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

[fromderinside]

But with freedom comes responsibility.

Right. You are responsible for putting down the fork.

This guy

is responsible for putting down his fork

But you are saying this guy

who may have no fork is responsible for putting down his too?

If so why?

 

[Bomb#20]

I'm here to remind you that not every problem, pseudo problem and non problem require the government to tell people what to do.

Maybe think of this position as avoiding the thread where a police officer chokes a fat person for eating an illegal burrito.

But isn't freedom a rather extreme shotgun of a solution to that problem? That thread can be avoided by the far simpler and more acceptable approach of tracing the chain of causality behind the illegal burrito, to the person who sold him the illegal burrito, and further if necessary. The fat person is one of us. Chances are the burrito seller is also one of us. His employer, the guy who made the burrito, the farmer who grew the beans in it, and so forth, are probably all one of us. But at some point in the chain we're bound to eventually find somebody who's one of them. The police officer chokes that guy. Problem solved.

 

[credoconsolans]

For the record. I see a lot of fat poor people.

They tend to eat what is cheap which is high fat, high salt, starchy foods.

Low fat, white chicken breast is $6.98 a lb.

Cheap, full of antibiotics, ground fatty mystery beef is $2.98 a lb.

Guess which one gets bought?

What's a white chicken?

Anyway, in recent purchases I have found the chicken breasts for $3/lb--and the low quality ground beef at about the same price. Cheaper still is the whole chicken.

The OP referred to food being healthy. Chicken thighs are dark meat and are higher in fat than chicken breast which is low fat white meat.

Whole chickens...well, they used to be cheaper. Back in the day, I remember seeing a whole chicken for sale for $3 something. The last whole chicken I bought, the price was on par with buying chicken fillet tenders. Except with the fillets, you weren't paying for bone.

Where some poor people live, they have to dodge shady people and loose pitbulls when walking anywhere, let alone walking for exercise.

I'm aware of the realities of bad neighborhoods.

For the record. I see a lot of fat poor people.

They tend to eat what is cheap which is high fat, high salt, starchy foods.

Low fat, white chicken breast is $6.98 a lb.

Cheap, full of antibiotics, ground fatty mystery beef is $2.98 a lb.

Guess which one gets bought?

What's a white chicken?

Anyway, in recent purchases I have found the chicken breasts for $3/lb--and the low quality ground beef at about the same price. Cheaper still is the whole chicken.

I get chicken breasts at Cosco for $2.50/lb. Yeah, poor people don't shop at Cosco, but I just checked Walmart and it's $2.30/lb.

If you have one nearby. I live in a blue-collar, low income area. The nearest Walmart is 7 miles away. OK if you have a car, not OK if you don't.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Right. You are responsible for putting down the fork.

OOH witty, you must own a television. But I would go beyond that to say you are responsible for your health beyond eating which means getting proper exercise and sleep and proper preventative measures. We of course cannot legislate this, but we can as a culture encourage this.

Exactly.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I'm here to remind you that not every problem, pseudo problem and non problem require the government to tell people what to do.

People = Government

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Is it fair to compare being overweight to being an alcoholic?

 

[NobleSavage]

What's a white chicken?

Anyway, in recent purchases I have found the chicken breasts for $3/lb--and the low quality ground beef at about the same price. Cheaper still is the whole chicken.

The OP referred to food being healthy. Chicken thighs are dark meat and are higher in fat than chicken breast which is low fat white meat.

Whole chickens...well, they used to be cheaper. Back in the day, I remember seeing a whole chicken for sale for $3 something. The last whole chicken I bought, the price was on par with buying chicken fillet tenders. Except with the fillets, you weren't paying for bone.

Where some poor people live, they have to dodge shady people and loose pitbulls when walking anywhere, let alone walking for exercise.

I'm aware of the realities of bad neighborhoods.

For the record. I see a lot of fat poor people.

They tend to eat what is cheap which is high fat, high salt, starchy foods.

Low fat, white chicken breast is $6.98 a lb.

Cheap, full of antibiotics, ground fatty mystery beef is $2.98 a lb.

Guess which one gets bought?

What's a white chicken?

Anyway, in recent purchases I have found the chicken breasts for $3/lb--and the low quality ground beef at about the same price. Cheaper still is the whole chicken.

I get chicken breasts at Cosco for $2.50/lb. Yeah, poor people don't shop at Cosco, but I just checked Walmart and it's $2.30/lb.

If you have one nearby. I live in a blue-collar, low income area. The nearest Walmart is 7 miles away. OK if you have a car, not OK if you don't.

No bus?

 

[NobleSavage]

OOH witty, you must own a television. But I would go beyond that to say you are responsible for your health beyond eating which means getting proper exercise and sleep and proper preventative measures. We of course cannot legislate this, but we can as a culture encourage this.

Exactly.

We don't need to ban anything, that is the wrong way to go. We don't need the government meddling with business recipes. Just slap shit foods with a sin tax the way we do cigarettes. Positive reinforcement always works better than negative so offer a tax credit for a healthy BMI.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Would people necessarily eat healthy food simply because they afford it?

 

[NobleSavage]

Our current obesity levels did not occur because of poor choices. The rise in obesity can be traced back to a specific time and specific events and has little if anything to do with individual choice.

Since 1900, the energy requirements for daily life have decreased substantially with the advent of labor-saving devices and automobiles, yet American weights remained stable until the 1970s. Dr. Boyd A. Swinburn, an obesity researcher at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and his co-authors in one Lancet paper call that decade the “tipping point.”

As more women entered the work force, the food industry, noting a growing new market, mass-produced convenience foods with palate appeal. The foods were rich in sugar, salt and fat, substances that humans are evolutionarily programmed to crave.

“Women were spending a lot less time on food preparation, but the industry figured out ways to make food more readily available for everybody,” Steven L. Gortmaker, a sociologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, said in an interview. “The industry made it easier for people to consume more calories throughout the day.”

As Dr. Swinburn and his co-authors wrote, “The 1970s saw a striking rise in the quantity of refined carbohydrates and fats in the U.S. food supply, which was paralleled by a sharp increase in the available calories and the onset of the obesity epidemic. Energy intake rose because of environmental push factors, i.e., increasingly available, cheap, tasty, highly promoted obesogenic foods.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/health/13brody.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

This also correlates with the government telling everyone to eat low fat foods.

 

[Bomb#20]

Low fat, white chicken breast is $6.98 a lb.

What's a white chicken?

Here's one.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Our current obesity levels did not occur because of poor choices. The rise in obesity can be traced back to a specific time and specific events and has little if anything to do with individual choice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/health/13brody.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

This also correlates with the government telling everyone to eat low fat foods.

View attachment 1704

you might want to ask yourself what else also changed at that time,

 

[NobleSavage]

^^^ Yeah, like I said in post above, it's multifaceted. But "poor people are fat because they can't afford healthy food" is BS.

 

[dismal]

I'm here to remind you that not every problem, pseudo problem and non problem require the government to tell people what to do.

People = Government

Government = things some people force other people to do.

Enforced by police.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Is Cooking Really Cheaper Than Fast Food?

I agree with the message that Slow Food and Bittman are sending here: that from-scratch cooking is absolutely the most powerful tool we have for improving our diets and resisting the food industry's most awful offerings. But I sense a significant accounting error: They omit the cost of labor for the home-cooked meal and include it in the fast-food alternative, which comes begging to be inhaled immediately, no postprandial dish-doing necessary.

The Times calculated the cost of its $14 chicken dinner by summing the price of the individual ingredients: a $6 raw whole chicken, $3 worth of potatoes, a nickel for salt and pepper, etc. But what about the time it takes to plan the dinner, shop for the ingredients, transform them into a meal, and then clean up the resulting mess?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tells us that the median hourly income in the United States is $16.27. Let's say it takes two hours to put the Times' meal together and clean up afterward—for the median US worker, that's about $32 worth of labor. Voilà! Our chicken dinner now costs around $46. Suddenly, that $28 Mickey D's excursion looks like quite the bargain.

Yet that bargain seems deeply problematic. McDonald's adds to its customers' leisure time in part by exploiting its own workers. The labor-adjusted price advantage McDonald's offers over a home-cooked meal largely reflects the fast-food industry's success at de-skilling and low-balling its own workforce. A "cook" at McDonald's doesn't so much cook as oversee the operation of simple-to-use cooking machines. As the BLS puts it: "Duties of these cooks are limited to preparation of a few basic items and normally involve operating large-volume single-purpose cooking equipment." It's no surprise, then, that the median wage listed by the BLS for "Cooks, Fast Food" is $8.70 per hour—just over half of the median wage for all professions.

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/10/cooking-really-cheaper-junk-food-mark-bittman

 

[AthenaAwakened]

This also correlates with the government telling everyone to eat low fat foods.

View attachment 1704

you might want to ask yourself what else also changed at that time,

They tell people to eat better while allowing the food industry to provide worse food options.

That seems a bit disingenuous to me.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Exactly.

We don't need to ban anything, that is the wrong way to go. We don't need the government meddling with business recipes.

Where do you live and what history do they have there?

Just slap shit foods with a sin tax the way we do cigarettes.

Raising taxes on the poor is just what they need,

Positive reinforcement always works better than negative so offer a tax credit for a healthy BMI.

And just how do we go about getting the BMI information from a citizenry with a right to privacy? Nabisco doesn't "need the government meddling with business recipes" but the IRS does need to know has fat I am?

WTF!!!!????!!!!

 

[NobleSavage]

We don't need to ban anything, that is the wrong way to go. We don't need the government meddling with business recipes.

Where do you live and what history do they have there?

Just slap shit foods with a sin tax the way we do cigarettes.

Raising taxes on the poor is just what they need,

Positive reinforcement always works better than negative so offer a tax credit for a healthy BMI.

And just how do we go about getting the BMI information from a citizenry with a right to privacy? Nabisco doesn't "need the government meddling with business recipes" but the IRS does need to know has fat I am?

WTF!!!!????!!!!

Your own article said to tax it. I worry about the tax hurting the poor about as much as the cigarette tax hurting them. The 2014 tax return already requires heath insurance info. A BMI credit would be voluntary.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Where do you live and what history do they have there?

Just slap shit foods with a sin tax the way we do cigarettes.

Raising taxes on the poor is just what they need,

Positive reinforcement always works better than negative so offer a tax credit for a healthy BMI.

And just how do we go about getting the BMI information from a citizenry with a right to privacy? Nabisco doesn't "need the government meddling with business recipes" but the IRS does need to know has fat I am?

WTF!!!!????!!!!

Your own article said to tax it. I worry about the tax hurting the poor about as much as the cigarette tax hurting them. The 2014 tax return already requires heath insurance info. A BMI credit would be voluntary.

From the NYT article

He and his co-authors listed three of the most cost-saving and health-saving measures: a 10 percent tax on unhealthy foods and drinks (like sugar-sweetened beverages, a proposal defeated in New York State by industry pressure); more obvious nutrition labeling of packaged foods, like a red, yellow or green traffic light on package fronts; and reduced advertising of “junk foods and beverages to children.”

They did not stop with just taxing. And they don't hold a monopoly on the only solutions available.

Some suggestions from Eric Schlosser of Fast Food Nation

In the epilogue, Schlosser makes the powerful statement that “There is nothing inevitable about the fast food nation that surrounds us.” He argues that while changes in our nation’s economy during the past two decades have been steeped in a rhetoric of “free market,” just the opposite happens as American corporations eliminate and absorb their rivals. Schlosser recommends that Congress immediately ban all advertisements aimed at children that promote foods high in fat and sugar. He urges Congress to eliminate tax breaks for chains which have high turnover rates and do not teach their employees any skills. Minimum wage and child labor laws should be enforced. OSHA should implement regulations on workplace violence. The USDA should insist on the highest standards for food served in school cafeterias. Congress should create a single food safety agency. State and federal authorities must consider looking at the meatpacking industry’s injury rate from a new perspective. OSHA should greatly increase its fines, in addition to mandatory plant closures and criminal charges for negligence when meatpacking employees are injured or killed. Schlosser argues that in addition to Congressional legislation, the consumer must become involved to ensure change. Schlosser says, simply, the consumer must stop buying fast food.

In the NEJM, their review of Fat Land sums up the book nicely and in an evenhanded way takes on the strengths of Critser's arguments [such as his historical understanding of how two policies decisions on the 1970s (Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon, Earl Butz eased regulations on corn production, and he lowered import restrictions on basic staples such as palm oil) changed the way we eat for decades hence] and its weakness (his call for americans to simply stop being gluttons).

System wide change takes system wide action and telling every individual to eat better will no more stop obesity than telling every soldier to stop shooting will stop war.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Is Cooking Really Cheaper Than Fast Food?

I agree with the message that Slow Food and Bittman are sending here: that from-scratch cooking is absolutely the most powerful tool we have for improving our diets and resisting the food industry's most awful offerings. But I sense a significant accounting error: They omit the cost of labor for the home-cooked meal and include it in the fast-food alternative, which comes begging to be inhaled immediately, no postprandial dish-doing necessary.

The Times calculated the cost of its $14 chicken dinner by summing the price of the individual ingredients: a $6 raw whole chicken, $3 worth of potatoes, a nickel for salt and pepper, etc. But what about the time it takes to plan the dinner, shop for the ingredients, transform them into a meal, and then clean up the resulting mess?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tells us that the median hourly income in the United States is $16.27. Let's say it takes two hours to put the Times' meal together and clean up afterward—for the median US worker, that's about $32 worth of labor. Voilà! Our chicken dinner now costs around $46. Suddenly, that $28 Mickey D's excursion looks like quite the bargain.

Yet that bargain seems deeply problematic. McDonald's adds to its customers' leisure time in part by exploiting its own workers. The labor-adjusted price advantage McDonald's offers over a home-cooked meal largely reflects the fast-food industry's success at de-skilling and low-balling its own workforce. A "cook" at McDonald's doesn't so much cook as oversee the operation of simple-to-use cooking machines. As the BLS puts it: "Duties of these cooks are limited to preparation of a few basic items and normally involve operating large-volume single-purpose cooking equipment." It's no surprise, then, that the median wage listed by the BLS for "Cooks, Fast Food" is $8.70 per hour—just over half of the median wage for all professions.

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/10/cooking-really-cheaper-junk-food-mark-bittman

This assumes they have hours they could be working. The biggest cause of low income is a lack of hours worked, thus they likely do not have the option.