Obesity and poverty...

I have a hard time reading this as anything other than fat shaming for kids.

I saw it as fat shaming PARENTS.

I recently went to a talk about food security. Basically, it talked about the ability of people living at or below the poverty level, and their ability to feed themselves and their families. Basically what it came down to is this: if a single mother with two kids is on income assistance, she receives $1124 a month.

Now by my calculations:

Monthly income: $1124
Rent: $ 700
Basic telephone/cable: $ 65
Electricity: $ 40
Bus passes $ 122

So that leaves Mom with $197 a month to feed herself and her two kids. That's $49.25 a week, or $7.04 a day.

Where I live, 4 liters of milk costs $7.49. A 2 liter of pop is $1.49. A loaf of bread costs $2.29. A box of Kraft dinner is $1.09.

In this lecture, they talked about the "basic food basket" which is the food that one would need to buy to follow Canada's food guide for healthy eating. The cost in our community to meet those basic requirements was over $80/week for this hypothetical mother and her two kids.

If a parent is trying to feed herself and her kids on less than $50 a week, of course they are going to eat a lot of boxed meals.

Another issue addressed was the fact that in the cycle of poverty, a lot of times parents just don't know or have the skills to prepare healthful meals, so even though you might be able to cook a healthy stew for $15 that would feed them for three days, Mom might not have the skills or the tools available.

So my point, after this rather long post, is that I do agree, poverty certainly plays a role.

If she's on welfare, she's getting rental assistance, heating assistance, a free cell phone (cable isn't a need), and if she NEEDS it for education/training, a bus pass (otherwise it's not a "need.") She's also getting SNAP (food stamps) which should be around $300 per month, more in some states.

Getting one form of assistance in no way assures that you'll get another form of assistance. It is entirely possible to be on welfare or disability and turned down for all the other programs.

Anyone getting cash welfare is automatically getting all of those others except possible Section 8. They are also getting medicaid. That's a given.

Welfare and SSDI/SSI are not the same thing.

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.

Thank you for bringing some humanity into this thread.

And, as well as some humanity, some actual experience with the condition that most of us, mercifully, have never experienced.

As someone who grew up damn poor but managed to claw my way out, get some schooling and now live a semi-middle class life, eating clean was the last thing on my mind and the minds of my parents. Maybe I'm wrong but our family drama was out there for the world to see - alcoholism, mental illness, unstable home and work life (for my parents). Growing up in a small town - you knew who had the issues with booze, craziness and drugs. It never seemed that the middle class families had these issues or hid it pretty well.

I read that a Kentucky (?) lawmaker wanted to tie academic performance of kids whose families receive aid - if the kid failed or underperformed, the family would lose their food stamps. I totally see that working.... :grumble: A kid who is already stressed and likely struggling with school due to lacking resources is now responsible for keeping the family's hunger at bay. No pressure there.