The image above is from an NYC Health Department subway ad eschewing the consumption of sweetened beverages. The artwork makes the beverage appear to be the iconic lemon flavored ice tea from Snapple? WTF?!? Wasn’t Snapple embedded in a multi-million dollar partnership with NYC, and more specifically the NYC Department of Education?
Not that I think you should take heed to every press release that comes down the pike, but this shit was major news when it dropped several years ago. Snapple became the “official beverage” brand for NYC. Snapple vending machines were installed in city agencies throughout the five boroughs. And schools also because when you aren’t allowed to leave school grounds for a quarter water or a bag of chips you can at least copp yourself a $1 can of Snapple.
Unfortunately for NYC, the deal wasn’t as sweet as the Snapple drinks are. So now Snapple gets thrown under the proverbial bus(a B25 I imagine) because the city is undergoing a policy shift in the war against the poor. City Hall thinks that if poor people stop drinking as much sody pops and sweetened beverages maybe there won’t be as much diabetes in the ‘hood. This idea is a fail also.
Let’s smarten up NaS and realize that poor people consume crap for one reason. It’s all we can afford. We grow to like the shit after buying it for generations. but if I could afford Kumbucha drinks I would copp those instead. For the same 16ozs. of a healthier beverage priced at $3 or more I can buy myself a Tropical Fantasy for $.50 and get the most sugar per 8oz. serving available. Those are the real decisions that poor people have to make.
Why is public policy always about threatening poor people?
Because the war on the poor continues unabated.
The poor have no advocacy. Without a public voice to speak for them they remain the nameless; faceless masses. When a travesty of injustice occurs the first thing any run of the mill politician will say is “in order to make an omlette you have to break a few eggs.” The primary comparison being in order to make a better society a few people have to be broken/killed off. The underlying comparison equates the nameless; faceless masses with eggs an item that 1) is destined to never reach it’s full potential 2) is meant to be used as a food source or a means to an end or 3) meant to be hard boiled and colored on Easter or tossed around on Halloween. In short an egg is next to nothing.
Our neighborhoods and schools are over-crowded and under-funded. The police practice a policy of shoot first and don’t answer any questions for 3 days. Our politicians act as if we are not the constituency and don’t have to be answered to.
I’ve always made the argument that lower (“poor”) class Black people will spend an extra $100 @ the mall before they spend it @ the grocery store. I was watching a documentary on the eating habits of slaves on PBS, which confirmed that Black people, mainly lower class/poor, have developed horrid dietary habits as a result of the horrible conditions with which our ancestors had no choice but to endure. All those pieces of animals that the whites threw away, & here we are now with entire restaurants dedicated to them. & we wonder about blood pressure, diabetes, heart problems, cancer, hell, maybe even mental problems as well.
It’s always funny to see an entire nation of people, by-products of devout capitalism, always attacked for just trying to survive in a society that wasn’t created for us, & we had no choice in becoming victim to.
Like rap cats who’ve made it & still allow their kids to consume Kool Aid with every fattening, sodium laced meal. When I was in Louisiana last week, it was overwhelming how much red meat & beef was served with every meal. Needless to say there wasn’t one skinny person in that entire family. It’s not that they were poor @ all, but I can sense the empowerment of foods that aren’t @ all healthy, but more tradition, especially because it was in the South.
You guys are acting like you never tasted KoolAid or even some ordinary pink lemonade att a picnic or something. Even better, take a look at how that stuff is made and pay attention to all the sugar that is poured into those drinks.
I like that DP told the truth, “For the same 16ozs. of a healthier beverage priced at $3 or more I can buy myself a Tropical Fantasy for $.50 and get the most sugar per 8oz. serving available.”
Ppl just like sugar.
FYI, Vitamin Water ain’t that sweet but that stuff moved in poor neighborhoods like no ones business because it was being marketed by 50 cent. Yeah there’re problems, but we spend our money on too much bullshit to talk so much shit.
props to tony grand for making my point better than i did, i stepped away to watch the nfl for a sec
cause they’re scared of what they dont know, dont like and what could happen if they “dont keep them in check”. Because they want to be the power holders. Goes all the way back to a bunch a dudes throwin tea off boats. The rich make it harder for the poor to come up because they dont think they can make it a profit off it. And they especially dont want the poor to think they have some sort of rights. Even tho, if everyone in America made at least what 40, 50,000 dolares a year, crime would decrease, land would be bought and other investments would be made. Even without the money, if people had food, free healthcare (including showers, soap and clothes and money) and some shelter for everyone. You watchin this Cowboys game? I say at least a 10 game season or new coaches
forgot about education
dam … i drink alot of that shizzz
Suburban white woman, I somehow stumbled across this website and accompanying videos and I’m hooked.
I think Americans live on different PLANETS! (forget about streets or neighborhoods)
tight post DP
Good looks realtalk.
Lol @ Beverly. Yeah, different planets, indeed.
Grand$ what up?
Beverly, this planet is large enough for two people to view the exact same event and come to two(2) different conclusions. The story above made me laugh only because I remember the press release for the Snapple deal and how it was buttressed by placing these machines in schools. Kids can’t learn now because they have quarter waters and bodega honey buns for breakfast. By noontime they are tired and irratible due to the sugar crash.
Believe it or not, I’m sympathetic to the food desert data. I’ve seen first hand how difficult it is for poor folks in certain areas to access the variety and quality of fresh, affordable, relatively healthy food that many take for granted.
But the cheap soda argument is bogus. At most, tap water costs about .2 cents per gallon. Even if tap water smells like ass, it can be boiled or run through a cheapie home filter.
There are other reasons besides cost that poor people stay eating unhealthy. It doesn’t help to vilify poor people for being swayed by those reasons, but it doesn’t help remove poor people’s agency either.
GG,
So you think poor folks aren’t doing enough with their tap water? Maybe they can bake their tap water as well, while they are boiling it and taking it from a lowgrade filter. You see how you selfrighteously add work to the working class? Maybe not so much selfrighteous but certainly without the mind to recognize the programming that has been developed to make poor folks mad the choices they make in the first place.
Dallas.
What you read as self-righteousness is one part pessimism about our unequal systems, one part being fed up with victimology.
We should keep fighting structural inequalities that limit the life chances of the poor, but let’s be honest–these structural inequalities aren’t going anywhere soon.
Individuals, especially poor ones, have very little control over the distribution of resources and life chances. I focus on minimizing poor folks’ self-destructive behavior because that’s one thing they can control (to a greater extent).
Poor people may be fucked by multiple systems, but they often exacerbate the problems by making poor choices. Again, I don’t want to demonize the poor, but treating them like perpetual children/victims is even more insulting.
And even factoring in the extra work to purify it, water costs way less than soda, and doesn’t contribute to the worsening of poor people’s life chances.
We agree that (de/re)programming is needed, though.
GG,
Wow, great point on the need to disconnect the victim mentality. You are right that we can’t even fight for our rights if we have it in our mind that we are perpetual victims.
I’m riding with GG on this one. Who cares what the city says. Guliani already showed and proved you can’t trust it. Folks in the hood need to be accountable themselves for what they consume. You can get water in any bodega I have been in. I know in Bed-Stuy around Fulton and Nostrand, all you see is fast food joints and no markets. With that said, you can still hop the train and get enough fresh groceries to last a week. I’m sure those spots accept WIC too.
The real deal is that the hood needs accessible supermarkets with fresh food to eat. That should be a right but capitalism argues the contrary.
This doesnt have to do with poor people.
Why not recommend drinking water, seltzer, or low-fat milk? If the ad told you to buy Kombucha at $5 a pop, that’s one thing, but seltzer costs one fucking dollar.
I like that there are ads encouraging people (of all walks of life) to be more healthy.
“I like that there are ads encouraging people (of all walks of life) to be more healthy.”
Do you call that ad above “encouraging” or is that didactic discouragement? There’s a difference you know?