this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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So I live in the US. I have 2 friends that got scurvy in 2017. How did they get scurvy you might ask? Let me tell you. They live about 30 mins from the grocery store in a car. Which they don’t have. The closest person that can take them grocery shopping lives about 2 hours away. Plus they’re poor as shit.
To save money they spent 3 months eating nothing but homemade biscuits (scones for non Americans). The lack of vitamin c gave them scurvy.
They live on a fixed income. My state tightened requirements for food stamps. They were fucked.
I will say that the UN came to my state several years ago. They literally called it the 3rd world and said it was the most impoverished place in the developed world. So, there’s that.
So that sucks, but I just don't see it being entirely about poverty in this case. There's not a single neighbor of theirs who they could ask "hey, next time you drive to Walmart let me ride with you"? They hit their diet to save money? There's no churches around them doing food pantry days?
Scurvy... You can prevent scurvy by eating literally anything uncooked, including meat. You can get vitamin C from grass. Sounds to me like these people are wholly uninterested in understanding anything about nutrition and diet and don't talk to their neighbors at all.
Did you just blame poor people for being unhealthy because they don't want to eat grass?
Oh the indignity! I can hear it now. "Eating only things with a nutrition label on the box is a yuman right!"
I eat weeds. Wild weeds from the yard. For fun. They're tasty. You should try it. Most of them are harmless and nutritious, shit, dandelions were an imported food crop from Europe. Double check what you're eating first but they can be really good.
I didn't blame them for not eating grass I said that you should know a thing or two about nutrition if you intend to, you know, survive. I don't know about you, but if I was so poor I was living off of scones alone for 3 months, I'd be looking up wild food and learning about vitamin deficiency, and I'd be entirely willing to eat grass to prevent fucking scurvy.
You have a yard. Many people do not. People live in parts of the US that are deserts made of shitty buildings and huge roads.
Those places are called "cities." And the people in question also have a yard, they're renting a house in the country.
And I don't have a yard actually, I just live somewhere that there's living creatures outside aka not a city.
Yeah no
Not having any greenery is not the defining characteristic of a city, it is a choice
Look at this picture, it is the capital of Switzerland, the centre of it no less:
And is that where these people live? That can't eat grass because everything is made of concrete?
Nah, those people live in the US, where cities look like this, thanks to car-centric lifes. If you tried to eat that grass you'd probably die, it's so polluted by engine oil, exhaust and tyre wear
So cities then.