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Is poverty really linked to food scarcity in western countries anymore ? The statistics show that overall, the poor are fatter than the rich.

cimmanom 8y ago
Because they have access to only poor quality foods. There may not be calorie scarcity but there is nutrition scarcity. And yes, for some there's also "food insecurity" which is not knowing where your next meal is coming from or having to choose between food and other necessities (shelter, warm winter clothing, medical care, transportation, etc.)
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  This talks around food scarcity without actually being food scarcity. First, you have to show that poor quality foods actually reduce willpower and contribute to further poverty. People used to fight wars on poor diets. I'm sure there's lots of military planners in the world that would love it if they could feed their army the way America feeds its poor. Food insecurity isn't food scarcity either, it's just more income insecurity. The distinctions matter because the policy you craft to fix actual food scarcity is different and far easier than the policy you craft to address income insecurity. Edit: I'm going to go against my usual playbook and discuss my downvoters. You fix social problems with policy. Policy has to affect everyone. That's what makes it policy. If you tailor bad policy that doesn't work, because it doesn't address the root cause, then you've made the world worse and not better. Giving poor people cheap ubiquitous Whole Foods Markets isn't going to solve their problems.
- mynameishere 8y ago
  This just isn't true. It's so obviously not true it's really very amazing that people repeat it. Go to a Dollar General in a poor area sometime. They have lots of potato chips and assorted crap. Yep. They also have canned beans, fruit, refrigerated sausage, cheese, chicken, etc. None of this is unaffordable. That's Dollar General. Most places have access to a Walmart which is as good nutritionally as any grocery store that ever existed. If people buy junk food it's because they enjoy it. Christ, even your typical gas station sells salad these days.
  - learc83 8y ago
    Cheap junk food is much more palatable than cheap healthy food. > Most places have access to a Walmart which is as good nutritionally as any grocery store that ever existed. Walmart tends to avoid the inner city. If you don't have a car there generally isn't one close enough to shop at more than once a week or so. Bringing home a week of groceries for a family on bus isn't a trivial task. It's much easier to pick up some cheap food from a convenience store. > Christ, even your typical gas station sells salad these days. If you compare the per calorie price of that salad to junk food, it's much more expensive.
joosteto 8y ago
Often the poor are fat because healthy food is more expensive. So yes, scarcity of healthy food is linked to poverty.
- ItsMe000001 8y ago
  I'm not sure that healthy food is more expensive when you only look at the items, because vegetables are not (some fruits are, but veggies are far more important). With even limited cooking skills you can produce pretty cheap and yet very good meals. However, I still think your point is valid, because it's not just the food items themselves. You need time to prepare them, plus a stressful life puts psychological pressure (which is real and not "imagined") on your brain for swift and easy rewards. So if you don't just look at the stuff on the plate, but see "eating" as a system consisting of sooo much more, the entire context, I think that's a big part of what in the end indeed makes bad food more expensive. I almost forgot to mention a possibly even bigger part: When you live in poor areas availability of certain foods is vastly limited, and availability of bad foods is through the roof. Try shopping in supermarkets in poor areas and compare it to a wealthy suburb supermarket.
  - Retric 8y ago
    Veggies are very expensive per calorie. A cucumber is ~16 calories and costs ~50 cents each. A 2,000 calorie diet at that rate would be 60$ per day. Granted nobody is eating like that but 1.50$ for 3 servings of vegetables per day is 550$ per year which really is significant for them. PS: This is assuming they even have access to low cost veggies.
    - ItsMe000001 8y ago
      Straw man at the very least? How many people use veggies for their energy? That's what most people use grains for - bread, pasta, potatoes. All of them also cheap. Given obesity rates, the problem is too much energy. After all, one part of calling for more vegetable consumption is so that people lower their energy intake. Example: https://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org/eating-vegetables-with-meals-may-help-cut-calories https://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org/eating-vegetable... (the number of articles on cutting calories by eating more vegetables is uncountable) Just as an aside, a short excerpt from a bio.chem course that shows the connection between high energy intake and obesity: https://youtu.be/rTR-Ev3hj4c https://youtu.be/rTR-Ev3hj4c
dizzystar 8y ago
This is far from universally true. Granted, people aren't starving to death, but there are plenty of poor people who are malnourished in the US.
ghusbands 8y ago
Yes. "America's dirty little secret: 42 million people are suffering from hunger" https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/americas-dirty-little-secret-42-million-are-suffering-from-hunger.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/americas-dirty-little-secret... UK: "Child poverty: Pale and hungry pupils 'fill pockets with school food'" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-43611527 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-43611527 "Germany’s hidden hunger: On the breadline in Europe’s richest country" http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/09/world/germany-food-bank-cnnphotos/ http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/09/world/germany-foo...
- nitwit005 8y ago
  I'm honestly never sure how seriously to take those sorts of statistics. They tend to be based on participation in food programs, which doesn't tell you that much. Deaths due to malnutrition are quite rare now, generally being confined to cases of abuse or niglect, while it used to be a normal cause of death.
  - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
    Death due to malnutrition would be a rather extreme case. You can be very malnourished without actually dying from it.
jdietrich 8y ago
Insecurity (partially) explains obesity, because body fat is an evolutionary adaptation to insecure food supplies. Our parents and grandparents were raised to eat what they were given and clear their plates. That's evolutionarily rational if you aren't sure where your next meal is coming from - food will spoil, but body fat will keep you alive through a famine. Shaking off that habit is much easier if you never worry about whether you'll go hungry tomorrow; a lot of poor people don't have that luxury. If you're just scraping by, an unexpected bill or a parking ticket might force you to choose between a payday loan or an empty refrigerator. Combine economic insecurity with a food market full of cheap, high-calorie foods and you've got a recipe for nutritional disaster. We're right to think that capitalism has created tremendous abundance, but we often under-estimate the pathological effects of insecurity. Without a sound safety net, the human brain just isn't capable of prudent long-term planning.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
1) Availability to "food" and availability to __healthy food__ are two different things. 2) Poverty creates perma-stress. It effects the body. It effects the mind. It effects decision making. Poverty is not sinply about income. It's much more complicated than that.
- gordaco 8y ago
  I don't know why you are being downvoted, since this is a perfectly valid topic that has been researched: http://www.businessinsider.com/poverty-effect-on-intelligence-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/poverty-effect-on-intelligenc.... There is also an effect about being time poor and having little to no time to cook. And coming from an also poor and time poor family, and never having learned how to cook. Etc. Poverty fucks you in many ways, and is indeed a complicated beast.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    Why does truth get down voted by naive know-it-alls on HN? Gee. I don't know ;)
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    Time. Yes that's important as well. It's not just cooking. Time is lost waiting for the bus, because you can't afford a car. You wait in line at the store because it can't afford another cashier and better technology. Etc. People think poverty is their well to do life but with less money. Oh God, that's so ignorant. BTW, the book Evicted is an eye and heart opener. Highly recommended.
- white-flame 8y ago
  Seriously, who in western countries does not have availability to "healthy food"? Everybody has basic grocery stores with cheap simple stuff just as available to them as convenience junk shops. It's education about how food affects you that makes all the difference. People literally don't know what they're putting in themselves. There's a lot of food purchasing decisions based on stressors related to your very reasonable 2nd point. Basic food education at a personal level brings people out of that particular negative health cycle.
agumonkey 8y ago
Poverty makes your mind stressed and fatty high sugar foods are good to satistfy your mind. Also these are cheaper and mass produced, highly marketed for low income masses and kids. Supermarkets are designed to make you buy shit. It's a sad natural phenomenon that amplifies itself. It doesn't really cost a lot to eat healthy but it requires a steady mindset which is usually done by culture. But consumerism ate culture so .. everybody just go for short term convenience until they become obese.

cimmanom 8y ago

Because they have access to only poor quality foods. There may not be calorie scarcity but there is nutrition scarcity. And yes, for some there's also "food insecurity" which is not knowing where your next meal is coming from or having to choose between food and other necessities (shelter, warm winter clothing, medical care, transportation, etc.)

vinceguidry 8y ago
This talks around food scarcity without actually being food scarcity. First, you have to show that poor quality foods actually reduce willpower and contribute to further poverty. People used to fight wars on poor diets. I'm sure there's lots of military planners in the world that would love it if they could feed their army the way America feeds its poor. Food insecurity isn't food scarcity either, it's just more income insecurity. The distinctions matter because the policy you craft to fix actual food scarcity is different and far easier than the policy you craft to address income insecurity. Edit: I'm going to go against my usual playbook and discuss my downvoters. You fix social problems with policy. Policy has to affect everyone. That's what makes it policy. If you tailor bad policy that doesn't work, because it doesn't address the root cause, then you've made the world worse and not better. Giving poor people cheap ubiquitous Whole Foods Markets isn't going to solve their problems.
mynameishere 8y ago
This just isn't true. It's so obviously not true it's really very amazing that people repeat it. Go to a Dollar General in a poor area sometime. They have lots of potato chips and assorted crap. Yep. They also have canned beans, fruit, refrigerated sausage, cheese, chicken, etc. None of this is unaffordable. That's Dollar General. Most places have access to a Walmart which is as good nutritionally as any grocery store that ever existed. If people buy junk food it's because they enjoy it. Christ, even your typical gas station sells salad these days.
- learc83 8y ago
  Cheap junk food is much more palatable than cheap healthy food. > Most places have access to a Walmart which is as good nutritionally as any grocery store that ever existed. Walmart tends to avoid the inner city. If you don't have a car there generally isn't one close enough to shop at more than once a week or so. Bringing home a week of groceries for a family on bus isn't a trivial task. It's much easier to pick up some cheap food from a convenience store. > Christ, even your typical gas station sells salad these days. If you compare the per calorie price of that salad to junk food, it's much more expensive.

joosteto 8y ago

Often the poor are fat because healthy food is more expensive. So yes, scarcity of healthy food is linked to poverty.

ItsMe000001 8y ago
I'm not sure that healthy food is more expensive when you only look at the items, because vegetables are not (some fruits are, but veggies are far more important). With even limited cooking skills you can produce pretty cheap and yet very good meals. However, I still think your point is valid, because it's not just the food items themselves. You need time to prepare them, plus a stressful life puts psychological pressure (which is real and not "imagined") on your brain for swift and easy rewards. So if you don't just look at the stuff on the plate, but see "eating" as a system consisting of sooo much more, the entire context, I think that's a big part of what in the end indeed makes bad food more expensive. I almost forgot to mention a possibly even bigger part: When you live in poor areas availability of certain foods is vastly limited, and availability of bad foods is through the roof. Try shopping in supermarkets in poor areas and compare it to a wealthy suburb supermarket.
- Retric 8y ago
  Veggies are very expensive per calorie. A cucumber is ~16 calories and costs ~50 cents each. A 2,000 calorie diet at that rate would be 60$ per day. Granted nobody is eating like that but 1.50$ for 3 servings of vegetables per day is 550$ per year which really is significant for them. PS: This is assuming they even have access to low cost veggies.
  - ItsMe000001 8y ago
    Straw man at the very least? How many people use veggies for their energy? That's what most people use grains for - bread, pasta, potatoes. All of them also cheap. Given obesity rates, the problem is too much energy. After all, one part of calling for more vegetable consumption is so that people lower their energy intake. Example: https://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org/eating-vegetables-with-meals-may-help-cut-calories https://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org/eating-vegetable... (the number of articles on cutting calories by eating more vegetables is uncountable) Just as an aside, a short excerpt from a bio.chem course that shows the connection between high energy intake and obesity: https://youtu.be/rTR-Ev3hj4c https://youtu.be/rTR-Ev3hj4c

dizzystar 8y ago

This is far from universally true. Granted, people aren't starving to death, but there are plenty of poor people who are malnourished in the US.

ghusbands 8y ago

Yes. "America's dirty little secret: 42 million people are suffering from hunger" https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/americas-dirty-little-secret-42-million-are-suffering-from-hunger.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/americas-dirty-little-secret... UK: "Child poverty: Pale and hungry pupils 'fill pockets with school food'" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-43611527 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-43611527 "Germany’s hidden hunger: On the breadline in Europe’s richest country" http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/09/world/germany-food-bank-cnnphotos/ http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/09/world/germany-foo...

nitwit005 8y ago
I'm honestly never sure how seriously to take those sorts of statistics. They tend to be based on participation in food programs, which doesn't tell you that much. Deaths due to malnutrition are quite rare now, generally being confined to cases of abuse or niglect, while it used to be a normal cause of death.
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  Death due to malnutrition would be a rather extreme case. You can be very malnourished without actually dying from it.

jdietrich 8y ago

Insecurity (partially) explains obesity, because body fat is an evolutionary adaptation to insecure food supplies. Our parents and grandparents were raised to eat what they were given and clear their plates. That's evolutionarily rational if you aren't sure where your next meal is coming from - food will spoil, but body fat will keep you alive through a famine. Shaking off that habit is much easier if you never worry about whether you'll go hungry tomorrow; a lot of poor people don't have that luxury. If you're just scraping by, an unexpected bill or a parking ticket might force you to choose between a payday loan or an empty refrigerator. Combine economic insecurity with a food market full of cheap, high-calorie foods and you've got a recipe for nutritional disaster. We're right to think that capitalism has created tremendous abundance, but we often under-estimate the pathological effects of insecurity. Without a sound safety net, the human brain just isn't capable of prudent long-term planning.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

1) Availability to "food" and availability to __healthy food__ are two different things. 2) Poverty creates perma-stress. It effects the body. It effects the mind. It effects decision making. Poverty is not sinply about income. It's much more complicated than that.

gordaco 8y ago
I don't know why you are being downvoted, since this is a perfectly valid topic that has been researched: http://www.businessinsider.com/poverty-effect-on-intelligence-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/poverty-effect-on-intelligenc.... There is also an effect about being time poor and having little to no time to cook. And coming from an also poor and time poor family, and never having learned how to cook. Etc. Poverty fucks you in many ways, and is indeed a complicated beast.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Why does truth get down voted by naive know-it-alls on HN? Gee. I don't know ;)
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Time. Yes that's important as well. It's not just cooking. Time is lost waiting for the bus, because you can't afford a car. You wait in line at the store because it can't afford another cashier and better technology. Etc. People think poverty is their well to do life but with less money. Oh God, that's so ignorant. BTW, the book Evicted is an eye and heart opener. Highly recommended.
white-flame 8y ago
Seriously, who in western countries does not have availability to "healthy food"? Everybody has basic grocery stores with cheap simple stuff just as available to them as convenience junk shops. It's education about how food affects you that makes all the difference. People literally don't know what they're putting in themselves. There's a lot of food purchasing decisions based on stressors related to your very reasonable 2nd point. Basic food education at a personal level brings people out of that particular negative health cycle.

agumonkey 8y ago

Poverty makes your mind stressed and fatty high sugar foods are good to satistfy your mind. Also these are cheaper and mass produced, highly marketed for low income masses and kids. Supermarkets are designed to make you buy shit. It's a sad natural phenomenon that amplifies itself. It doesn't really cost a lot to eat healthy but it requires a steady mindset which is usually done by culture. But consumerism ate culture so .. everybody just go for short term convenience until they become obese.