
Study: people who grow up poor have a harder time regulating their food intake - ohjeez
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/12/the-crippling-thing-about-growing-up-poor-that-stays-with-you-forever/
======
jrapdx3
Over the many years of assisting people seeking treatment for excess body
weight, I'm constantly amazed by the endless complexity of the condition, not
surprising given the crucial importance of energy intake and regulation for
biological survival.

Unfortunately the research full report is behind a paywall, and the
abstract/summary leaves out a lot of info. However the findings are
interesting in linking the dysregulated eating behavior to childhood SES. The
details of the full report are needed to clarify some questions, like the
demographic composition of the sample populations.

It's been observed for a long time that some minority groups (e.g., black and
Hispanic) have higher rates of obesity. The fact that these groups are also
over-represented in lower SES population segments could be a factor in the
results. It's not clear how such variables were accounted for.

Perhaps a key was the last experiment discussed in the article, where there
was reduced response to blood glucose level. Ordinarily increased glucose acts
as a feedback signal of nutrient status turning off the drive to keep eating.

Problems with satiety (sense of fullness) are common in obesity, though how it
works is incredibly intricate and poorly understood. There are dozens of
genetic elements and a vast array of hormones and other body messenger systems
implicated, ultimately it involves most every part of the body. No wonder
theorizing about causes of eating/metabolic disturbances is frustrating and
unsatisfying.

I'll take a stab at it anyway. IMHO nutritional factors should be a major
suspect. A big change in diet over the last few decades has been the
substantially increased intake of sugars put into processed/convenience foods.
Fructose in foods has increased the most and thought to play a prominent role
in higher rates of obesity. It's conceivable that early life exposure to high
levels of sugars could bring about enduring abnormalities in body systems
responsible for metabolic regulation.

~~~
akovaski
I think you can find the article for free, hosted by one of the authors, at
this link:
[http://personal.tcu.edu/sehill/Hill_Prokosch_PsySci_2016.pdf](http://personal.tcu.edu/sehill/Hill_Prokosch_PsySci_2016.pdf)

A version with the paper which seems to have supplemental information at the
end is available at this link:
[http://personal.tcu.edu/sehill/SES_Hunger_4_Nov_15.pdf](http://personal.tcu.edu/sehill/SES_Hunger_4_Nov_15.pdf)

~~~
jrapdx3
Thank you! I'll take advantage of the author's generosity, making it available
is a good thing to do.

------
WalterBright
A bit missing from these studies are my parents' generation. My father grew up
in hard times during the Depression, my mother grew up in WW2 ravaged Europe
and spent some years with severe food shortages. Neither had any sort of
obsessive relationship with food.

Ok, 2 people is not data. But this happened to tens of millions of people. As
I understand it, that generation was less obese than later generations.

~~~
capote
Interesting, same here but my parents are likely your generation. Grew up in
70s-80s communist Eastern Europe, lots of food shortages from government
obsession with self-sufficiency. Stories of waiting in line for 3 hours for a
maybe loaf of bread.

No sort of unusual relationship with food, especially compared to mine—I grew
up with all the food I wanted and I stuff my face with pointless garbage every
30 seconds.

~~~
turnip1979
I think your folks may have these issues if healthy food was "expensive" but
sugary processed foods would be "cheap" and plentiful. By expensive/cheap, you
can substitute waiting in line for price.

~~~
barry-cotter
Rice and beans are a complete diet. Potatoes and milk are a complete diet.
Frozen vegetables fried with spices are tasty, nutritious and very fast to
prepare. Porridge, aka oats with milk or water is also dirt cheap and
nutritious.

I spent an unfortunate length of time watching my pennies when it came to my
foodbudget, in a western country. Being poor sucks but healthy food isn't
expensive unless you mean prepared, ready to eat expensive food.

~~~
fghrthtb
Will power consumes mental energy. Fighting the urge not to consume the cheap
sugary food all around you is not something many people have the resources to
do - especially the poor, who are under stress and therefore have fewer
cognitive resources to devote to willpower. Drop the politics and think about
things logically - then reintroduce your emotion. If you manage it you will be
outraged at the disgusting setup of modern society.

~~~
fpoling
If one is very poor, one cannot afford money to get prepared food and forced
to prepare food themselves no matter how weak is the will power. And that will
be much healthier. The problem is that in Westen societies such extreme
poverty is rare and people can afford junk food and advertisements heavily
inclines them to get it.

~~~
tamana
The problem is also that it is easy to buy some cheap bad food while not
saving up for rent/car/school payment. In other words, even though we can't
afford our lifestyle, food dolllars are the first dollars, and we go into debt
for the rest. So we can over spend on convenient food while still being broke.

------
cubano
From my experience in addiction therapy, one thing has become very clear to me
and that is much of the compulsive behavior caused by faulty brain wiring
began during early childhood.

In my case, I was abandoned by my biological parents for a three month period
as an infant and was mistreated by Aunts and Uncles. I still have fleeting
horrible memories of this event.

Eating without regards to health or other consequences is simply a form of
addiction, as you are doing it for emotional reasons and not because of
hunger.

All sorts of emotional traumas happen to infants and young children in poverty
that are far less likely to happen to those in a more financially and, lets
face it, emotionally stable environments. Poverty, of course, stresses
everyone involved in it.

I am not sure how groundbreaking this research is as it has been well-known
for many years that seriously stressing infants causes the brain's reward
system to change.

~~~
sjg007
The emotional part is huge.. Children are like sponges and soak up everything.
If anxiety and depression are not genetic I definitely learned it from one of
my parents.

------
zuck9
From
[https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10154144677734228](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10154144677734228):

> "Hill singles out childhood poverty, because she and her team asked
> participants not only for their socioeconomic statuses as children, but also
> their current socioeconomic statuses as adults, and, rather incredibly, the
> abnormal eating patterns only correlated with the former."

What a ridiculous and bizarre taboo it is that causes people to only ever
consider _psychological_ explanations of eating behavior and obesity. Could it
maybe be that growing up poor changed something to do with adipose tissue or
insulin regulation or God knows what? Obviously not, because obesity can only
ever be caused by the Sin of Gluttony, which by basic just-world theory must
ultimately reduce to a personal choice in some way, even if we pat you on the
head forgivingly and talk about your traumatic childhood.

I would ordinarily wonder if the researchers were really this stupid or if it
was the journalist, but unfortunately so far as I know most-not-all of
academia is also still running on the rule that causal explanations for
obesity must be somewhere intermediated by the Sin of Gluttony.

~~~
zardgiv
When did it become acceptable on Hacker News to post someone else's comments
wholesale without any other contribution? I usually only see this with
Yudkowsky or Scott Alexander quotes, so is it something from the LessWrong
community?

~~~
zuck9
I see this as similar to submitting links on HN.

This is not related to LessWrong. A lot of top-level comments here are just
that:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3078128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3078128)

------
ghufran_syed
Shouldn't there be a control group, with a task not involving food, to see if
the issue is food-related, or generally with impulse control? Maybe ask them
to do some boring task they were told was important, but have Facebook,
TV,sports or some other distraction immediately available too. I suspect the
same people who had trouble with controlling food intake would also have
trouble with other self control or delayed gratification tasks.

------
notacoward
The explanation that first leapt into my mind (as someone who grew up poor and
is now not-poor BTW) didn't seem to be considered. For some kids, snacks are a
luxury. For others, they're an unremarkable part of the background. This is
going to make a huge difference in people's responses, but not as a matter of
hunger vs. satiety. There's a whole different part of the brain associated
with status and self-image; I'll bet that's the part that lights up
differently for the once-poor vs. never-poor. An fMRI should shed some good
light on the matter.

------
jakubp
Why would it still surprise anyone that being poor frequently leads to
emotional and health issues of all kinds?! Good food is more expensive. Sugar
is cheap (and causes huge problems when overused). Good veggies, fruit, meat,
fish, olive oil and spices (just some random examples) are simply inaccessible
to billions of people.

Emotional traumas mentioned by other commenters here may or may not be more
prevalent in poorer social circles, but multi-faceted support systems
definitely are less prevalent (money=resources of all kinds, especially health
services and broader social support through extended connections). What would
be really interesting is research on specific methods to fight emotional
behaviors resulting from such life experience (i.e. what specific things you
can do to [learn how to] regulate your food intake)... Because if there are
millions of people with that problem, then actual source of that problem is
unimportant at the moment.. unless nobody knows of a way to change thigns for
the better and the only hope seems to be in uncovering the actual reasons.

------
awinter-py
Fascinating.

No surprise that stress has a major developmental effect.

Mouse models have shown various kinds of stress (including food stress)
causing epigenetic changes that are passed down more than one generation. And
in reptiles, temperature conditions (a form of stress) control the male-female
split of offspring.

------
BadassFractal
I wonder if there's a general theme here. Parental love, relationships, food,
money, shelter, if you don't have access to those as you develop then you end
up having a rather unhealthy relationship towards them in adulthood that might
never be fixed without therapy.

------
mattmurdog
I knew a guy who grew up poor and as a result he didn't have much to eat
growing up. So whenever he had free food he'd eat/steal as much as he can
because he'd never know when his next meal might be.

------
ktRolster
_She also says that just because the pattern exists, doesn 't mean it's not
something we can change. "There's no reason to think we can't help them
override this."_

------
dang
Et tu, WaPo?

We changed the title to a representative sentence from the article.

~~~
downandout
Thanks for this. These clickbait headlines are getting out of control.

------
shockzzz
Fair article, but definitely suffers from ethnocentrism. I'm pretty sure
they'd find very different results in India, China, Egypt, etc.

------
walrus01
One of the amazing things about the US is that poorest 15% of the population
(by gross household income) is also the FATTEST segment of the population.

In developing countries where the poorest 15% are truly living a bare
existence lifestyle (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh) you would never see a poor
obese person.

~~~
lacantina
Of the 0.2% of the population that is homeless, few are fat. Their level of
poverty is closer to the poverty in developing countries.

~~~
AndrewGaspar
Surely you're not serious.
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1925022/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1925022/)

------
slicktux
Yes, I learned about this behavior in Introduction to Psychology; ever since I
find myself learning more from people's behavior than ever before; after all
that is psychology, the study of mental processes and behavior. The article is
spot on. . .Overall, I think more emphasis should be put on the aspect of
nature and nurture side of science to the application of understanding the
people around with inclusion of holistic treatment for individuals; that is if
one grew up poor can we than maybe attribute the cause of obesity to the
psychological aspect and if they did not grow up poor then maybe we can
attribute obesity and over consumption to sedentary lifestyle and relaxed
selective pressure and mal-adaptation to the new environment. . . that is
thrifty hypothesis. . .

------
nsajko
The cause could be that people with poor SES still have worse nutrition (lack
of some nutrients) and thus the urge to consume. (I mean, in addition to the
urge caused by malnutrition in childhood.)

~~~
wadetandy
Except in the study they found that people who were in higher socioeconomic
status now still had the issue. This wouldn't apply most likely, as they most
likely more healthy and well nourished now

~~~
usrusr
Not necessarily, wealth alone may not be enough to change established habits.
The overeating could be related to "bluff food" that tastes like it would
supply much of a given nutrient which it actually lacks. In that case, the
direct cause would be the body trying to compensate a low level of that
nutrient by eating more of the food that tastes like it would contain it. And
while wealth might help to not even start with that bluff food trap, getting
wealthy after establishing a habit for it will just allow to buy more.

~~~
im3w1l
I've been idly thinking about bluff food as well, thanks for putting a name on
it. Is there evidence for the concept, do we crave bluff food that corresponds
to our deficiencies?

What are the most common kinds of bluff food and do you think anything could
be done about it?

~~~
usrusr
Sorry, no citable sources, just reading between the lines of "processed food
is bad" and the dissatisfying explanations usually given in that context.

What we do know is that animals and humans have a natural ability to balance
their diet (by developing seemingly random cravings?) and that this ability is
increasingly breaking down in "western civilisation". It is a small jump from
that to the idea that market driven "yummy engineering" could be the perfect
setup to find the fault lines in our diet balancing instincts.

~~~
im3w1l
There seems to be a known link between cravings, especially for ice or soil,
and iron deficiency.

[http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=57792...](http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=577928)

[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08880010590896486](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08880010590896486)

[http://www.samj.org.za/index.php/samj/article/viewFile/358/3...](http://www.samj.org.za/index.php/samj/article/viewFile/358/317)

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00029343829...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0002934382908026)

------
richcollins
A twin study to look for a potential common cause between poverty and poor
food selection might yield interesting results.

~~~
wadetandy
It's not so much poor food selection as poor access to quality and affordable
food. You can eat for a lot longer on $10 if you're buying things on the
McDonald's dollar menu than if you're buying fresh produce at Safeway or
giant.

~~~
maxerickson
Pasta costs $1 a pound (if you price watch just a little).

Potatoes often cost less than $0.50 a pound.

I think those are very valid comparisons, potatoes are even more nutritious
than anything McDonald's sells.

Sure, you have to cook them both for 10 or 15 minutes, which means you have to
have a working stove top, but McDonald's is not more affordable than the
grocery store, especially if you are buying things that are only comparably
nutritious (rather than for flavor or better nutrition or whatever).

~~~
steveax
Assuming of course that you have a grocery store in your neighborhood.

~~~
maxerickson
It would be an interesting map, to see how many people lived substantially
closer to a McDonald's than to a place that sold pasta for reasonable prices.
I guess you might have to toss in Subway.

Here, the decent groceries are a bit over a mile away, two are a bit closer
than the McDonald's, one is a bit further. 2 Subways beat them all.

I guess such a map would have uninteresting regions where it was more of a
choice (rural residential lots).

------
MilnerRoute
Ironically, I couldn't read this article because I was too poor to pay the
Washington Post for a subscription.

~~~
Trufa
Strange, I'm not subscribe and I can see it no problem... Maybe it's a country
thing?

------
Smirnoff
I think the article pretty much answered its question about why people growing
up poor have hard time regulating their food intake -- it's because their
parents weren't smart and/or because these kids weren't taught about sugar
overuse and calorie counting.

I'm not sure why the following psychological reasons were offered: formerly
poor people lose ability to understand when they are not hungry anymore or
that these people have to keep eating because of psychological disorders.

I think really it comes down to this -- people growing up poor (and becoming
better off because of better economic conditions) as a group were not taught
or concerned about proper nutrition.

What I'd really like to know if the participants knew how to do counting
(calorie counting) and how many guys were part of the study. Having only
female participants in the first 2 studies is kind of picking very narrow and
unrepresentative pool. And females these days count their calories a lot, so
it's not surprising they refused to drink soda and instead went for water.

PS: the final study did include men, although didn't state how many.

------
pbhjpbhj
>higher socioeconomic households

What does this mean, is it a standard definition in the field? Do they just
mean "rich" or something else?

------
makemoniesonlin
This study is dumb. I grew up in upper middle class and have no problem
controlling my food intake (I almost have a six pack).

However, whenever there is an abundance of snacks out for eating without any
limits, I will go crazy and consume upwards of 2000 calories. I surely would
have not been able to regulate my food intake during this experiment, even
though I can in general at home.

------
known
One reason why we need
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)
FTW

------
geggam
The timing of the poor people getting fatter seems to coincide with the timing
of high fructose corn syrup being introduced.

We had 2 fat kids in my school class.... look around now

------
harryjo
Can we get a mod practice to rewrite WaPo's clickbait titles into proper
summary headlines?

~~~
dang
Absolutely. That's the practice universally (i.e. not for just one
publication, but all).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11516590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11516590)

It just takes a while for us to see them sometimes. You can always email
hn@ycombinator.com if there's one we haven't seen yet.

------
pink_dinner
My theory is that many poor families have a lack of self-control/discipline
and they pass these habits onto their kids. It's difficult to break out of a
family culture when you get older. Especially if this is what you have known
your entire life and you have pressure to stay that way.

Just like with money, it takes a ton of discipline to make continued long-term
minded decisions rather than short-term emotional ones that make you feel
good.

Of course, this doesn't apply to everyone. Humans are complicated.

~~~
notacoward
> poor families have a lack of self-control/discipline

I know you said that was just a theory, but it's a variation on a too-common
theme that I - and many others - find offensive. The experiment specifically
involved people who have the same current socioeconomic status. Some had been
affluent all their lives, while others had become affluent from poorer
beginnings. If self-discipline is what allows some to become richer than
others, don't you think those who became wealthy by their own efforts might
know a bit more about it than those who had their wealth handed to them? Why,
then, would they _still_ exhibit this distinct reaction to offers of food? I
don't think your theory has any explanatory power at all.

~~~
pink_dinner
Self-discipline isn’t binary, it’s fluid. Some people that obtain their own
wealth lose the edge they once had that got them there in the first
place...and end up poor again.

It also isn’t a guarantee of success (nothing is). It’s a way of stacking the
deck in your favor. It’s really one of the only things you can do if you want
to move to a better socioeconomic status.

Frankly, I'm tired of this new pervasive idea that the system will always be
against anyone that isn't rich and there's no point in even trying if you are
poor. Ironically, this victim menality will continue to keep many people in
poverty

We now live in an age of free information. There is free Internet access in
almost every library in the country and you can learn many new skills from
free video tutorials, college courses, and web pages. There are no more
excuses.

~~~
notacoward
You didn't answer the question. Instead, you made up something about the
"pervasive idea" that "there's no point" etc., which nobody here even remotely
hinted at. It's a _huge_ strawman. The "age of free information" blather is
even worse. The US is not all of the world. In much of that world, there is no
free internet access in almost every library. Even in the US, it's less
pervasive and often less truly free than you seem to think, and learning those
many new skills requires a certain baseline education that many do not have.
Someone would have to be _really_ deep in a privilege bubble to be so totally
oblivious to how life is for the truly poor.

But that's not even the point, really. The point is that, even if I were
inclined to blame the poor for their own situation as you do, your theory
would _still_ have no explanatory value when comparing the previously-poor to
the never-poor. Your "theory" is simply counterfactual and illogical. The fact
that it's also offensive is just the icing on the cake.

------
zxcvvcxz
Here's a thought: this pattern probably applies to other natural human needs
as well. That is, developmental scarcity leading to brain re-wiring that
compels overcompensation.

It almost sounds Freudian (probably is), but people who lacked love early in
life probably tend to try and get more of it later on, and have a harder time
being on their own, often feeling more lonely.

------
oldmanjay
It's an interesting connection. Too bad the article veers off into fantasy
land so they can posit vastly complicated triggers for the observation.

~~~
qntty
Isn't making sense of data by proposing possible explanatory frameworks the
essence of scientific theory? Are you just anxious to see evidence that could
possibly support or deny their theories? Or are you categorically opposed to
thinking beyond the most literal interpretation of data?

Where do ideas for experiments come from if not somone's unsupported
fantasies?

~~~
jessriedel
> Where do ideas for experiments come from if not somone's unsupported
> fantasies?

They come from small, modest guesses in accordance with Occam's razor. You
have got to be able to distinguish between (1) reasonable hypothesis
generation and (2) unhinged fantasies with a thousand moving parts unsupported
by data.

~~~
qntty
The fact that a single experiment needs to be an attempt to test a modest
guess doesn't mean that this is how every scientist experiences the process of
coming up with ideas for experiments. There is nothing about doing science
that requires you to refuse to fantasize about the big picture, even if the
big picture has a million moving parts (which it always does in social
science).

~~~
jessriedel
As a physicist, sometimes I sit in my bathtub and fantasize about the
possibility that the entire observable universe is a big simulation run by
aliens. But I don't publish it in the Washington Post.

The social sciences do not have a good track record when it comes to their
unhinged theorizing.

~~~
jacinda
You may not, but other people do.

\---

Bostrom goes so far as to say that unless we rule out the possibility that a
machine could create a simulation of a human existence, we should assume that
it is overwhelmingly likely that we are living in such a simulation.

“I’m not sure that I’m not already in a machine,” he said calmly.
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/12/27/aianxie...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/12/27/aianxiety/)

\---

~~~
stordoff
> unless we rule out the possibility that a machine could create a simulation
> of a human existence

Even if we rule that out, doesn't the possibility that we are in a simulation
still exist? Maybe the creators of the simulation exist in an n-dimensional
space, and the reality we experience is a gross simplification of that.

TBH, I find the idea comforting in a weird sort of way, as it gives a
structure to everything (e.g. Of course quantum states only collapse when
observed - why bother simulating something no one is looking at?).

------
tehwebguy
Maybe it's just the snacks

