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Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

I have a bit of a gripe with this "food insecurity" metric.

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.

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Wow. I'm at a loss for words with this comment.

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.

I don't know where you get this from

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.

People like the ones you're replying to like to make excuses for their lack of agency.

"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.

It's still victim blaming.

LoL! https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000FF1101 Current price/lb for chicken is $4.23. But of course that's from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, soooo.... can't trust that can we!

The parent comment said chicken legs, not chicken breast. That's this data series:

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.

So if I don't eat the bones too, I'm leaving nearly a whole dollar on the table? Damn. I can't believe it! I could be saving even more!!! I'm such an idiot.

This completely false talking point is a disease.

"Normal" foods like rice and beans are dramatically cheaper than "junk" food.

You know, you make such a good point here. The easiest solve for this is for the fat poor people to simply eat rice & beans. That will surely fix both problems.

I think we are both in agreement.

These are two symptoms of the same problem, I don’t see any issue with the statistics. Plus, of course, not everyone who’s poor or hungry is obese.

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/

Did you really just compare human beings to wild animals who hibernate?

It was a loose analogy, but it is thought Neanderthals may have hibernated (or gone into a state of torpor). Your comment offers no reasoning nor evidence; is something wrong with it, and if so what, exactly? Food scarcity in winter time is something humans have historically been exposed to and evolved with in much of the world. And clearly over-eating in humans corellates somewhat with food insecurity. Regardless of the mechanism, my point was that it’s not hard to imagine why obesity and hunger might go together.

And yet, the very study you linked to concluded that despite 5 years of research on the topic, it still isn't clear what the actual causes are. But you know, I definitely think your arm-chair reasoning probably contains the one true reason.

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)

Food isn't calories.

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