 15th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
They’re throwing away donuts? No wonder K-Lo was outraged.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
as an adjunct to this, i was learning recently from the funder of a study as to the elementary school absences in the LAUSD, the biggest single cause is oral health problems. there are whole schools where not a single kid does not have cavities because they have eaten so much sugary junk food….
May 15th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
let them eat gruel.
or maybe taste-tempting treats.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Did Matthew even read the linked article? It seems not. In fact, the author specifically states “it is certainly a worthy goal for food kitchens to endeavor to provide a healthy meal to those they serve”. Which completely undermines Matthew’s post.
The point of the article is that the soup kitchen is threatening to throw away perfectly good food, while at the same time soup kitchens are getting $150 million in taxpayer money. I don’t know why this is so difficult for Matthew to figure out – while we ought to provide healthy meals at these places, they also ought not to throw away perfectly good food that is less than ideally healthy. Especially when they are asking for $150 million from the taxpayers.
But this is all part and parcel of liberals’ typical profligacy with taxpyer funds. Hey, it’s just $150 million, so let’s throw away perfectly good food!
May 15th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
For added annoyance, couple this with the segment of last night’s The Daily Show where somebody argued to Sam Bee that the Obama’s organic garden would lead to higher starvation and obesity among the poor.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
“More gruel please sir” at the work-house for orphans is what they want. Don’t you know the poor ought to be punished?
(I see Pierre beat me to the ‘gruel’ punch.. )
May 15th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
It is preposterous to obsess over this but I can imagine Hannity sick at the thought of homeless people eating anything but gruel and moldy bread. How that’s supposed to provide them the energy to detail his car and clean his pool is beyond me.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
That stay-at-home mom can’t even read:
“If anyone brings us donuts, Steve [the chef] throws them away. . . . It is not good food for our guests. We care too much to give them anything but the best. Steve wants our guests to have the same experience as if they were paying $30 for the meal.”
becomes
Turning Miriam’s Kitchen into a place to get a $30 meal for free misses the mark.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Any post that elicits three “gruels” in ten comments should win some sort of web award.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Just when I thought NRO couldn’t get any dumber….they find this woman.
And Al is still a fucking liar like the sun rises in the East. But you knew that already.
This lady cites ONE example of throwing away food. Donuts. That’s it. And then she and Al jump up and down shouting “They’re throwing away food!” No they’re not. They’re throwing away fucking donuts.
And only an idiot thinks risotto is some sort of meal only royalty eat. Up until a few years ago, it was considered peasant food. It’s cheap, and it’s EASY TO MAKE FOR A LARGE CROWD. Ditto soup. Even if its, oh my god, pumpking soup. You know, those orange things that grow in the ground and don’t require a lot of maintenance.
My favorite part is when this bitch makes up shit about kitchens being too good for canned vegetables. That is completely, 100% made up. What a fucking bitch.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
My favorite part is when this bitch makes up shit about kitchens being too good for canned vegetables. That is completely, 100% made up.
these people are brought up in a strange world combining economic and social entitlement with mean-spirited “christian” religiosity. Lots of strange ideas about “teh deserving poor”, and what the poor deserve. Wasn’t it Kristol who made the remark about “lucky duckies”? Makes it a lot easier to justify grinding poverty, and voting against SCHIP in a country where twelve year olds die of tooth decay.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
No sense in cross-commenting here, but it strikes me as odd that advocating for better food standards in any aspect of American life is labeled as “snobbery” by the right. It’s pretty clear that eating fresh fruits and vegetables is healthier and tastier than eating processed foods. No real controversy there. Advocating for healthier school lunches, soup kitchen menus, and so on seems like a no-brainer to me.
Confession: I am a food snob. I don’t eat fast food or in chain restaurants. I’d rather pay a hobo to take a dump in a bag and eat that than shuck out my hard-earned dollars for a chicken-fried southwest margarita shrimp or whatever at Fridays or the alleged Tuscan delights they offer at the Olive Garden. If the cultural warriors want to take umbrage with my preferences, that’s fine. I eat better dinners than they so I win. But my personal tastes have nothing at all to do with my advocacy of better school lunches, something I do a lot of letter writing and bar-spouting-off about. If I didn’t own close to 300 cookbooks and spend the lion’s share of my free time cooking, eating, and reading about food, I’d still think its a good idea to encourage people, especially those at the margins, to eat healthier. My snobbery and my advocacy are independent from one another.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
I missed the Kim-plosion?
DAMN!
May 15th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Donuts are not “perfectly good food.” They may taste good, but fried grease is out of place in a soup kitchen.
I think the implication is that these places are wasting government money on snooty-tooty ingredients. Regardless, none of these ingredients is inordinately expensive or exotic. Pumpkin? Turnips? Ground beef? Fresh fruit? Sour cream? Garlic? And risotto? I mean, if rice is now considered an outrageous food to be wasted on the homeless, we’re in more trouble than I thought. The only fancy ingredient I saw was artichokes. The rest is just… staples.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Al is, of course, right. Especially about the part about MattY discrediting himself again. The solution is to drop funding to “Miriam’s Cuisine” and fund a smarter organization, one that might – for instance – use the donuts as just an addition to fresh fruit or similar.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Elvis sings: Don’t Be Gruel (To A Heart That’s True)
May 15th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Al is, of course, right. Especially about the part about MattY discrediting himself again. The solution is to drop funding to “Miriam’s Cuisine” and fund a smarter organization, one that might – for instance – use the donuts as just an addition to fresh fruit or similar.
Hey, lonewacko, I thought you had scuttled off to your hole someplace? I liked RoboticGhost’s dumb in a bag comment. The only thing that would be better would be forcing you to eat it, lonewacko.
Oh, and since the usual guy isn’t around to say, I will. “Shut the fuck up, Lonewacko.”
May 15th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Donuts are not “perfectly good food.” They may taste good, but fried grease is out of place in a soup kitchen.
Of course donuts are perfectly good food. This statement is the definition of food snobbery.
Regardless, none of these ingredients is inordinately expensive or exotic. Pumpkin? Turnips? Ground beef? Fresh fruit? Sour cream? Garlic? And risotto? I mean, if rice is now considered an outrageous food to be wasted on the homeless, we’re in more trouble than I thought. The only fancy ingredient I saw was artichokes. The rest is just… staples.
Hmmmm – “red-wine barbecue beef on handmade puff pastry”. Handmade puff pastry? A staple? “[A]ll topped off with fresh blueberries and sour cream”. Fresh blueberries is a staple? Have you ever seen how expensive fresh blueberries are? They cost a fortune.
The point isn’t that they are using good, expensive ingredients – even though undoubtedly they are. It’s that they are using expensive ingredients, and throwing away prefectly good food, while still demanding $150 million in taxpayer funds.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
I’d rather pay a hobo to take a dump in a bag and eat that than shuck out my hard-earned dollars for a chicken-fried southwest margarita shrimp or whatever at Fridays or the alleged Tuscan delights they offer at the Olive Garden.
No, you would not. I’m not a particular fan of chain restaurants or fast food, but you’re just being an ass.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
It’s a truly bizzare form of populism to criticize organizations for providing better food to poor people. Way to stand up for the downtrodden! After all, eating crappy food has worked out so well for the rest of America. Maybe we can just give them vouchers for Burger King instead.
It’s just weird that the right now considers spending money on ANYTHING to be an act of insanity. It’s outrageous to feed poor people now? Seriously? This is where you draw the line? What kind of society would you prefer? I’m pretty sure that we tried the Dickensian approach to poverty and it didn’t work out that well.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Oh, noes!
They’re doing it troll-style!
May 15th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Halfdan and WhyOhWhy make points I commented on over at IFA. Because something sounds “fancy,” it doesn’t necessarily mean it costs a lot. If you pay 30 bucks at a good restaurant, the majority of that $30 goes into the owner’s pocket and to pay staff and operation costs. A $30 meal at your local decent eatery would cost you, generally speaking, far less to make, even adjusted for bulk ingredient costs. The folks at Miriam’s donate their expertise to make humble ingredients into something more and that’s laudable.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
You have no idea if the same place with fresh blueberries is asking for public funding. This is sloppy bullshit. I can think of a host of reasons for a shelter not wanting to accept food donations to.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Handmade puff pastry? A staple?
Why not? Flour, water, and fat are staples. Combined in the proper manner they make puff pastry. I do it all the time. Its easy once you get the hang of it. That’s the point of Miriam’s. Instead of crap, feed these people something nice. What’s wrong with that? Because they are poor they should only eat government cheese? Que? Gde? I don’t get the criticism.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Hmmmm – “red-wine barbecue beef on handmade puff pastry”. Handmade puff pastry? A staple? “[A]ll topped off with fresh blueberries and sour cream”. Fresh blueberries is a staple? Have you ever seen how expensive fresh blueberries are? They cost a fortune.
Beef is a staple. Puff pastry is butter and flour. Both staples, and “handmade” implies that some pastry chef has donated his time to make it for the kitchen. Red wine suitable for cooking can be very cheap. And the blueberries were donated by a local farm.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Why are they “throwing away donuts”? That implies they didn’t buy them, but that they were donated. And it’s not something you can really store. Instead of giving ‘the poor’ old crap you don’t want, why not give money so they can buy nutritious food (or sell it to them at a discount).
May 15th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
you’re just being an ass
Yes I was. I wanted to establish myself as a true snob, you see. Can’t be a real snob without being an ass. It’s in the bylaws.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Yeah, I figured she was going to rough up pumpkin soup and mushroom risotto as soon as she mentioned that Michelle Obama was serving them.
Look, there isn’t anything fancy about pumpkins, mushrooms, risotto. In one or another part of the world each of these is commonly used because it is cheap, nutritious and versatile. She seems to be objecting that the homeless are eating unusual or exotic foods. Maybe she just doesn’t think anyone should be happier with their budget meal than the Gunlock family.
(And by the way, Julie — your family will thank you if you soak the beans a little longer.)
May 15th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
If this place were serving donuts, we’d hear criticism that taxpayer money is being wasted on a nutrition-free “donut shop for the homeless.” Deny it.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Poverty is an immoral condition. Therefore it is only just that soup kitchens serve unappetizing, unhealthy food to poor people so that they won’t want too much and will die more quickly from eating it. This is definitely what Jesus would do.
May 15th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
She seems to be objecting that the homeless are eating unusual or exotic foods.
exactly
May 15th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
“Of course donuts are perfectly good food. This statement is the definition of food snobbery.”
Al, I agree with the criticism of the snobby soup kitchen chef who thinks donuts are not good enough for his charges. I’ve seen a bag of donuts disappear at a men’s shelter in about 5 seconds flat. Of course, I’ve seen much the same in a Tuesday morning board meeting. Donuts are beloved by people of all races and classes.
But the disingenuous bait and switch in the NRO article is suggesting, with no evident basis, that the tax dollars received by these soup kitchens are also being used to buy needlessly overpriced food. Most soup kitchens count on volunteers and donations for their day-to-day operations. Our local shelter encourages volunteer groups to bring in meals, and some volunteers really do go nuts with their favorite quasi-gourmet recipes. But on ordinary nights, they serve very modest dinners.
And of course, puff pastries may seem horrifyingly elitist to some, but the ingredients are cheap. Fresh produce is also much cheaper in Cali than elsewhere, for obvious reasons.
May 15th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
I hate to say this, but for once, Al is correct.
Donuts were donated to the soup kitchen. The cook threw them out. I think it’s great that he wants the best for his guests, but really. Leave the donuts out, and if the homeless want the sugary treats instead of the mushroom risotto, then let them eat it!
Now I wouldn’t draw any lesson beyond “the chef is being a snotty jerk,” and Matthew’s broad lesson about nutrition is correct. Still, I wouldn’t bother defending Miriam’s Kitchen in this case.
May 15th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
She’s probably just jealous because her kids’ idea of a fine home cooked meal is oscar meyer hot dogs or, on a good night, hamburger helper.
All right, that was a bit mean, but seriously, you’re bashing NRO? Not even conservatives take it seriously anymore.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
I think that Matt and 3/4 of the commenters here did not read the article, miunderstood it, or are lying about it.
To throw away perfectly good food at a time like this is stupid. (To ask that in the future people bring in healthier food is not, of course).
As for the question about whether or not the soup kitchens should be getting the “best” food, my feeling is that, as long as the food is nutritionally sound, soup kitchens should purchase (or people donating to such institutions should donate) as much as possible of the least expensive food possible unless and until the soup kitchen has no problem feeding all of its clients. Giving more expensive brown rice instead of white rice is fine, but people should buy the least expensive brown rice that they can find, so that they can buy as much of it as possible.
Why? So that it does not run out. If a soup kitchen has all of the food it needs, and there are still more people who want to donate, well then they can get together and use their surplus to get higher quality food. But if the soup kitchen is having trouble making ends meet and trouble feeding all of the people who want to use its services, then buying more expensive food means less food and less people served.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying “buy a $5.00 bag of 1 lb. of rice instead of a $10.00 1 lb. bag (I forget how much rice costs, so this may be way off). I’m saying buy 2 $5.00 1 lb. bags and feed twice the people.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Of course donuts are perfectly good food. This statement is the definition of food snobbery.
Al can be regularly counted on to combine both idiocy and mendacity, and he doesn’t fail with this effort.
I worked midnights making donuts to pay for university, so I have some idea what I’m talking about. Donuts are “food”, not food. They are deep fried starch (sugar and white flour) – one of the worst things you could feed someone if the idea is to satisfy a nutritional need, (as opposed to a sugar craving). They epitomize everything that is wrong with food in the US. And they go stale *very* quickly – I would guess most donut shops throw out their wares after 8 hours. So for a donut to end up in a homeless shelter they would be considerably older than that (likely going on 2 days).
Our throwaways were picked up by a pig farmer, which is revealing enough.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Tossing the ‘nuts
A wee lesson about How Non-profits Work. Miriam’s Kitchen has a mission statement. They also have a board of directors. And most importantly, they have donors. Donors who give money to the organization to carry out its mission. If Miriam’s Kitchen departed from their mission to serve healthy meals to homeless people by serving them donuts they would be in violation of their 501C3 and would and should be directed to return to their core mission or risk losing their certification and/ or donorbase. So Miriam’s Kitchen serving donuts, being an edible foodlike substance with negative nutritional value, would be like the Make-A-Wish Foundation granting wishes to adults or the Breast Cancer Research Foundation funding pancreatic cancer research. It would be better, of course, for the chef to maybe pass along those donuts to another soup kitchen or something, but he shouldn’t serve them.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
The NRO post is stupid and not worth the discussion. It has exactly one hard fact deserving of consideration and that is that this one soup kitchen throws away some types of food donations they deem unhealthy -donuts.
The rest of it is speculation and knee-jerk attitude.
The author then conflates that kitchen with another that serves fancy food, but we know nothing about whether the other kitchen throws away or refuses certain types of food.
As to the cost of healthier food? We know exactly nothing. Many locations have voluntary programs where grocers and restaurants donate unusable food (soon to expire, or half prepared restaurant food that will not keep well) at no cost.
I think an informed post on the economics of soup kitchens, and what they movement for healthier better food, or local food, or slow food, or whatever, does for the economics, would be interesting. MY’s post and the link is just silly watercooler policy gossip.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
I hate to admit it, but I agree with the NRO!
Waste is shameful. Whether it is trust fund babies tossing out an entire wardrobe because it is last season or some jerk off in a food shelter who thinks he is the poor persons food police, it is shameful to waste in a world where so many people have nothing.
Most homeless people get maybe one meal a day at a food bank. You could slip them into plastic baggies so they could have something to eat at night or the next day. Yes, donuts aren’t the healthiest, but maybe you could treat poor people like adults and let them decide.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Glaivester: I think you’ve missed the point. Donuts aren’t rice, nor are they “perfectly good food” as you claim. Those were the only foods mentioned in the article as being thrown out. Donuts are essentially grease and sugar, which contributes towards tooth decay. Homeless people probably don’t have the best oral hygiene to begin with and if they can’t afford a house, they probably can’t afford to have cavities fixed, either.
Think about school lunches. Would you want children to be served donuts for lunch? Me neither. And why not? Because it takes away from them eating healthy foods with nutrients. As MY notes, there isn’t a problem with getting enough calories, it’s a problem with getting vitamins and minerals that people need to function.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
J has it right: a useless conversation about a moronic article, a mosquito bite from the right, part of a larger attack on any sort of social safety net.
I bet some of the people getting decent food are NEGROES! How on earth are THEY entitled to any sort of dignity?
Remember Reagan’s “ketchup is a vegetable”? Now it’s donuts.
For Christ’s sake.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Of course donuts are perfectly good food. -Al
And ketchup’s a vegetable, right Al?
May 15th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
RoboGhost: You can go to their website, which says: “Our mission is to provide individualized services that address the causes and consequences of homelessness in an atmosphere of dignity and respect.” Nothing about healthy food per se, and if you go to their recipes they’re for things like “Cream Biscuits” and “Barbeque Shrimp and Grits.”
Jeremy: These aren’t your typical American kids. They’re desperately poor people who’d be living out of garbage bins if it wasn’t for the soup kitchen. Obviously, it’s better for them to be eating healthy food than donuts, but throwing out food they’re willing to eat — forcing them to eat it out of the garbage can, instead of off a plate — is a travesty.
Matthew’s broader point is correct, and Al deserves to be stomped on, but I don’t think this is the best example for Matt to use.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
And the blueberries were donated by a local farm.
For a second I thought the NRO was making a valid point — after all, blueberries are really pricey. But no. The universe is right-side up again.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
I don’t get it.
Why can’t the homeless people just go to the neighborhood grocery store and buy whatever they want to eat? Every other person has too. Are the poor some sort of privileged minority in the new liberal America?
May 15th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
… and just how much better is puff pastry for you compared to donuts? Donuts are flour and water usually some eggs and yeast ( or baking powder ) then fried in cheap vegetable oil. Flour water and grease in other words. Puff pastry on the other hand is flour and water made into a paste then folded many times over a layer of butter. In other words flour water and grease. I suspect that donuts are better for you than puff pastry. Less fat, more protein – they might have eggs and milk in them, and the fat they do have is less saturated.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Matt Stevens,
If you dig into their program services that language is there. Nutrition is definitley on the mission agenda. It’s kind of a silly argument. I suppose he could serve the donuts or use them to make a desert or something. But still, if somebody donated beer they wouldn’t serve it for same reason. Clearly the program attracts dollars and attention by providing substantial food to the needy. Donuts are not in spec. Anyways, the NRO post is ridiculous whether the chef tosses donated not-food or not. Bashing a soup kitchen because the staff and volunteers who try to provide what they believe to be an appropriate service because the author don’t own with no fancy schmancy librul foods instead of good ol’ American poor chow is sickening.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
why the fuck didn’t chef asshat give the donuts to the volunteers donuts/bagels and bad coffee are essentials at every community event I have ever participated in
donuts dont go to waste volunteers happy homeless not satiated with sugar and grease win win win
May 15th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
I think some commenters did not read the linked article very carefully, and are conflating the different kitchens that are discussed. So whether puff pastry is better than donuts has nothing to do with anything said in the NRO piece. It might have to do with careless inferences that could be drawn from a quick glance, but nothing more.
After polluting the internets with such silliness, I think MY might consider asking around his policy wonk friends to find out what is known about soup kitchen economics, and the cost of them getting healthy food. But I have heard he never bothers to read the comments.
I am something of a wonk myself, and I do know from the nutritional literature that a large fraction, over 1/4 certainly, of available calories (from all major food groups), are wasted in the US. So, it would not surprise me that a lot of high quality food might be available in the U.S. if a soup kitchen bothered to look around. It would be nice to know what is going on.
I would prefer that MY not post such frivolous stuff. He would have more time for research, and could glance at the spell checker from time to time.
May 15th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
I am extremely liberal.
But the chef that threw out the doughnuts should be fired. I read the rest of the piece and agree that the homeless do deserve a healthy meal, but the sheer symbolic maternalism of denying poor people food they would enjoy is embarrassing.
By the way, to the people who say that fast food and doughnuts are “disgusting,” they ignore the fact that billions of people continue to purchase this food over and over again. Why? Because they like it. It tastes good. It’s fast. It’s cheap. What is disgusting to you isn’t for someone else, so get off your high horse, put down “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and quit becoming fodder for Bill O’Reilly. The last thing liberalism needs is to divorce itself from working class tastes and culture.
May 16th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Whether it is trust fund babies tossing out an entire wardrobe because it is last season
I’ve never known anyone to throw out clothes that were wearable, as in throwing them in the garbage. Most people I know will drop off their clothes at Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Particularly fashionable and business minded people with expensive clothes that were last season will have them sold at a consignment shop.
The fault of throwing out the donuts falls on the donors. Soup kitchens are there to provide healthy food to people who need it. Donut shops can always give away donuts at their leisure. And as Robotic Ghost points out: non-profits have missions and boards of directors they’re answerable to. This is a non-profit dedicated to providing good food to all comers.
May 16th, 2009 at 12:09 am
A formula: If distributable food at soup kitchen X = need for food at soup kitchen X then give the recipients of your regulated and overseen charity the best foods you can beg borrow or steal.
OK to ditch the donuts under those circumstances?
May 16th, 2009 at 12:12 am
There were greater-than and less-than signs in the above comment where it makes sense. Forgot that specific HTML tags were required.
Another formula iPhone + bar + beer = shoddy commenting.
May 16th, 2009 at 1:09 am
[...] Matt Yglesias finds a real winner of a piece at NRO: [...]
May 16th, 2009 at 1:49 am
I don’t get it. How did this twit manage to find a detailed menu from the MEND kitchen, but overlook this important fact:
May 16th, 2009 at 1:53 am
The above poster Tyro is the biggest tool of all time.
May 16th, 2009 at 2:07 am
Better link.
May 16th, 2009 at 2:28 am
I think this post should be more interesting.
May 16th, 2009 at 2:33 am
Which is kinda irrelevant in a food kitchen, you know?
If someone offers something demonstrably better AT THE SAME PRICE, why the hell are you complaining about it?
May 16th, 2009 at 3:11 am
That gourmet food kitchen actually runs on $40/month, because the chef has the food donated from local markets, and then uses his creativity.
Original article
And if Julie Gunlock got her material from there, she is a dishonest f*&^ing liar. But then again, she writes for the National Review, so we could have known that in advance.
May 16th, 2009 at 3:23 am
Julie Gunlock is the same person who wrote that hit piece for NRO on Alice Waters, just a few weeks ago:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjU5YWE1OTYwNTJjZmVjMmFkZjRiY2FiOGZjNTJhNGE
Her smearing of Waters was ridiculous, but honestly, read the piece and it’s pretty clear she was just a proxy for Gunlock’s attack on the new White House vegetable garden.
May 16th, 2009 at 3:31 am
Reading the article again, where does it say the chef threw out some donuts that somebody donated? It doesn’t say that at all. It quotes a MEND official as saying, “if anyone brings in donuts, the chef throws them away.”
Gunlock’s piece is entirely based on something that may never have happened.
May 16th, 2009 at 7:26 am
Don’t you see? The author – the stay at home working mom with a high-paying career – is well aware that risotto is rice. But she assumes that the people she is writing for, the base, DON’T know what risotto is. That’s what the right wing elite does, and they are the elite. They talk to their audience assuming that they’re idiots, morons, heathens, rednecks, and drunks.
Now, for all I know that’s exactly the group her fans are comprised of. It’d be up to them to confirm or deny, I wouldn’t know. But they had better know what this author, and the rest of the right wing elite they love so much, think about them. And I don’t think they get it.
May 16th, 2009 at 8:20 am
Seems that Zuzu’s Petals makes one of the more trenchant points here:
The soup kitchen is privately funded, with no governmental support.
So for all you reading-impaired, donut-scarfing, “that’s $150 million of MY money, goddamit!” assholes…
Maybe you should be sucking down a big heaping bowl of STFU.
Not that you will, because let’s face it, you’re too stupid to know when you’ve effed up and need to shut up.
“Fat and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
May 16th, 2009 at 8:40 am
risotto is rice
Well, for a proper risotto you can’t use any old rice, you need proper risotto rice, which is rounder and absorbs liquid better. Otherwise you end up with something else.
May 16th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Gunlock, and Al, have exactly one reasonable point. Throwing away donuts donated donuts is probably not a great idea. Most folks at a food kitchen or shelter will very happily eat a donut. Most will very happily eat two or three.
The rest of it is B.S.
A huge amount of food served at food shelters is donated. If somebody donates fresh blueberries, everyone gets fresh blueberries. If someone donates canned beets, it’s canned beets for lunch.
If somebody wants to take the time to make fresh puff pastry, what’s it to Gunlock or Al?
Finally, as others have mentioned, a lot of shelters and food programs are privately funded and run and don’t take federal money or any public money.
May 16th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Russell,
Last Christmas I made a big food donation to the shelter nearest me, where I used to volunteer. It was all frozen vegetables and a bit of fruit, because I knew that vegetables and fruits are things that are often rather hard to come by at shelters. I shudder to think that if Al was running their budget, he would have the shelter sell my donation and use the money to buy donuts. What a f*cktard.
Though I would say that if shelters are buying their own food, then frozen vegetables are much better nutritional value for money than either canned vegetables or fresh ones. There is little evidence that most nutrients are lost in the freezing process.
As for puff pastry, look the one thing that shelters have a LOT of is free labor. It would seem that puff pastries and other things which are labor intensive but where the ingredients are cheap, would be a perfectly rational thing to make. Fortunately, shelters have access to the labor of a lot of willing volunteers who don’t subscribe to Al’s ‘time is money’ nonsense.
Seriously, “let them eat donuts”? Does Al even listen to himself? Gee, perhaps next time I make a donation I should scrap the blueberries. Hell, I used to live in a rural village where my next door neighbors were chronically undernourished. I use to buy them nice things from the city all the time. I guess they should have sold my gifts and bought fried grease instead. What a f*cking tool.
May 16th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Re: Well, for a proper risotto you can’t use any old rice, you need proper risotto rice, which is rounder and absorbs liquid better. Otherwise you end up with something else.
The something else can be pretty tasty though.
May 16th, 2009 at 10:54 am
I think that Matt and 3/4 of the commenters here did not read the article, miunderstood it, or are lying about it.
Then you didn’t read the article either. I think what’s clear is that Al is a lying asshole and that a lot of NRO writers have a soul-warping hatred of the poor.
Seriously, NRO is writing a hostile screed against charity food kitchen workers. Do we need any more evidence that the conservative movement is dead and that people who still support them are a group of broken or ignorant people?
Seriously, what kind of political ignoramus do you have to be to still read anything written by the National Review, anymore? I have no idea why conservatives and republicans don’t write this publication off as something from the extremist fringe.
May 16th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Trus story, when I was teaching in Rhode Island in the early 90’s, a lot of our kids were so low-income they qualified for free breakfast and lunch at school.
They were routinely horrifying. But the worst was one day when breakfast was two donuts. TWO donuts. That was it. The entire breakfast.
Have you ever tried to teach a class of 10-year olds who had donuts for breakfast? Donuts covered in powdered sugar and cinnamon and chocolate?
Worst day of my teaching career. I finally sent them outside to just run it off. Which they did, for about an hour. And then, of course, they all crashed and we had “quiet reading time” where I pretended not to notice half of them had fallen asleep.
Christ, and we wonder why there’s a diabetes epidemic? We’re feeding children donuts for breakfast.
May 16th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Has anyone mentioned that Kathy Lopez and JoJo Goldberg are fatty lardasses?
May 16th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
[...] in Daily life, Food, GOP at 1:03 pm by LeisureGuy Matthew Yglesias: Julie Gunlock complains at NRO that “food snobs” are ruining America by serving unduly fancy [...]
May 16th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Does anyone besides me get the impression that these right-wingers are actually from some other planet, and haven’t yet quite managed to understand the nature of things on this one yet?
May 18th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
[...] Matt Y dissents: But 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. [...]
May 22nd, 2009 at 6:07 pm
When I worked at a Dunkin’ Donuts in high school, we threw out the leftover donuts every night. Probably 50 pounds, at least, every night. (Always put the munchkins at the bottom, because if you hit a bump on the way to the dumpster, you’ll tip the trash can and have a zillion munchkins to clean up off the parking lot, probably at midnight in the cold and dark.)
Donuts aren’t food. They have no nutritional value. They don’t even represent any kind of meaningful donation because so many are thrown away every day. Throwing away donated donuts is no worse than throwing away donated dirty diapers.