4 ms·

It's not like that at all, considering in many other parts of the world, the opposite trend is present - the poor people are thin, and the richer people are fat

It's not like that at all, considering in many other parts of the world, the opposite trend is present - the poor people are thin, and the richer people are fatter. There's nothing stopping rich-country poor people from eating like poor-country poor people, except the lack of life skills and desire. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6880978/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6880978/ This phenomena is sometimes exemplified on certain reddit subs, where people will post complaints "Here's all the groceries I can buy in my budget of $X. Guess I'm going hungry this month". And then they post pictures filled with processed/packaged food which is far more expensive than if they made better purchasing decisions. eg www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/10o985p

Workaccount2 3y ago
If there is one thing I can say about reddit, it's that they get particularly sensitive when talking about calorie consumption and weight. And there is definitely nothing they can do to stop eating so many calories.
JohnFen 3y ago
> There's nothing stopping rich-country poor people from eating like poor-country poor people, except the lack of life skills and desire. This just isn't true as a blanket statement in the US. I've been both wealthy and poor, and my experience is that when I've been poor, it was simply unaffordable to eat decently. My problem was not a lack of skills or desire, but money. But, as I said in a different comment, this depends quite a bit on where in the US you live.
- oh_sigh 3y ago
  While food deserts do exist, and increase the risk of obesity for residents in one, "only" 6% of Americans live in one. Access alone does not account for the incredible rates of obesity among the poor in America. I was also poor at one point, and I don't really know what to say about our differing experiences - I couldn't afford to eat junk food. I subsisted on rice, beans, grains, sale fruits/veg, and cheap cuts of meat. At my local walmart(which is in a HCoL area), you can buy 3500 calories of rice, 2600 calories of beans, and 5000 calories of chicken for $15, or 750 cal/$. It is hard to find processed food with a better cal/$ ratio than that. For example, a bulk box of velveeta mac and cheese at the same walmart is 3330 calories for $7.47, or 450 cal/$. Absolutely, if you don't know how to cook or prepare food, processed food might be your only option. But, that is a knowledge issue, not a monetary issue. https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts
  - wahern 3y ago
    I think the disconnect here is that in the U.S. "poor" encompasses a whole universe of relative incomes and experiences. I grew up poor as a kid, but for the most part never thought much about food. Some days maybe all I could scrounge together would be toast + butter, but I rarely if ever felt deprived. Except during one of our homeless stints, when we were staying with a family my mother met through (I think) a church program. We stayed at their house for only two weeks or so. My mother was working most of that time, and the wife made meals for her children, myself, and my little sister. It seemed like all we ever ate (or at least they let us eat--maybe they were worried we'd eat too much, though there wasn't much of anything else in the cupboards) was Bisquick pancakes. I was constantly hungry. I had never felt hunger like that before. And as a kid the situation felt so bizarre because this family lived in what seemed to me to be a beautiful, modern apartment (in retrospect, probably recently constructed public housing), yet they seemingly had no food. Also, the son was younger than me but weighed significantly more than I did--I was skinny but well within normal weight and height. Fast forward about 15 years and as a young adult working in SF I became acquainted with a struggling older woman with a teenage daughter, and I'd sometimes drive her around town if she needed a lift--e.g. needed to make an appointment. (I forgot how we met, but growing up there was never anything strange about strangers helping out, and somehow I found myself on the other side of the situation and just went with it.) One time she invited me over to her apartment for dinner to thank me, and out comes a box of Bisquick and a dinner composed of Bisquick-related dishes. Even today, in neither case can I really comprehend why Bisquick figured so prominently. I mean, from a dollar-and-cents standpoint, I can see the value, but I'm like 70% confident that in both cases neither families had no alternative but Bisquick. OTOH, you can't really second guess those decisions on the spot, and those periods are just snapshots in time. OTOOH, that doesn't imply people are making the most rational decisions. In any event, I guess the moral of the story is that there's an immense diversity of experiences even at the bottom of the income and wealth brackets, and we should be cautious drawing broad conclusions one way or another.
    - oh_sigh 3y ago
      Not to harp on it, but bisquick pancake mix perfectly exemplifies my point: The cheapest per unit bisquick they have at walmart is 6 lbs for $9.38. Keep in mind you still need to add your own milk and eggs to this anyway. Compare to home made: - 10 lbs bag of flour for $3.98, - 1 8.1 oz can of baking powder - $1.98 -- you'd have a few tablespoons leftover but let's just allot the whole can to it - 48 oz vegetable oil - $3.64 -- you'd use 20oz per 10 lbs flour, so $1.52 worth, with 28 oz remaining for other cooking. So, you can have 6 lbs of bisquick for $9.38, or 11 lbs of homemade mix for $7.48. That's $0.68/lbs homemade, versus $1.56/lbs for bisquick. You're paying about 2.5x in order to not dump a little bit of baking powder and oil into some flour. It's a bad financial decision to buy bisquick instead of the ingredients and DIY.

Workaccount2 3y ago

If there is one thing I can say about reddit, it's that they get particularly sensitive when talking about calorie consumption and weight. And there is definitely nothing they can do to stop eating so many calories.

JohnFen 3y ago

> There's nothing stopping rich-country poor people from eating like poor-country poor people, except the lack of life skills and desire. This just isn't true as a blanket statement in the US. I've been both wealthy and poor, and my experience is that when I've been poor, it was simply unaffordable to eat decently. My problem was not a lack of skills or desire, but money. But, as I said in a different comment, this depends quite a bit on where in the US you live.

oh_sigh 3y ago
While food deserts do exist, and increase the risk of obesity for residents in one, "only" 6% of Americans live in one. Access alone does not account for the incredible rates of obesity among the poor in America. I was also poor at one point, and I don't really know what to say about our differing experiences - I couldn't afford to eat junk food. I subsisted on rice, beans, grains, sale fruits/veg, and cheap cuts of meat. At my local walmart(which is in a HCoL area), you can buy 3500 calories of rice, 2600 calories of beans, and 5000 calories of chicken for $15, or 750 cal/$. It is hard to find processed food with a better cal/$ ratio than that. For example, a bulk box of velveeta mac and cheese at the same walmart is 3330 calories for $7.47, or 450 cal/$. Absolutely, if you don't know how to cook or prepare food, processed food might be your only option. But, that is a knowledge issue, not a monetary issue. https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts
- wahern 3y ago
  I think the disconnect here is that in the U.S. "poor" encompasses a whole universe of relative incomes and experiences. I grew up poor as a kid, but for the most part never thought much about food. Some days maybe all I could scrounge together would be toast + butter, but I rarely if ever felt deprived. Except during one of our homeless stints, when we were staying with a family my mother met through (I think) a church program. We stayed at their house for only two weeks or so. My mother was working most of that time, and the wife made meals for her children, myself, and my little sister. It seemed like all we ever ate (or at least they let us eat--maybe they were worried we'd eat too much, though there wasn't much of anything else in the cupboards) was Bisquick pancakes. I was constantly hungry. I had never felt hunger like that before. And as a kid the situation felt so bizarre because this family lived in what seemed to me to be a beautiful, modern apartment (in retrospect, probably recently constructed public housing), yet they seemingly had no food. Also, the son was younger than me but weighed significantly more than I did--I was skinny but well within normal weight and height. Fast forward about 15 years and as a young adult working in SF I became acquainted with a struggling older woman with a teenage daughter, and I'd sometimes drive her around town if she needed a lift--e.g. needed to make an appointment. (I forgot how we met, but growing up there was never anything strange about strangers helping out, and somehow I found myself on the other side of the situation and just went with it.) One time she invited me over to her apartment for dinner to thank me, and out comes a box of Bisquick and a dinner composed of Bisquick-related dishes. Even today, in neither case can I really comprehend why Bisquick figured so prominently. I mean, from a dollar-and-cents standpoint, I can see the value, but I'm like 70% confident that in both cases neither families had no alternative but Bisquick. OTOH, you can't really second guess those decisions on the spot, and those periods are just snapshots in time. OTOOH, that doesn't imply people are making the most rational decisions. In any event, I guess the moral of the story is that there's an immense diversity of experiences even at the bottom of the income and wealth brackets, and we should be cautious drawing broad conclusions one way or another.
  - oh_sigh 3y ago
    Not to harp on it, but bisquick pancake mix perfectly exemplifies my point: The cheapest per unit bisquick they have at walmart is 6 lbs for $9.38. Keep in mind you still need to add your own milk and eggs to this anyway. Compare to home made: - 10 lbs bag of flour for $3.98, - 1 8.1 oz can of baking powder - $1.98 -- you'd have a few tablespoons leftover but let's just allot the whole can to it - 48 oz vegetable oil - $3.64 -- you'd use 20oz per 10 lbs flour, so $1.52 worth, with 28 oz remaining for other cooking. So, you can have 6 lbs of bisquick for $9.38, or 11 lbs of homemade mix for $7.48. That's $0.68/lbs homemade, versus $1.56/lbs for bisquick. You're paying about 2.5x in order to not dump a little bit of baking powder and oil into some flour. It's a bad financial decision to buy bisquick instead of the ingredients and DIY.