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Late last week, a food blogger friend of mine Tweeted about a Walmart press release advertising a $20 Thanksgiving dinner. According to the press release, the dinner, which was available starting on November 4, included the following list of ingredients:
- One 12-pound Grade A turkey
- Three 11 to 15.5-ounce cans Green Giant vegetables
- Two 14-ounce cans Ocean Spray cranberry sauce
- Three 6-ounce boxes of Stove Top stuffing
- One 5-pound bag of red potatoes
- One 12-count package of Sara Lee dinner rolls
- One 22-ounce pumpkin roll cake
The Tweet spawned a healthy debate in the Twittersphere, but, even though I’m usually happy to run my mouth in support of all things local, sustainable and organic, I didn’t think I could capture the nuance of my position on this in 140 characters or less.
This is a tough one. I firmly believe that Walmart’s pricing policies—the ones where they force their suppliers to lower and lower and lower their costs year after year, creating an artificial pricing structure and forcing jobs overseas to cut labor costs—are evil. Flat-out evil.
The only way that Walmart can offer such a deal—all that food for so little money—is if they’ve forced their suppliers to cut corners and offer the corporation similarly low prices, or Walmart used this as a loss leader to get people in the door of their stores. Neither of those options are particularly in the spirit of giving and thanks and being a good neighbor. They are Walmart’s brand of business. And I abhor that. I simply abhor it.
But I’m going to be straight up and honest here. It’s not like I never shop at Walmart. In fact, I bought probably 85 percent of my supplies for my trip to Burning Man at the Walmarts in Oakland and in Sparks, NV. The stuff I bought—including my ridiculous Miley Cyrus-brand pleated skirt short enough to shock even me—was cheap, and it didn’t matter if it got ruined in the dust of Black Rock City. I’ve also visited relatives in towns like Keyser, WV, where the Walmart was really the only place to shop for electronics, clothes and other consumer goods. So I can’t be one to cast stones—I don’t think it’s right that there are places in America where Walmart is your only shopping option, but I understand it’s the reality for more Americans than I’d like to count.
There’s another aspect of it, though, that checks me from fully passing judgment on Walmart. It has nothing to do with the company or the stores or the way they do business—I repeat…I abhor the way they do business—but it has to do with the families who might not be able to afford Thanksgiving this year if it weren’t for food banks, and industrial turkeys offered up for sale at Walmart.
At the end of the day, here is what I believe: I believe we have to make radical, dramatic changes to our food system. I believe no one should ever have to eat an industrial, processed, hormone- and antibiotic-laden turkey that might be cheap at the checkout counter but also will cost way more down the line in environmental and health costs. I believe industrial food has made America sick, and we’re only getting sicker. I believe the only way to turn this around is to find ways to make local, sustainably-grown, seasonal, and sometimes organic food available at better prices to people who cannot access nor afford that food right now.
But that work is going to take time. And in the meantime, while plenty of good and thoughtful people in this world are doing that work, I still want everyone in this country to be able to sit down on Thursday and celebrate Thanksgiving. As families. As friends. As neighbors. As a community. And if, to do that, they have to eat a meal that is artificially low-priced due to location or finances, so be it. I can’t, in good conscience, ask them to do anything different.
Here are some resources and ideas for making your Thanksgiving affordable and sustainable this year:
- Mir Kamin of BlogHer has some great tips for celebrating a frugal Thanksgiving.
- Hilary Meyer
