Food or Famine - Not Hoarding

Hey all,  

I'm pandemic posting for want of anything else to do, just to fill the aching void.  Today I'm musing about panic buying and empty store shelves.  

Food panic has become a staple of this pandemic and I think we need to step outside our current sugar canister and consider that the bulk of the problem should not all be heaped upon the hoarders.  Based on my pandemic binge-viewing I suspect that we're misdirecting a big heap of the blame for our food shortage.  

Given my wealth of experience, I'd have to say that we hoarders are typically introverts who's biggest problem is our inability to sidle around our homes alongside the newspapers stacked to our ceilings.  The shortages can't all be blamed on hoarders, because if we hoarders are any good at what we been blamed for, we’ve already been storing food alongside our newspapers and trust me.  We ran out of space for food late in the 1980's!  Add that to the fact that most hoarders would rather be found dead than go out into the world with the ravening hoard to scavenge for food and you may begin to agree with me that pandemic food shortages might have a different source. 

What if the problem is more sinister?  What if we’ve designed our nation into starvation?  

Just for a moment, imagine the showcase kitchen fitted with wall-sized refrigeration, double ovens and microwave drawers.  Perfection right?  Well, there is a flaw in the beautiful kitchen design with its quartzite counter tops and lighted cabinetry.  And I postulate that this is what has led to the nation’s food shortage.  

The basic design flaw that's caused our food emergency is that we've placed form over function—our nation's problem is that beautiful kitchen.  

  

Don’t get me wrong, the answer isn't simple appliance ignorance akin to my boss’s problem who can't run his new conduction/convection range.  “Please call the service representative and ask them to come and teach me how to use my oven.”  My thought was, “I think that warranty expired two years ago.”  

Nope, it's not simple stove stupidity that is blame for this round of panic buying.  Nope, this problem  is big and it can’t be resolved with a youtube video or a food channel how-to. 

The Pandemic flaw is that our designer kitchens are food-less.  Designers discovered that if you store food without rotation, you invite bugs, so beautiful kitchens have been filled with faux vegetables and fake fruit.  Across the United States, our kitchens have engineered shelving that unfold like a pop-up card to reveal fancy calligraphed tins filled with empty-ness.   

American's have carefully cultivated an ignorance in basic food acquisition and preparation skills.  That coupled with no time to prepare because we are working frantically to pay for those beautiful kitchens, means that as a whole, America eats out.  

Often. And that means there is NO FOOD IN THOSE HOMES.  

And now that Americans have been ordered by national emergency to eat in, we are forced to begin to replace the internet influencer-fueled faux life with reality.  And in the case of food, there is the need to acquire basic food supplies and that--THAT--is what’s contributing to the nation's food shortages. 

I'm reminded of Robin, that cute influencer from Houston who stands outside her gorgeous, (empty) pantry with a package of rice in one hand and one of beans in the other, while she muses that she does not currently know how to cook beans and rice, but her mother has assured her that she could live off them in a pinch.  Well, this is the pinch and that handful of food will indeed make one meal.  Or maybe two.  

So please stop blaming the hoarders and begin to direct the concern toward the ones that are truly at risk.  Those beautiful, ignorant, unrealistic people who were caught unprepared and are now struggling to fix their fundamental design flaw.   Basic food storage.  

Have a little empathy for everyone in the nation who are just now struggling to learn what basic necessities look like and how to prepare them.  And even if you can only throw them a bone, with their bean and rice storage, they might make a really tasty soup.  

That's My Reality, and Sometimes It Bites and When it does, I Write.            Mar. 2020 for the Win