DIET
Check Your Kitchen Privilege
Sometimes, there’s a reason the poor eat unhealthy foods
Marie Antoinette probably didn’t really say “Let them eat cake” when told her people had no bread, but they cut off her head anyway. She was living it up like a Zuck or a Musk or a Bezos while her people struggled and starved.
It plays out a little bit differently today. The question isn’t cake vs. bread; it’s more like kale salad vs. fast-food burgers.
You probably have kitchen privilege.
I do, too. It makes it hard to understand the difficulty of preparing healthy and inexpensive meals when you don’t have access to a decent kitchen, especially if you are trying to feed a family.
I already knew this, of course, but hadn’t experienced it. Even in my poorest days, I’ve always been lucky to have a working kitchen. That’s given me the ability to stretch my food dollars by cooking from scratch and to pack lunches for meals eaten away from home.
I am the master of budget cooking.
How thrifty am I? I made my own damned saltine crackers, flour tortillas and pasta back in the day! I still routinely bake homemade sourdough bread, although in recent years I’ve become a decadent…
