# How do women in poverty become obese? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 12, 2017, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123 "2017-07-12T20:14:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/101 "2017-07-13T23:54:56Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > Home Ec? WTF? I’m approaching 40 (37) and I nor anyone I know has taken Home Ec. How long has it been since such classes have been taught _anywhere_? I hear “home ec” and I think of I Love Lucy. lol I’m a couple of years younger than you and we definitely had Home Ec classes in primary _and_ high school; I grew up in New Zealand. They were invaluable - taught me basic cooking (which I expanded upon as I got older), sewing (I can repair minor tears, reattach buttons, things like that) and important things like food hygiene and other random but useful “around the house” stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/102 "2017-07-14T00:10:07Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > **Moderating** > If you believe someone has insulted you, you should report it rather than responding to it. > Colibri > General Questions Moderator I’m not in the habit of “telling on people” but your point is taken. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/103 "2017-07-14T00:20:37Z")
> [@mmmiiikkkeee](#): > > How active people are or how physically strenuous their jobs are has little to do with putting on or losing weight. [This](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-exercise-paradox/) study which has been cited here before on other threads indicates that whether a person is active all day or sits in an office chair all day they burn about the same number of calories. You can’t actually jog off an extra slice of pizza nor do you require more food to be able to unload trucks all day rather than read documents. I have worked hard labor jobs where it was a fast hard pace the entire 8 hours and I always lost a lot of weight. I think it has something to do with my endorphins kicking in and killing my appetitive because I seemed to eat less when doing extremely hard labor. ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/104 "2017-07-14T00:27:30Z")
**How do women (and men and children) in poverty become obese?** Let me introduce you to the dollar menu. Seriously. I know several families who eat fast food meals at least once or twice a day, virtually every day. It’s cheap, it’s convenient, it’s familiar, and it (arguably) tastes so good. Add to that all the juice and sody-pop folks guzzle all the live-long day, whatta ya got? Obesity. mmm ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/105 "2017-07-14T00:28:14Z")
While there are higher rates of obesity for lower income people it is not that much different in the US. So people with more money and better access don’t really do that much better. > [@](#): > > More than 33 percent of adults who earn less than $15,000 per year are obese compared with 24.6 percent of those who earned at least $50,000 per year.18 [2008-2010 data] [https://stateofobesity.org/obesity-rates-trends-overview/](https://stateofobesity.org/obesity-rates-trends-overview/) ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/106 "2017-07-14T00:44:28Z")
The most common problem I see with “discussions” like this, is confirmation bias. People who want to think that all poor people and people “on the dole” are just lazy or even scammers, will be upset that someone fat is also saying they are in need of help. Even the assumption going the other way, that poor people eat more “junk food,” and are fat for that reason, are usually not supported by any science. Hell, our entire American society is right now rampantly plagued, not just by obesity, but even worse, by WRONG IDEAS AND MADE UP THEORIES ABOUT OBESITY. There’s a fight going on right now, where the people who used to say that ONE kind of fat in the diet is the biggest problem, are being shoved aside by people saying it’s the OTHER kind of fat that’s at fault, still others who claim it’s all about refined sugars, more who think it’s all about Corn Syrup sugar, and on and on. This kind of thread (and I am assuredly NOT making an accusation here, I am pointing out a possibility for each person to consider on their own) is often triggered by an honest person being misled by a dishonest one. Someone who wants to declare that taxes on the rich can be cut, because all those fat poor people are obviously getting way too much food already, will sneakily push someone new to the whole thing, to ask such a question, in hopes that lots of people eager to find someone to point the finger at for EVERYTHING wrong in their lives, will join into the plot blindly. The point I’m trying to make is, that there is currently no consensus at ALL amongst real experts, as to what does and doesn’t always cause people to get fat. So coming to any SHORT AND SIMPLE conclusion about why poor people are fat, is bound to be either dishonest, or flat out false. ---
**Author:** ![mmmiiikkkeee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/edb3f5/32.png) [@mmmiiikkkeee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmiiikkkeee)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/107 "2017-07-14T02:14:22Z")
> [@](#): > > This is a perfect example of garbage results. How do I know it’s garbage? Because it contradicts reality. > > There are numerous studies that show that not only do certain types of exercise increase metabolism rate, but also that the rate remains elevated for a length of time afterwards. > > Take any reasonably-typical office worker, put that person in a job where he’s moving around all day long, and as long as he doesn’t change his eating habits, he WILL lose weight. It’s that simple. Have you read the article? It’s not garbage, and has a lot more supporting facts and explanations than your single sentence claim. Can you give examples of the numerous studies that support your claim and contradict the study I linked? > [@](#): > > I can’t get to the whole article, but it seems it’s more about comparing light activity to being sedentary. Typical light office work may not really make a difference. The few extra calories you burn by walking around can easily be mitigated by your body lowering your metabolism at a later time. But a job where you’re climbing around a roof or hauling around cement bags is essentially like real exercise. Many day labor jobs will be doing that sort of grunt work which burns a lot of calories. It’s about tracking the calories burned by one of the few hunter-gatherer groups left today and comparing them to far less active people typical in modern society… so they measured people doing much more work than walking back and forth from the photocopier every hour. And the study supports the idea that the human body has multiple means of performing extra work using the same amount of calories taken in. > [@](#): > > I have worked hard labor jobs where it was a fast hard pace the entire 8 hours and I always lost a lot of weight. I think it has something to do with my endorphins kicking in and killing my appetitive because I seemed to eat less when doing extremely hard labor. I think a lot of it has to do with this; when you’re doing hard physical work you’re not only too busy to constantly snack, but you’re in a different mental state as well. You don’t feel like eating anything at all when you’re carrying lumber back and forth or picking orders in a warehouse. The harsher the conditions (outdoors, high/low temperatures, insects, noise), the more focused you get trying to just get the job done so you can go home. Also consider that more of the labouring jobs are performed by younger males, and having a higher lean body mass required to (or developed by) moving concrete forms around all day does require more calories to maintain… but much of the weight loss associated with being very active involves maintaining more lean mass and eating less, not burning more during the physical activity its self. Many people in poverty have a lot of time on their hands and a lot of stress about their situations to overcome. Maintaining a certain BMI is seldom a high priority nor viewed as a pathway out of poverty for those people. Throw in cheap high-calorie foods which require little effort to prepare or clean up that can be obtained at any convenience store and it’s not that surprising that poor people are drawn to them to make life just a little bit easier. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/108 "2017-07-14T02:17:02Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > Some of us look back fondly to the era of [No Frills branded foods](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/06/22/big-food-chain-selling-no-frill-products-in-area/4c5b7c62-3a67-48e5-ad2e-943e51379f17/?utm_term=.27cc4106aeca). [Oh i remember this](https://patspints.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/generic-beer.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/109 "2017-07-14T03:16:23Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > In these threads, it is often asserted that many poor people in the U.S. are obese because “they can’t afford healthy food.” I do not believe this is true for two reasons: > > 1. Generic staples such as poultry, beans, rice, and potatoes are healthy and _cheap_. > > 2. _Lots_ of middle class people are also obese. Why is that the case? Since they have money, are they obese for a different reason vs. poor people? > > The cold, hard truth is that poor obese people are fat for the same reason as middle class obese people… _they love to eat high-calorie foods_. You can give them healthy food for free, and they’ll just throw it in the trash. > Many poor people work very few hours, or no hours at all. They have an incredible amount of time on their hands. And at least one definitely NOT poor poster in this thread, who points out how poor people eat easy, cheap, unhealthy food, has himself posted in the past about his own struggles to get his weight down from 280. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of us have significant weight problems. Poor women may well have higher higher rates of obesity than the general population, but it’s a bigger problem all around. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/110 "2017-07-14T04:04:45Z")
Lots of excuses for why poor people are fat… they don’t know how to cook, they’re dumb, high calorie food is cheaper, etc. Yet there are many (almost as many) middle class people who are fat/obese. Why are they fat/obese? Are they fat/obese for a completely different reason? The apologists for the poor would say, “Yes.” Rational minds would say they reason so many middle class people are obese, and the reason so many poor people are obese, are one in the same. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/111 "2017-07-14T04:14:05Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > IHere’s one quote from this thread: “impoverished people often are working long hours at low-wage job(s), and don’t have time or energy to prepare good meals” Right - that doesn’t mean ALL poor people fall into that category. > [@](#): > > And another: “Whoever compiled it somehow missed the millions of people who work two or even three part-time jobs” It takes 3 million people to total 1% of the US population, so “a small percentage” and “millions of people” can in fact overlap. > [@](#): > > Do you personally know someone who is poor who is working 3 jobs for more than 60 hours a week? Not at the moment. Lots of folks working 2 jobs, though. > [@](#): > > Does anyone on this message board? If you do, let me know. I will personally pay their rent for a month so they have time to look for a better job, or cook a few meals, or even learn how to cook. Or I’ll buy them a stove if they don’t have one. > > Anyone? I have a friend who works full time whose family is currently homeless, sometimes she sleeps in the parking lot of the store she works at. Husband, three kids. Want to pay her rent? ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/112 "2017-07-14T05:23:46Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The Diocese handed out a box with rice, beans, government cheese and some other stuff. Another local church handed out day old bread from Trader Joes\* and large bags of onions and potatoes. Plenty of food, should you have a way to cook it. (it wasnt uncommon to find bags of rice and beans discarded nearby). If people were caught dumping items, they should have been banned from the food pantry for X period of time. That’s insane! If they don’t want or can’t use an item, they should just say so. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/113 "2017-07-14T12:21:21Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > I have a friend who works full time whose family is currently homeless, sometimes she sleeps in the parking lot of the store she works at. Husband, three kids. Want to pay her rent? How can she have rent when she is homeless? Her, her husband and her three kids all sleep in the car in the parking lot of the store? Does her husband work? How old are the kids? Where is this? And yes, if you personally know them, and their situation is as you describe, and they need money for security deposit or whatever, then I will pay it. I said I would and I don’t lie. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/114 "2017-07-14T12:22:23Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Not at the moment. Lots of folks working 2 jobs, though. Do they work more than 60 hours a week total at these 2 jobs? ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/115 "2017-07-14T12:31:19Z")
You guys are missing one obvious factor – health problems causing obesity are far less likely to be properly treated in the poor than in the wealthy. Hypothyroid, for example. Asthma. Asthma preventative meds are expensive. Oral steroids are cheap. Type II diabetes makes it damn hard to lose weight (so the cycle continues). PCOS is tricky to treat and likely to go untreated in the poor. Insulin resistance. Depression. Anti-depressants. The food doesn’t help, but it’s not just food. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/116 "2017-07-14T12:58:20Z")
> [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > You guys are missing one obvious factor – health problems causing obesity are far less likely to be properly treated in the poor than in the wealthy. I’d like to see a cite for this, please - what percent of poor people are obese due to untreated medical conditions? Some kind of hard data would be best - not a link to a website of an advocacy group, or “scientists estimate…” TIA. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/117 "2017-07-14T13:11:25Z")
Some confusion may arise from how we use the words “poverty” and “poor”. Poverty, when we’re looking at federal statistics, is a threshold [defined](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Measures_of_poverty) by UCSB. It is adjusted yearly and it is dependent on household size. So I was not living in poverty when I was making 7 and change an hour, but I would have been if I had children. HHS uses a slightly different and (IMO) more nuanced measure, and IIRC all federal benefits programs use the HHS measure. The OP specifically calls out “women in poverty”. And we have plenty of data on people living in poverty by the UCSB threshold. However, as **Broomstick** pointed out in another thread, someone making $1 above the poverty threshold would probably still be considered poor by most of us. And so we see that many federal benefits drop off well above the threshold, e.g. 130% for SNAP (food stamps). So “poor” is not strictly defined, and we don’t have good data on the poor. Regarding people working multiple jobs: Per the data I already referenced above, only ~3MM people living in poverty (12% of all living in poverty) worked full-time year-round in 2014. So working extremely long hours is simply not an important factor when describing the typical person living in poverty. If we want to look at a loosely-defined “poor”, it might be more significant, but no one has shown data to support that. And given that only 5% of jobholders hold multiple jobs, and that a randomly selected multiple jobholder will most likely be married with a college degree\*, supporting that position will be difficult. > **[Multiple jobholding over the past two decades : Monthly Labor Review: U.S....](https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/multiple-jobholding-over-the-past-two-decades.htm)** > > A decline in multiple jobholding in the United States during the past two decades reflects a lower propensity to moonlight among single jobholders. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/119 "2017-07-14T13:21:37Z")
Ugh. USCB not UCSB. United States Census Bureau. I deal with too many universities ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/120 "2017-07-14T13:37:30Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > How can she have rent when she is homeless? She doesn’t, of course, but she’d sure like to have that “problem”. > [@](#): > > Her, her husband and her three kids all sleep in the car in the parking lot of the store? The kids are staying with the grandparents. Apparently her parents hate her husband so much they won’t let they two of them stay at their house. Can’t figure out why, the husband isn’t a bad guy. > [@](#): > > Does her husband work? When he can - odd jobs mostly. Got laid off and hasn’t found permanent work since, like a lot of other people here in the rustbelt. > [@](#): > > How old are the kids? Don’t know exactly, I know the oldest is 17, one of them is 11 or thereabouts, another is younger. > [@](#): > > Where is this? Gary, Indiana > [@](#): > > And yes, if you personally know them, and their situation is as you describe, and they need money for security deposit or whatever, then I will pay it. I said I would and I don’t lie. Well, cool - of course, that’s just one month rent. The problem is that after paying for essentials like food (their food stamps don’t cover everything) her paycheck doesn’t stretch to cover rent on a steady basis, her husband doesn’t have a steady income, and they can’t pass a credit check to get a lease. It’s generous of you to want to pay a month’s rent, but then there’s the problem of all the other months to come. The Section 8 waiting list in this area for housing assistance is _10 years_. Which doesn’t help them now. This isn’t a matter of them being lazy, it’s that many full time jobs just don’t provide enough wage to support a family. The company doesn’t want people camping out in the parking lot, but at any time there’s up to a half dozen of my fellow employees doing just that and management looks the other way. They tend to rotate in and out of the situation, but it’s nasty little secret in the US that quite a few people working full time jobs are homeless. That doesn’t mean they’re living on the street, it means they’re sleeping in their car or couch surfing. I understand that Wal-Mart wins the local prize for most homeless employees in my area - my company pays more so it’s less likely to happen. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2017, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123/121 "2017-07-14T14:03:14Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Well, cool - of course, that’s just one month rent. The problem is that after paying for essentials like food (their food stamps don’t cover everything) her paycheck doesn’t stretch to cover rent on a steady basis, her husband doesn’t have a steady income, and they can’t pass a credit check to get a lease. It’s generous of you to want to pay a month’s rent, but then there’s the problem of all the other months to come Well, that’s true. 1 month isn’t going to solve any problems. But what will? Despite what you might think, I actually care about stuff like this. We simply disagree on the amount of personal responsibility that individuals have for their own situation. A family friend and her daughter and 2 granddaughters were having a tough time a few years ago, and they stayed at my house since I was divorced, and my kids didn’t live with me. A 3 story townhouse is pretty big just for me, so they moved in. No rent or utilities, but they purchased all the food and my friend did all the cooking except for the weekends my kids were there. I had no problem helping them out. But low and behold, her daughter got pregnant AGAIN (same guy) and then that was it. I told them I had done all I could, but they understood they would have to move out before the new baby came. That’s the type of personal responsibility I am usually talking about. If you don’t have your own place, and you don’t have a job, and you have 2 kids, for the love of God, don’t get pregnant again. Take all the steps you can to NOT get pregnant. Same for doing things to better yourself. Sure, they are probably tired from working wherever they can. But you know what? I’m tired after working too. Counting commuting time, I spend 12 hours a day out of my house. But I can still go to school, or cook food at home, or look for a better job, or tutor my kids. It’s hard. I will never, ever say that it is easy to get ahead, or just stay afloat. It’s not. But “It’s too hard!” is not an excuse I will ever accept. So, back to your friend and her husband. Yes, 1 month rent isn’t much. But that 30 days they wouldn’t have to worry about where to sleep. That’s 30 days they could stay with their kids. That’s 30 days of time for him to look for a job, or try to get training, or something, without having to worry about where they are going to sleep. I can do it, no problem. I have no reservations helping someone a little if I, or someone I know (like you, even if it’s just from the message board), knows them personally. So, let me know. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-women-in-poverty-become-obese/791123.md?page=7)