Buttered green beans takes ten minutes in a microwave????

That aside, this proposed program would actually pay a single parent to stay at home with their kids all day and provide the food and give them cooking classes.

This is mind-blowingly insane! Your kids, your responsibility. For eons, parents have managed to provide for their own children. Step up, like your ancestors did.

as well as education on cooking, meal planning and shopping

I take it Wartman has never watched PBS on the weekends? Or maybe the idiot has never heard of the Food network? Or how about The Joy of Cooking cook book for $21.50 from Amazon?

It's easy to learn to cook. And something beyond hamburgers isn't that hard either. This is a stupid way to waste our money.

The SNAP program is full of fraud already.

...or maybe we can reduce spending and lower everyone's taxes, instead of filtering through a government bureaucracy and giving some of it back.

I wanted to pick certain parts out of this and point out the lunacy, but the entire piece is lunacy.

How do people still think government is the answer to anything?

Happy Mother's to all you moms out there!

**Should read Happy Mother's Day**

And she's quoted Selma James, exwife of CR James, Trotsky fan, and general wacko.
At the root of this is the strong belief that poor people, esp poor minorities, should just give up their cultural ways and be more like sensible liberal white people. Who eat organic foods, and only watch PBS, rather than eating fried foods and play video games.

Buttered green beans takes ten minutes in a microwave????

Oh, I should say, I liked them cooked till they're almost crunchy. With three pats of butter on half a bag of green beans. It has enough fat that if I'm really exhausted, I can eat only that for dinner, plus a snack of maybe a piece of Camembert.

For them to be crunchy, you have to cook them on high with the lid off. Experiment with your microwave. Mine's circa 1992 -- I mailed it to myself when I moved from NYC in the mid 90s.

To get Americans cooking, we need to make it possible. Stay-at-home parents should qualify for a new government program while they are raising young children -- one that provides money for good food, as well as education on cooking, meal planning and shopping ... [and blah, blah, blah]

Translation: Damned peasants! They won't do what they're supposed to do, even if we pay them!

If we truly value domestic work, we should also enact workplace policies that incentivize health, like "health days" that employees could use for health-promoting activities: shopping for food, cooking, or tending a community garden.

Whaddya mean "we," Cupcake? By the way, doesn't this bring to mind the entire factory staff performing outdoor calisthenics at the start of shift? Might be tolerable in Southern California, but could be rough in Minneapolis in January.

I think the Federal government should hire hipster culinary school grads to move into public housing and cook for everyone who lives there. What could go wrong?
And paying people to work in a community garden so that people who actually grow food for a living can go out of business and then be dependent on the government--what a great idea!

And "health days" for shopping? What about free manicures and facials?

>These payments could be financed by taxing harmful foods, like sugary beverages, highly caloric, processed snack foods and nutritionally poor options at fast food and other restaurants.

I love people who say they want us to not have these bad habits, like smoking and eating crap, but they expect those same bad habits to pay for their programs.

What hypocritical, fuck-bake bullshit.

It only took about three lines of this story to bring out my inner Stephanie Hodges.

I have no problem taxing junk foods. Just be sure bread is included as a "junk food."

Excluding flourless breads, such as those made by Ezekiel.

We need to make it possible? To cook?

We discovered fire and its applications tens of thousands of years ago. It's been possible to cook ever since then.

same old equality of outcome pressure as the mortgage crisis, the higher ed crisis, etc.

"If they are able to do [insert virtuous activity here] then they will become fine upstanding citizens." [who will continue to vote our way]

'you can lead a horse to water...'

why would anyone in their right mind spend the time to cook, when they never have before? When nobody in their family ever did? Perhaps they can remember someone in their grandparents gen that did.

You want to get them to eat healthy? Deliver meals on wheels to their door, but NO foodstamp cards that you can use to buy anything.

Making it convenient but not optional would certainly force some change.

But these progs want to be SEEN to do something, they dun really have to do it. They want to be celebrated for their caring, when they could give a damn.

The best way is to let people alone and they will figure out how to fend for themselves... but it's messy. Humans are messy.

How many people buy a pack of smokes rather than enough food for a day?

Once upon a time, The Community was the answer... teaching people how to live and get stuff done, but too many people equate community with the govt.

They beggar everyone, cuz they're easier to please.

Oh come'n folks - it is the NEW YORK TIMES for Pete's sake. What else can we expect from such a has-been rag? I certainly wouldn't expect anything of intelligence from them any more.

Huh. And this whole time I've been staying home cooking good meals for my family for free.

Just because parents cook, that doesn't mean the kids will learn how. My parents cooked almost every meal, but there was NO emphasis on learning how to cook either actively or passively. I was better than most kids I went to college with (I knew how to make a cake from mix, boil pasta, make rice w/o a rice cooker), but was otherwise uneducated in cooking.

I think some of the "let them be kids" coddling the Boomers did had some unintended consequences. Frankly, it is much harder to learn such things from a cookbook than from a good decade of watching & helping in the kitchen!

This isn't to say that the government is the solution, but no amount of teaching adults is going to make it as easy and non-overwhelming as having done it a lot growing up.

That reminds me - it's time to get the kids in the kitchen more.

"These payments could be financed by taxing harmful foods, like sugary beverages, highly caloric, processed snack foods and nutritionally poor options at fast food and other restaurants."

We do this in Canada. At least in Ontario, not sure about the other provinces and territories. It doesn't work.

My kids are the skinniest in their class. I am constantly amazed at the amount of fat kids I see, compared to when I was a child. Of course, I'm also constantly amazed by the amount of fat adults I see.

If you want to eat healthy, you will. Also, if you want to exercise, you will. The two need to go together, coincidentally. I find most parents don't understand that.

Fat people gonna be fat, healthy people gonna be healthy.

Just because parents cook, that doesn't mean the kids will learn how. My parents cooked almost every meal, but there was NO emphasis on learning how to cook either actively or passively. I was better than most kids I went to college with (I knew how to make a cake from mix, boil pasta, make rice w/o a rice cooker), but was otherwise uneducated in cooking.

I think some of the "let them be kids" coddling the Boomers did had some unintended consequences. Frankly, it is much harder to learn such things from a cookbook than from a good decade of watching & helping in the kitchen!

Posted by: Shannon M. Howell at May 12, 2013 4:59 PM
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As someone else said, it's not that kids are any dumber than they used to be, it's that parents are treating them that way and not giving them any responsibilities, so the kids end up mentally flabby. E.g., we used to expect 5-year-olds to cross the roads by themselves, but nowadays, instead, we have sheltered preteens who are too dumb not to walk on the railroad tracks - with earbuds. (And, as George Carlin pointed out, you have to GO to railroad tracks, whereas public roads are everywhere.)

One problem, I think, is that 1) conservative parents often think that kids should take the initiative to learn EVERY boring life skill without asking for help and then they unfairly blame the kids for not knowing how to do anything, and 2) liberal parents think they shouldn't try to push ANY skill on kids that they show no interest in.

As one woman said (not verbatim): "My parents made it a point to TEACH me things. I considered myself to be a pretty independent kid, but back then, I certainly didn't approach my mother and ask her for a lesson in laundry - she had to make me learn and then assign the chore to me."

Amy, I'm not certain but I suspect your mother's cooking may have been more influenced by Adelle Davis (health food advocate) than Angela Davis (domestic terrorist turned San Francisco State University professor).

"If you won't do what it takes to keep your children healthy, there are programs where you can have yourself sterilized. I suggest you take advantage of one of them, or (heavens!) pay for it yourself."

Or, you could just use Amy's 20 year old microwave at tabletop height for a few years (a few months if you like to stand in front of it and wait for your food.)