An interesting thread.

Will this generation ever take up the skills of tending backyard chicken pens and vege patches? I think more people will, especially as food gets more expensive and money gets harder to find.

Plates were smaller back in the days of one chicken feeding a family of four for Sunday dinner, the leftovers put into chicken soup for Monday tea and a couple of sandwiches for dad's lunch.

Fatties were few and far between back then, they lived on the smell of the chicken, the meals mainly consisted of vegetables and bread. The chicken doesn't go so far when everyone has a quarter at one sitting.

Did you watch that program on tele last night newtown grafitti? It was filmed in Cardiff, Wales and the little kids were living on a diet of sugar, every meal was frozen fast food or take away....sad how we've become so lazy.

I started a backyard vege patch this year, but I must say if I had to survive on my efforts I'd be a gonner for sure, but I'm learning and home grown veges always taste better.

This fast food trend started when mum went out to work because one wage didn't cover the mortgage or the rent.

The next Great Depression will sort it out, back to self sufficiency. It's coming, like it or not!

Sir Spot of Borg wrote on Dec 29^th, 2012 at 6:24am:



Too true. You can get a loaf of bread for as little as $1 if you look around,  but you wouldn't get much fruit or veg for that.

I still think you could make yourself a healthy alternative for the price of a big mac meal.

newtown_grafitti wrote on Dec 28^th, 2012 at 9:42pm:



I think you're right.  This, along with the old "I don't have time to cook a healthy meal after work" chestnut would account for the majority of the phenomenon. 

But what accounts for the erosion of home skills, AND greater work demands?

One word: Feminism. 

Annie Anthrax wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2013 at 9:15am:


Exactly right.  A generation of fat, unhealthy,inert, brainwashed kids is a small price to pay for a tidier house.   

Of course, it's not often men that these children live with, so it's quite irrelevant.

Annie Anthrax wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2013 at 9:34am:


LOL.  Look at the examples of 'home skills' given earlier - tending/killing/eating chickens, pickling/bottling veges for later consumption - Men haven't picked up the slack left by women - they just don't get done at all.  Even a friggin home cooked meal is somewhat of an oddity these days.  If that's not a loss of home skills, I'm andrea dworkin. 

aquascoot wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2013 at 10:06am:



Which makes it obvious (to me) that feminism has been commandeered for use as a vehicle to deliver hapless dependency and corporate rule.  Now, with the idoelogy firmly entrenched in very aspect of society, we can but sit and wait until the feminists get a clue that maybe, just maybe, feminism hasn't been an unfettered good, and we've been sold a dud under false pretences.  But by then, will it be too late?

This topic has nothing to do with feminism. Women still cook from scratch in 80% of the world. You won't find microwaves in the villages of the Philippines, or India, or Indonesia.

The cause of this issue is the marketing of processed food. As Newtown says, it's about US corn dumping and the marketing of high-sugar products. It's an orchestrated, long-term strategy by US food companies to get access to the world's developing markets. It involves the WTO, US farm subsidies, global patent legislation for seeds, and the business models of food giants like Proctor & Gamble, Unilever and Nestle.

Take Nestle - a Swiss company that basically sells processed corn, rice and milk powder with all the nutrition taken out of it. It advertises products like Milo on billboards around the world as a quick, healthy energy food. It's a long-term strategy that brands Nestle products as "health" food when in reality they're just chocolate and sugar. The developing world often views these products as modern and efficient. In many countries, Nestle infant formula is seen as a modern alternative to breast feeding. Since the introduction of these high-processed, globalized foods, countries like China have multiplied obesity levels in the space of 10 years.

Nestle represents a strategy by Western corporations and their paid politicians to reposition the developed world following the loss of its manufacturing sector. Food products are essentially intellectual property - from the genetically modified seed to the logo on the hamburger. If a company owns the patent and the supply chain, it owns the product, wherever the food is actually produced.

It's a business model pioneered by Cocal Cola. Coke holds the "secret" recipe, outsources the bottling, and places the product throughout the world "within an arm's reach of desire." The production line is lubricated by a sophisticated advertising campaign. All Coke actually produces is the syrup and the brand. The rest is all selling.

The global rise in obesity levels has nothing to do with feminism and everything to do with the globalization of processed food. It also has a lot to do with corn, and the post-war genius of US food technology in adapting and finding so many uses for it. Corn is in almost every processed food you can buy. Palm oil doesn't even come close.

Corn represents US hegemony at every level - from its government agricultural subsidies to its development and marketing boards to Monsanto's ownership of the GM corn patents to its use by US processed and fast food companies.

China might have taken over the world's manufacturing, but the US still owns the monopoly in global soy, maise, meat and corn production. One US surplus dump of cheap corn can wipe out a developing country's farm sector. The US has done this to Mexico and the Philippines, effectively putting local corn growers out of business and ensuring future (subsidized) US exports.

Yes, friends, this is what we call "free trade".