# USA: Poverty = Obesity? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 8, 2008, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280 "2008-12-08T18:12:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![FaerieBeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e95f7d/32.png) [@FaerieBeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FaerieBeth)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/21 "2008-12-08T23:04:54Z")
Another factor may be the “family style” way a lot of people tend to serve dinner in America. All the pans, bowls, and platters full of food are put on the dining table, and folks take what they want during the meal…while chatting, watching tv, whatever. You really tend to over eat then, because there’s no way you’re accurately judging your portions…pass the potatoes!..you’ll take another spoonful…grab one more roll…it’s right there in front of you, and you’re not even thinking about it. In my experience, poorer folks tend to serve dinner this way, because then it looks like a feast, and then the family eats until it’s all gone. That’s great for special family gatherings and events, but there are some families that eat that way every night. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/22 "2008-12-09T00:18:22Z")
There are plenty of people who don’t consider being moderately overweight to be a major problem. Remember, our very idea of what is "attractive’ and “unattractive” is pretty entrenched in ideas of class. Health is one thing, but I think it’s important to keep in mind our own biases in this debate. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/23 "2008-12-09T00:25:12Z")
> [@Meyer6](#): > > The poorest years of my life were also the fattest, for me. There were a lot of factors, but a big part of it was that I couldn’t afford a gym membership and in most parts of Canada it’s not like you can easily go out for a walk everyday or whatnot. I was under the impression that Canada is not, in fact, a frozen wasteland, as it is often portrayed in the American mecdia. > [@ZipperJJ](#): > > Well there’s starchy, natural foods and starchy boxed foods. > > My roommate is dirt poor right now (don’t ask) and he eats boxed mashed potatoes, boxed macaroni & cheese, generic white bread, Bisquick, butter and eggs. Every so often he gets a pound of high-fat ground meat (the leaner it is, the more expensive it is). He just got some money and bought a head of iceberg lettuce, some cheap frozen entrees, some canned meat-ish stuff, a case of soda and some generic salad dressing. He has some…interesting choices there. Is soda actually cheaper than tap water, or is your tap water gross/unsafe? Are boxed mashed potatoes cheaper than mashing your own? Is Bisquick cheap? And in my experience, even cheap frozen dinner-type stuff is still 3 or 4 bucks for essentially a small snack. ---
**Author:** ![Meyer6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@Meyer6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meyer6)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/24 "2008-12-09T00:39:07Z")
> [@Captain\_Carrot](#): > > I was under the impression that Canada is not, in fact, a frozen wasteland, as it is often portrayed in the American mecdia. Well, not all the time. It’s cold, but it’s a dry cold. Seriously, you’re right, it’s not a frozen wasteland. It’s just cold enough in most places to turn you off of outdoor exercise through much of the winter - probably just like a lot of America. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/25 "2008-12-09T01:10:46Z")
I think it’s a lot of things. Here are my hypotheses: Cultural. You tend to eat what you grew up eating, unless you’ve been exposed to different tastes. Poor, uneducated people usually don’t move outside of their cultural comfort zone, so they don’t broaden their taste buds very much. Doritos or roasted laver? Wonder bread and peanut butter or whole-wheat pita and hummus? Deep fried cod or lemon-zested Mahi Mahi? I’ve noticed that people with diverse paletes tend to go for quality over quantity. Picky eaters (not saying most poor people are) tend to eat what they like in overabundance. I think the above partially explains why my parents, who aren’t poor but come from working class roots, are obese. They eat the same foods over and over. When they do ethnic, it’s always the same battered, fried, saucy stuff. Accessibility and convenience. Where do you tend to find fast food restaurants? In poor neighborhoods. Especially the _worse_ ones, like Church’s Chicken. Imagine you’re a single mother and you’ve got to take two buses to get home every evening. The bus lets you off in front of Greasy’s Chicken and Biscuits. You know the moment you walk into the house, the kids are going to be whining about dinner. And lord knows you’ve been standing on your feet all day and don’t feel like cooking. So why not stop at Greasy’s? The kids love it, you love it, the food is filling, and you can feed everyone for about 7 dollars. Plus you get a free galloon of iced tea (that’s kinda healthy, right?). And no dirty dishes! Unhealthy food is more psychologically rewarding. It fills you up. It tastes really good. Rich people have vacations and luxury automobiles to look forward to. Poor people have Taco Bell and TV. Caring about health is a luxury in itself. When you’re poor, your consciousness is focused on survival and simply making it through the day. You don’t save up to buy a house; you save up to pay the light bill. The kids can’t read? Well, that’s bad but it’s secondary to them not having shoes. Yes, it’s not good to eat biscuits and gravy for breakfast every morning, but neither is it good to live in a roach-infested apartment or dodge crackheads on the way to work. Putting special value on food while ignoring all the other crap a poor person has to deal with may seem like a waste of time. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/26 "2008-12-09T01:13:39Z")
> [@Captain\_Carrot](#): > > He has some…interesting choices there. Is soda actually cheaper than tap water, or is your tap water gross/unsafe? Are boxed mashed potatoes cheaper than mashing your own? Is Bisquick cheap? And in my experience, even cheap frozen dinner-type stuff is still 3 or 4 bucks for essentially a small snack. He wanted soda so he splurged on it. Something like $1.39/12pack at Aldi I think. Potatoes might rot before he has a chance to buy more. Boxed mashed potatoes stay around for a long time. Plus, not sure if he knows how to cook. You can get frozen dinners for $1 around here, with a bit of rice, chicken, cheese and veggies. He got Bisquick to make french toast with. Not sure if it’s needed (I don’t make french toast) but he’d taken some of mine and enjoyed it. Surely one can buy potatoes, rice, beans and frozen veg. But you have to know how to cook them. And you have to want to. And you have to eat them ad nauseum. I’m not saying that poor people in America choose the best bang for their buck. People make terrible choices not just based on their budgets but I honestly believe they don’t know what might be a better nutritional (and sometimes budgetary) choice. In my roommate’s case, he chooses what he knows how to make, what has a long shelf life and what he’s not against eating day in and day out. I don’t begrudge him this - I have a slightly higher budget and I think about food the same way. Nutritional value is also way low on my list because I want something cheap, something fast and something different than what I ate the last 2 days. ETA: excellent thesis, **monstro**. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/27 "2008-12-09T01:28:03Z")
Didn’t George Orwell observe that many poor people in the world are heavy due to the low nutrition value of their food? I can’t find it right now, but I thought he observed it as well. ---
**Author:** ![CaerieD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@CaerieD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaerieD)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/28 "2008-12-09T01:29:12Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > There are plenty of people who don’t consider being moderately overweight to be a major problem. > > Remember, our very idea of what is "attractive’ and “unattractive” is pretty entrenched in ideas of class. Health is one thing, but I think it’s important to keep in mind our own biases in this debate. This is true, and I’ve found it especially true out here in a rural area. Most discussions about “the poor” focus on the inner city, but there’s a heck of a lot of poverty in the country, too, and I’ve seen more morbidly obese people since moving here than I ever saw in the inner city. In my area, which is very economically depressed right now, I see entire families doing their grocery shopping at the convenience store, because otherwise they’d have to drive twenty or more miles to get to a Wal-Mart. The convenience stores don’t have fresh fruits and vegetables and barely even have canned vegetables. When they get a little bit of money to spend on food, they go out to a steak house or they go buy comforting foods that are loaded in fat or sugar. And whenever my coworkers see me eating something healthy, or I make a comment about avoiding some particularly poor food choice, I’m invariably told that I’m too thin and have nothing to worry about. Being overweight is a fact of life and seen as perfectly attractive by plenty of people. Why _should_ they try to be thinner? They already feel that they’re being deprived because they can’t have what they want to eat every night, so why would they deprive themselves further by cutting out the mac ‘n’ cheese, the McDonald’s, the five gallon buckets of generic ice cream? This is especially true when it comes to younger people, who won’t take health concerns seriously since the consequences are generally longterm. Why should a twenty-year-old put down that burger and head to the gym for the health of a fifty-year-old? And then of course, by the time he _is_ that fifty-year-old, the damage is done. Why bother putting down the burger _now_? If food is your easiest pleasure–and you feel deprived of the foods you prefer anyway–there’s little to stop you from embracing it. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/29 "2008-12-09T01:47:33Z")
I wonder if religiousity also plays a role. Religious people tend to have more faith in God than they do in the medical establishment. Poor people tend to be religious. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/30 "2008-12-09T02:22:46Z")
Uh…I posted in the wrong thread. My bad. ---
**Author:** ![Savannah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Savannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savannah)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/31 "2008-12-09T02:31:24Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > Didn’t George Orwell observe that many poor people in the world are heavy due to the low nutrition value of their food? > > I can’t find it right now, but I thought he observed it as well. I’ve been going nuts trying to find the Orwell quote about poverty, rewarding/treating oneself and food. I had it printed out above my desk about five years ago. I thought it would answer the OP perfectly, but damned if I can find the quote… Still searching. Edited to add: I had a semi-shitty day at work. I’m having some rye and potato chips for dinner. Healthy, much? But I “deserved” it because management are conniving bitches. I’m fat. I should be eating grilled salmon, asparagus and salmon, with sparkling mineral water for my dinner tonight. But I’m not. I’m tired, pissed-off, and in need of instant solace. ---
**Author:** ![Savannah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Savannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savannah)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/32 "2008-12-09T02:41:00Z")
[QUOTE=George Orwell] The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don’t nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the English-man’s opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread. [/QUOTE] Ah, found it. ---
**Author:** ![Imasquare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Imasquare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imasquare)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/33 "2008-12-09T02:52:03Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I have heard of starched being blamed for obesity-yet there are many regions of the world where the poor subsist almost entirely on starchy food (Africa-manioc, S. America-rice, Peru-potatos), and do not get obese. The claim that carbs are super fattening seems doubtful to me. I’m a big fat slob at the momement - I have binge eating disorder and live on high fat junk food. But a few years ago I ate mostly potatoes cooked in the microwave oven, and bread rolls. A lot of them too - up to 10 potatoes a day. At that time I weighed 30kg (66 pounds) less than I do now. I did not start to gain weight until I gave up my potatoes and bread lifestyle. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/34 "2008-12-09T03:18:08Z")
> [@trupa](#): > > Also, supermarkets in the US tend not to locate in poor neighborhoods, and the public transit systems are generally not very good. So if you live in a poor area, and don’t have a car, your food choices are limited to what you can find at fast food chains and convenience stores. Which parts of the country do you mean? Every MA city I’ve ever lived in has had multiple supermarkets, so I’m having a little trouble picturing this. Are we just talking about great big cities like LA and NYC, or much smaller ones too? ---
**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:** [December 9, 2008, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/35 "2008-12-09T03:24:35Z")
Detroit, as one example, didn’t have groceries stores for years. They still might not. I remember that at one point they were down to a single 7/11 - if you wanted groceries you had to shop in a different city, which meant you needed transportation to that other city. Detroit is an extreme, but inner city ghettos frequently don’t have proper grocery stores. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/36 "2008-12-09T03:28:24Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Which parts of the country do you mean? Every MA city I’ve ever lived in has had multiple supermarkets, so I’m having a little trouble picturing this. Are we just talking about great big cities like LA and NYC, or much smaller ones too? There are no longer any national chain supermarkets in the city of Detroit. [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12477872](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12477872) New York has problems with supermarket access for the urban poor: [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/nyregion/05citywide.html?\_r=2&oref=slogin](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/nyregion/05citywide.html?_r=2&oref=slogin) ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/37 "2008-12-09T03:43:16Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > Surely one can buy potatoes, rice, beans and frozen veg. But you have to know how to cook them. If you can put water into a pan and onto a stove, you’ve pretty much figured out how to cook these items. I’ve seen 4-year-olds manage this. If there are problems with such foods, they must lie elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/38 "2008-12-09T03:47:02Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Which parts of the country do you mean? Every MA city I’ve ever lived in has had multiple supermarkets, so I’m having a little trouble picturing this. Are we just talking about great big cities like LA and NYC, or much smaller ones too? The Contextual Effect of the Local Food Environment on Residents’ Diets [http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/92/11/1761.pdf](http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/92/11/1761.pdf) (American Journal of Public Health) ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/39 "2008-12-09T04:03:36Z")
> [@mmouse9799](#): > > I think a lot of it has to do with unhealthy foods being cheap, while healthy nutritious foods are more expensive. A bag of baby carrots costs $2.50 at my supermarket, but a McDonald’s double cheeseburger is only $1 or so. That’s because there is no such thing as “baby carrots”. You’re paying a premium for peeled, chopped carrots. Just buy the whole ones next time and they will be cheaper than McDonald’s. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280/40 "2008-12-09T04:09:25Z")
> [@Hello\_Again](#): > > There are no longer any national chain supermarkets in the city of Detroit. > [No More Supermarkets?: Major Grocers Flee Detroit : NPR](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12477872) Strange. [Google Maps](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=maps+detroit+grocery&sll=42.330165,-83.045913&sspn=0.278176,0.578842&g=detroit&ie=UTF8&ll=42.371227,-83.08548&spn=0.266326,0.578842&t=h&z=11) shows me lots of groceries. [The Yellow Pages](http://www.yellowpages.com/categories/Detroit-MI/grocery) also shows me tons of groceries in Detroit. I see lots of Kroger. Isn’t that a big chain? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usa-poverty-obesity/476280.md?page=3)