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.
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.
I was under the impression that Canada is not, in fact, a frozen wasteland, as it is often portrayed in the American mecdia.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Strange. Google Maps shows me lots of groceries. The Yellow Pages also shows me tons of groceries in Detroit. I see lots of Kroger. Isn’t that a big chain?