6 ms·

Many people are too poor to eat well. When all you can afford is spaghetti and potatoes, you will gain weight and experience suboptimal energy. You'll also be m

Many people are too poor to eat well. When all you can afford is spaghetti and potatoes, you will gain weight and experience suboptimal energy. You'll also be more likely to suffer anxiety, depression and get diabetes. Believe me, you don't think all that well either - decisions become more emotional than rational - so getting out of the hole gets even harder. Instead of finger pointing, chastising and instructing, I think more compassion is required when it comes to dealing with the complex issue of obesity.

Tycho 14y ago
Your two assertions that 1. Eating healthily is more expensive than eating junk 2. Eating poorly impairs your ability to think to the extent that you cannot be held responsible for your poor choice of diet I find them very hard to believe (even though I hear them often). Do you have any links to the studies or evidence that show this?
- skylan_q 14y ago
  "Eating healthily is more expensive than eating junk" This assertion is blatantly false. I can get full on excellent quality food for about the price of a mcdonald's meal + a bag of chips. I've eaten like crap, and I've eaten well. It's very cheap to eat healthy. Most people are just making excuses for not wanting to practice self-control or educate themselves.
  - TeMPOraL 14y ago
    > This assertion is blatantly false. I can get full on excellent quality food for about the price of a mcdonald's meal + a bag of chips. Not that kind of junk. Think ramen noodles.
  - kijin 14y ago
    A lot of people can't even afford a mcdonald's meal + a bag of chips. Everywhere I look, fat is cheaper than protein, white bread is cheaper than whole-grain multigrain bread, white rice is cheaper than brown rice, a pack of sugar is cheaper than the same weight in fresh fruits and veggies, and a bottle of sauce made with nothing but salt and MSG is cheaper than a bottle of sauce made with natural ingredients. When you need to feed 2 teenagers with a budget of single-digit dollars per day, every penny counts.
    - Tycho 14y ago
      Is it also cheaper to get overweight/obese on unhealthy food than consume just enough calories of healthy foodstuffs?
      - kijin 14y ago
        Assume that unhealthy food is $1/serving and 500kcal/serving. Assume that healthy food is $2/serving and 400kcal/serving. Assume that you need 2000kcal/day. A healthy diet costs $10 for "just enough calories". An unhealthy diet costs only $4 for the same calories. If you ate 3000kcal/day, it would still only cost $6. So yes, it can be cheaper to eat a lot of unhealthy food than to eat only a small amount of healthy food if the price differential is large enough. It's also easier to overdose on unhealthy food because the calories are so concentrated. A second bowl of ramen can contain 400 calories. A second head of lettuce might only have 40 calories. Of course, you might face a million-dollar loss 20 years later because of heart disease, but would it really enter the calculations of a single mom with a weekly grocery budget of $35?
    - eru 14y ago
      You can get protein for really cheap. You just have to get used to eating offal.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    Spoken like a person of privilege - a widespread epidemic clearly must be hordes of poor people too lazy to exercise self-control. Having lived in both incredibly poor neighborhoods and incredibly wealthy ones, I'll say this: It's possible to eat healthily in poor neighborhoods, it takes a lot of work - a lot more work than it does for a wealthy person living in a wealthy place. I've observed this in myself: I gained enormous amounts of weight while living in a poor, working-class neighborhood, and promptly shed it once I moved to a wealthy upper middle-class neighborhood. I've bounced back and forth between poor areas and rich areas since then, and the pattern has so far held up. But, anecdotes not equivalent to data, etc etc. In a upper-middle class neighborhood healthy diets practically come after you with a baseball bat. It's steeped in the general consciousness of the area, support by people who possess the freedom of finance, time, and effort to think about such things, and it's supported by the merchants in the area. The same is not true in poor neighborhoods, where fast is king to a population of overworked and tired people. When you're holding down multiple jobs and raising kids at the same time, the CSA subscription may be cheaper and healthier, but it also requires time you don't have. Merchant offerings in the area reflect this reality, and so even someone with the intent to eat healthily will find that availability of healthy food is substantially lower. We are fortunate in that we have the resources with which to abstract many annoying details away from our lives so we can concentrate on the important things: good bodily health, mental well-being, and the such. Most of the population isn't so lucky.
    - Tycho 14y ago
      Is obesity/overweightness worse in the poorer demographics than it is in the middle and upper classes? (rather than just more counter-intuitive)
      - potatolicious 14y ago
        Yes: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207163807.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207163807.ht... Though the relationship appears to have weakened in recent years: http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/are-low-income-people-at-greater-risk-for-overweight-or-obesity/ http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/are-low-incom... http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20050502/rich-poor-gap-narrowing-in-obesity http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20050502/rich-poor-gap-narrow...
  - tryitnow 14y ago
    "Most people are just making excuses for not wanting to practice self-control or educate themselves." This is true, but not a very useful thing to say. Trivial observations of others' moral failings are often a way for us to feel better about ourselves and our choices, but such statements are not solving the problem.
- rdl 14y ago
  If you live in the ghetto (where shopping options are corner stores or equivalent, not cheap hippie coops) and have no time (due to kids, poor time management, long hours at a low paying job, ...), don't have a real kitchen or any skills, etc., it is a lot harder to eat healthy and cheaply. The first part of #2 is true, but the latter part is more a moral or philosophical question.
- mistercow 14y ago
  >Eating poorly impairs your ability to think to the extent that you cannot be held responsible for your poor choice of diet You appear to have fallen into the trap of believing that the concepts of compassion and personal responsibility are at odds with each other. American politics have been poisoned by the same idea, and it's a real shame.
  - Tycho 14y ago
    Depends if you believe Judge not, so that ye shall not be judged Vs. Judge, and expect to be judged
skylan_q 14y ago
Swap the pasta for eggs.
eru 14y ago
I basically agree. Especially with the difficulty of getting out of the hole. You can live healthy on little money. But most people don't want to eat that kind of food. (George Orwell made a similar observation.) Potatoes are actually pretty healthy.

Tycho 14y ago

Your two assertions that 1. Eating healthily is more expensive than eating junk 2. Eating poorly impairs your ability to think to the extent that you cannot be held responsible for your poor choice of diet I find them very hard to believe (even though I hear them often). Do you have any links to the studies or evidence that show this?

skylan_q 14y ago
"Eating healthily is more expensive than eating junk" This assertion is blatantly false. I can get full on excellent quality food for about the price of a mcdonald's meal + a bag of chips. I've eaten like crap, and I've eaten well. It's very cheap to eat healthy. Most people are just making excuses for not wanting to practice self-control or educate themselves.
- TeMPOraL 14y ago
  > This assertion is blatantly false. I can get full on excellent quality food for about the price of a mcdonald's meal + a bag of chips. Not that kind of junk. Think ramen noodles.
- kijin 14y ago
  A lot of people can't even afford a mcdonald's meal + a bag of chips. Everywhere I look, fat is cheaper than protein, white bread is cheaper than whole-grain multigrain bread, white rice is cheaper than brown rice, a pack of sugar is cheaper than the same weight in fresh fruits and veggies, and a bottle of sauce made with nothing but salt and MSG is cheaper than a bottle of sauce made with natural ingredients. When you need to feed 2 teenagers with a budget of single-digit dollars per day, every penny counts.
  - Tycho 14y ago
    Is it also cheaper to get overweight/obese on unhealthy food than consume just enough calories of healthy foodstuffs?
    - kijin 14y ago
      Assume that unhealthy food is $1/serving and 500kcal/serving. Assume that healthy food is $2/serving and 400kcal/serving. Assume that you need 2000kcal/day. A healthy diet costs $10 for "just enough calories". An unhealthy diet costs only $4 for the same calories. If you ate 3000kcal/day, it would still only cost $6. So yes, it can be cheaper to eat a lot of unhealthy food than to eat only a small amount of healthy food if the price differential is large enough. It's also easier to overdose on unhealthy food because the calories are so concentrated. A second bowl of ramen can contain 400 calories. A second head of lettuce might only have 40 calories. Of course, you might face a million-dollar loss 20 years later because of heart disease, but would it really enter the calculations of a single mom with a weekly grocery budget of $35?
  - eru 14y ago
    You can get protein for really cheap. You just have to get used to eating offal.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Spoken like a person of privilege - a widespread epidemic clearly must be hordes of poor people too lazy to exercise self-control. Having lived in both incredibly poor neighborhoods and incredibly wealthy ones, I'll say this: It's possible to eat healthily in poor neighborhoods, it takes a lot of work - a lot more work than it does for a wealthy person living in a wealthy place. I've observed this in myself: I gained enormous amounts of weight while living in a poor, working-class neighborhood, and promptly shed it once I moved to a wealthy upper middle-class neighborhood. I've bounced back and forth between poor areas and rich areas since then, and the pattern has so far held up. But, anecdotes not equivalent to data, etc etc. In a upper-middle class neighborhood healthy diets practically come after you with a baseball bat. It's steeped in the general consciousness of the area, support by people who possess the freedom of finance, time, and effort to think about such things, and it's supported by the merchants in the area. The same is not true in poor neighborhoods, where fast is king to a population of overworked and tired people. When you're holding down multiple jobs and raising kids at the same time, the CSA subscription may be cheaper and healthier, but it also requires time you don't have. Merchant offerings in the area reflect this reality, and so even someone with the intent to eat healthily will find that availability of healthy food is substantially lower. We are fortunate in that we have the resources with which to abstract many annoying details away from our lives so we can concentrate on the important things: good bodily health, mental well-being, and the such. Most of the population isn't so lucky.
  - Tycho 14y ago
    Is obesity/overweightness worse in the poorer demographics than it is in the middle and upper classes? (rather than just more counter-intuitive)
    - potatolicious 14y ago
      Yes: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207163807.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207163807.ht... Though the relationship appears to have weakened in recent years: http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/are-low-income-people-at-greater-risk-for-overweight-or-obesity/ http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/are-low-incom... http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20050502/rich-poor-gap-narrowing-in-obesity http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20050502/rich-poor-gap-narrow...
- tryitnow 14y ago
  "Most people are just making excuses for not wanting to practice self-control or educate themselves." This is true, but not a very useful thing to say. Trivial observations of others' moral failings are often a way for us to feel better about ourselves and our choices, but such statements are not solving the problem.
rdl 14y ago
If you live in the ghetto (where shopping options are corner stores or equivalent, not cheap hippie coops) and have no time (due to kids, poor time management, long hours at a low paying job, ...), don't have a real kitchen or any skills, etc., it is a lot harder to eat healthy and cheaply. The first part of #2 is true, but the latter part is more a moral or philosophical question.
mistercow 14y ago
>Eating poorly impairs your ability to think to the extent that you cannot be held responsible for your poor choice of diet You appear to have fallen into the trap of believing that the concepts of compassion and personal responsibility are at odds with each other. American politics have been poisoned by the same idea, and it's a real shame.
- Tycho 14y ago
  Depends if you believe Judge not, so that ye shall not be judged Vs. Judge, and expect to be judged

skylan_q 14y ago

Swap the pasta for eggs.

eru 14y ago

I basically agree. Especially with the difficulty of getting out of the hole. You can live healthy on little money. But most people don't want to eat that kind of food. (George Orwell made a similar observation.) Potatoes are actually pretty healthy.