

Food spending in America. Dining out vs buying groceries - ottbot
http://www.bundle.com/article/Food-DrinkDining-OutBundle-Spending-food-drink-America-10578

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hugh3
It seems like there could have been much more interesting information
extracted from this dataset than they actually got. Instead we're getting gems
like the fact that people who make more money wind up spending more money on
food, and "the people who are spending the most money on food overall devote
more money to dining out". Families with children spend more money on food
than single people.

The analysis goes on to ask interesting questions but not answer them. _"how
did people in Austin spend $12,447 on food and drink last year, while people
in Miami spent half as much? What are they buying in Austin? And what aren't
they eating in Miami?"_ Perhaps because Miami has a lot of old people and old
people spend a lot less on food than young people? The data exists to figure
out whether this would be sufficient to account for it, but they don't bother
doing the analysis.

Oh, and the one graph I really wanted to see was "proportion of food budget
spent on going out" vs "income" which I suspect might show some interesting
behaviour. But the graph wasn't there.

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tjmaxal
they aren't exactly a very serious site

~~~
hugh3
I'm not asking them to be serious, I'm just asking them to be interesting.

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jerf
"Brian Wansink, the director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University,
estimates we make 227 decisions about what to eat every day..."

That doesn't pass the smell test. The only way I can get that number is to
devalue "decision" to the point of uselessness; if I decide to each hamburgers
for dinner, well, I decided not to eat lasagna and I decided not to eat
spaghetti and I decided not to eat at McDonald's and I decided not to eat at
Wendy's. Maybe that's not exactly what they did, but I couldn't find an actual
description of the methodology, and _j'accuse_.

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tjmaxal
I would like to see this data overlayed with an obesity map.

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hugh3
Hmm, to first order I don't see much correlation. Pulling some statistics off
Forbes the five fattest cities in America are:

1\. Memphis TN: Obesity rate 34%, food spending $4667 (near bottom)

2\. Birmingham AL: Obesity rate 31.3%, food spending $7109 (slightly above
average)

3\. San Antonio TX: Obesity rate 31.1%, food spending missing from list? (Or
did I miss it?)

4\. Riverside CA: Obesity rate 30.8%, food spending $5675 (below average)

5\. Detroit MI: Obesity rate 30.1%, food spending $2246 (dead last)

And rounding out the top ten we have a bunch of poorish Southern cities plus
San Diego. I didn't bother to look them all up but San Diego has a surprising-
to-me-ly small food spending.

OK, so I suppose there's a tendency towards the fattest cities being among the
lowest-spending, with Birmingham being a slight outlier. I suspect what we're
seeing is just the well-known "poor people are fatter" phenomenon, but
complicated by a bunch of factors such as race, age distribution (few old
people are fat) and local cuisine (southern and Mexican cuisine are
particularly fattening).

I'll repeat what I always say though: poor people aren't fat _because_ they're
poor, they're fat _for the same reason_ they're poor -- they're not too
bright, have poor impulse control, don't plan ahead, and so forth.

~~~
blizkreeg
>> I'll repeat what I always say though: poor people aren't fat because
they're poor, they're fat for the same reason they're poor -- they're not too
bright, have poor impulse control, don't plan ahead, and so forth.

I would seriously not go that far to say poor people are not too bright or
have poor impulse control. That's judgmental without any data to back it up.
Poor people are likely poor because they aren't well educated, or have
professional white collar jobs like you and I. Lack of education and access
results in lack of awareness. You and I sit in our comfy sofas watching Jamie
Oliver give a talk at TED and hence we hail our organic vegetables and our
foo-foo healthy lifestyles. You cannot compare this vantage point with the
predicament of someone who is struggling to make ends meet. Or someone who
grew up in a poor neighborhood.

Lack of money has absolutely nothing to do with "brightness" or impulse
control. I grew up in India and know all too well that poor people can be very
sharp.

I have seen well-to-do fat people who lack even basic self-control. In fact,
much of America is not poor and the obesity epidemic here has nothing to do
with income levels. It is the result of a simple fact that fattening,
processed stuff is widely available at every corner for dirt cheap prices. And
that stuff that tastes good. When a healthy meal costs $12, it is but natural
that someone who earns minimum wage goes for the $3 burger at McD.

To disprove your argument, I put forward one simple fact. Majority of the
population in developing countries is not fat and they certainly aren't
dancing around in money.

I would be interested in running an experiment. What if all organic, fresh,
natural, unprocessed food was made dirt cheap and anything that isn't was
taxed like hell? So a lb of fresh vegetables and fruits costs $0.50.
Unprocessed food is subsidized at 50%. That order of fries, soda, and
cheezburger? $15.

What effect would it have on society?

~~~
orangecat
_Lack of education and access results in lack of awareness. You and I sit in
our comfy sofas watching Jamie Oliver give a talk at TED and hence we hail our
organic vegetables and our foo-foo healthy lifestyles. You cannot compare this
vantage point with the predicament of someone who is struggling to make ends
meet._

You don't need to eat like Jamie Oliver to not be obese. How much "education"
does it take to realize that cookies and sugary sodas and sitting on the couch
all day will make you fat?

 _It is the result of a simple fact that fattening, processed stuff is widely
available at every corner for dirt cheap prices here. Stuff that tastes good._

Absolutely. And I think there's something to Scott Adams's willpower theory.
If you have a great job and a nice house and a gorgeous wife and/or mistress,
it's not a huge sacrifice to pass on the Twinkie and go jogging. But if you're
just barely making ends meet and have no apparent prospects for improvement,
it's really hard to turn down short-term gratification.

Making healthy food taste better would do far more to combat obesity than
plastering nutritional labels and PSAs everywhere.

