Obesity and poverty...

I think it is offensive to equate poverty with lack of knowledge and education. Due to the struggling economy, even people with PhDs can be under the poverty line. I know of many intellectuals that have had trouble making ends meet. This type of thinking is stereotyping plain and simple and it is sadly quite prevalent in this entire thread.

On the other hand, I do agree with the interesting posts about this topic.

If you go to the grocery and buy enough fresh, whole food to feed a family of four for a week, you'll likely spend no less than $200. Good, fresh, real food is terribly expensive. Crap food is not! A cheeseburger, fries, and coke at McDonalds cost $3. A salad at McDonalds cost $6. Fresh produce and meat is expensive compared to ramen noodles and Vienna sausages. It's next to impossible for people living in poverty to eat healthy food!

I don't know how to fix that, but I know that something needs to change if we're going to solve the obesity epidemic in this country!

As someone who actually came from a poverty-stricken background, allow me to shed a little light on a lot of people's situation. I'm not going to give my opinion on the topic itself, just some information for other people to consider before they do. If you haven't been horribly poor you really do not have any idea of how to guess what you'd do in the situation.

1) Sometimes your family has no way to get to a grocery store often, so you shop at what's nearby, usually at convenience stores. Most convenience stores do not sell fruits and vegetables, only non-perishable items. Sometimes the nearest grocery store sucks, and you can't afford any better.

1.5) When you have little money, you want your food to feed many mouths and/or last a long time. With most perishables being at a week or so, the incentive to buy is very low.

2) Sometimes there is literally no yard or even a patio/balcony. You are apartment 15F in a 20-story building full of people just like you. No one is doing any gardening.

2.5) No grocery store owner in is right mind wants to open a grocery store in your neighborhood because he doesn't want to be robbed, or have people steal his merchandise.

3) Your live with your mother who works 2 jobs.

4) Your dad pays no child support and doesn't pick you up to have dinner or go to the park for a run.

5) When your mom wants to make you smile, she buys you candy and "treats". The neighbors give you candy and treats, too, because you and your friends are good kids, and candy is cheap.

6) You're not taught nutrition in school. You go to a school that sucks because it gets almost no funding because the students do poorly on their tests, and your teacher spends half the day disciplining other students. He or she spends one third of the school year preparing you for standardized tests that most students will fail.

6.5) Schools themselves are serving students things that are not healthful. Pizza (recently deemed a vegetable in the US, by the way) tater tots, and brown meat served with instant potatoes isn't setting the best example.

7) People in poverty usually have very little education. Don't assume they should know they need to eat healthier.

8) They are raised to keep hunger away (just as our public school food system continues to model), not to be nutritionally balanced. Think of comfort foods, and remember why they bring comfort. They're filling and swimming in salt and butter or grease, and they make you feel good.

9) Your brain associates hunger with stress. Your mom can't afford to buy a better car, a couch that has all 4 legs and no rips in it, a coffee maker to replace her old one, but she will be damned if she can't feed you and you have to feel what she felt when she was a hungry little kid living just like you do now.

I think it is a combination of factors:

In many impoverished countries people are thin, and I think a big part of that is: 1) highly processed foods aren't available 2) people cook because they have to.

A lb of beans isn't expensive...they are very nutritious. But, if you don't know how to make them, you don't know how long they'll keep...you aren't going to make them.

My parents were working poor and we lived on beans, low fat hamburgers my mom made and froze over the weekends, oatmeal and vegetables from her garden which she canned for the winter months. But, all of this takes some basic knowledge of cooking/cooking science which most of us (rich and poor alike) lack.

I detest it when people "blame" parents. I'm a parent, I know lots of other parents...rich, poor or in the middle you do the very best you can with what you are given. Walk in the shoes of someone who is living paycheck to paycheck, who can't take her kids to the park because of drug deals and gang wars,whose kids can't play outside cause they'll get caught in gang crossfire or be sexually assaulted or recruited as a runner for a drug lord, who isn't using her stove because the slum lord turned off the utilities... Many families are hanging by their fingers just trying to survive...

If you are living in a constant state of threat, you're not clipping coupons and doing menu planning...being poor is a full time job which leave you in a state of exhaustion.

Do you think that most of these people don't have internet or internet access? It takes 5 minutes to get on google or pinterest and find loads of healthy, cheap recipes.



I cant afford internet at home...and i dont have a computer either. what makes you think that "these people" would have internet access? i can only get on here from work...

While i agree with you to an extent i'll also argue that yes you can feed a family of 4 for less than $200 a week. My Weekly grocery budget is 1/2 of that! I buy in bulk and also shop seasonal fruits and veggies. I also shop at farmers markets and a little amish shop that is in my neighborhood. Its not just what they are eating, but the quantity.

Out in the country, they don't have farmer's markets and bulk stores. :frown: Where I grew up in Alabama, you had to drive about 30 mins. to get to the one tiny grocery store in the nearest town, and I didn't even know what a farmer's market was until I moved to a big city.

Anyone who thinks the connection between obesity and poverty can be explained away with a couple of obtuse statements shouldn't be harping on about anyone else's lack of intelligence or education. Life in poverty is a miserable life. When you are miserable, you often make poor choices to try to feel better in the moment. When you live in poverty, life becomes a series of those moments. Few people take into account the fact that there is a strong link between poverty and depression, especially in affluent countries where poverty isn't the norm. Blanket statements about the cost of healthy food and lack of education only touch on part of the reality.

As for not having a grocery store near your home, get on the darn bus, go to the next neighbourhood.

Now I live in the DR. People here live off of 200 dollars a month. Even the roughest Barrio has a veggie stand, a butcher and a colmado that sells the basics.

Cost of living breakdown here....

Fifty to seventy five dollars to rent an apartment in the Barrio.
Fifty dollars for cell phones. (phone lines are minimal here so this is a necessity)
Another fifty for hair and entertainment.
Leaves fifty dollars for food and bus service.
Notice I left out internet and cable??? When you are poor you should spend that money on food, that is obvious here, but how many poor people in North America have deluxe cable and high speed internet.


Heres the kicker, no one here is obese, no one here is starving (there are exceptions) Rice and beans and chicken are cheap and is the national dish. No one can afford the junk. Rice and beans are cheap everywhere, so this is not a regional thing.

You can eat healthy cheap. You just have to take some time to learn how to cook.

People here also live day to day. It is normal to see someone buy one plantain (approximately five cents) one clove of garlic ect.

But the kids look healthy, they are much happier. Not to mention, the kids here go out and play...they aren't cooped up indoors like our North American children who cannot play outside because it is not safe. I played outside when I was a kid, but I never see kids outside here in Canada, even in the nicest neighbourhoods.

The kids in North America are all sitting in front of the computer, or TV. Poor or not.

Not learning how to cook is lazy. I could cook a meal at six years old. It isn't rocket science, but like everything it is a skill.

As for not having a grocery store near your home, get on the darn bus, go to the next neighbourhood.

People would just rather eat crap, and that is the truth.