# Obesity and Health Care **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 6, 2009, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515 "2009-05-06T04:12:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![yorick73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/b5a626/32.png) [@yorick73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yorick73)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/41 "2009-05-07T16:03:17Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > You mean, as opposed to now where 50 million Americans _don’t have access to care_ outside of life-or-death emergencies because they aren’t insured, and only access to those drugs they can pay full, upfront cash prices for? Nonsense. You know full well that number includes illegals, those who choose not to buy insurance even though they can afford it, and those who neglect to sign up for government health care for which they qualify. > [@Broomstick](#): > > If you’re uninsured your care isn’t “rationed” it’s _nonexistant_, you’re a non-person with almost no access to the system. If you don’t have money for the drugs you need you may very well die. That’s _one in six_ people in this country. No insurance and your waiting time for anything short of immediate emergent care is _infinity_. > > If you’re one of the 50 million Britain’s healthcare system doesn’t look bad at all. More money buys better health care. That is an inescapable fact. I just don’t understand why people like you want to voluntarily reduce your own benefits to increase those of others. I’ve got an idea…all you bleeding hearts can go into the government system to help others and don’t complain about the shitty care or lack of quality meds available to you. But don’t force me or my family to sacrifice. ---
**Author:** ![Billy\_Baroo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/76d3ee/32.png) [@Billy\_Baroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billy_Baroo)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/42 "2009-05-07T17:29:40Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > It’s not a matter of what you eat but how much. I would put my body up against anyone’s here and I eat junk and am just fine. It’s all about calories not the kind of food you eat, as long as you get the minimum protein, carbs and fats required, any extra can come from any source. > > People are always shocked at how can you eat cookies, and chips and stuff and look like you do. I tell them I just don’t eat a lot, when I hit 1800 calories in a day, I STOP eating. Precisely. There is no meaningful distinction between healthy and unhealthy foods. The food industry dupes the public into making an artificial dichotomy so that they can sell more diet food and organics. Obesity is addiction, a disorder caused by the amount of food, not the type. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/43 "2009-05-07T19:47:46Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > “The government, by most reasonable people’s standards, exists to counteract and correct mass stupidity” - makes the common liberal assumption that the solution of first resort to any large problem is the government. Apologies to the OP for continuing the hijack here, but I think you’re reading a lot of extra inferences into that statement. Saying that the government exists to solve problems does not necessarily imply the assumption that the government is the **first** place you should turn to solve **any** large problem. > [@Shodan](#): > > And it further assumes that the government can fix whatever it is, and that the costs of doing so will be less than any other course of action. First part yes, second part no. Certainly, saying the government exists to do X does imply that the government is capable of doing X. However, it doesn’t necessarily imply anything about the **cheapest** way of doing X. > [@jtgain](#): > > That woman doing yoga in her 90s will be getting sick and needing care when she is 105. There is no stopping sickness and death. As a general statement, this is of course true. However, it misses two points: 1. If people are staying healthier longer and working longer, then they’re paying more into the system. Somebody who works and pays taxes for 60 years and then needs five years of continuing medical care is a better deal for the system than somebody who works and pays taxes for 40 years and then needs five years of continuing medical care. (And yes, I support raising standard retirement ages as average life expectancy and “health expectancy” values increase.) 1. You’re assuming that a healthy-living person in good physical shape will end up requiring just as much expensive medical care in the long run as a person with an unhealthy lifestyle; the only difference will be that the costs in the first person’s case will kick in at a later age. But how do we know that this is true? I have not seen any data comparing the overall lifetime medical costs for people who have healthy lifestyles vs. those who have “lifestyle diseases” such as chronic morbid obesity. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that healthy-living people actually cost less overall, even if they do live longer and eventually contract a fatal disease. Is there any actual evidence confirming or contradicting this? ---
**Author:** ![anu-la1979](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/47e85d/32.png) [@anu-la1979](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anu-la1979)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2009, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/44 "2009-05-07T21:05:13Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > [www.cheaphealthygood.com](http://www.cheaphealthygood.com) Heh. The recipe on the front page today is the _the_ staple vegetable dish I ate growing up. It really is incredibly tasty. ---
**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:** [May 8, 2009, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/45 "2009-05-08T00:34:52Z")
> [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > You mean, as opposed to now where 50 million Americans don’t have access to care outside of life-or-death emergencies because they aren’t insured, and only access to those drugs they can pay full, upfront cash prices for? > > Nonsense. You know full well that number includes illegals, those who choose not to buy insurance even though they can afford it, and those who neglect to sign up for government health care for which they qualify. Please provide some evidence for your claim that this collection of illegals, those who choose not to buy, and those who fail to sign up form a significant portion of that 50 million. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > If you’re uninsured your care isn’t “rationed” it’s nonexistant, you’re a non-person with almost no access to the system. If you don’t have money for the drugs you need you may very well die. That’s one in six people in this country. No insurance and your waiting time for anything short of immediate emergent care is infinity. > > > > If you’re one of the 50 million Britain’s healthcare system doesn’t look bad at all. > > More money buys better health care. That is an inescapable fact. The US spends three times per capita on health care as other western nations yet we lag behind in things like life expectancy and infant mortality. This makes me think we’re paying extra for “name brand” health insurance rather than spending it on actual care in an efficient manner. > [@](#): > > I just don’t understand why people like you want to voluntarily reduce your own benefits to increase those of others. I’ve got an idea…all you bleeding hearts can go into the government system to help others and don’t complain about the shitty care or lack of quality meds available to you. But don’t force me or my family to sacrifice. After 13 years in the health insurance industry I am all too aware that most people _don’t_ have as good of health insurance as they think they do. If the health insurance company doesn’t approve you won’t get the surgery or the drug you need or your doctor recommends - so much for free choice. Likewise, if your doctor isn’t on your health insurance company’s favored list you’re SOL - opponents of national health care say that the government will pick your doctors - nevermind that is NOT the case in the countries I have looked into like Britain, Canada, Australia, and so on - but right now _corporations_ pick your doctor. This is better… how? Truth is, an awful lot of insured people can really only get “shitty” healthcare, and many medications are unavailable to them. Not knowing the details of your policy I can’t say if you fall into that group, but quite a few million people do. Don’t be too sure you’re truly covered for catastrophe. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/46 "2009-05-08T00:46:30Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > That woman doing yoga in her 90s will be getting sick and needing care when she is 105. There is no stopping sickness and death. I’d rather be the spry, independent-living 99-year-old who dies after a short bout with pneuomonia rather than the invalid 79-year-old who spends ten years dying from Alzheimer’s and complications from diabetes. Which would you rather be? And whom would you rather take care of, as a tax-payer? ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/47 "2009-05-08T01:47:34Z")
> [@anu-la1979](#): > > Heh. The recipe on the front page today is the _the_ staple vegetable dish I ate growing up. It really is incredibly tasty. Is asafetida as stinky as she claims? I’m kind of tempted to give that recipe a try (although it would involve a stop at an Indian market), I like cabbage. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/48 "2009-05-08T02:44:14Z")
As the OP, I’ll just note that I had intended this thread to be more about whether obesity was/wasn’t a significant factor of the low stats the US gets in terms of life expectancy and such. The taxation idea was more just pointing out that there is theoretically a quick and easy, and overall cheap, way to catch up with other nations that really had nothing to do with the health care system itself. > [@Broomstick](#): > > The US spends three times per capita on health care as other western nations yet we lag behind in things like life expectancy and infant mortality. This makes me think we’re paying extra for “name brand” health insurance rather than spending it on actual care in an efficient manner. I’m actually rather boggled on this front. Looking at the average income of doctors in the US and in Canada or the UK, they all seem to come in around $150,000 per year. Then, in terms of how health spending is split up, the [pie chart for the US](http://www.healthpolcom.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/2007-us-health-spending.png)\* and [that of Canada](http://www.healthsystemfacts.com/Client/OHA/HSF_LP4W_LND_WebStation.nsf/resources/Exp/$file/Exp+Can+01+public+exp+on+health+by+spending+type.gif)\*\* appear to be more or less exactly the same. Mathematically speaking, if I’ve got equivalent spending per head for equivalent sections of a pie chart, then the total spending per head for the entire chart is the same; i.e. Canadian health care spending and US health care spending per capita should be the same going from those numbers. Since I know that the US spends nearly double, roughly half of all health care money seems to disappears before actually going into health care spending (i.e. not entering into one of the pie chart segments). - [Health Spending, Health Reform, and Physicians | Dr. Michael Miller's Blog](http://www.healthpolcom.com/blog/2009/01/15/health-spending-health-reform-and-physicians/) \*\* [http://www.healthsystemfacts.com/Client/OHA/HSF\_LP4W\_LND\_WebStation.nsf/page/Public+expenditure+on+health+by+type+of+spending+Canada+large](http://www.healthsystemfacts.com/Client/OHA/HSF_LP4W_LND_WebStation.nsf/page/Public+expenditure+on+health+by+type+of+spending+Canada+large) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/49 "2009-05-08T03:17:08Z")
> [@yorick73](#): > > More money buys better health care. That is an inescapable fact. I just don’t understand why people like you want to voluntarily reduce your own benefits to increase those of others. I’ve got an idea…all you bleeding hearts can go into the government system to help others and don’t complain about the shitty care or lack of quality meds available to you. But don’t force me or my family to sacrifice. ITT:people who are very ignorant playing the victim card. Try being the uninsured poor when prescription drugs can run into hundreds of dollars a month then you can talk about sacrifice. Also clinging to the current retard American system is making many many other families sacrifice. How many jobs would have been saved if American products could compete without having to support 3x the healthcare costs in their price? “Screw the country, let the poor die needlessly but don’t you dare use the S word!” ---
**Author:** ![Carol\_Stream](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c2a13f/32.png) [@Carol\_Stream](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carol_Stream)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/50 "2009-05-08T03:35:56Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > If you’re one of the 50 million Britain’s healthcare system doesn’t look bad at all. Getting something for nothing doesn’t look bad at all. It’s just unworkable, on a large-scale basis. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/51 "2009-05-08T03:50:13Z")
> [@](#): > > **mswas** : Very few people are so poor that they are spending all of their discretionary income on food. Money spent on necessities is not “discretionary.” You have a very strange view of how the poor can get by. Apparently you have never had to make do with eating starch straight out of a box. You have never had to have cornbread instead of biscuits because cornbread is cheaper. I think it was in a Yahoo! news scrawl yesterday that I saw that 17% of the nation’s children do not have enough to eat. That’s one in six. And then you suggest that we should let them eat shrimp. I know of people who can’t have even the cornbread because they don’t have any electricity and they never have. ---
**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:** [May 8, 2009, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/52 "2009-05-08T11:03:20Z")
> [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > If you’re one of the 50 million Britain’s healthcare system doesn’t look bad at all. > > Getting something for nothing doesn’t look bad at all. It’s just unworkable, on a large-scale basis. Oh, _please_ - it is NOT “something for nothing”, it’s very explicit the British system is paid for by taxes. As is the Canadian system. And the Australian system. Yes, it IS being paid for, but without the “namebrand” to pay for and the private middle man they’re getting their healthcare at 1/3 the cost we are, and EVERYONE is covered. It’s not unworkable - it’s working in all those other countries, every day of every week of every year. I’m sorry if reality and the evidence contradicts your world view but that’s life sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/53 "2009-05-08T11:20:18Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > That is a faulty assumption. Not everyone is productive. > > The unemployment rate is 8%. If a 30 year old guy dies, someone else takes the job he had. Or if he has no job, he is no longer a burden to the taxpayer. All told, it is a net loss of one unemployed person. His family will be sad, but it is no real net loss to society. You and I are replaceable. Um, we’re talking about population-level effects. One premature death is a drop in the bucket. Thousands of them are not. > [@](#): > > If no more 30 year olds get sick, and all live to be 100, they will be using more resources at the end of their lives then at a younger age. There is no net gain in that equation, and there is no shortage of people who can fill the workforce. If we were at 100% full employment and the constraint in the economy was available bodies to fill the jobs, then you could possibly have a point. You are wrong. If we all live to be 100 and those 100 years are healthy ones, then we will be more productive and work longer. Social security won’t crash because people won’t jump ship from the workforce as soon as they reach 65. Medicaid won’t get overtaxed because people will be healthier and not need so many doctor’s visits. Families won’t be overburdened with nursing care costs, and in fact will be able to rely on spry, energetic old folks to help raise grandchildren and greatgrandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. There are nothing but benefits to having a healthy elderly population. In what kind of bizarro world would it not be? ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/54 "2009-05-08T12:45:46Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > ITT:people who are very ignorant playing the victim card. Try being the uninsured poor when prescription drugs can run into hundreds of dollars a month then you can talk about sacrifice. > Also clinging to the current retard American system is making many many other families sacrifice. How many jobs would have been saved if American products could compete without having to support 3x the healthcare costs in their price? > > “Screw the country, let the poor die needlessly but don’t you dare use the S word!” I know a BIG American company that like many companies offshored its customer service department. To Canada. Because Canada has people who speak English, share our culture (more or less). But because there is no health care overhead for the business, you can pay a decent living wage for Canadians and still save money over hiring that job in the U.S. Oh, and Canada was cheaper than India. This is when I went from the fiscal conservative “Universal Health Care is too expensive for the government” to “the U.S. needs UHC if we are going to be able to compete for jobs in the world market.” The cost of health care is driving businesses to move jobs overseas. Yeah, wages are cheaper in China, but its the cost of healthcare that moves the U.S. over the top. And yes, that may mean that is a “socialized” health care system you get rationed - and if you want great health care you need to have supplemental insurance or pay out of pocket. But this is America, home of opportunistic capitalism - I’m sure plenty of businesses will spring up overnight (well, really companies like UnitedHealthGroup will change their business model - they already have the preliminary work done for when UHC gets passed - I worked on that there 12 years ago when Clinton was in office) to fill in gaps. ---
**Author:** ![yorick73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/b5a626/32.png) [@yorick73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yorick73)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/55 "2009-05-08T16:25:55Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Please provide some evidence for your claim that this collection of illegals, those who choose not to buy, and those who fail to sign up form a significant portion of that 50 million. > **[Xoilac TV - Trực Tiếp Bóng Đá Xôi Lạc, Trực Tuyến XoilacTV](https://diamundialradio.org/)** > > Xem trực tiếp bóng đá hôm nay tại Xoilac86 TV. Link bóng đá trực tuyến XoilacTV chất lượng cao dành cho fan xem tructiepbongda miễn phí cùng Xôi Lạc. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/56 "2009-05-08T17:41:21Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I’d rather be the spry, independent-living 99-year-old who dies after a short bout with pneuomonia rather than the invalid 79-year-old who spends ten years dying from Alzheimer’s and complications from diabetes. > > Which would you rather be? And whom would you rather take care of, as a tax-payer? Do we have evidence that people who are healthy die more quickly than unhealthy people? I know of a few people who drank themselves to an early death, but never spent a day in the hospital. If we were to institute some higher tax on unhealthy food, would these people (obviously their estate) get some sort of tax rebate since they weren’t part of the problem? Would a person who lived a clean life, but ended up getting a prolonged illness be forced to pony up some extra coin before they die? Fair is fair, right, and the taxpayers must be made whole.. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/57 "2009-05-08T21:00:16Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > Money spent on necessities is not “discretionary.” You have a very strange view of how the poor can get by. Apparently you have never had to make do with eating starch straight out of a box. You have never had to have cornbread instead of biscuits because cornbread is cheaper. Cornbread is healthier than biscuits too. Funny that right? And I used to live in a storage unit. > [@](#): > > I think it was in a Yahoo! news scrawl yesterday that I saw that 17% of the nation’s children do not have enough to eat. That’s one in six. And then you suggest that we should let them eat shrimp. No I suggested that shrimp stir fry was an expensive stir-fry and that at only $ 6 a meal, it’s pretty cheap. A value meal at McDonald’s costs that much. People as poor as you are describing aren’t fat either. > [@](#): > > I know of people who can’t have even the cornbread because they don’t have any electricity and they never have. And are they fat? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/58 "2009-05-08T21:05:50Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I don’t think most poor people are pigging out on TV dinners. Rather, they are pigging out on fast foods and snack foods. For $4.00, you can buy a liter of soda, a big bag of potato chips, and a whole box of Little Debbies. And if you live off of that for a year you will die of malnutrition. I am starting to feel like I am arguing against a straw man ‘poor person’. People who are THAT poor tend not to be fat. I’m thinking people who live in 1 bedroom apartments or trailer parks poor, not destitute shanty dwellers without working plumbing. > [@](#): > > Or you can get the double cheese burger combo at McDonalds. Your stir fry is healthier, but per calorie, the junk food route is more economical. Add in the fact that the junk food is designed to be tastier and more addictive, it’s on every billboard you see, and sold on every block and it really isn’t that hard to see why the stir fry loses out. Where does this idea that calories = economy come from? It sounds like a perception issue as I said. You need a lot more to get by day to day than pure calories. more calories != more value. As this thread was talking about poor people being fat. So clearly they are getting too much calories but not enough nutrition. If they ate like I am describing they might get fewer calories but they’d get more nutrition, for roughly hte same price. Stir Fry loses out because it actually requires a modicum of work. 15 minutes at the grocery store and 15 minutes at the stove is more than 5 at the drive through. > [@](#): > > Yes, but you must add lard for it to be delicious. 😉 Look I eat at McDonald’s but it’s not one of the cheapest meals I eat. I had Ramen noodles for lunch. Two Ramen packets, a leftover soy packet, a leaf of lettuce and two eggs. All in all my lunch cost about $ 1.25 and I shared it with my daughter. And yet it was healthier than a bottle of soda and a bag of potato chips. I put green chili, cumin and coriander in my rice and beans, and top it with shredded cheese if I have it, bringing the price of the meal to the extravagance of about $ 1. I am not a poster child for healthy eating, far from it, I am about 40 lbs overweight, but I know that it has nothing to do with the price of food and everything to do with what I choose to eat. Or more specifically, drink, I drink too much soda. Forget the soda and drink water, you won’t get fat, and soda is empty calories. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/59 "2009-05-08T21:13:26Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > [www.cheaphealthygood.com](http://www.cheaphealthygood.com) > > Most of her recipes are prepared rather quickly - 20 minutes getting home from work or less. You do have to menu plan and grocery shop. And you do have to learn to like your veggies. Yeah, the opposition to veggies in our culture is kind of strange. > [@](#): > > But I think there are HUGE education components that need to happen. > > 1. Many people have no idea how to cook. “What’s a soup bone” was a question on a frugal board. When you get into some of the more complex details of frugal living - people are lost. Like baking bread. It isn’t hard to bake bread. You have to hang around the house for a few hours (or mix ‘no knead bread’ and come back to the house ten hours later for a few hours). But people have no idea where to start. If you can’t cook, then you need to eat out - or eat dinners out of boxes. Dinners out of boxes don’t tend to be healthy (and the healthy ones are expensive) - dinners out are expensive unless you are going for the McDonald’s value meal. I have a weakness (that I can no longer indulge) for McDonalds hamburgers (gluten intolerance) and I recognize that you are getting a lot of calories for the money. But they aren’t the best calories - or even really good calories. McDonald’s value meal is expensive even. I live in New York and can go out and get Chinese with actual vegetables in it, or get Punjabi vegetarian for even cheaper than that. I need to cut gluten from my diet. > [@](#): > > 1. Many people have little idea of what is good for them. Diet soda may (or may not be) better for you than regular soda - but it isn’t exactly a health food. Soda in general is bad for us. It gives us agita and is incredibly fattening. We are opposed to drinking water. Our relationship to food in this culture is downright pathological, it’s weird. > [@](#): > > 1. When they know what’s good for them, they still behave like petulant children. I have spinach up the yango from the farmer’s market for $1. But few people want to eat spinach when you can get a bag of cheezypoofs. And I suppose its their choice to each cheezypoofs instead of spinach (sometimes I do, too). This one really isn’t education. I’d rather eat spinach, though I do like cheesypoofs from time to time. > [@](#): > > 1. Menu planning - from deciding what to eat to grocery shopping for it - is a lost art. And the learning hump to get it from “painful” to “a good use of time” is pretty steep. And few people have the gifts of being able to go into the store and throw together meals on the fly based off what they see on sale. Yeah, I can’t do that, it’s pretty hard. It’s totally an issue of education. I think a lot was lost between the 40s and t he 70s, in the 40s Betty Crocker came around and got lots of women out of the kitchen and in the 70s feminism came around and taught people that being in the kitchen was a form of oppression. So a lot of the tradition of cooking was lost in the interim. ---
**Author:** ![anu-la1979](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/47e85d/32.png) [@anu-la1979](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anu-la1979)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515/60 "2009-05-08T21:59:09Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Is asafetida as stinky as she claims? I’m kind of tempted to give that recipe a try (although it would involve a stop at an Indian market), I like cabbage. I don’t find it stinky in the sense that it gives off a garbage odour like durian-it has a very sharp curryish smell to it. You could leave it out if you wanted/add a little bit more turmeric to compensate. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obesity-and-health-care/495515.md?page=4)