Tags
Cynthia Davis, Highway K, hunger, Mary Still, missouri, O'Fallon
Rep. Mary Still (D-Columbia) just joined the growing group of critics calling on Missouri Speaker Ron Richard to remove Rep. Cynthia Davis (R-O’Fallon) from her chairmanship of a committee dedicated to families and children because of her comments on hunger and motivation.
In the newsletter, Davis wrote that “people who are struggling with lack of food usually do not have an obesity problem” and “hunger can be a positive motivator” for older teens capable of getting jobs.
“To say that this would have an effect on the obesity problem, that’s just cruel,” Still said. “It’s incorrect, wrong and cruel, and I’m not comfortable with her in a leadership position.”
Good for Still for keeping the pressure on Richard to hold him accountable, since he’s the one who named Davis to the chair.
But yet again, Davis managed to say something in this article that really bothered me.
Davis said her role as a mom and foster parent makes her qualified to lead the families and children committee. “I am an expert on family values,” she said. “I’m a huge advocate of the family, and I understand families in a deeper sense than most other legislators in the Capitol.”
Excuse me? She understands families in a deeper sense than most other legislators? What a self-important jerk! She has more children than the average legislator, I’ll give her that, but a deeper sense of understanding? Perhaps it was earned by lessons learned from allowing small children to play on a highway median.
So Missouri family values are what allow her to point out that involuntary hunger is good because it solves the obesity problem? If I actually believed her take on Missouri and its values, I would be really happy I am not from a Missouri family. Get her off this committee! Somebody who says that hungry kids should go to work at McDonalds so that they can partake of those (mythical) free meals, shouldn’t be talking about either her knowledge of nutrition or the causes of obesity.
Davis is almost in a class with Charles Edward Trevelyan, the British Treasury Secretary during the Irish potato famine in the 1840s who said about the widespread starvation in Ireland (claiming anywhere from 200,000 to 3 million people — the numbers are in dispute):
Rep. Davis’ comments about poverty and obesity sound downright Victorian.
Involuntary hunger motivates nothing; it is a severe, debilitating health condition that can require professional medical intervention to recover from fully. Indeed, for children the effects of hunger-induced malnutrition are often permanent.
People are not plants; they don’t simply wilt for lack of water, but then bounce back when the water returns.
Furthermore, Rep. Davis clearly has no clue about causes of obesity, especially in lower income groups. Overall, it’s not the quantity of food causing obesity but the quality. People who can’t afford things like fresh produce, whole grain wheat, lean meat, etc often are stuck with cheap, highly processed foods with very little nutritional value.
For the working poor especially this can be an extremely difficult cycle to break out of, since they generally don’t have the time to buy food in bulk and prepare their own meals, nor do they have income adequate to buy their meals anywhere but the cheapest fast food joints.