The Obesity-Hunger Paradox
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This article concentrates on the availability of food, but I think that's only one side of the problem. I remember an NPR segment a couple of years ago where they went to a food bank near a wealthy area and compared what people were donating to what people were taking from the food bank. The rich folks were donating whole-wheat bread, which ended up just sitting on the shelves. Either the poor folks didn't know what to do with it, or felt insulted that the rich folks were trying to change their eating habits, or they just didn't like it. The poor folks wanted white bread and canned vegetables. Just because you've got whole-grain bread and fresh vegetables doesn't mean you know what to do with them or how to get your kids to eat them. Better supply might help, though: provide healthy food, and maybe they'll figure out what to do with it, even if they didn't really want it in the first place.
Getting kids raised on junk to start eating healthy food is another problem: I don't have kids myself, but evidently kids are little nutritional self-harm monsters. If you give healthy food to a kid who is used to pizza rolls and potato chips, he won't eat it, and he'll get cranky and nasty because he hasn't eaten. He'll torture himself and everyone around him until he gets candy or a Coke or mac and cheese. If you've let your kids get accustomed to eating junk, there's going to be a hell of a lot of suffering -- for both parents and kids -- before healthy eating starts to feel normal. Maybe that's why the adjustment time is measured in generations.
Personally, my parents had some crude notion of healthy eating, so I didn't get soda, candy, or sugary cereal, but we ate a lot of pancakes, french toast, spaghetti, bread and butter, bacon, buttery popcorn, etc. Those are foods that it's easy to gorge on, quantities were not consistently limited, and I liked eating, so I ate way too much. My parents maintained discipline and knew it was important that I ate a healthy diet; they just didn't have a good enough understanding of nutrition. Hopefully with my own kids I'll maintain what they achieved and add a better understanding of nutrition.
I don't think that was ever true. The converse might have been true, but just look at old pictures - not a whole lot of fat people, and certainly not many morbidly obese people.
Obesity has been an epidemic since 1980 or so. It must be something that changed around then. In other news, high fructose corn syrup hit the market in 1975.
The video is worth watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
Convenience and time? You're going to do better healthwise and financially with any of ten products you can eat straight out of the can/jar. How can you beat a can for convenience and time efficiency?
Dare I say there aren't decent grocery stores in poor areas for the same reason there are many liquor stores in poor areas. It's not some policy problem.
And then you'd look down, and see a new $200+ pair of shoes every couple months.
As to the article, there were four grocery stores, including an Aldi's, within walking distance from where I worked, and I know that half of the workers that fit that category walked or drove right past Aldi's on their way to work. There are certainly areas where there are very few healthy options, but there's a worse epidemic of stupid choices.
In the extremely poor areas, the deck is stacked worse, but I've never yet seen a marked decrease in obesity near grocery stores in poor areas, despite access to healthy food.
I don't know what are those cans and jars of healthy food you are referring to. The only thing I can think of is canned fruit/peppers but they are definitely more expensive than the caloric equivalent of junk food.
Also as the article said, if you have uncertain income you will end up going on a starve/binge cycles which are also guaranteed to make you fat.
Another issue is that any affordable healthy food usually requires cooking and many poor people (esp in urban areas) do not have access to clean kitchens.
So it is a real issue and saying "they are poor because they are stupid" is pretty fucked up.
Well yeah, but this is a study on obesity, which means they're getting too many calories compared to nutrients. And quite frankly, if they can't control themselves in the starve-binge cycle, which probably contributes significantly to the lack of food money, and can't tell that something harming them is harming them, then any evolutionary standpoint sort of demands they stay there. Meanwhile, those typically-poorest locations are most heavily targeted for food kitchens and support money, but many are too proud to take help that's offered.
And, if there's not a portion of stupidity, how do some get out of poverty? And explain the increased drug and alcohol use in such areas.
It's not a relevant difference. Sugar and rice are the absolutely cheapest calories, and they're not so good for you. But a can of coconut milk is ~700 healthy and tasty calories for about a buck. Eggs are healthy and pennies a pop; you can even buy them already hard boiled. A can of sardines is a couple bucks. A can of sauerkraut is a buck and loaded with nutrition.
You have to be a moron to fail to put together a decent day's worth of food at a grocery store given $8. If you're willing to eat high starch you can eat for a couple bucks a day.
You can bulk bags of rice as needed to supplement smaller amounts of healthier foods if you need to save money. (Stay away from the sugar) A diet of rice, beans, and vegetables may be boring but with little research you can live on it just fine.
Wrong. I manage just fine. I have very little money for food. It can be done if you know what to buy and how to cook. You need to set aside eating some of the things you want and you will need to suck it up and carry food with you. I use my friend's kitchen when I can't get back to my place to cook. Sometimes you might have to skip some of the food you would enjoy.
If you don't know how to cook and you're poor you better learn to cook. You have no excuse not to learn. If you don't know how to buy food start asking people that have their act together. Seek help anywhere you can find it. (I've been lucky to have a friend that does some rather nice cooking. My mom is also great at cooking and I had her teach me.)
So to make a blanket statement: If you are poor and you don't take steps to improve yourself you will stay poor and you are an idiot. There are exceptions but they are just that, exceptions.
Any person who is obese is eating more food than they need. With the same amount of money, they can eat fewer calories but get better nutrition.
Incidentally, poverty is not the issue. Most graduate students are poor (or very close to it), but obesity is not particularly prevalent in grad school. Based on my personal experience, I'd guess that more poor students eat overpriced organic granola than big macs.
I can tell you it was damned hard to change the way I ate, and I'm not stupid. At least, I'm not stupid in the "underclass too stupid to do the obvious things that will fix their lives" kind of way that you're talking about. Intelligence wasn't the solution to the problem; long-term focus on accustoming myself to a different way of living was. For about eighteen months, maybe closer to two years, I paid more attention to losing weight than I did to anything else, including my personal life and professional development. And guess what? Even now I have to pay a certain amount of attention to maintain my weight. It just won't go on autopilot. I'm still smart enough and knowledgeable enough, but it's a small constant drain on my energy to execute.
The drain on my energy is much lower now, but I was lucky to be able to devote so much time and energy to get to where I am now. I was even unemployed for a significant amount of that time, which I could afford thanks to working in a pretty high-paying profession, and which was a big help in being able to focus on changing my lifestyle. Plus I happened to have a friend who decided to turn me into a running partner at exactly the right time. How lucky could I get?
All that happened in my mid-twenties, so I spent more than a decade being fat and bright (at least by IQ-type standards: test scores, grades, academic competitions, etc.) before I made any lasting progress on my weight.
It's highly constructive when the prevailing mode of discussing the issue blames public policy and business practices, as this article does. I stand by my assertion that it's mostly personal failings. Therefore, nothing needs to be done. It's a free country. Let people make their choices and suffer the consequences.
I'll make allowances that agriculture policy (subsidies for grains and soy) and bad diet advice from the government probably play a role. But it's not the predominant issue.
I've reread the article and I don't think that the author is blaming public policy. The article states some reasons why obesity may be more prevalent amongst poor communities, and also explains some proposed policies that may help to address the problem.
Really, there are two options here. One is to say "haha look at those stupid fat people" and watch the obesity rate climb. The second would be to realise that many of these people are on taxpayer funded Medicare, and then realise the logic of supporting cost-effective government policies that help reduce obesity and in turn the cost of government healthcare.
We could do is take away medicare and replace it with free gyms. That would probably make people healthier and save billions of dollars.
My hypothesis is that we've seen a weakening of social norms and pressure, as reflected in the illegitimacy rate and the deterioration of standards for clothing in public. You faced more opprobrium for being fat, bearing a bastard child, or dressing in cheap garbage in the past. Now you can comfortably be fat in public, and wear flip-flops too.