

The Obesity-Hunger Paradox - fleaflicker
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/nyregion/14hunger.html

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dkarl
It would be interesting to know how many groups or classes of people have
bridged the gap from insecurity to plenty _without_ experiencing an obesity
problem. Even Japan is struggling with a rise in obesity. Remember when the
rich were all plump, and gout was a rich person's disease? Upper-class culture
evolved to deal with the problem, but it didn't happen overnight. This looks
like an instance where the upper classes took a few generations to adapt, but
now we're looking at the poor (and also the middle class) and saying _why
don't you just catch the fuck up right now?_ Obviously people arriving at the
problem later have more information to work with, but cultural change is hard.
Give 'em a generation or two.

This article concentrates on the availability of food, but I think that's only
one side of the problem. I remember an NPR segment a couple of years ago where
they went to a food bank near a wealthy area and compared what people were
donating to what people were taking from the food bank. The rich folks were
donating whole-wheat bread, which ended up just sitting on the shelves. Either
the poor folks didn't know what to do with it, or felt insulted that the rich
folks were trying to change their eating habits, or they just didn't like it.
The poor folks wanted white bread and canned vegetables. Just because you've
got whole-grain bread and fresh vegetables doesn't mean you know what to do
with them or how to get your kids to eat them. Better supply might help,
though: provide healthy food, and maybe they'll figure out what to do with it,
even if they didn't really want it in the first place.

Getting kids raised on junk to start eating healthy food is another problem: I
don't have kids myself, but evidently kids are little nutritional self-harm
monsters. If you give healthy food to a kid who is used to pizza rolls and
potato chips, he won't eat it, and he'll get cranky and nasty because he
hasn't eaten. He'll torture himself and everyone around him until he gets
candy or a Coke or mac and cheese. If you've let your kids get accustomed to
eating junk, there's going to be a hell of a lot of suffering -- for both
parents and kids -- before healthy eating starts to feel normal. Maybe that's
why the adjustment time is measured in generations.

Personally, my parents had some crude notion of healthy eating, so I didn't
get soda, candy, or sugary cereal, but we ate a lot of pancakes, french toast,
spaghetti, bread and butter, bacon, buttery popcorn, etc. Those are foods that
it's easy to gorge on, quantities were not consistently limited, and I liked
eating, so I ate way too much. My parents maintained discipline and knew it
was important that I ate a healthy diet; they just didn't have a good enough
understanding of nutrition. Hopefully with my own kids I'll maintain what they
achieved and add a better understanding of nutrition.

~~~
rsheridan6
>Remember when the rich were all plump

I don't think that was ever true. The converse might have been true, but just
look at old pictures - not a whole lot of fat people, and certainly not many
morbidly obese people.

Obesity has been an epidemic since 1980 or so. It must be something that
changed around then. In other news, high fructose corn syrup hit the market in
1975.

~~~
bricestacey
There was a good lecture titled _Sugar: The Bitter Truth_ by Robert Lustig, a
professor at UCSF, where he argues that HFCS is poisonous. What I found most
interesting was that although HFCS is a sugar, it supposedly is primarily
metabolized to fat. It seems pretty easy to then link low-income, food
insecure (hungry) people with obesity.

The video is worth watching: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>

~~~
Raphael
He said fructose is poison. Sucrose is just as hazardous; it's just that HFCS
happens to be pumped into everything.

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gruseom
It's only a paradox, I suppose, if you buy the prosperity hypothesis of
obesity. Another word for "paradox" might be "refuting evidence". Gary Taubes
has done some excellent work on this. My mind was changed by watching some of
his talks, which are readily available on Youtube.

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kingkongreveng_
If you're poor and buying mostly fast food you're just stupid. Dare I say
you're poor and fat because you're stupid.

Convenience and time? You're going to do better healthwise and financially
with any of ten products you can eat straight out of the can/jar. How can you
beat a can for convenience and time efficiency?

Dare I say there aren't decent grocery stores in poor areas for the same
reason there are many liquor stores in poor areas. It's not some policy
problem.

~~~
hristov
Sorry you are wrong. Food that is good for you is just more expensive than
food that is bad for you. I have never been really truly poor but I have been
a poor student and I can tell you from first hand experience that it is
definitely the case that if you are trying to save every penny you are more or
less guaranteed to eat bad food.

I don't know what are those cans and jars of healthy food you are referring
to. The only thing I can think of is canned fruit/peppers but they are
definitely more expensive than the caloric equivalent of junk food.

Also as the article said, if you have uncertain income you will end up going
on a starve/binge cycles which are also guaranteed to make you fat.

Another issue is that any affordable healthy food usually requires cooking and
many poor people (esp in urban areas) do not have access to clean kitchens.

So it is a real issue and saying "they are poor because they are stupid" is
pretty fucked up.

~~~
kingkongreveng_
> Food that is good for you is just more expensive than food that is bad for
> you.

It's not a relevant difference. Sugar and rice are the absolutely cheapest
calories, and they're not so good for you. But a can of coconut milk is ~700
healthy and tasty calories for about a buck. Eggs are healthy and pennies a
pop; you can even buy them already hard boiled. A can of sardines is a couple
bucks. A can of sauerkraut is a buck and loaded with nutrition.

You have to be a moron to fail to put together a decent day's worth of food at
a grocery store given $8. If you're willing to eat high starch you can eat for
a couple bucks a day.

~~~
epochwolf
> Sugar and rice are the absolutely cheapest calories

You can bulk bags of rice as needed to supplement smaller amounts of healthier
foods if you need to save money. (Stay away from the sugar) A diet of rice,
beans, and vegetables may be boring but with little research you can live on
it just fine.

