Scarcity captures the mind

I am about 60 pages into what I already know will be the most important book I read this year – Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Authors Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard behavioral economist, and Eldar Shafir, Princeton psychologist, explain how shortages–of things like money, time, and social connection–change our cognitive patterns and behavior. Put simply, they measured how well people’s brains worked before and after reminding them of, or subjecting them to, the experience of having too little. Their experiments consistently find that the preoccupation and worry of being stretched too thin causes us to make rash decisions, become impulsive, and exhibit antisocial behavior. Everyone has experienced this to some degree. Think about a time when you felt overwhelmed and overloaded. Did you snap at someone you love? Binge on potato chips? Put off doing something you knew was crucial to your wellbeing? These effects are especially strong when money is short; Scarcity has tremendous implications for understanding poverty.

In the authors’ words, “scarcity captures the mind,” leaving “less mind to give to the rest of life.” They call this phenomenon a reduction in bandwidth, a term that captures the myriad cognitive degradations they and other researchers have measured. This reduction of bandwidth is not related to intelligence or education; the same people performed worse on cognitive tests in times of want than they did in times of plenty. This data explains that unhealthy behaviors are rooted in poverty, not due to a deficit in character or fortitude. It challenges the idea that “bootstrapping,” overcoming one’s circumstances by sheer determination, will solve poverty. I look forward to digging into the upcoming chapters on poverty and how best to address scarcity and its societal effects. I am already seeing how this relates to food security.

September is Hunger Action Month, and many Americans are participating in the SNAP challenge: a week or so of eating on about $31.00 a week, a typical SNAP food budget. The point of the SNAP challenge is not to prove the feasibility of eating healthy on this tight budget or recreate the whole experience of being food insecure. The point is to create awareness and perhaps develop a sense of understanding and solidarity. Ron Shaich, CEO of Panera Bread is blogging about his SNAP challenge experience. In preparation for the challenge, Mr. Shaich and colleagues went on a supermarket tour led by Alicia McCabe of Share Our Strenth’s Cooking Matters Massachusetts. Cooking Matters at the Store gives community members great tips and strategies for maximizing their food budgets, navigating food labels, and finding wholesome, healthy ingredients for scratch cooking. Now, these tours are great (I know because I help lead them as a Cooking Matters volunteer). But this doesn’t mean that eating on a SNAP budget is easy, even with guidance. In his Day 4 blog, Mr. Shaich describes the detrimental effects that his preoccupation with food, social isolation, and feeling of malnourishment have had on his work and family life. His words–“cranky,” “engulfed,” “resentment”–echo the effects described in Scarcity.

I hope you’ll read the book. It’s a game-changer for the conversation about poverty. No matter where you are coming from, no matter where your own scarcities lie, I think you will also find great personal insight. I certainly have. 

Fast Food Nation – finally read!

After many years of wanting to read it, I finally polished off Fast Food Nation. I picked it up for a buck at a local library book sale! It was pretty much what I had expected. After reading Omnivore, seeing Food Inc. etc, I wasn’t really blown out of the water by any new information. Except for the section focusing on the working conditions and worker exploitation in meat packing plants. That was shocking and very sad. If the processed food scene is old hat for you, I recommend skipping or skimming most of the book and focusing on that part. If you are not very familiar with this aspect of the food business, Fast Food Nation is a pretty good read.

Just Kids by Patti Smith

My first read of 2011. This was a lovely book, a touching memoir of the years of partnership shared between artists Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. It is romantic and sometimes overwritten but always felt sincere. Beyond being the story of a deep love, it is the story of two young artists becoming famous through scrappy tenacity and sheer luck of place and timing. It shows us New York in the 70s, in the strange overlapping shadows of the Summer of Love and Warhol. Smith’s wonderful anecdotes of William Burrows, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix are gems but they always take the back seat to the intimate, innocent, and sometimes painful depiction of a beautiful and unusual relationship.