What's up with poverty and obesity?

Great Debates
21

Um, more often than not, your average poor person is going to be lazier than your average successful person. Mentally anyway, maybe not physically, since a lot of entry level jobs call for more physical work (if they have a job, and many don’t). I’d be willing to bet that a lot of the larger persons you’ve seen from the area in question are unemployed and probably don’t care and haven’t looked for gainful employment in quite some time.
I can’t supply you a cite but I grew up in an environment (a certain part of a certain city) where this type of behavior was common enough for it to be a question that got asked on a regular basis.
My only reasonable explanation is when someone starts down the road of handouts and government assistance they become even lazier than before.
It’s a viscious circle.

I know a little bit about both. What I do know is that if someone executes the proper brain cells and uses a little common sense they can eat properly.
Laziness is a key factor in choosing the easy (high content fat food) way out.
If you disagree with that, kindly explain why.

22

Fattening food is very cheap. For $4 a day, you could eat enough PB&J to get as big as a house. Think about it. $2 for a couple loaves of bread. $4 for a big jar of PB and $4 for a big jar of jelly, that’ll provide 3,000 calories a day for quite a while. Hell, even dining out you can get a few thousand calories at McD’s for under $10 bucks a day.

Also, poor folks still likely have jobs that require little physical activity, but don’t have the money/time that wealthier folks have to exercise or buy gym memberships or home exercise equipment. A rich guy can pay a maid to clean the house, a restaurant to cook his food and a fella to mow his lawn, the poor have to do all of it themselves.

23

These “All fat people are lazy” comments usually end up as lengthy and heated Pit threads. Can we keep the bigotry out of this one, please?

24

I went into a McDonald’s a few months ago and got a double cheeseburger. It only cost a dollar. As I was sitting there eating it, I was struck with the realization that, if I was really strapped for cash, two of these would probably frequently be my dinner, and I’d get pretty fat.

If I was really hungry, I could probably put down 3 of those. That’s gorging myself on 1400 calories of seriously fatty (and admittedly pretty tasty) food for $3. Of course the poor eat there.

25

Ah, nice one. Let’s play the race card and maybe the realities will disappear.
All of God’s creatures are susceptible to this, this isn’t even limited to humans.

26

Sure, but it’s a long way from there to “They’re fat and poor because they’re lazy.” You’re making a moral judgement. Take it to the Pit.

27

What gets tiring is when someone misrepresents what others are saying. I’m being very careful in what I say. Laziness is a route to being a large person. Not the other way around. I never said that large people are lazy. It’s the inherent laziness that can make you fat, not your inherent fatness that makes you lazy. Unless we’re referring to fat heads. If that’s the case then it’s hopeless. :wink:

28

IMO, some of it is priorities as well. When one is poor and scraping by, worries about paying the bills and the rent, maybe scraping to afford a dental visit, taking the kids to the doctor, and keeping one’s job take priority over staying in shape. Losing weight isn’t a priority just because they’ve got so many other concerns that take precedence. When they get a little free time, it’s easier to relax a bit and try and forget one’s troubles in a book or TV show, instead of adding another thing that just has to be done. People can’t always take the path of greater resistance.

29

I’m telling you one last time, you’re going to piss a lot of people off with this. Stop it.

30

Not if you’re like some of the poor people around here, who live in places like the Central Valley and commute into San Francisco (an hour by car, without traffic).

It’s probably also harder to exercise if walking or biking in your neighborhood is dangerous because of crime, poor road maintenance, or polluted air. You’re much more likely to find all of those in a poor neighborhood than in a rich one.

31

Specieist!!
:wink:

32

You are correct, sorry. My first post was meant to be sarcastic. I can see how you’d be confused. Strike the first post and start with post #21 for an actual thought.

33

I don’t know why tdn is getting upset, this is NOT a moral issue. We’re not talking about the people who have thyroid problems or eating disorders, we’re talking about a majority of the poor population in the south. I have lived there, seen it’s raunch. I have met and mingled with these lazy people, who, in general WILL admit to thier laziness and further complain about it.

This IS a general question. There ARE factual answers to why people are habitually this way, POOR or NOT.

Unless this affects you in a personable manner, I’d ignore it and stop your whining!

34

Fair enough.

While I don’t deny a link between obesity and lack of physical activity, “lazy” is a loaded word. And to say that poor people are lazy is incendiary. I just don’t want to see a flamefest.

35

Here in Panama, as in much of the Third World, poverty and obesity are *not * linked. I have very rarely seen an obese poor person here (whether in the city or in rural areas) - the only obese people I know are in higher socioeconimic brackets. Poor people here are generally more active than people who are better off, and they generally don’t have access to, or can’t afford, high-fat fast food or other luxuries. In the US, unlike the Third World, low-paying jobs often don’t require much physical activity, high fat food is cheap enough for poor people to afford, and fast-food outlets are everywhere.

36

Well, I can see som reasons:

Reason one: Delayed gratification.

Eating healthy meals requires a fair amount of planning ahead…having ingredients on hand, and starting the process before your already very hungry. I pride myself as an efficient cook, and it’s pretty rare I can have a (non breakfast) meal on the table in less than a half an hour after I start. Much easier to just go to Micky D’s.

AND extracting oneself from poverty requires a lot of planning. Why work hard for an education that MIGHT payoff someday, when I can do nothing and collect the dole?

AND eating healthy requires a bit of education. Education on the risks of obesity, education on what constitutes a healthy diet, etc. But since education doesn’t tend to payoff today, why bother?

Anyway, my brother is pretty much poor. There are a lot of factors, but a big one is that he doesn’t plan for the future. At all. His wife has invited me for dinner…and gone to buy the groceries to fix dinner after I arrived. When a paycheck comes in, it gets spent quickly, nothing is set aside to last untill the next check is expected. A job is chosen purely on starting salery, with no regard to benifits, nor opportunity for advancement. At one time he had at least normal ambitions…just has never had a clue as to how he might get from where he’s at to where he’d like to be.

Even many wealthy, educated people don’t recognize where thier lifestyle is leading them untill one day they are suddenly 30# overweight.

But someone who plans for the future is MUCH more likely to make lifestyle changes, and stick with it while thier wasteline fades at a glacial pace. Or to try again when that firs diet doesn’t work out.

Reason Two: Low self esteem.

In general, I think it is fair to say that low self esteem is associated with both poverty and obesity. Note that the causal direction of this corilation could be either or both directions. Being either poor or fat can lead to low self esteem, which could easilly lead to the other condition, which could then lead to even lower self esteem.

There are some proud poor folk…and I’m pretty sure they are NOT as likely to be obese as those that are proud only of thier ability to game the welfare system. Strictly an opinion there.
Reason Three: Exercise
Ghettos are not safe areas to run. Gym membership isn’t free. Bicycles get stolen in the 'hood, and carrying it up the stairs (cause the slum lord won’t fix the lift) to your fith floor apartment every time you go in and out is a bitch.

Basketball hoops seem to be available. and popular in Ghetto areas. Used by youth who are not at all obese. Once they outgrow that, though, there aren’t many other options.

37

On top of that, eating well requires education and literacy, unless you happen to live in a society in which the staple diet is naturally healthy and balanced anyway, such as the traditional diets of many Asian cultures. Knowing what foods are good for you, how to prepare them, and planning and provisioning for multiple days/people with perishable foods are all fairly elaborate and highly specialized skills that require sufficient liesure time, intellectual drive, and literacy to acquire. The poor, especially in a state like Louisiana where the public school system is lowly-rated, don’t really have the basic skills nor encouragement to develop these more advanced talents, and so the nominal meal tends to be cheap, storable, and easily prepared foods that are high in starches and saturated fats and low in nutritional value. The same can be seen in Oceanic cultures where the traditional diet has been replaced by canned meats and junk food, and where traditional education has been replaced by relief checks and action movies (as discouragingly related in Theroux’s The Happy Isles of Oceania).

This, in combination with other above mentioned factors, causes the poor to tend to obesity, though that malady has significant representation among the middle class and wealthy as well, who spend billions of dollars a year trying to find some kind of short-cut solution to health and beauty, as reflected in the fiscal (if not effective) success of diet companies, health clubs, and cosmetic surgery. The poor just don’t have those options.

Uncommon Sense may not intend to be prejudiced in his statements, but the attitude–that being obese is some kind or moral failure (“lazy”) rather than a result of poor education and bad food habits from a lifetime of exposure to the bad habits of others–dismisses the true cause of the problem; to wit; poor people are poor largely because they’re unlucky enough to be born poor. A few “Readers Digest” success stories may emerge despite the environment, but most people only rise to what is expected of them, if that.

Stranger

38

What about obesity among the poor that do not have jobs ? I am guessing that many of the poor in New Orleans did not work, and that they collect welfare and/or food stamps and live in subsidized housing.
I would think that the combination of being unemployed, not exercising, and eating unhealthy foods would cause many cases of obesity.

39

From personal experience, having started out poor and now being fairly well-off, I can say this- as a general rule, the more a job has paid, the less actual work I had to do to earn that money, mentally and especially physically.

To make ends meet on minimum wage, most people have to work two jobs. I don’t call that “lazy”.

40

Why all the replies about low paying jobs ? Most of the people that I have met that were obese and poor happened to be either unemployed or on some sort of disability. I grew up in the south, and I do not care if the people were black or white, it is not a race issue, there are plenty of poor white obese people in the trailer parks, and I never knew them to have jobs. Welfare, food stamps, and subsidized housing allow many people to not work and to also have enough money to buy unhealthy food.