Poor people are fat because they can't afford healthy food

[NobleSavage]

Prove me wrong, but I want to call bullshit on this. Assuming you have access to a kitchen and supermarket there is a ton of cheep healthy food. Yes, fresh fruits and vegetables are expensive. Frozen veggies are not expensive and you can get canned fruit that is not laced with sugar.

Super cheap healthy food:

1) Beans and Rice.

2) Oats

3) Eggs

4) Spaghetti

A liter of soda is about $1. A gallon of milk (3.78 liters) averages $3.67

I don't shop at Walmart but you can get a pound of salmon for $5. When in history could you buy salmon for less than $5 a pound? You can get a huge bag of frozen chicken for less than it would cost to buy a damn chicken.

There probably has been no time in history where you can get a such a wide variety of healthy food for so little.



Please keep organic pseudoscience, sustainable farming, animal crulity, and GMOs out of this thread. Thanks in advance.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

For the record, I don't recall ever seeing a fat homeless person.

 

[fromderinside]

For the record, I don't recall ever seeing a fat homeless person.

Fixed fer ya Jimmy Higgins

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Can you get us a link on someone making this claim?

I do know that what a lot of people do complain about is lack of time and access to full grocery stores in many poor areas and the reliance on cheap processed food.

 

[NobleSavage]

For the record, I don't recall ever seeing a fat homeless person.

I'm talking about poor people not homeless.

 

[NobleSavage]

Can you get us a link on someone making this claim?

I do know that what a lot of people do complain about is lack of time and access to full grocery stores in many poor areas and the reliance on cheap processed food.

I'll look for links, but the first thing that comes to my mind is Michell Obama and her idea of "food deserts" in the inner cities.

 

[fromderinside]

Can you get us a link on someone making this claim?

I do know that what a lot of people do complain about is lack of time and access to full grocery stores in many poor areas and the reliance on cheap processed food.

For starters here's a primer fer ya: Te Grocery Gap: Who has Access to Healthy Food and Why it Matters http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/25/patricia-mccollum-charged_n_1624093.html

enjoy the disparities.......

 

[Nice Squirrel]

http://www.minnpost.com/community-s...-income-families-don-t-limit-shopping-food-de

But fresh research from the University of Minnesota, while far from suggesting that food deserts aren’t a problem, does indicate that lower-income Minnesotans who receive government aid to put food on the table go the distance for their food buys.

A new study shows that Twin Cities’ residents receiving Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP (still often called “food stamps”) regularly shop outside their neighborhoods partly “because of perceived better quality and lower prices of suburban stores.”

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Prove me wrong, but I want to call bullshit on this. Assuming you have access to a kitchen and supermarket there is a ton of cheep healthy food. Yes, fresh fruits and vegetables are expensive. Frozen veggies are not expensive and you can get canned fruit that is not laced with sugar.

Super cheap healthy food:

1) Beans and Rice.

2) Oats

3) Eggs

4) Spaghetti

A liter of soda is about $1. A gallon of milk (3.78 liters) averages $3.67

I don't shop at Walmart but you can get a pound of salmon for $5. When in history could you buy salmon for less than $5 a pound? You can get a huge bag of frozen chicken for less than it would cost to buy a damn chicken.

There probably has been no time in history where you can get a such a wide variety of healthy food for so little.

View attachment 1685

Please keep organic pseudoscience, sustainable farming, animal crulity, and GMOs out of this thread. Thanks in advance.

How do poor people get to the store?
How do you make sure your kids eat right when you are working two or three part time jobs with commute times measured in hours?
And what about dietary restrictions due to existing illnesses?

Chew on this

Unhealthy foods can be found at any grocery store, on any aisle. But at convenience stores way out in the county that serve as primary grocery stores for residents who are unable to drive to larger supermarkets in town – if they don’t have a car or can’t afford gas – cheap, unhealthy foods might be the only real option.
Simpson recalled her recent visit to a Glasgow-area convenience store.
“The produce consisted of a bin of rotten bananas, a big bin of rotten potatoes, and in the cooler section there was one bag of carrots, a bag of celery, maybe a couple apples, and some onions,” she said.

http://food.academic.wlu.edu/root-of-the-problem/eating-healthy-can-the-poor-do-it/

He saidthat obesity remained the biggest problem of food poverty as families are forced into choosing cheap, processed high fat foods just to survive. "It's getting worse because people can't afford good quality food," he said. "Malnutrition, rickets and other manifestations of extreme poor diet are becoming apparent. GPs are reporting rickets anecdotally in Manchester, the East End of London, Birmingham and the West Midlands. It is a condition we believed should have died out.

"The vitamin deficiency states of gout, malnutrition being seen in hospital admission statistics are extreme manifestations of specific dietary deficiencies or excesses, but they are markers of a national diet which is poor. Food prices up 12%, fuel prices up double-figure percentages and wages down is a toxic combination, forcing more people to eat unhealthily."

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/30/child-poverty-link-malnutrition-rickets

It's not the poor, it's the poverty.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Also: why would you torture poor people by feeding the salmon?

 

[NobleSavage]

http://www.minnpost.com/community-s...-income-families-don-t-limit-shopping-food-de

But fresh research from the University of Minnesota, while far from suggesting that food deserts aren’t a problem, does indicate that lower-income Minnesotans who receive government aid to put food on the table go the distance for their food buys.

A new study shows that Twin Cities’ residents receiving Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP (still often called “food stamps”) regularly shop outside their neighborhoods partly “because of perceived better quality and lower prices of suburban stores.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/h...eserts-and-obesity-challenged-in-studies.html

It has become an article of faith among some policy makers and advocates, including Michelle Obama, that poor urban neighborhoods are food deserts, bereft of fresh fruits and vegetables.

But two new studies have found something unexpected. Such neighborhoods not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too. And there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.

Within a couple of miles of almost any urban neighborhood, “you can get basically any type of food,” said Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation, lead author of one of the studies. “Maybe we should call it a food swamp rather than a desert,” he said.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Looks like we have our answer.

Beans and rice are mighty nice.

 

[Bronzeage]

For the record, I don't recall ever seeing a fat homeless person.

It's rare, but there are two morbidly obese homeless men in my neighborhood. I have no real explanation, but I have encountered plenty of drunk or high homeless people. No matter what a healthy diet might cost, it has to be cheaper than vodka or meth.

The problem of obese poor people is a true first world problem. It's more complicated than just the cost of food. It's entirely possible to feed two people for $3 a day, if both of them like cabbage. The most cold hearted libertarian would think it's unrealistic to expect poor people to eat nothing but cabbage. A little bacon and chili peppers make a world of difference, but it still gets old fast. Of course, there are lots of poor neighborhoods where a fresh head of cabbage is hard to come by. I live on the edge of one. Since I have a car, it's not a problem. If I were an obese poor person, foraging for fresh cabbage would be a challenge.

There is another side to this coin. Do affluent people maintain a healthy BMI because they have access to healthy food? It seems a silly proposition when stated that way.

There must be other factors at play.

 

[NobleSavage]

There must be other factors at play.

I'd say it's mostly a state of mind. If you are despondent you tend to eat like shit. Problem is it's a vicious circle.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

One minor note, rice and beans are nutritionally neutral.

One other thing, cooking is an art. Everyone can draw, but not everyone can do so well or decently. If it is taught in schools (which it was when I was a kid), that helps, but the classes only really taught how to cook recipes, not how to cook from scratch, which is what would help stretch the dollar and learn what you can cook quickly. Cooking well, requires access to information, mainly the Internet (which helped me with my whole grain bread problem). Access to a microwave to help speed things up like cooking carrots.

It can be done, but it must be learned, and it isn't as simple as opening a box of frozen Banquet chicken.

For the record, I don't recall ever seeing a fat homeless person.

I'm talking about poor people not homeless.

I was always under the impression that the homeless were poor.

 

[Bronzeage]

There must be other factors at play.

I'd say it's mostly a state of mind. If you are despondent you tend to eat like shit. Problem is it's a vicious circle.

This assumes poor people are despondent. Is this actually a fact?

 

[NobleSavage]

I'd say it's mostly a state of mind. If you are despondent you tend to eat like shit. Problem is it's a vicious circle.

This assumes poor people are despondent. Is this actually a fact?

Good point, not sure. Maybe it's more socially acceptable to be fat in lower income communities?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This assumes poor people are despondent. Is this actually a fact?

Good point, not sure. Maybe it's more socially acceptable to be fat in lower income communities?

Could you demonstrate that adulthood obesity is higher among the poor than the non-poor?

 

[Testy Calibrate]

Can you get us a link on someone making this claim?

I do know that what a lot of people do complain about is lack of time and access to full grocery stores in many poor areas and the reliance on cheap processed food.

Watch food inc. The problem includes time to.cook.

 

[NobleSavage]

Good point, not sure. Maybe it's more socially acceptable to be fat in lower income communities?

Could you demonstrate that adulthood obesity is higher among the poor than the non-poor?

First thing I found, I'm sure there is more: "More than 33 percent of adults who earn less than $15,000 per year were obese, compared with 24.6 percent of those who earn at least $50,000 per year."

http://www.healthyamericans.org/newsroom/releases/?releaseid=241

It's obvious to me just driving around the US.