

The “Girth-Wealth” Gradient: the poorer you are the fatter you're likely to be - cwan
http://www.slate.com/id/2229523/pagenum/all/

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blintson
They don't need to do anything to solve the fat people problem. Just remove
all crop subsidies and the problem will eventually solve itself. It's more
expensive to eat healthy because the crops used in making unhealthy foods are
heavily subsidized. At my local Kroger two red bell peppers cost more than a
twelve pack of generic soda. A sprig of cilantro costs $.75 inside, but a soda
can be bought from a vending machine in the front for $.50.

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hughprime
Is that hypothesis backed up by any data?

Australia and New Zealand have (almost) no agricultural subsidies, and yet
have the sixth and seventh highest obesity rates in the world.

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awt
Do they import cheap food from abroad?

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hughprime
Australia hardly imports any food at all, because it's large and climatically
diverse enough to support just about every crop in the world.

And yet people are still fat. Y'know why? Because they eat too much. Do they
eat too much because they're too poor to afford better food? Nope, they eat
too much because food is tasty and they have imperfect self-control.

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jmillikin
Link is just a Times landing page; here's the real article:
<http://www.slate.com/id/2229523/pagenum/all/>

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hristov
This is a well known problem. Healthy food is just too f-ing expensive.

If anyone is looking for a billion dollar idea, try making a healthy tasty
affordable fast food chain. And no subway does not count, it tastes like
cardboard.

The biggest problem with the healthy fast food chain is supply of fresh
produce. One of the main reasons bad food is so much cheaper is simply because
it lasts longer and thus can handle the long nationwide supply chains that are
currently prevalent.

But that is the exact type of problem that should be solvable with present
technology. You could connect all the small farmers in an area in some kind of
online market and allow them to sell produce directly to restaurants at weekly
or daily auctions or even sell contracts for future delivery of produce. Thus,
the restaurants can have a way to get their supplies cheaply and reliably and
directly from the farmer.

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hughprime
Where do people keep getting this idea that healthy food is expensive? Do they
live in areas substantially different from mine? At my local supermarket most
fruits and vegetables cost between $1 and $2.50 a pound. A whole head of
lettuce is, like, a buck. Rice costs almost nothing. A potato costs... I
dunno, but it's not much.

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rdouble
_Do they live in areas substantially different from mine?_

Probably. The article is talking about how poor people are fat. At grocery
stores in poor neighborhoods, healthy stuff is significantly more expensive,
or simply does not exist. For instance, a can of black beans at the ghetto
grocery store by my apartment near Bushwick costs twice as much as it does at
the Whole Foods in Union Square. Produce is rarely available, and when it is,
it's almost spoiled.

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hughprime
For what it's worth, the "local supermarket" I was talking about is on the
border of Oakland, and the area is so ghetto that they keep not only the
liquor and razor blades, but also the toothbrushes and condoms, in locked
cabinets.

I see plenty of fat people there.

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rdouble
Which supermarket is it? I used to live on the Oakland border.

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hughprime
The Pak N Save in Emeryville.

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hughprime
I hate these articles which pop up every week or so, trying desperately to
make the claim that fat poor people are the victims of anything other than
their own lack of self-control.

We all have to make decisions in life. Do we go to school, or do we cut class?
Do we work hard, or do we slack off? Do we eat that cheeseburger, or do we
have the salad? Do we go to the gym, or do we sit around eating chocolate ice
cream in front of the TV?

Some people are better at making these decisions (i.e. choosing the less
immediately satisfying option for long term gain) and some people are worse.
It should not be surprising that the people who are bad at making these
decisions tend to wind up both fat and poor.

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yan
I know this is far less politically correct than discussing subsidies and
prices, but can it be that poorer communities just assign less value to eating
well and staying healthy and are not necessarily looking to maximize nutrition
per dollar?

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zach
Could be. Looking at it economically, let's say I have a farm that produces
equal amounts of two food items. They're fairly indistinguishable, but one is
healthier, say because it has lots more omega-3 oils.

Which one would I charge a premium for? Which one would I make most of my
money on? Which one would end up with the fancier packaging? Remember, that's
presuming it's no more expensive to produce the healthy stuff.

And who would pay that premium? Who would eat the less-healthy stuff? Taking
those two kinds of consumers as the model, I think that's why anywhere a
business can apply price discrimination to a healthier food, it totally will.

~~~
yan
I don't know which one you'd pay a premium for. You'd see which one you're
selling more of and charge a premium for that.

The reality is, foods aren't indistinguishable. They have different tastes,
different marketing, different cultural value, etc. How "good" something is is
not, and never was, a prime indicator of success in the marketplace or value
to the consumer. If Pepsi wants to spend billions on advertising, people will
buy Pepsi.

I'd also venture a guess in saying that you don't just get a tally of every
food component available within some distance of your house, their nutritional
content and their price, and then you just optimize on nutrition regardless of
what your favorite childhood dish was, or what you're in the mood for or what
your friends are having.

All I'm saying is it isn't that simple as turning into a simplified problem of
supply and demand. Go to a fried foods place at a poor neighborhood and watch
how people order; I sincerely doubt they'd always end up getting the cheapest
thing just that's what they can afford. Certain lifestyle choices lead you to
a certain lifestyle (or perpetuate it) and completely forgetting those choices
for problems like obesity is being disingenuous with yourself.

~~~
zach
It's not as simple as you say either, so I don't know what I'm supposed to say
here. But thanks for the conversation.

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parse_tree
Who says healthy food is more expensive? For $20 I can get enough bananas,
oatmeal, tuna, eggs, and cucumbers to last me a week (easily). What's
expensive is the great tasting healthy stuff - lean chicken breasts, sushi,
good cuts of steak, exotic fruits and vegetables, etc. And this is a rude
thing to say, but there's a lot of fat people who given a little more money
would prefer an extra big mac and mcFlurry with their combo rather than wild
rice and BBQ'd salmon.

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3pt14159
Though I hate social engineering taxes, the easy way to fix the regressive
nature of the fat tax would be to cut a cheque to every person legally living
in the country. While the poor now have to pay, say, $1000 more per year they
are also cut a cheque worth $1100, giving them real choice between healthy and
nonheathly.

~~~
gaius
Nah, that's not how it works. I rarely go to supermarkets any more but when I
do I always see the same thing: fat mothers, fat kids, trolley full of
processed food and then to the cigarette kiosk to load up on fags, gossip and
TV magazines, and lottery tickets. You can feed a family of four healthy food
bought from the market for a day for the cost of 20 smokes - Indian and
Italian food in particular is incredibly cheap to make from scratch. The
problem is _not_ one of affordability. Anyone who says it is has a political
agenda.

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skolor
Kind of. Having lived for the past two years now on the low end of the income
spectrum, eating well is definitely more expensive than eating for the least
possible. White bread is cheaper than Whole Wheat. Low fat meats are always
more expensive than the fattier meats.

Mind you, either way it is cheaper or it breaks even at worst when compared to
buying pre-processed foods, but the point is: you can save some money by
eating a little worse.

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gaius
It depends on how much prep you're prepared to do. You can make a hearty
lentil curry very cheaply, for example, if you buy the basic ingredients in
bulk. 'Course this presupposes that you know how to cook, but that knowledge
is very nearly free, the only investment is in time.

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theBobMcCormick
Wasn't it pointed out in a previous article linked here on HN that the poor
tend to have less free time?

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hughprime
Some poor people have too little free time (the ones working two minimum-wage
jobs) while others have too much (the unemployed). It would be interesting to
compare the obesity rates of the two groups. I doubt you'd find that the
unemployed were thinner.

