Are the poor fat?

I just came across this post on a thread, "Why is eating healthy so darn expensive?"

"This is why poor people are usually the fat ones. Takes discipline to cut down on unimportant living expenses and buy healthy food, which is much more expensive (MUCH, MUCH MORE - if the farmers weren't subsidized) to grow, produce. Also, the cost if you are determined to eat healthy (and exercise) is a very good reason to grow your own. Even if you only have a patio, I grew tomatoes, cucumbers, etc., in pots on my sundeck."

I agree in a lot of ways.

Thoughts?

Ill weigh in. We live below the national poverty level. I can buy a economy pack (100) honeybuns for the same price as three d'anjou pears. I can buy 25 tacos for the price of one uncooked, unseasoned pork tenderloin.

However- i live in a rural area. We saved and scrounged and went hungry to make an investment. We bought chickens and heirloom seeds. Now, i get 38 eggs a day (at $0.02/per egg) and up to 400lbs of produce a season (ex. Zuchinni ends up being under $0.01). It was a $300 investment and takes about 10 hours out of my day. We plan on hatching eggs to raise meat birds (they'll end up about $0.03/lb) and are going to invest in milk goats or a dairy cow.

$300 wouldnt have bought my family a months worth of healthy food in a store.

Eta- we ended up saving enough for the gun im holding in my pic-a hunting rifle. Another investment to bag meat for the cost of a bullet

Food deserts are defined as:
An area where the distance to a supermarket is more than ¼ mile,

Then I have lived in a food desert my entire life.

I can grow ANYTHING.....until i put it in a container. I can murder the healthiest plants in two days in a stupid pot.

I'm not quite that bad, but container gardening is more difficult, at least for me. It's also much more expensive than planting in the ground. The initial setup is very expensive - pots, seeds, dirt. But pots also need fertilized more often because nutrients are depleted more quickly in the contained area.

I have been poor. Not dumpster diving poor, but near poverty level. I was a lot thinner then than I am now that I have money for whatever food I want. I was also younger then, had 2 young children to keep up with, and quite frankly we just could not afford a lot of junk. When one bag of potato chips costs as much as a bag of carrots AND a bag of apples, and you have only that much, only an idiot would buy the chips.

I have a container garden on my roof top with right now around 300 plants/containers. It took me a few years to establish, because I refused to buy pots and now use recycled containers from buckets to coffee cans and 2 or 3 liter soda bottles from the garbage. I also recover my own seeds from my plants, or participate in exchanges where all it costs me is postage. I am just one person, but for about 8-10 month I cover all my vegetable & herb needs for an investment of no more than the equivalent of 50 dollars. It is true that it is more work; especially watering as often as twice a day in this semi-tropical country, but since it's my hobby and the way I combat stress and keep from eating when I don't need to, it is time very well spent.

I thought it was lack of education?

Ding ding ding.

I would also like to add poor people are LAZY end of story! There are plenty of opportunities out there you just have to get up off your @$$ and get them!

there are often weekly farmers markets 2 and 1/2 months out of the year (I live in the North East, US) and they are definitely more expensive

Grew up in New York state (Chemung County and then near Buffalo) and now I live in Florida. It was cheaper to buy local produce in New York (where I lived) than in Florida (where I live).

Where YOU live may be more expensive, but you do no live in the entirety of the Northeast.

I'm not questioning the veracity, but those definitional criteria seem awfully restrictive...

Food deserts are defined as:
An area where the distance to a supermarket is more than ¼ mile,

Then I have lived in a food desert my entire life.

Is the City of Baltimore saying that 1/4 mile is too far for someone to carry groceries?

The "truly" poor can not afford to buy food, plus they usually have very physical jobs like farmers and construction. They need high caloric food to survive.

There is very few "truly" poor people in the US.

Go to a third world country, see real poverty.

I am a Food Producer (top end luxury items) - I always believed that people need to get back into the kitchen, and learn to cook. I was having this rant one day during an interview with a journalist. Later that week, she tweeted me with a challenge. "Put your money where your mouth is Mrs xxxx". It was the "Live below the line" (google it) challenge. I had £5 to live on, for five days. (I raised money for Unicef in the process). I was not allowed to forage (which was my first thought), no fishing, snaring, shooting - and if I ate anything from the garden - I had to count man hours and costs.
I did complete the challenge successfully. TV got involved too - and that was good for raising my fund for charity.
It did however, give me a whole new perspective on people who do indeed "live below the poverty line".
I found I had to buy very cheap, very fatty foods. I bought sausages which were quite frankly disgusting, I used the fat from frying the sausage as stock for risotto. I bought cans of peas for 19p (there was more mush than peas) - I had peaches which were tinned and steeped in syrup - fresh fruit was totally way out of budget.
By the end of the five days my stomach ached - I could smell grease in my skin - I was bloated - I did gain weight - and my whole bodily functions ceased. I could not afford to buy the foods which cater for my allergies - again - resulting in massive stomach pain.
I felt sluggish - didnt sleep well - and no notion of exercise as I felt so weighed down by fat -
everything cheap - was low in nutrition - and high in fat.
It was an eye opener - poverty - real poverty - does not finance good nutrition.