5 ms·

One-sixth of Americans don’t have enough food to eat

43 points by zvanness 12y ago

ocfx 12y ago
the people in that picture look like they eat plenty
jehb 12y ago
The other five-sixths of us have too much.
- AJ007 12y ago
  Several of the people pictured in the story are overweight. The cruel irony is that if the price support for wheat/corn/soybean processed food was removed these people would get to feel what physical starvation was like.
  - stefan_kendall3 12y ago
    Yeah, because corn, wheat, and soybean are inelastic goods, am I right? I can't go 3 days without that sweet sweet soybean oil, or I will literally starve to death. I'd actually draw the supply and demand curve and what would happen to the various suppliers and buyers if the subsidies were removed, but I'm afraid I would get labeled a dirty Randian and branded a heretic.
greyskull 12y ago
I'm not denying that there are relevant problems that should be addressed, but why are all these families having kids, multiple even, if they're not fit to raise them? I'm not saying they deserve it, but is it really all that surprising that one or two low-wage adults aren't able to provide for themselves on top of growing children? I'm sure there are families with no kids also facing difficulties, but damn, people! Also, I'd like to see the breakdown of these families' budgets. Where is their money going? If they're like most Americans, they're likely pissing money away needlessly. The cynic in me is showing again.
- hueving 12y ago
  They usually don't choose to conceive. Another factor is poor planning. Many people don't budget in the fact that one parent could be unemployed for months on end.
  - frio 12y ago
    I think this deserves extra attention. America has a weird cultural thing at play here; the religious right seem to be strongly anti-contraception (the recent Hobby Lobby decision being a good example). Yet, when the inevitable happens and a child is unexpectedly conceived, there doesn't appear to be much in way of a support structure. I'd be happy to be wrong on the second part.
- aianus 12y ago
  My politically incorrect opinion: the same factors that cause them to be poor influence how many children they have, poor decision making and low impulse control. That and the fact that having children makes them poor by robbing them of the time to improve themselves and earn a higher salary.
  - throwaway7548 12y ago
    And they are also likely to be happier than you are ;) Primarily because of the same factors that you've mentioned.
    - qq66 12y ago
      If that's true, which is doubtful, then their problems should become a 2nd priority, since our 1st priorities should be improving the happiness of the least happy.
  - mercer 12y ago
    I'm not sure if that in itself is a politically incorrect opinion. The link between success and impulse control is, as far as I know, pretty well established and agreed upon. It's the conclusion that you draw from this that matters. Is poor decision making and low impulse control also just a consequence of poverty, of being born in an environment that does not nurture these skills? Or does the buck stop there and do these poor people only have themselves to blame? The same applies to addiction, whether to a particular substance or obesity-related. It was only when I spent some time in Texas that I realized how much harder it is to eat well and exercise compared to my life in Amsterdam! Or religion. Having experienced both a very religious life, and a very 'secular' life, the one thing it taught me is how little, in the end, my behavior and beliefs were shaped by my 'individual' thoughts and decisions. Very humbling. I tend to be on the no-blame side on these issues, as I strongly believe we're much less 'individuals' than we think, and much more a product of our upbringing and our path in life, which is to a large degree out of our hand. The ability to make choices is, in itself, largely not a choice. I hold that position because I've seen and experienced how fragile and context-dependent people are, and because there are volumes of research that support this. I also believe it is, regardless of the facts, a more optimistic, constructive, and humble approach to life. It reminds me am not the product of (just) my own willpower and craftiness; I am the product of nurturing parents, a good education, a relatively stable upbringing, and inspiring, like-minded friends and acquaintances.
fossuser 12y ago
> It can be tempting to ask families receiving food assistance, If you’re really hungry, then how can you be—as many of them are—overweight? The answer is “this paradox that hunger and obesity are two sides of the same coin,” says Melissa Boteach, vice president of the Poverty and Prosperity Program of the Center for American Progress, “people making trade-offs between food that’s filling but not nutritious and may actually contribute to obesity.” For many of the hungry in America, the extra pounds that result from a poor diet are collateral damage—an unintended side effect of hunger itself. This doesn't make sense to me. Doesn't calorie intake directly correlate with gaining weight? From earlier in the article: > Chances are good that if you picture what hunger looks like, you don’t summon an image of someone like Christina Dreier: white, married, clothed, and housed, even a bit overweight. The image of hunger in America today differs markedly from Depression-era images of the gaunt-faced unemployed scavenging for food on urban streets. “This is not your grandmother’s hunger Is this not because the people in the depression era were actually starving? I'm not intending to downplay the issues here, but I find it hard to follow the disconnect of people being overweight not having enough food to eat.
- xherberta 12y ago
  It's a disconnect that's not unique to the families NG interviewed. Take the Pima native Americans in 1905, where the women, who were quite physically active, basically treated like beasts of burden, had a distressingly high obesity rate, though these families were given a limited ration from the government, mostly white flour and sugar, and not more than 2000 calories per person per day. You can find the same trend in 1928 with Sioux on a South Dakota Crow Creek Reservation--very high levels of obesity in coincidence with extreme poverty. In the early 1960s, MIT nutritionists calculated that Trinidadians were getting no more than 2000 calories per day, yet they were seeing an extreme obesity problem among the females. Your (calories in = calories stored + calories used) basis for judging other human beings fails because these are not independent variables. Metabolic rate is not constant. If you feed your body few calories, your metabolism adjusts so as to use fewer calories and store more. If you skip some meals, your metabolism is receiving a signal that it had better use the absolute minimum and store the rest to be used in future food crises. A high-carbohydrate meal causes insulin to be released, and insulin causes sugars in the bloodstream to be stored as fat. And then your blood sugar is low, and you're hungry again. Have you ever noticed the intense hunger that follows an hour or two after a carb binge? Fat cells that are stimulated to grow (by insulin) scream loud for their share of the energy, just as a growing child's appetite is caused by hormonal messaging for growth and not the other way around. Fat cells scream loud, ensuring that they get their needs met even if the rest of you is weak, tired, and resorting to stealing energy from muscle, the brain, and other tissues. Also, preservatives, additives, and high-sodium foods can cause a person to retain water, which can add to weight independent of caloric intake. In an older discussion on this issue, travisp shared this article: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154 http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154 >Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance >The results of our study challenge the notion that a calorie is a calorie from a metabolic perspective. During isocaloric feeding following weight loss, REE was 67 kcal/d higher with the very low-carbohydrate diet compared with the low-fat diet. TEE differed by approximately 300 kcal/d between these 2 diets, an effect corresponding with the amount of energy typically expended in 1 hour of moderate-intensity physical activity >In conclusion, our study demonstrates that commonly consumed diets can affect metabolism and components of the metabolic syndrome in markedly different ways during weight-loss maintenance, independent of energy content. The low-fat diet produced changes in energy expenditure and serum leptin42- 44 that would predict weight regain. In addition, this conventionally recommended diet had unfavorable effects on most of the metabolic syndrome components studied herein. In contrast, the very low-carbohydrate diet had the most beneficial effects on energy expenditure and several metabolic syndrome components, but this restrictive regimen may increase cortisol excretion and CRP. If you consider yourself a scientifically-minded, follow-the-research type, it's time to re-evaluate your (calories in = calories stored + calories used) hypothesis.
cscurmudgeon 12y ago
Problems like this make me feel we need two parallel governments and you could subscribe to either. 1. Govt 1: Nanny state. Will support you if you get poor, but you agree to controls on your life. 2. Govt 2: Do whatever. Don't come crying if you crash and burn.
- viraptor 12y ago
  I'd say this is false dichotomy. Version 1 does not have to control your life. They would have to use more reporting on peoples' lives, (so that it's known who is actually poor and whether people are paying into the pool) but that doesn't mean controlling them. At least not in the way this sentence seems to imply.
  - cscurmudgeon 12y ago
    Taxation is just fungible control. I largely meant paying more taxes. But some amount of control might be needed. E.g., more stricter drug laws, there should be some financial friction on reproduction based on number and age (9 kids at 31 is just amazing).
    - throwaway7548 12y ago
      In 1800-ies the typical American mother bore 7 children. So nothing amazing. Standard human biology.
      - cscurmudgeon 12y ago
        Um. Yeah. I was not talking about human biology here. The quality of life of the lady mentioned is not that different from an 1800s American middle class person.
- JackFr 12y ago
  I find it interesting, that the article seems to view the fact that the family has to supplement their SNAP assistance with visits to a food pantry as a problem, rather than something to be happy about. Indeed, poverty, hunger and food insecurity are awful, but why is it more attractive for amelioration of these conditions to come from the Federal government, than from non-governmental actors?
zkirill 12y ago
Of course it is possible to eat well cheaply in America, but it takes resources and know-how that many low-income Americans don’t have. I think that more food education, especially at a young age, could play a big part in addressing this problem and I wish that the article expanded more on this. I don't know if schools currently have any curriculum revolving around cooking, nutrition and reducing food waste but it could go a long way to prepare these children for rising food prices and the abundance of cheap, low-quality food products. Edit: grammar
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
antidamage 12y ago
Are the rest obese?
frio 12y ago
As a visiting New Zealander, the one thing I've noticed about the American price structure is that food is reasonably expensive, while superfluous goods aren't. A decent-ish pair of shoes is $50USD; a board game off Amazon $35, (which I'll admit to blitzing while visiting!). Both would probably set you back a minimum of $120NZD back home. Comparatively, our food is cheaper, and generally healthier (Whole Foods feels the closest to a New Zealand supermarket; lots of fresh fruit, vegetables, bulk bins). The other surprising thing is that debit cards are new-ish here; credit cards are prevalent. Couple the accompanying fees (?) with pricing structures that are less declarative (food advertised sans tax; tipping expected), and it's more difficult to budget. Further, having/using credit means it's always tempting to dip further into it. In comparison, we've had EFTPOS (debit) for decades, sales tax is included in the advertised price, and there isn't a tipping culture. NZ has its own problems with growing inequality which need addressing, and this is anecdata at best, but I can see why avoiding temptation and sticking to a good budget might be more troublesome.
- bpodgursky 12y ago
  Where are you shopping? While the average american supermarket (Kroger, Gerbes, Safeway, Wal-Mart) has a lot of unhealthy food available, there are also a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables. Whole foods is a REALLY bad example of the average cost of food in the US--it's well known for being expensive and catering to the organic/locally grown/whatever crowd. You're not going to get an accurate idea of US food prices shopping there.
  - frio 12y ago
    Sure, I'm aware that costs are higher at Whole Foods :). Sorry, I shouldn't have left that unqualified. I've been elsewhere too; they just had a selection which reminded me the most of a supermarket at home (partly because this particular one wasn't massively oversized like the Wal-Mart I visited -- everything here is bigger!). I'm also staying in an area (Downtown in an nice city) where food would be more expensive anyway, which may be influencing my perception. So, again -- it's just an anecdote, but the area I'm in back home is generally regarded as an expensive one too.
  - 12y ago
rdmcfee 12y ago
Mrs. Dreier looks to be at least 20kg overweight. She could quite healthily fast for at least 3 months living of of those reserves plus some magnesium supplements. It has been done before with great success: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/pdf/postmedj00315-0056.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/pdf/post...
- xherberta 12y ago
  Hmm. Do you want to pay for the medical supervision she'll need for that fast? Healthy food might be cheaper.
apsec112 12y ago
"In 2006 the U.S. government replaced “hunger” with the term “food insecure” to describe any household where, sometime during the previous year, people didn’t have enough food to eat. By whatever name, the number of people going hungry has grown dramatically in the U.S., increasing to 48 million by 2012... " There are lots of people in the US in terrible situations, and we should try to help them, but that does not give reporters a license to make up facts. "Food insecurity" does not mean that people are going hungry. It means people who are "at risk of" going hungry, a much broader group. From the Texas Food Bank Network (http://tfbn.org/food-insecurity/ http://tfbn.org/food-insecurity/): "What does “food insecure” NOT mean? Food insecurity is not “the government’s definition of hunger.” It is a broader term that captures outright hunger and the coping mechanisms that households use to avoid hunger. Food insecurity is a household situation, not an individual situation. While food insecurity affects everyone in a household, it may affect them differently. Therefore it is not correct to state that specific individuals in a food insecure household (such as children) definitely experience outright hunger or specific coping mechanisms. Rather than describing these individuals as being “food insecure”, they should be referred to as “living in a food insecure home.” Food insecurity is a year-long measure. Therefore, it is not correct to assert that every food insecure household is experiencing food insecurity “right now,” will experience hunger “tonight” or “does not know where their next meal is coming from.” Research shows that food insecurity tends to be episodic and often cyclical. Food insecurity does not mean that a household lacks access to grocery stores, lives in a “food desert,” or does not have time to shop/cook. It only refers to lack of food access based on financial and other material resources." A much better, but less pageview-generating, term for the problem a large number of Americans face is "malnutrition". If you are malnourished, you may not be going hungry (and may actually be overweight), but still don't get the nutrients you need to be healthy.
tokenadult 12y ago
I saw the chart of "more than half a mile from a supermarket," and I recalled that for as long as I have lived in my current neighborhood (since mid-2001), all my children have known how to walk along with me a mile out and a mile back to shop for groceries and carry them home. I have been doing something more or less like this most of my adult life. Sometimes I would walk for a while before catching a bus home from my grocery shopping, or sometimes share rides with friends who had cars and go on shopping trips together at especially inexpensive discount grocery stores, but whether traveling farther or nearer, I always preferred buying food in grocery stores and preparing it at home to buying fast food. Always. My children have grown up into slim and athletic adults, perhaps because for them eating is something they do after engaging in exercise. Yeah, some places in the United States (and some of those are featured in the article kindly submitted here) are a lot lousier even than the Near North Side of Minneapolis for taking walks outside or for finding any access at all to a grocery store, but for the most part the first thing to change here is the trade-off of how far to travel by what means for what kind of food. That will promote better health, even with very low incomes.
skittles 12y ago
The U.S. is full of people that can barely make it to the next paycheck, but they'll have an iPhone, a car, cable tv, cigarettes, etc. Unless you are taking public transportation to your 2 jobs without all the consumer goods I've mentioned, then you aren't poor.
drewcon 12y ago
We spend less on food than ever before. http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1009/50-years-of-consumer-spending.aspx http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1009/50-years-of-... We spend less on food than any other nation. http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/03/daily-chart-5 http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/03/daily-c... It's debatable that food deserts are a thing. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of-food-deserts-and-obesity-challenged-in-studies.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of...
- oh_sigh 12y ago
  Isn't that last article saying that food deserts aren't necessarily correlated with obesity?
  - drewcon 12y ago
    Correct. The questionable correlation in the original article is: Good food is simply not available in low income neighborhoods >people are forced to make make cheaper choices >they become obese and malnourished. The times article cites studies that call that into question, citing apparent actual availability in those areas and focusing more on people just making poor choices. I'm no expert, but sheer economics does not seem to be primary influencer causing current outcomes.
    - oh_sigh 12y ago
      Okay. I just wanted to point out that your original post makes it sound like "Food deserts don't exist". Not "Food deserts aren't necessarily correlated with obesity"
naturalethic 12y ago
bullshit
xherberta 12y ago
Here's a visual approach to cost per calorie: http://www.mymoneyblog.com/what-does-200-calories-cost-the-economics-of-obesity.html http://www.mymoneyblog.com/what-does-200-calories-cost-the-e... When I made my own cost-per-calorie calculations, I found that the much maligned non-synthetic FATS are a wonderfully cheap source of calories. They're nutritious, satisfying, and make veggies taste great. There's a lot of bias against fat, and most Americans believe that eating fat makes you fat, but what does the evidence say? Look to the research, and you'll see that the opposite is true, provided you're staying away from vegetable oils and trans-fats. Here's a sample from my calculations, for comparison with the link above (where foods were chosen to make the point that low-cost foods are bad for you). I live where food is pretty cheap. The most economical picks are very unpopular, I suppose because of the popular non-evidence-based, government-touted slander of eating a high-fat diet. Yes, it's bad for rodents. I'll give you that. But when you look at humans who are eating high-fat AND low carb, the research looks pretty awesome. And we could use more of it. All prices are per 200 calories. (Grass fed items and etc. included to show the level of health and principle that can be achieved while keeping it cheap): Trader Joe's PEANUT BUTTER (non-hydrogenated, no sugar added) $.10 OLIVE OIL $.14 Roasted SUNFLOWER SEEDS, $.14, MAYO (fancy, safflower oil with no canola or soy) $.22 DRY LENTILS $.24 BACON ENDS $.26 ALMOND MEAL $.38 CANNED COCONUT CREAM $.32 Grass fed BUTTER $.36 CREAM $.38 REFRIED BEANS(canned)$.40 SOUR CREAM $.44 SWEET POTATO $.50 WHOLE CHICKEN $.56 COTTAGE CHEESE $.60 EGGS (local) $.70 YOGURT (plain,full fat)$.88 GROUND BEEF grass fed $1.38 Apples $1.40 GREEN BEANS (frozen) $2.00 Chicken Breasts ($5/lb)$2.00

43 points by zvanness 12y ago

ocfx 12y ago

the people in that picture look like they eat plenty

jehb 12y ago

The other five-sixths of us have too much.

AJ007 12y ago
Several of the people pictured in the story are overweight. The cruel irony is that if the price support for wheat/corn/soybean processed food was removed these people would get to feel what physical starvation was like.
- stefan_kendall3 12y ago
  Yeah, because corn, wheat, and soybean are inelastic goods, am I right? I can't go 3 days without that sweet sweet soybean oil, or I will literally starve to death. I'd actually draw the supply and demand curve and what would happen to the various suppliers and buyers if the subsidies were removed, but I'm afraid I would get labeled a dirty Randian and branded a heretic.

greyskull 12y ago

I'm not denying that there are relevant problems that should be addressed, but why are all these families having kids, multiple even, if they're not fit to raise them? I'm not saying they deserve it, but is it really all that surprising that one or two low-wage adults aren't able to provide for themselves on top of growing children? I'm sure there are families with no kids also facing difficulties, but damn, people! Also, I'd like to see the breakdown of these families' budgets. Where is their money going? If they're like most Americans, they're likely pissing money away needlessly. The cynic in me is showing again.

hueving 12y ago
They usually don't choose to conceive. Another factor is poor planning. Many people don't budget in the fact that one parent could be unemployed for months on end.
- frio 12y ago
  I think this deserves extra attention. America has a weird cultural thing at play here; the religious right seem to be strongly anti-contraception (the recent Hobby Lobby decision being a good example). Yet, when the inevitable happens and a child is unexpectedly conceived, there doesn't appear to be much in way of a support structure. I'd be happy to be wrong on the second part.
aianus 12y ago
My politically incorrect opinion: the same factors that cause them to be poor influence how many children they have, poor decision making and low impulse control. That and the fact that having children makes them poor by robbing them of the time to improve themselves and earn a higher salary.
- throwaway7548 12y ago
  And they are also likely to be happier than you are ;) Primarily because of the same factors that you've mentioned.
  - qq66 12y ago
    If that's true, which is doubtful, then their problems should become a 2nd priority, since our 1st priorities should be improving the happiness of the least happy.
- mercer 12y ago
  I'm not sure if that in itself is a politically incorrect opinion. The link between success and impulse control is, as far as I know, pretty well established and agreed upon. It's the conclusion that you draw from this that matters. Is poor decision making and low impulse control also just a consequence of poverty, of being born in an environment that does not nurture these skills? Or does the buck stop there and do these poor people only have themselves to blame? The same applies to addiction, whether to a particular substance or obesity-related. It was only when I spent some time in Texas that I realized how much harder it is to eat well and exercise compared to my life in Amsterdam! Or religion. Having experienced both a very religious life, and a very 'secular' life, the one thing it taught me is how little, in the end, my behavior and beliefs were shaped by my 'individual' thoughts and decisions. Very humbling. I tend to be on the no-blame side on these issues, as I strongly believe we're much less 'individuals' than we think, and much more a product of our upbringing and our path in life, which is to a large degree out of our hand. The ability to make choices is, in itself, largely not a choice. I hold that position because I've seen and experienced how fragile and context-dependent people are, and because there are volumes of research that support this. I also believe it is, regardless of the facts, a more optimistic, constructive, and humble approach to life. It reminds me am not the product of (just) my own willpower and craftiness; I am the product of nurturing parents, a good education, a relatively stable upbringing, and inspiring, like-minded friends and acquaintances.

fossuser 12y ago

> It can be tempting to ask families receiving food assistance, If you’re really hungry, then how can you be—as many of them are—overweight? The answer is “this paradox that hunger and obesity are two sides of the same coin,” says Melissa Boteach, vice president of the Poverty and Prosperity Program of the Center for American Progress, “people making trade-offs between food that’s filling but not nutritious and may actually contribute to obesity.” For many of the hungry in America, the extra pounds that result from a poor diet are collateral damage—an unintended side effect of hunger itself. This doesn't make sense to me. Doesn't calorie intake directly correlate with gaining weight? From earlier in the article: > Chances are good that if you picture what hunger looks like, you don’t summon an image of someone like Christina Dreier: white, married, clothed, and housed, even a bit overweight. The image of hunger in America today differs markedly from Depression-era images of the gaunt-faced unemployed scavenging for food on urban streets. “This is not your grandmother’s hunger Is this not because the people in the depression era were actually starving? I'm not intending to downplay the issues here, but I find it hard to follow the disconnect of people being overweight not having enough food to eat.

xherberta 12y ago
It's a disconnect that's not unique to the families NG interviewed. Take the Pima native Americans in 1905, where the women, who were quite physically active, basically treated like beasts of burden, had a distressingly high obesity rate, though these families were given a limited ration from the government, mostly white flour and sugar, and not more than 2000 calories per person per day. You can find the same trend in 1928 with Sioux on a South Dakota Crow Creek Reservation--very high levels of obesity in coincidence with extreme poverty. In the early 1960s, MIT nutritionists calculated that Trinidadians were getting no more than 2000 calories per day, yet they were seeing an extreme obesity problem among the females. Your (calories in = calories stored + calories used) basis for judging other human beings fails because these are not independent variables. Metabolic rate is not constant. If you feed your body few calories, your metabolism adjusts so as to use fewer calories and store more. If you skip some meals, your metabolism is receiving a signal that it had better use the absolute minimum and store the rest to be used in future food crises. A high-carbohydrate meal causes insulin to be released, and insulin causes sugars in the bloodstream to be stored as fat. And then your blood sugar is low, and you're hungry again. Have you ever noticed the intense hunger that follows an hour or two after a carb binge? Fat cells that are stimulated to grow (by insulin) scream loud for their share of the energy, just as a growing child's appetite is caused by hormonal messaging for growth and not the other way around. Fat cells scream loud, ensuring that they get their needs met even if the rest of you is weak, tired, and resorting to stealing energy from muscle, the brain, and other tissues. Also, preservatives, additives, and high-sodium foods can cause a person to retain water, which can add to weight independent of caloric intake. In an older discussion on this issue, travisp shared this article: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154 http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154 >Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance >The results of our study challenge the notion that a calorie is a calorie from a metabolic perspective. During isocaloric feeding following weight loss, REE was 67 kcal/d higher with the very low-carbohydrate diet compared with the low-fat diet. TEE differed by approximately 300 kcal/d between these 2 diets, an effect corresponding with the amount of energy typically expended in 1 hour of moderate-intensity physical activity >In conclusion, our study demonstrates that commonly consumed diets can affect metabolism and components of the metabolic syndrome in markedly different ways during weight-loss maintenance, independent of energy content. The low-fat diet produced changes in energy expenditure and serum leptin42- 44 that would predict weight regain. In addition, this conventionally recommended diet had unfavorable effects on most of the metabolic syndrome components studied herein. In contrast, the very low-carbohydrate diet had the most beneficial effects on energy expenditure and several metabolic syndrome components, but this restrictive regimen may increase cortisol excretion and CRP. If you consider yourself a scientifically-minded, follow-the-research type, it's time to re-evaluate your (calories in = calories stored + calories used) hypothesis.

cscurmudgeon 12y ago

Problems like this make me feel we need two parallel governments and you could subscribe to either. 1. Govt 1: Nanny state. Will support you if you get poor, but you agree to controls on your life. 2. Govt 2: Do whatever. Don't come crying if you crash and burn.

viraptor 12y ago
I'd say this is false dichotomy. Version 1 does not have to control your life. They would have to use more reporting on peoples' lives, (so that it's known who is actually poor and whether people are paying into the pool) but that doesn't mean controlling them. At least not in the way this sentence seems to imply.
- cscurmudgeon 12y ago
  Taxation is just fungible control. I largely meant paying more taxes. But some amount of control might be needed. E.g., more stricter drug laws, there should be some financial friction on reproduction based on number and age (9 kids at 31 is just amazing).
  - throwaway7548 12y ago
    In 1800-ies the typical American mother bore 7 children. So nothing amazing. Standard human biology.
    - cscurmudgeon 12y ago
      Um. Yeah. I was not talking about human biology here. The quality of life of the lady mentioned is not that different from an 1800s American middle class person.
JackFr 12y ago
I find it interesting, that the article seems to view the fact that the family has to supplement their SNAP assistance with visits to a food pantry as a problem, rather than something to be happy about. Indeed, poverty, hunger and food insecurity are awful, but why is it more attractive for amelioration of these conditions to come from the Federal government, than from non-governmental actors?

zkirill 12y ago

Of course it is possible to eat well cheaply in America, but it takes resources and know-how that many low-income Americans don’t have. I think that more food education, especially at a young age, could play a big part in addressing this problem and I wish that the article expanded more on this. I don't know if schools currently have any curriculum revolving around cooking, nutrition and reducing food waste but it could go a long way to prepare these children for rising food prices and the abundance of cheap, low-quality food products. Edit: grammar

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

antidamage 12y ago

Are the rest obese?

frio 12y ago

As a visiting New Zealander, the one thing I've noticed about the American price structure is that food is reasonably expensive, while superfluous goods aren't. A decent-ish pair of shoes is $50USD; a board game off Amazon $35, (which I'll admit to blitzing while visiting!). Both would probably set you back a minimum of $120NZD back home. Comparatively, our food is cheaper, and generally healthier (Whole Foods feels the closest to a New Zealand supermarket; lots of fresh fruit, vegetables, bulk bins). The other surprising thing is that debit cards are new-ish here; credit cards are prevalent. Couple the accompanying fees (?) with pricing structures that are less declarative (food advertised sans tax; tipping expected), and it's more difficult to budget. Further, having/using credit means it's always tempting to dip further into it. In comparison, we've had EFTPOS (debit) for decades, sales tax is included in the advertised price, and there isn't a tipping culture. NZ has its own problems with growing inequality which need addressing, and this is anecdata at best, but I can see why avoiding temptation and sticking to a good budget might be more troublesome.

bpodgursky 12y ago
Where are you shopping? While the average american supermarket (Kroger, Gerbes, Safeway, Wal-Mart) has a lot of unhealthy food available, there are also a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables. Whole foods is a REALLY bad example of the average cost of food in the US--it's well known for being expensive and catering to the organic/locally grown/whatever crowd. You're not going to get an accurate idea of US food prices shopping there.
- frio 12y ago
  Sure, I'm aware that costs are higher at Whole Foods :). Sorry, I shouldn't have left that unqualified. I've been elsewhere too; they just had a selection which reminded me the most of a supermarket at home (partly because this particular one wasn't massively oversized like the Wal-Mart I visited -- everything here is bigger!). I'm also staying in an area (Downtown in an nice city) where food would be more expensive anyway, which may be influencing my perception. So, again -- it's just an anecdote, but the area I'm in back home is generally regarded as an expensive one too.
- 12y ago

rdmcfee 12y ago

Mrs. Dreier looks to be at least 20kg overweight. She could quite healthily fast for at least 3 months living of of those reserves plus some magnesium supplements. It has been done before with great success: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/pdf/postmedj00315-0056.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/pdf/post...

xherberta 12y ago
Hmm. Do you want to pay for the medical supervision she'll need for that fast? Healthy food might be cheaper.

apsec112 12y ago

"In 2006 the U.S. government replaced “hunger” with the term “food insecure” to describe any household where, sometime during the previous year, people didn’t have enough food to eat. By whatever name, the number of people going hungry has grown dramatically in the U.S., increasing to 48 million by 2012... " There are lots of people in the US in terrible situations, and we should try to help them, but that does not give reporters a license to make up facts. "Food insecurity" does not mean that people are going hungry. It means people who are "at risk of" going hungry, a much broader group. From the Texas Food Bank Network (http://tfbn.org/food-insecurity/ http://tfbn.org/food-insecurity/): "What does “food insecure” NOT mean? Food insecurity is not “the government’s definition of hunger.” It is a broader term that captures outright hunger and the coping mechanisms that households use to avoid hunger. Food insecurity is a household situation, not an individual situation. While food insecurity affects everyone in a household, it may affect them differently. Therefore it is not correct to state that specific individuals in a food insecure household (such as children) definitely experience outright hunger or specific coping mechanisms. Rather than describing these individuals as being “food insecure”, they should be referred to as “living in a food insecure home.” Food insecurity is a year-long measure. Therefore, it is not correct to assert that every food insecure household is experiencing food insecurity “right now,” will experience hunger “tonight” or “does not know where their next meal is coming from.” Research shows that food insecurity tends to be episodic and often cyclical. Food insecurity does not mean that a household lacks access to grocery stores, lives in a “food desert,” or does not have time to shop/cook. It only refers to lack of food access based on financial and other material resources." A much better, but less pageview-generating, term for the problem a large number of Americans face is "malnutrition". If you are malnourished, you may not be going hungry (and may actually be overweight), but still don't get the nutrients you need to be healthy.

tokenadult 12y ago

I saw the chart of "more than half a mile from a supermarket," and I recalled that for as long as I have lived in my current neighborhood (since mid-2001), all my children have known how to walk along with me a mile out and a mile back to shop for groceries and carry them home. I have been doing something more or less like this most of my adult life. Sometimes I would walk for a while before catching a bus home from my grocery shopping, or sometimes share rides with friends who had cars and go on shopping trips together at especially inexpensive discount grocery stores, but whether traveling farther or nearer, I always preferred buying food in grocery stores and preparing it at home to buying fast food. Always. My children have grown up into slim and athletic adults, perhaps because for them eating is something they do after engaging in exercise. Yeah, some places in the United States (and some of those are featured in the article kindly submitted here) are a lot lousier even than the Near North Side of Minneapolis for taking walks outside or for finding any access at all to a grocery store, but for the most part the first thing to change here is the trade-off of how far to travel by what means for what kind of food. That will promote better health, even with very low incomes.

skittles 12y ago

The U.S. is full of people that can barely make it to the next paycheck, but they'll have an iPhone, a car, cable tv, cigarettes, etc. Unless you are taking public transportation to your 2 jobs without all the consumer goods I've mentioned, then you aren't poor.

drewcon 12y ago

We spend less on food than ever before. http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1009/50-years-of-consumer-spending.aspx http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1009/50-years-of-... We spend less on food than any other nation. http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/03/daily-chart-5 http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/03/daily-c... It's debatable that food deserts are a thing. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of-food-deserts-and-obesity-challenged-in-studies.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of...

oh_sigh 12y ago
Isn't that last article saying that food deserts aren't necessarily correlated with obesity?
- drewcon 12y ago
  Correct. The questionable correlation in the original article is: Good food is simply not available in low income neighborhoods >people are forced to make make cheaper choices >they become obese and malnourished. The times article cites studies that call that into question, citing apparent actual availability in those areas and focusing more on people just making poor choices. I'm no expert, but sheer economics does not seem to be primary influencer causing current outcomes.
  - oh_sigh 12y ago
    Okay. I just wanted to point out that your original post makes it sound like "Food deserts don't exist". Not "Food deserts aren't necessarily correlated with obesity"

naturalethic 12y ago

bullshit

xherberta 12y ago

Here's a visual approach to cost per calorie: http://www.mymoneyblog.com/what-does-200-calories-cost-the-economics-of-obesity.html http://www.mymoneyblog.com/what-does-200-calories-cost-the-e... When I made my own cost-per-calorie calculations, I found that the much maligned non-synthetic FATS are a wonderfully cheap source of calories. They're nutritious, satisfying, and make veggies taste great. There's a lot of bias against fat, and most Americans believe that eating fat makes you fat, but what does the evidence say? Look to the research, and you'll see that the opposite is true, provided you're staying away from vegetable oils and trans-fats. Here's a sample from my calculations, for comparison with the link above (where foods were chosen to make the point that low-cost foods are bad for you). I live where food is pretty cheap. The most economical picks are very unpopular, I suppose because of the popular non-evidence-based, government-touted slander of eating a high-fat diet. Yes, it's bad for rodents. I'll give you that. But when you look at humans who are eating high-fat AND low carb, the research looks pretty awesome. And we could use more of it. All prices are per 200 calories. (Grass fed items and etc. included to show the level of health and principle that can be achieved while keeping it cheap): Trader Joe's PEANUT BUTTER (non-hydrogenated, no sugar added) $.10 OLIVE OIL $.14 Roasted SUNFLOWER SEEDS, $.14, MAYO (fancy, safflower oil with no canola or soy) $.22 DRY LENTILS $.24 BACON ENDS $.26 ALMOND MEAL $.38 CANNED COCONUT CREAM $.32 Grass fed BUTTER $.36 CREAM $.38 REFRIED BEANS(canned)$.40 SOUR CREAM $.44 SWEET POTATO $.50 WHOLE CHICKEN $.56 COTTAGE CHEESE $.60 EGGS (local) $.70 YOGURT (plain,full fat)$.88 GROUND BEEF grass fed $1.38 Apples $1.40 GREEN BEANS (frozen) $2.00 Chicken Breasts ($5/lb)$2.00