Would You Eat At 50 School Cafeterias In The Name Of Progress?

In the United Kingdom, about a quarter of students leaving school doors will do so as an obese person, and the National Health Service spends a lot of money–too much money–treating illnesses related to bad diets every day of the year. What might the two have in common? School lunch programs. But in order to figure out how to improve them, these savvy policy makers decided to visit over 50 schools, try their lunches, and then decide where to go from there. The first step to improving bad policy is to live it, and as our pinstriped congressmen discuss pizza sauce the vegetable as childhood obesity is on its way to becoming a national health crisis, perhaps they could take a few pointers from these Brits.

If You’re Young, Here’s Everything You Need To Know About Obamacare

Cheer up, GOP. As they say, the 41st time’s the charm. Amid the screaming and shouting and contorting about the Affordable Healthcare Act courtesy of our conservative leaders, many of the facts have been lost (touché, GOP, touché). If you’re young, here’s everything you need to know about it before you get your panties in a bunch.

The Incarceration Business

The Article: The Business of Mass Incarceration by Chris Hedges in Truth Dig.

The Text: Debbie Bourne, 45, was at her apartment in the Liberty Village housing projects in Plainfield, N.J., on the afternoon of April 30 when police banged on the door and pushed their way inside. The officers ordered her, her daughter, 14, and her son, 22, who suffers from autism, to sit down and not move and then began ransacking the home. Bourne’s husband, from whom she was estranged and who was in the process of moving out, was the target of the police, who suspected him of dealing cocaine. As it turned out, the raid would cast a deep shadow over the lives of three innocents—Bourne and her children.

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The murder of a teenage boy by an armed vigilante, George Zimmerman, is only one crime set within a legal and penal system that has criminalized poverty. Poor people, especially those of color, are worth nothing to corporations and private contractors if they are on the street. In jails and prisons, however, they each can generate corporate revenues of $30,000 to $40,000 a year. This use of the bodies of the poor to make money for corporations fuels the system of neoslavery that defines our prison system.

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The Thin Line Between Corporate Farmers And Drug Dealers

Convening the pernicious nature of the fast food industry, predatory practices of corporate farmers, poverty and race into one riveting short, Joshua Merchant introduces us to his friend James and breaks down how lack of access to healthy, sustainable foods in low income neighborhoods contributes to the epidemic of Type 2 diabetes.

The Race Catch 22

What’s freedom when you’re more welcome when in shackles instead of a suit?