According to
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
1 out of 7 US inhabitants have food insecurity. And this is a govt website likely to underestimate the statistic
1 out of 7 US inhabitants have food insecurity. And this is a govt website likely to underestimate the statistic
The stat comes from people reporting that they have felt hungry without having enough food to satiate their hunger. Totally makes sense at first pass.
But here is the rub, obesity is out of control in the US, and it is especially bad in poorer populations.
So now we have two conflicting stats: Poor people are food insecure while simultaneously being overweight...
The reconciliation is easy, when you are obese, you get hungry more and eat more. A 325lb average height male has to eat ~50% (!) more food per day than a healthy weight male of the same stature.
I know this is a bit of the stick in the spokes of the stat, but its blatantly obvious that America does not have a low income hunger problem, it has a low income obesity problem.
So, in case you aren't from America, you might not know this: the food that is the cheapest also happens to be the food that is the least nutritious. Americans who are poor cannot afford fresh vegetables, fruit, meats and gym memberships. They can afford cheetos.
It is quite the spurious correlation to say that obesity causes hunger. Just wow.
Unprepared foods, in the US, are much cheaper than prepared foods.
A bag of Cheetos (16oz) is $5.
A pound of chicken legs is $2.
2 lbs of rice is $3.
I'd suggest you instead argue that low income people work multiple jobs and therefore have no time to cook. I've had this debate a lot before.
"I can't work out, I can't afford a gym! No, I'm not going to run around the park or join the YMCA!"
"I can't eat healthy, I can't afford it! No, I'm not going to buy a big bag of rice and black beans."
Before anyone comes at me: there are poor people and their struggles are real. I am 100% opposed to things like removing soda from food stamps.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000706212
It's currently at $1.82/lb. Assuming that 30% of leg weight is inedible bone, it's more like $2.60 per pound of edible chicken.
"Normal" foods like rice and beans are dramatically cheaper than "junk" food.
If you think about it, it makes sense that food insecurity and obesity go together. If I didn’t know when I’d have food, I’d try to overeat when I could, like many wild animals do before winter. And most of our cheap food is low quality and very high in fat and carbs (esp. sugars).
The problem that’s bigger than both obesity and hunger is poverty, and poverty causes both of those things.
See this paper for a longer explanation: “Food insecurity as a risk factor for obesity: A review” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9549066/
Research has mostly focused on explaining the paradox at a household level. Farrell and colleagues reviewed the literature pertaining to low- and middle-income countries and focused on the bigger picture, that is, analyzing the issue at an individual, household, community, and country level. They proposed 5 context-mechanisms factors that could modify the association between an individual’s food insecurity and obesity risk: affordability of energy dense, processed foods, quantity & diversity of food consumed, spatial temporal access to nutritious food, interpersonal distribution of food and non- dietary behavior. Nevertheless, affordability of energy dense foods was identified as the main mechanism since the authors had limited evidence to support the other mechanisms (26). Other authors have proposed that social support can also play a role since they found that food insecure women who reported lower levels of social support were more likely to be obese (28)