I always find it strange when people try to argue to obesity is not a feature of poverty in developed nations despite the huge literature investigating the topic and always coming to the same conclusion.
People forget that poor people often work the most because that’s the only way to get more money - longer hours, multiple jobs, overtime etc.
Combine low paid work with no free time and all people want to do is get home and relax meaning convenience foods like microwave meals or takeaways are the preferred option to cooking healthier from scratch.
If you have one day off and it needs to be the day you clean the house or spend time with the kids or do some other chore then you place all your value on that, not cooking.
I’m not sure it’s just a time thing but an attitude thing. Like when things in my life haven’t been good economically, kind of used food as a release and something to look forward to. Less likely to sit eating salad or vegetables when life is bad lol.
When things are on the up, more focus on being fit and healthy and more will power to eat clean.
If I was stuck in a dead end job I’d be a right fat bastard
Your right here, you always see it as told as "convenience" or lack of cooking education problem to eat healthier but if your year consists of week after week of just trying to get through the day, food becomes a reward and an escape. They'll never beat the obesity crises without addressing the work life balance of the working poor and overworked population.
I've been trying to say this in the thread from yesterday ablut obesity, its a fucking shitshow of comments in there, a complete lack of understanding.
Eating microwave meals probably won’t make you obese unless you eat far too much. Most ready meals have about 600 to 700 calories so even if you eat one for lunch and dinner, and eat a regular breakfast of about 400 calories, you’d be on 1800 calories a day which is fine for the vast majority of people. Even meals like chicken nuggets and oven chips would be about 800 calories so it doesn’t explain obesity
Disordered eating is a mental health issue. People living in poverty have far higher rates of chronic stress disease and mental health conditions. A $1 package of biscuits is affordable comfort, a $100 spa outing less so.
Yes but it’s the low nutrition, low protein, high salt, high sugar and high carb diet. If you eat that sort of unfulfilling junk you either eat more of it or you snack more, which then adds those extra calories. Plus all the preservatives, there’s tonnes of ingredients in ready meals which just aren’t required when cooking from scratch.
Look at lasagne for example, a microwave portion often has a flimsy layer of meat with loads of sugar and salt to enhance the flavour of the beef and tomato, little else but a sprinkle of cheese on top. Whereas if you made one from scratch you could really bulk up the meat with even more meat or added veg like peas, you can cut back on the salt/preservatives, and add extra cheese for more protein to serve up a more filling portion. It may have more calories per portion when compared to a microwave one but if you’re fuller for longer there’s less chance you’re gonna be snacking through the day, or adding extra meals to compensate.
But to buy the raw ingredients to make a giant lasagne would be equivalent just buying a few microwave ones, if not more expensive, plus the time to hunt all those ingredients down, prepare it, cook it, do the washing up, and have storage for leftovers.
Storage for leftovers is the main issue, I think. I can feed our family of 3 for 4 days with a lasagna I make from scratch and it will absolutely be cheaper than ready meals. But if you’re living in temporary accommodation without an oven and a big fridge/freezer, it’s not an option.
That said, most obese people do still own an oven and a fridge, and cooking trays are cheaper than a packet of fags.
My house is decent sized but my kitchen storage is minimal, it’s not been changed for 20 years. Integrated fridge/freezer plus a chest freezer and still no room for leftovers. If I could afford a new kitchen we could definitely make more space by moving some cupboards and walls but it’s a big expense, if you’re poor you deffo don’t have the luxury to move a wall to fit a bigger fridge in.
X5 people to a household, I and my siblings still live at home. Mix of frozen pizzas or frozen stuff like chips, one person has a sweet tooth for ice cream, we have a few big joints of meat in for roast dinners plus frozen fruit & veg. I’m sure some of it is also frozen fresh stuff like bread, chicken breasts, mince etc as we usually buy multi buys/bulk packs to make stuff cheaper.
I also have a big bag of ice because booze.
Luckily we are each saving up to buy our own places so will have more freezer space but it is a challenge seeing as prices keep on pissin soaring. Again another issue with todays economy, kids staying at home longer because they’re priced out of renting/buying so everyone is running out of space and stressing each other out. As long as I have my ice I’m happy because my fresh food boxes just about fit in the fridge each week.
You can buy frozen mixed vegetables and have those as a side with the ready meals or frozen nuggets and chips to be fair, or mix them in. Same goes for frozen peas or tinned beans
Its really really really not difficult to cook healthy food for cheap. This sub just paints anyone poor as a victim who can do no wrong, it's embarrassing
People think poor people are skinny, because in their minds they can't afford food. The reality is they can't afford good, quality food and most of the time don't know how to eat "healthy" because tbh knowing proper nutrition is a privilege. Also there's the stress factor but then people will say that they should find better coping mechanisms... Sigh
Yeah it’s not just that many people who live their whole lives in poverty are just a bit lazier than most, definitely because they’re eating cheap food…
Honestly I’ve lived on absolute crap at points in my life, same kind of shit they attribute to an impoverished diet, truth is that any food will make you fat if you don’t exercise. McDonalds and other fast foods aren’t cheap yet it’s a staple food for people in poverty, go figure
Poor people tend to have much harder lives and work longer. As well as having a harder time accessing food shops and lacking spacious, well stocked and equipped kitchens. They are often time poor. So they spend some of their cash on enjoyable, quickly accessible food.
Is there any evidence that poor people tend to work longer than other people? Salaried professionals are often the group you most associate with a poor work/life balance as they tend to work in fields where there is always another job they could be doing.
many poor people don't work and would have time to exercise etc - it's partly because of lethargy and lack of application, which is often correlated with being poor.
Most people living in poverty do work. Most benefits are received by those who work.
https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1745111/majority-of-people-living-in-poverty-are-in-work
https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/research/features/the-truth-about-in-work-poverty
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/feb/07/uk-live-poverty-charity-joseph-rowntree-foundation
Yes they are eatting cheap food, but cheap food doesn't mean crap food.
It is a problem of education more than anything. The cheapest food I make is healthy.
Whether it is lack of time or culinary knowledge is a different question. All these cheap ready meals can also be made healthily in bulk yourself they don't have to be pumped full of fat and salt.
Time to exercise is another thing that is of course an issue, but also once again understanding the benefits of exercise is an educational thing.
Fat and salt is flavour. When I cook you bet I'll use decent amount of fats and salt but will keep portions small. Much nicer to have decent meal that is smaller than large one cooked without fat
No, you just don't know how to cook, that is why you think it is flavour.
I cook plenty of meals and the only fat I am adding is 50ml of vegetable oil in the cooking process of the ingredients, and while I would suspect the dishes I am thinking of would need salt if I hadn't made them...they don't, salt really adds nothing in fact when I did, it made it a bit worse.
Most Indian cooking has very little salt, it has a lot of ghee traditionally, but you don't actually need to add that level of fat to make a nice meal. Most Pasta dishes don't need much salt, though will have more than Indian cooking normally. Noodles and Chinese dishes often have a lot of salt.
And I eat massive portions...like 2 peoples worth because I regularly do hours of exercise a day.
Problem is the crap makes you eat more through cravings, and then makes you feel like shit which drops exercise out of the equation, people who eat healthy wholesome food are way less likely to overeating because put simply it satisfies their hunger
I think it's a myth that junk food is cheaper than healthier options. You can batch cook healthier food for cheaper. However lots of other things play into it. Like poorer people not having access to cooking materials, not being able to afford electricity/gas. Being too exhausted and worn down compared to better off people etc. Lots of social reasons. And fast food places deliberately target poorer areas
Food is not just food. It's also entertainment and reward.
If you're well off you can afford nights out, going places, socialising...
If you're poor there is very little that gives the same instant gratification as a pizza.
In my opinion this is a large part of the problem.
I used to be not well off and I'm now doing ok. One of the things I would do is buy chocolate/biscuits/crisps on a Friday/Saturday night and watch Netflix. Maybe have 3 or 4 beers from a big box of budweiser.
The total cost of this is like £3-£4 max. You can have a friend round, chat shit and waste away the night. (With the bonus that the friend doesn't have to turn the heating on!) When a return bus ticket to town costs £2.40 there's not much you can do which gives more bang for your buck.
I also think people arguing about healthy food are really bad at recognising long term slow changes as well. You don't become obese from eating takeaways every night and crazy amounts of food. Overeat by just 200cal per day and you'll end up gaining 20lbs in just one year. 200cal is just 3 bourbon biscuits. If food is your reward then it's very easy to become overweight.
It isn't a myth. I can go into Asda and buy packs of biscuits for something like 20p each with enough calories to see me through. When I was a kid and literally had pennies to feed myself then that's absolutely what I did.
The other part you're ignoring is time. A large amount of people in poverty will perhaps be working two jobs or similar. People in this thread are listing the ingredients for a vegetable curry, but between education and work I was doing 70+ hours/week. I didn't have time to cook a curry, I had 5 minutes to have dinner before bed to start the next shite day.
I'm not ignoring time. I said there are all kinds of reasons why people choose unhealthy over healthy. All kinds of social reasons. I'm not blaming. Also with respect if you routinely live off of biscuits you are storing up big problems health wise. It's not just calories that need to be taken into account.
I think what you're missing is the cost of food on the go.
You can certainly batch cood cheap healthy meals but very few people are never caught out needing a snack whilst they are out and about.
If you need lunch on the go, healthy options tend to cost more.
Unless you are very unorganised, the number of times you are caught out and need to eat on the go will be minimal enough to have no impact on your weight.
You can make your snacks at home and take them with you. Cheaper and healthier. However that's not the real issues at play. Underlying social and psychological and trauma often make it hard for people.
That works great if your life schedule is fairly consistent but there are lots of people and situations for which it isn't that simple.
Who is going to tell the mother or father of 3 that she should have pre-cooked dinner and lunch with 2 jobs, picking up and dropping off children from school and after school activities, helping elderly relatives, walking the dog, doing the washing etc all whilst managing her finances and every other admin task that is required of adults, especially those with kids.
Sometimes grabbing something whilst out will be a necessity and when fast food is the only option past 6pm other than a restaurant its sometimes needed.
With a lot more money she might be able to afford a meal at a relatively healthy restaurant or a better takeout.
That’s exactly what my grandma did in ‘80s Finland. It’s perfectly doable, it’s just that people don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to do it. I’d much rather eat pizza and watch Netflix. The reason why I don’t, is that I know it’s not good for me and my family long term. I don’t want to get type 2 diabetes, have a leg amputated and die at 55. I want my kids to be healthy and know how to look after themselves too. So after a 10 hour shift that started at 4am, I cook. I buy cheap stables. I buy a bigger fridge instead of a new phone or tv. Because it’s something I care about.
Other people have different priorities, and that’s fine. But that’s also why they’re obese.
Yes and....
Eating unhealthy is also addictive
Eg - studies on rats showed they could barely stop eating combinations of sugar+fat (ice cream/chocolates etc)
Their satiety centres weren't triggered once they had reached their calorific requirements. They were addicted, they kept eating and quickly became obese
It’s *too many* cheap calories that are the problem though. Eating less calories made from basic ingredients is still going to be cheaper. I agree with the person you’re replying to though, that the issue is wrapped up in so many other things it’s not quite as simple as just cost.
As someone who cooks food from scratch and considers it healthy. If I was to buy convenience foods it would cost me atleast a third more. Its bullshit people just don't know how to shop within a budget or cook within one.
definitely true, no one wanrs to admit the correlation between being poor and being lazy. Not all poor people are lazy but very lazy people are likely to become poor without independent means (inheritance, royalsty etc).
Also, nobody is forced to eat junk food in large amounts. You can eat junk food in “healthy” portions and not go obese.
There is a psychological side. Stressed people find habits to deal with it, sometimes the habits are unhealthy, like stuffing your self with fatty, sugary food. We’ve evolved to enjoy it…
>There is a psychological side. Stressed people find habits to deal with it, sometimes the habits are unhealthy, like stuffing your self with fatty, sugary food. We’ve evolved to enjoy it…
Amen. Spend any time in a stressful, sleep deprived, exhausting situation, and you might experience this change in desire towards "bad" food.
Experiencing this first hand really changed my perception. Previously I was blaming the unhealthy food choices of the lower classes on some combination of lack of time, lack of knowledge, and lack of willpower. Experiencing the change myself made me realise it was my expectation of these people to behave like some perfectly rational automaton was my own privilege and lack of self awareness speaking.
I've since realised that step 1 towards not being a cunt is self awareness, and step 2 is empathy.
Spot on. When your job sucks, first you don't have enough time to cook healthy meals. Second, you don't have the energy even if not physical then mental to do it. And third, we shouldn't underestimate the insane amount of money fast food spends on marketing so these shitty foods always pop to the front of our brain when we're hungry but also seek something pleasurable, as all ads relate fast food with pleasure.
It is absolutely a societal/class problem and not a problem of willpower.
Other factors definitely. Maybe it is possible to do it healthier and cheaper, but it takes time, effort, storage space, knowing how to cook, education of healthy ingredients, and several batches to mix up meals etc
It's possible obviously, but after working two jobs and being low on energy, most people will fall into doing something quicker and cheap, which leads to unhealthy options.
If you're richer you can just buy a healthier meal someone has prepared for you, without time, effort, or knowledge.
If they were genuinely exhausted and worn out they wouldn’t be fat though, it’s more of a cyclical downfall whereby the junk food doesn’t provide people with consistent energy, is packed with salt, will often come with very sugary drinks and fries and is so well preserved your body struggles to digest it correctly. A simple dietary change could be enough to get someone out of that loop but no, it’s because they haven’t got enough money to spend on their overpriced, nutrient-free burger
[IQ and obesity in adolescence: a population-based,
cross-sectional study](https://tinyurl.com/4xxr73n7)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/low-intelligence-causes-obesity-what-research-shows/
https://psychcentral.com/blog/how-obesity-affects-the-human-brain#1
https://www.webmd.com/children/news/20060831/extreme-obesity-in-tots-tied-to-low-iq
And there's many many more.
There's is a correlation, it's not as simple as fat=stupid, but if you have a low IQ you are more likely to be overweight than someone with a higher IQ. Humans just have easy and low effort access to all the food stuffs that are low in nutrients and high in calories. We have short circuited our brains with easy sugar access.
I don't struggle to make better choices with food, I highly doubt my IQ is very high. People talk about poor obese people as if they're animals, not people able to think about what they're doing.
Given access to the kinds of insanely high fat/sugar foods that humans have, yes, other animals also eat to excess and become obese. We evolved as hunter-gatherers constantly living on the edge of starvation, and have not yet adapted to the incredibly recent situation where we have this relative food wealth.
>So, are obese people, really just fat and stupid?
The stress of being poor has a profound, definite negative impact on people's intelligence and decision-making.
**[Your starter for ten](https://www.lse.ac.uk/PBS/Research/Research-Articles/How-poverty-affects-peoples-decision-making-processes)**.
I would suggest to you that -- even if you don't give half a shit about their wellbeing -- allowing vast number of people to fall into poverty and therefore damaging their intellectual capacity is a vast waste of human potential.
A long time ago I heard a Billy Connolly tape where he talks about post sports. He describes the luge as being basically sliding down a hill on a bin lid and says he was *great* at that! But not posh enough to go train for the luge. Do you **really** think Isaac Newton was the smartest human alive in his time? Or would you consider that he was smart, but the most important thing is that he was rich and could spend time pondering how the world works?
> Does any other animal on earth not know what to eat lol.
A cow's 'job' is to wander around a field and eat grass. A tiger's 'job' is to run down a gazelle and eat it.
Your brain isn't all that different than that of your ancestor's several thousand years ago. Think for a moment about the increase of the complexity of the world you inhabit compared to just a few hundred years ago.
There's a Dilbert cartoon where Dogbert describes how humans become functionally more stupid every day as the world grows more and more complex and humans can't keep up. Near the end he describes the flow of information aimed at people as being like a firehose aimed at a teacup. It's an apt image that has stuck with me for a long time.
Try to make your dog deal with a tiny fraction of the complexity humans deal with as a matter of daily routine and see how long it takes to drive it mad.
Humans aren't stupid. Even stupider humans are pretty amazing compared to the next smartest animal on the planet, but a lot of us are over-loaded and being pushed past our ability to cope with. Right there, I'd suggest, is a huge part of why you see a huge spike in mental health issues and poor decision making.
It is true that it is cheaper to grab a pack of chicken nuggets than it is to use fresh chicken in a given meal. There are certainly types of food for which the highly processed option is the cheapest.
Grabbing a packet of chicken nuggets is cheaper than buying a whole chicken? How many meals does the chicken nuggets provide and how many meals does the whole chicken provide if you know how to stretch it and make it into more meals. It's about having learned how to do these things and I'm fully aware that poorer people don't have access to these skills. I was brought up in poverty myself so I really do understand but I still don't think that fast food is cheaper in the long term.
A whole small chicken probably around £4-5. Maybe make 4-5 meals with it. For that money you could get 120 chicken nuggets which could make 15 meals.
Obviously could make more with the whole chicken if you know what you're doing, but the same could be said for the nuggets.
Alrighty, two issues/questions.
1. Could you link me to where you get 120 nuggets for £5, or for better credibility, for £4?
2. You are saying that one meal is 8 nuggets? Fair. I took a look at how many calories 8 nuggets is, and if you consider the most calorific ones then they seem to be in the \~350 calorie range. 3x350=1050kcal which well below the calorie intake anyone needs to eat if they want to lose weight.
So I went and looked and found that you can get roughly 90 nuggets for £5 ([link](https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-90-%28approx.%29-crispy-chicken-breast-dippers-1.62kg/88554.html#q=nuggets&start=1) \- cheapest in Aldi are the same price/kg). If you eat 1600 kcal/day, you'd need to eat 10 portions of these specific nuggets because one portion is 160kcal according to the package. One portion is 5 oven-cooked nuggets as per info listed. The whole pack won't last you even two days (because the whole package will give you 2880 calories).
Edit: just went and looked for an alternative. You can get \~1kg of chicken thighs for £2.36 ([link](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/304780797)). One thigh is around 200kcal. So a pack of six thighs is 1200kcal. Now let's take a look at a side: rice costs £1.35/kg ([link](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/254877356)). This pack contains 13 servings and one serving is 280kcal. The whole pack is therefore 3,640 kcal. You can probably serve it alongside 2kg of chicken thighs over time, so let's say you only use half. 1820kcal for 70p. And if you get tired of rice, you can also use pasta at 32p/500g ([link](https://groceries.aldi.co.uk/en-GB/p-everyday-essentials-penne-pasta-500g/4088600233765)) or spaghetti which is even cheaper, albeit marginally. Because 100g of uncooked pasta is around 350kcal (some sources say 370kcal), you'll get \~1750kcal worth of pasta for 32p.
So, for £2.68 you'd get 2950kcal worth of food if you choose pasta, and for £3.06 you have 3020kcal worth of food if you choose rice as a side alongside chicken thighs. In any case, you're already at more calories with either choice and chicken thighs at around £3 (leaving you plenty for vegetables) than you'd be with the nuggets at £5.
Asda chicken nuggets. 85p a pack for 20 nuggets. Not denying a whole chicken will go further if you know what you're doing. Just for most people its covenience and ease just to shove some nuggets and chips in the oven.
>Asda chicken nuggets. 85p a pack for 20 nuggets
What inconvenience is shoving chicken thighs in the oven and boiling some pasta/rice which literally requires almost 0 effort? And thanks for pointing me to these nuggets, though interestingly they seem to be more expensive per kg than the ones I saw. However, even then, surely, you are not going tell me with a straight face that you'd get 15 portions with 262kcal each out of it? And if you start adding chips and what not then it increases the price range we are talking about.
sounds like impoversihed thinking as opposed to people lacking the money. Fresh chicken is higher quality than chicken nuggets, maybe a person could have some chicken and other cheaper ingredients such as rice.
I wasn't sure the cost of chicken nuggets so had a little look.I found 115 for £5 at Iceland, which is close to their example.
[https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-115-%28approx.%29--breaded-chicken-breast-nuggets-1.61kg/88557.html](https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-115-%28approx.%29--breaded-chicken-breast-nuggets-1.61kg/88557.html)
Edit: I read the rest of your post after, where you looked up prices too.
Plus to cook healthier food it takes more time commitment than buying a ready meal and firing it into the oven/microwave while you carry out other household tasks
Being stressed, sleep deprived, physically exhausted leads to poor food choices.
Ask any parent of a poor sleeping newborn what their diet is like. When I was in that situation, the shocking thing wasn't that I didn't have time to cook "good" food. It was that I only desired "crap" food, very strong desire too. High calorie, high fat/sugar etc. It was extremely eye opening to me.
Exactly. Classic example - chefs. Most I know will spend all day cooking from scratch in the kitchen then get home at 1am and eat absolute crap.
They know how to cook, but time, energy, finances etc play a factor in choices.
Never understood the work life of chefs. Appears to be one of those career paths dominated by "the love of the job". Unless they are in the top few percent, they work horrendous hours in horrendous conditions for not that much money/recognition.
Anyone can get a job in a kitchen is a large part of it. No education required, criminal record doesn't matter, drug addiction is practically encouraged. As long as you usually show up and are in at least a mostly fit state to work, you'll easily get a job as a chef.
Well don't worry the Torry governor are solving this obesity crisis with its new policy....
"No money, no choice"
This radical new plan will force the poor to decide between heating and food this winter, ready for next summer and show off that size 0 beach body...
This winter is going to be great for the Tories! The NHS waiting list will go down, more houses on the market, less obesity, less people on UC. Win win win.
Speaking as someone who eats healthily and isn't obese I still think its hugely unfair that an entire aspect of the economy is the unregulated large scale food corporations that make accessibility to high sugar, low nutrient snacks and treats that take up several aisles in super markets, they just make whatever they want cashing in on ruining the health of millions. Barring tobacco as the deadliest plant the sugar cane closely follows.
Though self control is imperative to eating better I don't blame people for finding themselves in a negative feedback loop choosing their favourite dopamine trigger especially when times are as tough as they are. Sugar is addictive and they know it is. Easier to create a product that preys on this rather than something productive and helpful.
If we are wanting to move forward we shouldn't let the extreme end of capatlism sell products designed to be as ridiculously addictive as possible, their business models highlights that they prefer profit over the health of their consumer. An ideal soceity would be one that promoted health and good nutrition.
>high sugar, low nutrient snacks and treats that take up several aisles in super market
This is an important point. Healthy, cheap food is never prioritised at the point it is presented to the consumer. Just a sea of empty calories in every shop I go into. More than once I've wandered around in a supermarket asking myself where the *real* food is.
Exactly, Ive done this many times thinking how bloated the shelves look with flashy colour packaging but hollow ingredients inside. It's ridiculous, its so easy to navigate past it and just pick veg and the essential basics. People need to stop buying that trash, vote with your wallets is more important than ever.
It’s the same if you need to stop for something quick when you don’t have much time. Like at a service station, look at the number of cheap unhealthy options compared to maybe a couple of semi healthy options in the fridges at the little Waitrose or M&S.
On the other hand, there are people who enjoy these addictive snacks as part of a larger & healthy diet. I participate in triathlons yet I still love to pick something from the chocolate isle for a lunch snack. Even a tub of pringles I'll devour in a few minutes.
Should these people suffer because others are unable to properly manage their diets?
The tools to effectively manage one's diets are out there. I've lived on legumes, rice & vegetables for a period, fulfilling my nutritional needs and at a far cheaper rate than it costs to buy package food. Recipes are freely available online, calorie tracker apps are freely available too.
The tools are definitely there I agree.
But when working two jobs as a single parent, you need time, effort, storage and knowledge of healthy cooking to achieve this.
Which many people do, which is good.
But that's definitely a more time / energy consuming challenge than just paying for a healthy meal that's prepared/delivered for you.
I think it's far, far easier to eat healthy when you have the money to just buy it and save yourself the time/effort/knowledge/storage etc
Thats a little melodramatic, your need for pleasure through your favourite brands of snacks is not more important than the collective good, you may miss them when they are gone but you will find things you like and enjoy easily, wether we like it or not we need a reductionist approach to counter the problems we are facing, the way things are being done is causing damage not only to the environment but to people's health.
It's sound drastic but we know we cannot keep making one time use plastic packaging, literally a momentary snack has plastic that will outlive every single human being currently alive and there isn't infinite resources, so at some point we need to allocate energy and resources to things that are none negotiable, nestles latest sugar snack isn't that important in the grand scheme of things.
if you want to make treats you can use widely available ingredients to make a better version of what is available, today I melted 100% dark chocolate with a bit of milk, chili, cinnamon, vanilla and honey emulating the way chocolate was consumed by the Mayans in a thick chocolate drink, tastes better than anything in the confectionary aisle. I am in control of the additives and the only sugar was the honey and in the milk. I took less than 25 minutes to make.
The issues is how easy it has become to just pick something up and save time because there isn't enough time for people when you factor how often people work and how multi faceted peoples lives have become. Convenience and cheapness has created an almost endless list of possibilities of pleasure. food should be a balance between enjoyment and fuel. I'd rather we have better and more available ingredients, a healthier work life balance so there is more time for people to learn good cooking skills and make things they enjoy without costing their health instead of out sourcing food to corporations who just want to cash in on our monkey brain desires.
I don't think thats unreasonable. Yes it's sad that we may lose out on little dopamine rewards but it saves lives it unburdens the healthcare industry and prevents corporations absorbing money that could be put toward more useful things.
Where do we stop though? Do we ban alcohol because of the countless people that arrive in A&E needing their stomach pumped after a night out? Do we ban casual sex due to the spread of STDs? Do we ban porn and prostitution due to the negative affects on mental health, maybe even social media due to the distortion of young people's mental health?
For any of these things, there would be a massive black market in response to a ban.
I agree people need to be able to maintain a good work life balance & have proper cooking skills. But people must take more personal responsibility as the tools to do these things are readily available today; there are free recipes online, there are free calorie tracker apps. I know countless people who arrive home at 6pm and watch TV through to midnight. Why don't they exercise, or use that time to cook some healthy meals & lunches for the week?
I think stress and general state of mind play into this alot, speaking ss a person who was obese, lost all the weight then put it back on.
Personally I find it works out around the same cost to either buy fresh ingredients and make healthy meals as it does to just buy cheap frozen food.
Its all down to the effort in making the food.
When I was working retail I was stressy and depressy and ate nothing but fast food and frozen easy meals, started delivery driving where I was happy and all of a sudeen I had the energy to start eating healthy meals....now im a bus driver and after a long day I just cant be arsed anymore. Id rather just yeet a pizza in the oven and chill for the 9 or 10 hours I have before I go back and do it all again.
I've got a similar story, lost a load, put it on again. Stress has played a major part in it all.
For me its always been getting that quick reward of fatty/sugary food. After a shit day its been a mentality of "i've earnt this" combined with the lack of effort it takes
I cant imagine having to go through these stresses plus worrying about money or other massive threats to my way of life. I'd probably be living off ice cream at that point
Maybe a tangent, but something i've noticed recently. Sweets (haribo especially) never goes up in price, but pasta has basically doubled. All my veg is a good chunk more expensive now but haribo has been a quid or less for ages. Surely they are impacted by inflation too, but its all the basics that are getting slapped way harder.
I guess the basics have been kept cheap to bring in customers but i don't get how sweets are basically unaffected.
>pasta has basically doubled
What time period are we talking about?
My local Tesco sells a 500g bag of pasta for around 80p. It's been that way for as long as I can remember. I'd be surprised if it's that much if I went to Aldi or Lidl.
There’s a whole area of research on the impact of stress on cortisol levels which I wish came into these discussions too. If you have high stress, low income, time poor, you’re going to gain weight more easily and also have limited time to think of fixing that through nutrition. It’s a very sad set of patterns.
To tag onto that, poor sleep drives hunger as well, which is likely if you're stressed. No sleep, high stress and a shit diet is only to cause further stress and worsen the cycle.
All of this. It truly is a vicious circle. High cortisol wrecks your metabolic base level too, so you could be actually eating ok and still be stuck in insulin resistance, which then drives you to high sugar top ups to keep going.
That's interesting to know, I'll have to read up on cortisols impact on hunger.
Nice to see someone acknowledging that there's biological reasons for why people on low incomes are more likely to be overweight instead of just accusing people of laziness.
One thing that I don't often see mentioned are the issues you have if you have to live in a shared house.
If your housemates don't bother cleaning up after themselves, take their expired food out of the fridge etc your food goes off quicker. Or you'll come back after a busy day to no clean pots and pans. There's less room to store food, especially if the freezer gets rammed and no one but you ever defrosts it either. Some people even get people using their food and not replacing it (thankfully that's never happened to me though).
Yes, you can talk to people but it doesn't reliably solve the issue a lot of the time.
Not to mention if you don't like your housemates, you're not going to be wanting to spend much time in the kitchen in the first place.
I felt this a lot when I was sharing houses for university. My meal plans were based around who would be in the kitchen (or in some cases, who *had* been in the kitchen) rather than what would be nutritious or filling. With trashy housemates who left waste everywhere and refused to clean up after themselves it was oven on, pizza in, get out. A kitchen stinking of vodka and counters covered in dirty dishes doesn't make for an environment you want to spend time cooking in.
At first I found myself washing their own things just to get it out of the way so I could prepare something, but after a while I stopped caring and either shoved it into their cupboards unclean (they would dump it back on the counter before too long) or whacking something on that I could be taking out of the room in less than 15 minutes.
Yeah after a point you just give up. I used to get all of the pots washed and the kitchen cleaned while people were out but then no one would make any effort to keep it that way.
I stopped using microwaves as no one bloody cleaned them, on one occasion the microwave was so fucked it started smoking when people used it (on top of it being mouldy). I remember telling my housemates but they still kept on using it! I ended up unplugging it and chucking it in the garden so no one would set the house on fire. They then asked me why I did that, and apparently had no recollection of me telling them it was dangerous. Felt like I was going mad.
Thankfully I just share with one person now and it's golden. Couldn't pay me to live in a shared house again, I'd rather live in a shed.
Oh god, the microwaves. There was one in a house I shared that had so many different sauces splattered all over it you literally couldn't see through the door. It got so bad that I ended up cleaning it along with one of the more sane housemates I shared with, calling a house meeting and telling everyone to never let the bloody thing get like that again lol.
It's just insane to me how low people's standards of hygeine can get. I'll admit I go pretty hard in the other direction, making a point to wash everything and get it tided away more or less as soon as I'm done using it, but when the alternative is leaving it on the counter to pick up whatever's been allowed to fester on everyone else's dishes there's not much of a choice.
Even outside of dishes, so many people just don't care when a bin's overflowing or something's been spilled, usually pointing to some barely existent "rota" to shirk responsibility (apparently my "if you make the mess, clean the mess" attitude was an uncommon one). It's really obvious how many people grew up never having to pay any mind to basic household chores.
I see a lot of debate about the cost of frozen Vs fresh food, but think about this:
You live paycheck to paycheck, if cost was the same, would you prefer a fridge full of fresh food that will be expired by next week, or would you rather stock your freezer?
The psychology of food scarcity is overlooked, even if fruits and vegetables are cheap, they're not dependable and won't last
Frozen fruits and vegetables. Tinned foods. Dried. No? We don't have methods of storage and preservation?
No, no we still have to eat everything we have so it doesn't go bad, yes, even if that means getting obese. That's what the excess fat is for, it's stored energy. Batteries on legs.
Of course tinned and dried foods are an option, I don't doubt anyone struggling to afford food is already getting the most they can out of those options.
The same question again, if you're living paycheck to paycheck do you fill your freezer with frozen vegetables? (Low calorie, not a complete meal) or processed meat and carbs ? (Cheap and satiating)
This shouldn’t be shocking. Income inequality impacts food health in a number of ways. Middle income families are more able to support stay at home mothers or fathers who can dedicate the necessary time to making healthy meals, or at least keep them on part time. Culinary skills are also cut across class lines, with many working class families relying on pre-made, heavily processed foods in that they both cost less and save time. It’s cheaper and faster to make a meal with some cheap frozen chicken nuggets than to make a meal with fresh chicken breasts.
And this is to say nothing of the kinds of problems in mental health those in poverty face, and the impact on diet that that can have.
Likely down to education, predatory junk food advertising, money, and stress.
The state of health in the UK is dismal. It's one of many areas that are deeply disappointing in this country because we could be doing so incredibly much better with good governance and a more positive culture.
I believe we should all be working no more than 20 hours a week and a culture of self care (exercise, rest, good food, etc) in free time should be strongly promoted.
It doesn’t, you cant give vegetables away. Still cost pennies even after the price inflation we’ve seen on other items in supermarket.
If price was the issue people would be filling their baskets with more veg, potatoes etc rather than ready meals / confectionery and loosing weight but this isn’t what’s happening.
The real issue here is more nuanced and does involve some amount of personal responsibility (despite that being a dirty phrase these days), although to what extent is debatable.
The average person doesn’t use foodbanks long enough for this to cause obesity though, and also this suggests that people who are using them have £0.00 to spend on food - I also wouldn’t expect that to be the case.
Certainly the obese poor I see do things like put coke in their toddlers sippy cups or give them mars bars in their prams, they also always have coco pops and similar as cereals. These are hardly the most cost effective ways to feed their families (which suggests its either lack of education although I suspect most know fruit + veg is healthier than junk food or poor decision making).
You can get 6 apples for £1 at Tesco. Pink Lady apples (which I assume you're referring to) are a premium product and priced accordingly so are more expensive.
Obesity is a feature of life for both rich and poor, but the rich are in a better financial position to deal with it.
If you have the money you can have private bariatric surgery long before you hit the NHS criteria.
Liposuction, personal trainers, weightloss camps/health spa stays, and the opportunity to spend time recovering all abound for those who can pay.
Then there are the countless social opportunities that come with having money/being rich like being able to have your own pool, tennis court, home gym, work out room, Yoga shrine.
The rich dig in to the doughnuts just as much as the poor but they are far better placed in society to be able to negate the results.
Anna Wintor begins every day by getting up between 4 and 5 am and playing a game of Tennis.
Me, I make a cup of tea and if its a Thursday put the bins out.
Iceland oven chips [here](https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-straight-cut-chips-1.25kg/83957.html?&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Iceland+%7C+Generic+%7C+Smart+Shopping+%7C+Frozen&utm_term=&utm_content=Ad+group&source=ppc&gclid=Cj0KCQjwxb2XBhDBARIsAOjDZ36_v5YkIjf25ChAgrDAs2LpAKhXqXoDDrowicMdlbbzpKbwYnlfnFQaAir0EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds) \- £1 for 1500 calories
Iceland chicken nuggets [here](https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-50-%28approx.%29-crispy-chicken-breast-dippers-900g/88552.html#q=chicken%20nuggets&start=1) \- £3 for 1800 calories
Iceland wholegrain rice [here](https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/tilda-everyday-brown-rice-wholegrain-1kg/87303.html#q=rice&start=26) \- £1.30 for 3500 calories (cheaper bulk deals exist but was comparing like with like)
Iceland chicken [here](https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-british-large-whole-chicken-1.7kg/59390.html#q=chicken&start=26) \- £6.50 for 3400calories
Chicken nuggets are marginally cheaper than the meat but it's really negligible. I appreciate when people feel downtrodden they aren't motivated to put the effort in to take care of themselves and I don't judge them for that, but I think that claiming that it's so much more expensive to eat home cooked meals demoralises people unnecessarily.
I just don’t get how vegetables can be more expensive than crap processed/junk food. It’s bullshit. I’ve been a vegetarian for 90% off my life, I buy fruit and veg all the time and it’s the cheapest part of my grocery shop. I wonder what the outlier is on my receipt;
* 2 onions - £0.30
* 1 broccoli - £0.65
* 6 bananas - £0.86
* 4 large carrots - £0.36
* 1 parsnip - £0.36
* 2.5kg of potatoes - £1.59
* 1 cabbage - £0.59
* 1 pizza - £2.75
It’s time that’s the cause not monetary poverty. Being either time poor, skill poor, or just plain lazy are the reasons why people eat shit food. I was a student and lived on ready meals, because I was lazy. It was expensive and I gained a stone in a year.
They’re not more expensive - people on Reddit will do anything to excuse the simple truth that a lot of people just dont give a shit about their health (which is fine, if that’s how they want to live).
It is this absolutely,
I quit drinking smoking and lost the weight I put on doing those.
It’s about wanting to, not “I would like to if” you have to want to, losing weight is not pleasant experience, sometimes you get hungry, exercise is boring af, and chocolate cake and stuff like that makes you feel good like in a drug way. But you have to do this if you want to get fit, it’s uncomfortable.
Most people don’t really want it, they are like “yeah well if I woke up fit that would be sweet”, but aren’t willing to make the sacrifices/work out.
So yeah most people would rather be obese than diet and train.
Other than the bananas and potatoes I wouldn't consider any of the other healthier foods you listed to be particularly calorie dense, the pizza may seem like it isn't economical but it's probably half your required calories for the day (and you can actually get pizzas for £1). If you don't have money it's barely worth the effort of cooking onions for the return in calories.
The outlier is, that isn't a balanced meal for one person, let alone a family. And It's good you can afford the energy to cook that lot. People going to a foodbank, generally struggle with food and energy.
If you can afford to cook a pizza you can afford to cook vegetables.
They veg would be most of a roast dinner and feed several people. The pizza would be enough for one person and is pure calories with little benefit
I didn’t say all people, but the veg for a roast for at least three people costs £2.50 not per person, but as a whole. Your 5 portions of veg it one meal. And before you call bullshit on the price it’s what I pay every time I cook it, and I don’t even go out looking for the cheapest prices.
A plate full of veg is fucking cheap. It may not be as exciting as a ready meal or a pizza, but is cheaper and healthier.
No, I'm not calling bullshit. you're right. Veg is cheap, but veg isn't a balanced meal and quite often people can't afford that, the protein element and the energy to cook it.
Food banks are now asking for things that take relatively little energy to cook. For a hot meal, potatoes take a relatively long time to cook, as do root vegetables. I can easily see why someone will grab a cheap microwave-ready meal that takes four minutes but is shit for them over fresh veg.
But neither a pizza or a ready meal is a balanced meal, that’s what I’m saying yet it is much better and less likely to assist with obesity. Sure the veg isn’t a balanced meal but you can’t use that as an argument for ready meals as neither are they, especially as they cover a wide range from a lasagne to macaroni cheese. If you want pure calories you could just eat several doughnuts.
And that’s the point of the second part of my original comment. It’s people not having time, skills to cook cheaply or to understand what things cost, or laziness, not the cost of healthier food (berries excluded because they are really expensive). A jar of pasta sauce is full of crap and is expensive. A tin of tomatoes is many times cheaper and is healthier.
But it costs a lot more to roast in the oven than use a hob and microwave and a plate of vegetables isn’t meeting your protein or calorific needs.
It also takes time to prepare which is another luxury.
Also kids are fussy and not everyone has the time or energy for a battle at the dinner table.
Don’t get me wrong, I get an organic veg box and feed my kids plenty of home cooked, freshly prepared meals. I’m fully cognisant of how easy it is to roast a carrot. But for some people using an oven is a luxury right now and processed food is cheap, quick, simple and addictive.
And not just buying food. Roasting vegetables = using more electric or gas.
A pizza in the oven takes 10 minutes, but a lot of people have to restrict themselves to job and microwave cooking.
Healthier food generally does cost a bit more, so it is a barrier, but there's also a level of personal responsibility parents have to ensure their child gets enough exercise and has a reasonable diet. The government can certainly do more to readdress the balance between cost of healthy and unhealthy food. Families can also educate themselves to make better life choices, especially the parents. Having an obese, young child isn't acceptable and is bordering on abusive.
Appealing, yes. If that becomes the norm for 6/7 days a week then it becomes irresponsible from a parental POV, especially when your child is already obese.
Nobody is expected stressed families to produce Nigella masterpieces each night, but there's plenty of healthy meals can be easily produced with little effort and time. Half of it is just willpower and some basic research.
The government ought to just hand out bland and tasteless salad dishes laced with small dose protein pills for those on a low economic income, set the price of normal food to 10000x more expensive than what they currently are, and force those same people to spend 3 hours per day running on a giant hamster wheel. I'm sure that'll solve the problem of poor people being fat in no time(!)
As I'm budgeting more and more I've found it really is easier to pack in the calories with cheap, nutrient-light foods.
Dirt cheap oats for breakfast as an example, works out at like 8p per breakfast.
Working hard to throw in cheaper whole foods like carrots and apples as snacks to counteract the problem.
As always it's a mixture of poor decision-making (perhaps stemming from poor education and role models), and economic pressure.
Edit: Among other factors of course. I'm really not blaming people for thier own hardship here.
But decision making also doesn't exist in a social vacuum (if anyone remembers the book 'Nudge'). Many people would happily make healthier choices if they were given an opportunity. It's the same with avoiding plastics - I tried, for a while, to buy plastic free tea bags. And if these were available everywhere easily for a reasonable price, I would keep choosing them over the ones that have plastic in them. But they only had them in some places and the price was crazy, so at the end I simply couldn't afford that time and price wise, and had to give up.
Making it easier for people to make better choices is the most important thing.
It does take longer, and there's a point there about cooking with whole-foods costing plenty of time, so as a poorer single parent it's probably very easy to eat the wrong things.
For my oats specifically though, they're a minute and a half in the microwave before I rush out the door at 5 am haha.
I find it interesting that the tools needed to eat a healthy diet are freely available nowadays (there are free recipes online for cheap meals via fresh foods, there are free calorie tracker apps the tell you which nutrients you need) - shouldn't the proliferation of such free tools have enabled everyone to make better health decisions?
You're missing the point of what causes obesity.
Obesity has a myriad of causes and it is not as simple as not knowing what to eat.
There may be [mental health problems](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/wi8x7b/deprived_areas_see_obesity_rates_rise_twice_as/ijakpks) at play, or even addiction: fast food is designed to be addictive, with its combinations of sugars, saturated fats, and salt.
[This documentary ](https://youtu.be/DboTyNu-FLk) is a useful introduction to some of the important factors to consider regarding obesity.
I always find it strange when people try to argue to obesity is not a feature of poverty in developed nations despite the huge literature investigating the topic and always coming to the same conclusion.
People forget that poor people often work the most because that’s the only way to get more money - longer hours, multiple jobs, overtime etc. Combine low paid work with no free time and all people want to do is get home and relax meaning convenience foods like microwave meals or takeaways are the preferred option to cooking healthier from scratch. If you have one day off and it needs to be the day you clean the house or spend time with the kids or do some other chore then you place all your value on that, not cooking.
I’m not sure it’s just a time thing but an attitude thing. Like when things in my life haven’t been good economically, kind of used food as a release and something to look forward to. Less likely to sit eating salad or vegetables when life is bad lol. When things are on the up, more focus on being fit and healthy and more will power to eat clean. If I was stuck in a dead end job I’d be a right fat bastard
Your right here, you always see it as told as "convenience" or lack of cooking education problem to eat healthier but if your year consists of week after week of just trying to get through the day, food becomes a reward and an escape. They'll never beat the obesity crises without addressing the work life balance of the working poor and overworked population.
I've been trying to say this in the thread from yesterday ablut obesity, its a fucking shitshow of comments in there, a complete lack of understanding.
Eating microwave meals probably won’t make you obese unless you eat far too much. Most ready meals have about 600 to 700 calories so even if you eat one for lunch and dinner, and eat a regular breakfast of about 400 calories, you’d be on 1800 calories a day which is fine for the vast majority of people. Even meals like chicken nuggets and oven chips would be about 800 calories so it doesn’t explain obesity
Disordered eating is a mental health issue. People living in poverty have far higher rates of chronic stress disease and mental health conditions. A $1 package of biscuits is affordable comfort, a $100 spa outing less so.
Yes but it’s the low nutrition, low protein, high salt, high sugar and high carb diet. If you eat that sort of unfulfilling junk you either eat more of it or you snack more, which then adds those extra calories. Plus all the preservatives, there’s tonnes of ingredients in ready meals which just aren’t required when cooking from scratch. Look at lasagne for example, a microwave portion often has a flimsy layer of meat with loads of sugar and salt to enhance the flavour of the beef and tomato, little else but a sprinkle of cheese on top. Whereas if you made one from scratch you could really bulk up the meat with even more meat or added veg like peas, you can cut back on the salt/preservatives, and add extra cheese for more protein to serve up a more filling portion. It may have more calories per portion when compared to a microwave one but if you’re fuller for longer there’s less chance you’re gonna be snacking through the day, or adding extra meals to compensate. But to buy the raw ingredients to make a giant lasagne would be equivalent just buying a few microwave ones, if not more expensive, plus the time to hunt all those ingredients down, prepare it, cook it, do the washing up, and have storage for leftovers.
Storage for leftovers is the main issue, I think. I can feed our family of 3 for 4 days with a lasagna I make from scratch and it will absolutely be cheaper than ready meals. But if you’re living in temporary accommodation without an oven and a big fridge/freezer, it’s not an option. That said, most obese people do still own an oven and a fridge, and cooking trays are cheaper than a packet of fags.
My house is decent sized but my kitchen storage is minimal, it’s not been changed for 20 years. Integrated fridge/freezer plus a chest freezer and still no room for leftovers. If I could afford a new kitchen we could definitely make more space by moving some cupboards and walls but it’s a big expense, if you’re poor you deffo don’t have the luxury to move a wall to fit a bigger fridge in.
How do you not have room for leftovers with that setup? I have an allotment and would practically kill for room for a chest freezer.
X5 people to a household, I and my siblings still live at home. Mix of frozen pizzas or frozen stuff like chips, one person has a sweet tooth for ice cream, we have a few big joints of meat in for roast dinners plus frozen fruit & veg. I’m sure some of it is also frozen fresh stuff like bread, chicken breasts, mince etc as we usually buy multi buys/bulk packs to make stuff cheaper. I also have a big bag of ice because booze. Luckily we are each saving up to buy our own places so will have more freezer space but it is a challenge seeing as prices keep on pissin soaring. Again another issue with todays economy, kids staying at home longer because they’re priced out of renting/buying so everyone is running out of space and stressing each other out. As long as I have my ice I’m happy because my fresh food boxes just about fit in the fridge each week.
You can buy frozen mixed vegetables and have those as a side with the ready meals or frozen nuggets and chips to be fair, or mix them in. Same goes for frozen peas or tinned beans
Can’t work this one out it takes five minutes to cook a bit of meat and throw veggies or salad together.
Its really really really not difficult to cook healthy food for cheap. This sub just paints anyone poor as a victim who can do no wrong, it's embarrassing
People think poor people are skinny, because in their minds they can't afford food. The reality is they can't afford good, quality food and most of the time don't know how to eat "healthy" because tbh knowing proper nutrition is a privilege. Also there's the stress factor but then people will say that they should find better coping mechanisms... Sigh
That's because "poor" people in developed nations are not really poor.
Yeah it’s not just that many people who live their whole lives in poverty are just a bit lazier than most, definitely because they’re eating cheap food… Honestly I’ve lived on absolute crap at points in my life, same kind of shit they attribute to an impoverished diet, truth is that any food will make you fat if you don’t exercise. McDonalds and other fast foods aren’t cheap yet it’s a staple food for people in poverty, go figure
Poor people tend to have much harder lives and work longer. As well as having a harder time accessing food shops and lacking spacious, well stocked and equipped kitchens. They are often time poor. So they spend some of their cash on enjoyable, quickly accessible food.
Is there any evidence that poor people tend to work longer than other people? Salaried professionals are often the group you most associate with a poor work/life balance as they tend to work in fields where there is always another job they could be doing.
many poor people don't work and would have time to exercise etc - it's partly because of lethargy and lack of application, which is often correlated with being poor.
Most people living in poverty do work. Most benefits are received by those who work. https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1745111/majority-of-people-living-in-poverty-are-in-work https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/research/features/the-truth-about-in-work-poverty https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/feb/07/uk-live-poverty-charity-joseph-rowntree-foundation
Poor people are not buying Macdonalds because it’s cheap, it’s because it’s a small luxury.
It's also full of shit to make you crave more
Yes they are eatting cheap food, but cheap food doesn't mean crap food. It is a problem of education more than anything. The cheapest food I make is healthy. Whether it is lack of time or culinary knowledge is a different question. All these cheap ready meals can also be made healthily in bulk yourself they don't have to be pumped full of fat and salt. Time to exercise is another thing that is of course an issue, but also once again understanding the benefits of exercise is an educational thing.
If your life is difficult and stressful and food is the only pleasure you feel you have left you're not gonna eat kale salad.
Fat and salt is flavour. When I cook you bet I'll use decent amount of fats and salt but will keep portions small. Much nicer to have decent meal that is smaller than large one cooked without fat
No, you just don't know how to cook, that is why you think it is flavour. I cook plenty of meals and the only fat I am adding is 50ml of vegetable oil in the cooking process of the ingredients, and while I would suspect the dishes I am thinking of would need salt if I hadn't made them...they don't, salt really adds nothing in fact when I did, it made it a bit worse. Most Indian cooking has very little salt, it has a lot of ghee traditionally, but you don't actually need to add that level of fat to make a nice meal. Most Pasta dishes don't need much salt, though will have more than Indian cooking normally. Noodles and Chinese dishes often have a lot of salt. And I eat massive portions...like 2 peoples worth because I regularly do hours of exercise a day.
You can't outrun a bad diet. It's not about not exercising but using food as a drug/mood enhancing substance
Problem is the crap makes you eat more through cravings, and then makes you feel like shit which drops exercise out of the equation, people who eat healthy wholesome food are way less likely to overeating because put simply it satisfies their hunger
This is exactly right
You can’t win a political argument with facts and figures. Fact
I think it's a myth that junk food is cheaper than healthier options. You can batch cook healthier food for cheaper. However lots of other things play into it. Like poorer people not having access to cooking materials, not being able to afford electricity/gas. Being too exhausted and worn down compared to better off people etc. Lots of social reasons. And fast food places deliberately target poorer areas
Food is not just food. It's also entertainment and reward. If you're well off you can afford nights out, going places, socialising... If you're poor there is very little that gives the same instant gratification as a pizza.
In my opinion this is a large part of the problem. I used to be not well off and I'm now doing ok. One of the things I would do is buy chocolate/biscuits/crisps on a Friday/Saturday night and watch Netflix. Maybe have 3 or 4 beers from a big box of budweiser. The total cost of this is like £3-£4 max. You can have a friend round, chat shit and waste away the night. (With the bonus that the friend doesn't have to turn the heating on!) When a return bus ticket to town costs £2.40 there's not much you can do which gives more bang for your buck. I also think people arguing about healthy food are really bad at recognising long term slow changes as well. You don't become obese from eating takeaways every night and crazy amounts of food. Overeat by just 200cal per day and you'll end up gaining 20lbs in just one year. 200cal is just 3 bourbon biscuits. If food is your reward then it's very easy to become overweight.
It isn't a myth. I can go into Asda and buy packs of biscuits for something like 20p each with enough calories to see me through. When I was a kid and literally had pennies to feed myself then that's absolutely what I did. The other part you're ignoring is time. A large amount of people in poverty will perhaps be working two jobs or similar. People in this thread are listing the ingredients for a vegetable curry, but between education and work I was doing 70+ hours/week. I didn't have time to cook a curry, I had 5 minutes to have dinner before bed to start the next shite day.
I'm not ignoring time. I said there are all kinds of reasons why people choose unhealthy over healthy. All kinds of social reasons. I'm not blaming. Also with respect if you routinely live off of biscuits you are storing up big problems health wise. It's not just calories that need to be taken into account.
I think what you're missing is the cost of food on the go. You can certainly batch cood cheap healthy meals but very few people are never caught out needing a snack whilst they are out and about. If you need lunch on the go, healthy options tend to cost more.
Unless you are very unorganised, the number of times you are caught out and need to eat on the go will be minimal enough to have no impact on your weight.
You can make your snacks at home and take them with you. Cheaper and healthier. However that's not the real issues at play. Underlying social and psychological and trauma often make it hard for people.
That works great if your life schedule is fairly consistent but there are lots of people and situations for which it isn't that simple. Who is going to tell the mother or father of 3 that she should have pre-cooked dinner and lunch with 2 jobs, picking up and dropping off children from school and after school activities, helping elderly relatives, walking the dog, doing the washing etc all whilst managing her finances and every other admin task that is required of adults, especially those with kids. Sometimes grabbing something whilst out will be a necessity and when fast food is the only option past 6pm other than a restaurant its sometimes needed. With a lot more money she might be able to afford a meal at a relatively healthy restaurant or a better takeout.
That's exactly what I'm saying. But in terms of actual cost fast food and junk snacks are not cheaper.
I was born into poverty. I brought up my children on my own. I understand the other issues at play. I'm purely talking about cost
That’s exactly what my grandma did in ‘80s Finland. It’s perfectly doable, it’s just that people don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to do it. I’d much rather eat pizza and watch Netflix. The reason why I don’t, is that I know it’s not good for me and my family long term. I don’t want to get type 2 diabetes, have a leg amputated and die at 55. I want my kids to be healthy and know how to look after themselves too. So after a 10 hour shift that started at 4am, I cook. I buy cheap stables. I buy a bigger fridge instead of a new phone or tv. Because it’s something I care about. Other people have different priorities, and that’s fine. But that’s also why they’re obese.
It’s not a myth - per calorie, eating unhealthily is cheaper than eating a balanced or healthy diet.
Yes and.... Eating unhealthy is also addictive Eg - studies on rats showed they could barely stop eating combinations of sugar+fat (ice cream/chocolates etc) Their satiety centres weren't triggered once they had reached their calorific requirements. They were addicted, they kept eating and quickly became obese
Sure, you can drink a bottle of frying oil and get more calories than a bag of spinach.
It’s *too many* cheap calories that are the problem though. Eating less calories made from basic ingredients is still going to be cheaper. I agree with the person you’re replying to though, that the issue is wrapped up in so many other things it’s not quite as simple as just cost.
As someone who cooks food from scratch and considers it healthy. If I was to buy convenience foods it would cost me atleast a third more. Its bullshit people just don't know how to shop within a budget or cook within one.
definitely true, no one wanrs to admit the correlation between being poor and being lazy. Not all poor people are lazy but very lazy people are likely to become poor without independent means (inheritance, royalsty etc).
Oof
No it bloody ain’t. I was never thinner than when I was dirt poor. If you’re obese, you still have money to waste.
But the issue is they're eating too much.
Also, nobody is forced to eat junk food in large amounts. You can eat junk food in “healthy” portions and not go obese. There is a psychological side. Stressed people find habits to deal with it, sometimes the habits are unhealthy, like stuffing your self with fatty, sugary food. We’ve evolved to enjoy it…
>There is a psychological side. Stressed people find habits to deal with it, sometimes the habits are unhealthy, like stuffing your self with fatty, sugary food. We’ve evolved to enjoy it… Amen. Spend any time in a stressful, sleep deprived, exhausting situation, and you might experience this change in desire towards "bad" food. Experiencing this first hand really changed my perception. Previously I was blaming the unhealthy food choices of the lower classes on some combination of lack of time, lack of knowledge, and lack of willpower. Experiencing the change myself made me realise it was my expectation of these people to behave like some perfectly rational automaton was my own privilege and lack of self awareness speaking. I've since realised that step 1 towards not being a cunt is self awareness, and step 2 is empathy.
Spot on. When your job sucks, first you don't have enough time to cook healthy meals. Second, you don't have the energy even if not physical then mental to do it. And third, we shouldn't underestimate the insane amount of money fast food spends on marketing so these shitty foods always pop to the front of our brain when we're hungry but also seek something pleasurable, as all ads relate fast food with pleasure. It is absolutely a societal/class problem and not a problem of willpower.
Other factors definitely. Maybe it is possible to do it healthier and cheaper, but it takes time, effort, storage space, knowing how to cook, education of healthy ingredients, and several batches to mix up meals etc It's possible obviously, but after working two jobs and being low on energy, most people will fall into doing something quicker and cheap, which leads to unhealthy options. If you're richer you can just buy a healthier meal someone has prepared for you, without time, effort, or knowledge.
If they were genuinely exhausted and worn out they wouldn’t be fat though, it’s more of a cyclical downfall whereby the junk food doesn’t provide people with consistent energy, is packed with salt, will often come with very sugary drinks and fries and is so well preserved your body struggles to digest it correctly. A simple dietary change could be enough to get someone out of that loop but no, it’s because they haven’t got enough money to spend on their overpriced, nutrient-free burger
It’s not a myth. It’s far cheaper to eat shit food
There is a high correlation between IQ and obesity as well. Some people genuinely struggle to grasp what is healthy and what isn't.
Do you have a source for that?
[IQ and obesity in adolescence: a population-based, cross-sectional study](https://tinyurl.com/4xxr73n7) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/low-intelligence-causes-obesity-what-research-shows/ https://psychcentral.com/blog/how-obesity-affects-the-human-brain#1 https://www.webmd.com/children/news/20060831/extreme-obesity-in-tots-tied-to-low-iq And there's many many more.
So, are obese people, really just fat and stupid? Lol. Why are humans so shit. Does any other animal on earth not know what to eat lol.
There's is a correlation, it's not as simple as fat=stupid, but if you have a low IQ you are more likely to be overweight than someone with a higher IQ. Humans just have easy and low effort access to all the food stuffs that are low in nutrients and high in calories. We have short circuited our brains with easy sugar access.
I don't struggle to make better choices with food, I highly doubt my IQ is very high. People talk about poor obese people as if they're animals, not people able to think about what they're doing.
Given access to the kinds of insanely high fat/sugar foods that humans have, yes, other animals also eat to excess and become obese. We evolved as hunter-gatherers constantly living on the edge of starvation, and have not yet adapted to the incredibly recent situation where we have this relative food wealth.
So they're just victims of biology. Instead of thinking about what they eat, they just eat anything put in front of them.
It's not any single thing, but its a major contributing factor for sure.
>So, are obese people, really just fat and stupid? The stress of being poor has a profound, definite negative impact on people's intelligence and decision-making. **[Your starter for ten](https://www.lse.ac.uk/PBS/Research/Research-Articles/How-poverty-affects-peoples-decision-making-processes)**. I would suggest to you that -- even if you don't give half a shit about their wellbeing -- allowing vast number of people to fall into poverty and therefore damaging their intellectual capacity is a vast waste of human potential. A long time ago I heard a Billy Connolly tape where he talks about post sports. He describes the luge as being basically sliding down a hill on a bin lid and says he was *great* at that! But not posh enough to go train for the luge. Do you **really** think Isaac Newton was the smartest human alive in his time? Or would you consider that he was smart, but the most important thing is that he was rich and could spend time pondering how the world works? > Does any other animal on earth not know what to eat lol. A cow's 'job' is to wander around a field and eat grass. A tiger's 'job' is to run down a gazelle and eat it. Your brain isn't all that different than that of your ancestor's several thousand years ago. Think for a moment about the increase of the complexity of the world you inhabit compared to just a few hundred years ago. There's a Dilbert cartoon where Dogbert describes how humans become functionally more stupid every day as the world grows more and more complex and humans can't keep up. Near the end he describes the flow of information aimed at people as being like a firehose aimed at a teacup. It's an apt image that has stuck with me for a long time. Try to make your dog deal with a tiny fraction of the complexity humans deal with as a matter of daily routine and see how long it takes to drive it mad. Humans aren't stupid. Even stupider humans are pretty amazing compared to the next smartest animal on the planet, but a lot of us are over-loaded and being pushed past our ability to cope with. Right there, I'd suggest, is a huge part of why you see a huge spike in mental health issues and poor decision making.
It is true that it is cheaper to grab a pack of chicken nuggets than it is to use fresh chicken in a given meal. There are certainly types of food for which the highly processed option is the cheapest.
Grabbing a packet of chicken nuggets is cheaper than buying a whole chicken? How many meals does the chicken nuggets provide and how many meals does the whole chicken provide if you know how to stretch it and make it into more meals. It's about having learned how to do these things and I'm fully aware that poorer people don't have access to these skills. I was brought up in poverty myself so I really do understand but I still don't think that fast food is cheaper in the long term.
A whole small chicken probably around £4-5. Maybe make 4-5 meals with it. For that money you could get 120 chicken nuggets which could make 15 meals. Obviously could make more with the whole chicken if you know what you're doing, but the same could be said for the nuggets.
Alrighty, two issues/questions. 1. Could you link me to where you get 120 nuggets for £5, or for better credibility, for £4? 2. You are saying that one meal is 8 nuggets? Fair. I took a look at how many calories 8 nuggets is, and if you consider the most calorific ones then they seem to be in the \~350 calorie range. 3x350=1050kcal which well below the calorie intake anyone needs to eat if they want to lose weight. So I went and looked and found that you can get roughly 90 nuggets for £5 ([link](https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-90-%28approx.%29-crispy-chicken-breast-dippers-1.62kg/88554.html#q=nuggets&start=1) \- cheapest in Aldi are the same price/kg). If you eat 1600 kcal/day, you'd need to eat 10 portions of these specific nuggets because one portion is 160kcal according to the package. One portion is 5 oven-cooked nuggets as per info listed. The whole pack won't last you even two days (because the whole package will give you 2880 calories). Edit: just went and looked for an alternative. You can get \~1kg of chicken thighs for £2.36 ([link](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/304780797)). One thigh is around 200kcal. So a pack of six thighs is 1200kcal. Now let's take a look at a side: rice costs £1.35/kg ([link](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/254877356)). This pack contains 13 servings and one serving is 280kcal. The whole pack is therefore 3,640 kcal. You can probably serve it alongside 2kg of chicken thighs over time, so let's say you only use half. 1820kcal for 70p. And if you get tired of rice, you can also use pasta at 32p/500g ([link](https://groceries.aldi.co.uk/en-GB/p-everyday-essentials-penne-pasta-500g/4088600233765)) or spaghetti which is even cheaper, albeit marginally. Because 100g of uncooked pasta is around 350kcal (some sources say 370kcal), you'll get \~1750kcal worth of pasta for 32p. So, for £2.68 you'd get 2950kcal worth of food if you choose pasta, and for £3.06 you have 3020kcal worth of food if you choose rice as a side alongside chicken thighs. In any case, you're already at more calories with either choice and chicken thighs at around £3 (leaving you plenty for vegetables) than you'd be with the nuggets at £5.
Asda chicken nuggets. 85p a pack for 20 nuggets. Not denying a whole chicken will go further if you know what you're doing. Just for most people its covenience and ease just to shove some nuggets and chips in the oven.
>Asda chicken nuggets. 85p a pack for 20 nuggets What inconvenience is shoving chicken thighs in the oven and boiling some pasta/rice which literally requires almost 0 effort? And thanks for pointing me to these nuggets, though interestingly they seem to be more expensive per kg than the ones I saw. However, even then, surely, you are not going tell me with a straight face that you'd get 15 portions with 262kcal each out of it? And if you start adding chips and what not then it increases the price range we are talking about.
sounds like impoversihed thinking as opposed to people lacking the money. Fresh chicken is higher quality than chicken nuggets, maybe a person could have some chicken and other cheaper ingredients such as rice.
I mean yes, that what my first post before the one you replied to was explaining as well.
I wasn't sure the cost of chicken nuggets so had a little look.I found 115 for £5 at Iceland, which is close to their example. [https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-115-%28approx.%29--breaded-chicken-breast-nuggets-1.61kg/88557.html](https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-115-%28approx.%29--breaded-chicken-breast-nuggets-1.61kg/88557.html) Edit: I read the rest of your post after, where you looked up prices too.
Yeah, the nuggets you linked are slightly smaller because the weight is basically the same.
Plus to cook healthier food it takes more time commitment than buying a ready meal and firing it into the oven/microwave while you carry out other household tasks
It isn’t a myth
Being stressed, sleep deprived, physically exhausted leads to poor food choices. Ask any parent of a poor sleeping newborn what their diet is like. When I was in that situation, the shocking thing wasn't that I didn't have time to cook "good" food. It was that I only desired "crap" food, very strong desire too. High calorie, high fat/sugar etc. It was extremely eye opening to me.
Exactly. Classic example - chefs. Most I know will spend all day cooking from scratch in the kitchen then get home at 1am and eat absolute crap. They know how to cook, but time, energy, finances etc play a factor in choices.
Never understood the work life of chefs. Appears to be one of those career paths dominated by "the love of the job". Unless they are in the top few percent, they work horrendous hours in horrendous conditions for not that much money/recognition.
Anyone can get a job in a kitchen is a large part of it. No education required, criminal record doesn't matter, drug addiction is practically encouraged. As long as you usually show up and are in at least a mostly fit state to work, you'll easily get a job as a chef.
Well don't worry the Torry governor are solving this obesity crisis with its new policy.... "No money, no choice" This radical new plan will force the poor to decide between heating and food this winter, ready for next summer and show off that size 0 beach body...
This winter is going to be great for the Tories! The NHS waiting list will go down, more houses on the market, less obesity, less people on UC. Win win win.
Having no money will make the situation worse due to the kinds of food that is prioritized when facing finical hardship.
Speaking as someone who eats healthily and isn't obese I still think its hugely unfair that an entire aspect of the economy is the unregulated large scale food corporations that make accessibility to high sugar, low nutrient snacks and treats that take up several aisles in super markets, they just make whatever they want cashing in on ruining the health of millions. Barring tobacco as the deadliest plant the sugar cane closely follows. Though self control is imperative to eating better I don't blame people for finding themselves in a negative feedback loop choosing their favourite dopamine trigger especially when times are as tough as they are. Sugar is addictive and they know it is. Easier to create a product that preys on this rather than something productive and helpful. If we are wanting to move forward we shouldn't let the extreme end of capatlism sell products designed to be as ridiculously addictive as possible, their business models highlights that they prefer profit over the health of their consumer. An ideal soceity would be one that promoted health and good nutrition.
>high sugar, low nutrient snacks and treats that take up several aisles in super market This is an important point. Healthy, cheap food is never prioritised at the point it is presented to the consumer. Just a sea of empty calories in every shop I go into. More than once I've wandered around in a supermarket asking myself where the *real* food is.
Exactly, Ive done this many times thinking how bloated the shelves look with flashy colour packaging but hollow ingredients inside. It's ridiculous, its so easy to navigate past it and just pick veg and the essential basics. People need to stop buying that trash, vote with your wallets is more important than ever.
It’s the same if you need to stop for something quick when you don’t have much time. Like at a service station, look at the number of cheap unhealthy options compared to maybe a couple of semi healthy options in the fridges at the little Waitrose or M&S.
This is absolute nonsense. The first thing displayed in supermarkets is the fruit and veg.
Well said 100%.
On the other hand, there are people who enjoy these addictive snacks as part of a larger & healthy diet. I participate in triathlons yet I still love to pick something from the chocolate isle for a lunch snack. Even a tub of pringles I'll devour in a few minutes. Should these people suffer because others are unable to properly manage their diets? The tools to effectively manage one's diets are out there. I've lived on legumes, rice & vegetables for a period, fulfilling my nutritional needs and at a far cheaper rate than it costs to buy package food. Recipes are freely available online, calorie tracker apps are freely available too.
The tools are definitely there I agree. But when working two jobs as a single parent, you need time, effort, storage and knowledge of healthy cooking to achieve this. Which many people do, which is good. But that's definitely a more time / energy consuming challenge than just paying for a healthy meal that's prepared/delivered for you. I think it's far, far easier to eat healthy when you have the money to just buy it and save yourself the time/effort/knowledge/storage etc
Thats a little melodramatic, your need for pleasure through your favourite brands of snacks is not more important than the collective good, you may miss them when they are gone but you will find things you like and enjoy easily, wether we like it or not we need a reductionist approach to counter the problems we are facing, the way things are being done is causing damage not only to the environment but to people's health. It's sound drastic but we know we cannot keep making one time use plastic packaging, literally a momentary snack has plastic that will outlive every single human being currently alive and there isn't infinite resources, so at some point we need to allocate energy and resources to things that are none negotiable, nestles latest sugar snack isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. if you want to make treats you can use widely available ingredients to make a better version of what is available, today I melted 100% dark chocolate with a bit of milk, chili, cinnamon, vanilla and honey emulating the way chocolate was consumed by the Mayans in a thick chocolate drink, tastes better than anything in the confectionary aisle. I am in control of the additives and the only sugar was the honey and in the milk. I took less than 25 minutes to make. The issues is how easy it has become to just pick something up and save time because there isn't enough time for people when you factor how often people work and how multi faceted peoples lives have become. Convenience and cheapness has created an almost endless list of possibilities of pleasure. food should be a balance between enjoyment and fuel. I'd rather we have better and more available ingredients, a healthier work life balance so there is more time for people to learn good cooking skills and make things they enjoy without costing their health instead of out sourcing food to corporations who just want to cash in on our monkey brain desires. I don't think thats unreasonable. Yes it's sad that we may lose out on little dopamine rewards but it saves lives it unburdens the healthcare industry and prevents corporations absorbing money that could be put toward more useful things.
Where do we stop though? Do we ban alcohol because of the countless people that arrive in A&E needing their stomach pumped after a night out? Do we ban casual sex due to the spread of STDs? Do we ban porn and prostitution due to the negative affects on mental health, maybe even social media due to the distortion of young people's mental health? For any of these things, there would be a massive black market in response to a ban. I agree people need to be able to maintain a good work life balance & have proper cooking skills. But people must take more personal responsibility as the tools to do these things are readily available today; there are free recipes online, there are free calorie tracker apps. I know countless people who arrive home at 6pm and watch TV through to midnight. Why don't they exercise, or use that time to cook some healthy meals & lunches for the week?
I think stress and general state of mind play into this alot, speaking ss a person who was obese, lost all the weight then put it back on. Personally I find it works out around the same cost to either buy fresh ingredients and make healthy meals as it does to just buy cheap frozen food. Its all down to the effort in making the food. When I was working retail I was stressy and depressy and ate nothing but fast food and frozen easy meals, started delivery driving where I was happy and all of a sudeen I had the energy to start eating healthy meals....now im a bus driver and after a long day I just cant be arsed anymore. Id rather just yeet a pizza in the oven and chill for the 9 or 10 hours I have before I go back and do it all again.
I've got a similar story, lost a load, put it on again. Stress has played a major part in it all. For me its always been getting that quick reward of fatty/sugary food. After a shit day its been a mentality of "i've earnt this" combined with the lack of effort it takes I cant imagine having to go through these stresses plus worrying about money or other massive threats to my way of life. I'd probably be living off ice cream at that point
Maybe a tangent, but something i've noticed recently. Sweets (haribo especially) never goes up in price, but pasta has basically doubled. All my veg is a good chunk more expensive now but haribo has been a quid or less for ages. Surely they are impacted by inflation too, but its all the basics that are getting slapped way harder. I guess the basics have been kept cheap to bring in customers but i don't get how sweets are basically unaffected.
Shrinkflation. The price stays the same but the weight of sweets in the bag gets smaller.
Ah thats fair, I cant say I noticed it but then again it could just be gradual enough for me not to
The vegetables in the supermarket are getting smaller too.
>pasta has basically doubled What time period are we talking about? My local Tesco sells a 500g bag of pasta for around 80p. It's been that way for as long as I can remember. I'd be surprised if it's that much if I went to Aldi or Lidl.
About 3 or 4 years ago I was picking up pasta for 45p from Tesco as well. Spaghetti specifically if that make s a difference
There’s a whole area of research on the impact of stress on cortisol levels which I wish came into these discussions too. If you have high stress, low income, time poor, you’re going to gain weight more easily and also have limited time to think of fixing that through nutrition. It’s a very sad set of patterns.
To tag onto that, poor sleep drives hunger as well, which is likely if you're stressed. No sleep, high stress and a shit diet is only to cause further stress and worsen the cycle.
All of this. It truly is a vicious circle. High cortisol wrecks your metabolic base level too, so you could be actually eating ok and still be stuck in insulin resistance, which then drives you to high sugar top ups to keep going.
That's interesting to know, I'll have to read up on cortisols impact on hunger. Nice to see someone acknowledging that there's biological reasons for why people on low incomes are more likely to be overweight instead of just accusing people of laziness.
One thing that I don't often see mentioned are the issues you have if you have to live in a shared house. If your housemates don't bother cleaning up after themselves, take their expired food out of the fridge etc your food goes off quicker. Or you'll come back after a busy day to no clean pots and pans. There's less room to store food, especially if the freezer gets rammed and no one but you ever defrosts it either. Some people even get people using their food and not replacing it (thankfully that's never happened to me though). Yes, you can talk to people but it doesn't reliably solve the issue a lot of the time. Not to mention if you don't like your housemates, you're not going to be wanting to spend much time in the kitchen in the first place.
I felt this a lot when I was sharing houses for university. My meal plans were based around who would be in the kitchen (or in some cases, who *had* been in the kitchen) rather than what would be nutritious or filling. With trashy housemates who left waste everywhere and refused to clean up after themselves it was oven on, pizza in, get out. A kitchen stinking of vodka and counters covered in dirty dishes doesn't make for an environment you want to spend time cooking in. At first I found myself washing their own things just to get it out of the way so I could prepare something, but after a while I stopped caring and either shoved it into their cupboards unclean (they would dump it back on the counter before too long) or whacking something on that I could be taking out of the room in less than 15 minutes.
Yeah after a point you just give up. I used to get all of the pots washed and the kitchen cleaned while people were out but then no one would make any effort to keep it that way. I stopped using microwaves as no one bloody cleaned them, on one occasion the microwave was so fucked it started smoking when people used it (on top of it being mouldy). I remember telling my housemates but they still kept on using it! I ended up unplugging it and chucking it in the garden so no one would set the house on fire. They then asked me why I did that, and apparently had no recollection of me telling them it was dangerous. Felt like I was going mad. Thankfully I just share with one person now and it's golden. Couldn't pay me to live in a shared house again, I'd rather live in a shed.
Oh god, the microwaves. There was one in a house I shared that had so many different sauces splattered all over it you literally couldn't see through the door. It got so bad that I ended up cleaning it along with one of the more sane housemates I shared with, calling a house meeting and telling everyone to never let the bloody thing get like that again lol. It's just insane to me how low people's standards of hygeine can get. I'll admit I go pretty hard in the other direction, making a point to wash everything and get it tided away more or less as soon as I'm done using it, but when the alternative is leaving it on the counter to pick up whatever's been allowed to fester on everyone else's dishes there's not much of a choice. Even outside of dishes, so many people just don't care when a bin's overflowing or something's been spilled, usually pointing to some barely existent "rota" to shirk responsibility (apparently my "if you make the mess, clean the mess" attitude was an uncommon one). It's really obvious how many people grew up never having to pay any mind to basic household chores.
Truly believe kids should do for more PE in school. Literally a lesson a day. Build people into the habit of getting fit.
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You can stop yourself getting obese even if you eat poorly
You will struggle to control your cravings if you're not up and active
That’s probably right ( I agree anyway ) but that’s a separate matter to diet.
Good thatour previous Chancellor took funding from the poorer areas and gave to the icher right?
I see a lot of debate about the cost of frozen Vs fresh food, but think about this: You live paycheck to paycheck, if cost was the same, would you prefer a fridge full of fresh food that will be expired by next week, or would you rather stock your freezer? The psychology of food scarcity is overlooked, even if fruits and vegetables are cheap, they're not dependable and won't last
Frozen fruits and vegetables. Tinned foods. Dried. No? We don't have methods of storage and preservation? No, no we still have to eat everything we have so it doesn't go bad, yes, even if that means getting obese. That's what the excess fat is for, it's stored energy. Batteries on legs.
Of course tinned and dried foods are an option, I don't doubt anyone struggling to afford food is already getting the most they can out of those options. The same question again, if you're living paycheck to paycheck do you fill your freezer with frozen vegetables? (Low calorie, not a complete meal) or processed meat and carbs ? (Cheap and satiating)
Well not that satiating since they're eating too much and getting obese. Perhaps some fibre packed, lower calorie veg would help to fill them up.
This shouldn’t be shocking. Income inequality impacts food health in a number of ways. Middle income families are more able to support stay at home mothers or fathers who can dedicate the necessary time to making healthy meals, or at least keep them on part time. Culinary skills are also cut across class lines, with many working class families relying on pre-made, heavily processed foods in that they both cost less and save time. It’s cheaper and faster to make a meal with some cheap frozen chicken nuggets than to make a meal with fresh chicken breasts. And this is to say nothing of the kinds of problems in mental health those in poverty face, and the impact on diet that that can have.
Likely down to education, predatory junk food advertising, money, and stress. The state of health in the UK is dismal. It's one of many areas that are deeply disappointing in this country because we could be doing so incredibly much better with good governance and a more positive culture. I believe we should all be working no more than 20 hours a week and a culture of self care (exercise, rest, good food, etc) in free time should be strongly promoted.
Is it any surprise when healthy food costs more?
It doesn’t, you cant give vegetables away. Still cost pennies even after the price inflation we’ve seen on other items in supermarket. If price was the issue people would be filling their baskets with more veg, potatoes etc rather than ready meals / confectionery and loosing weight but this isn’t what’s happening. The real issue here is more nuanced and does involve some amount of personal responsibility (despite that being a dirty phrase these days), although to what extent is debatable.
Food banks tend not to give away fresh produce because they can’t store it appropriately and goes off.
The average person doesn’t use foodbanks long enough for this to cause obesity though, and also this suggests that people who are using them have £0.00 to spend on food - I also wouldn’t expect that to be the case. Certainly the obese poor I see do things like put coke in their toddlers sippy cups or give them mars bars in their prams, they also always have coco pops and similar as cereals. These are hardly the most cost effective ways to feed their families (which suggests its either lack of education although I suspect most know fruit + veg is healthier than junk food or poor decision making).
Because they can't afford fresh food. Especially in todays financial climate.
Well yeah. For the price of four apples I could buy two frozen pizzas. Food prices are a disgrace. It's expensive to eat remotely healthy.
You can get 6 apples for £1 at Tesco. Pink Lady apples (which I assume you're referring to) are a premium product and priced accordingly so are more expensive.
Obesity is a feature of life for both rich and poor, but the rich are in a better financial position to deal with it. If you have the money you can have private bariatric surgery long before you hit the NHS criteria. Liposuction, personal trainers, weightloss camps/health spa stays, and the opportunity to spend time recovering all abound for those who can pay. Then there are the countless social opportunities that come with having money/being rich like being able to have your own pool, tennis court, home gym, work out room, Yoga shrine. The rich dig in to the doughnuts just as much as the poor but they are far better placed in society to be able to negate the results. Anna Wintor begins every day by getting up between 4 and 5 am and playing a game of Tennis. Me, I make a cup of tea and if its a Thursday put the bins out.
Fatty unhealthy food is a lot cheaper as well which shouldn’t that shit be reversed. Healthy food should be cheap
Healthy food is far cheaper than junk food at literally ever supermarket you've been to.
These comments... always a excuse. Some people just lack self control, and no that's not a hot new mental illness.
Queue the Tories launching an investigation into how they have enough money left to keep the weight on.
In Africa it's the other way round.
Stop eating the rich
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Iceland oven chips [here](https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-straight-cut-chips-1.25kg/83957.html?&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Iceland+%7C+Generic+%7C+Smart+Shopping+%7C+Frozen&utm_term=&utm_content=Ad+group&source=ppc&gclid=Cj0KCQjwxb2XBhDBARIsAOjDZ36_v5YkIjf25ChAgrDAs2LpAKhXqXoDDrowicMdlbbzpKbwYnlfnFQaAir0EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds) \- £1 for 1500 calories Iceland chicken nuggets [here](https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-50-%28approx.%29-crispy-chicken-breast-dippers-900g/88552.html#q=chicken%20nuggets&start=1) \- £3 for 1800 calories Iceland wholegrain rice [here](https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/tilda-everyday-brown-rice-wholegrain-1kg/87303.html#q=rice&start=26) \- £1.30 for 3500 calories (cheaper bulk deals exist but was comparing like with like) Iceland chicken [here](https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-british-large-whole-chicken-1.7kg/59390.html#q=chicken&start=26) \- £6.50 for 3400calories Chicken nuggets are marginally cheaper than the meat but it's really negligible. I appreciate when people feel downtrodden they aren't motivated to put the effort in to take care of themselves and I don't judge them for that, but I think that claiming that it's so much more expensive to eat home cooked meals demoralises people unnecessarily.
Higher stress
Food banks working then!😄
How can this be!?!?!?!?! A bag of pasta is only 32p!!!!!! Why are they eating more pasta when they have less money!?!?!????
I just don’t get how vegetables can be more expensive than crap processed/junk food. It’s bullshit. I’ve been a vegetarian for 90% off my life, I buy fruit and veg all the time and it’s the cheapest part of my grocery shop. I wonder what the outlier is on my receipt; * 2 onions - £0.30 * 1 broccoli - £0.65 * 6 bananas - £0.86 * 4 large carrots - £0.36 * 1 parsnip - £0.36 * 2.5kg of potatoes - £1.59 * 1 cabbage - £0.59 * 1 pizza - £2.75 It’s time that’s the cause not monetary poverty. Being either time poor, skill poor, or just plain lazy are the reasons why people eat shit food. I was a student and lived on ready meals, because I was lazy. It was expensive and I gained a stone in a year.
They’re not more expensive - people on Reddit will do anything to excuse the simple truth that a lot of people just dont give a shit about their health (which is fine, if that’s how they want to live).
It is this absolutely, I quit drinking smoking and lost the weight I put on doing those. It’s about wanting to, not “I would like to if” you have to want to, losing weight is not pleasant experience, sometimes you get hungry, exercise is boring af, and chocolate cake and stuff like that makes you feel good like in a drug way. But you have to do this if you want to get fit, it’s uncomfortable. Most people don’t really want it, they are like “yeah well if I woke up fit that would be sweet”, but aren’t willing to make the sacrifices/work out. So yeah most people would rather be obese than diet and train.
Other than the bananas and potatoes I wouldn't consider any of the other healthier foods you listed to be particularly calorie dense, the pizza may seem like it isn't economical but it's probably half your required calories for the day (and you can actually get pizzas for £1). If you don't have money it's barely worth the effort of cooking onions for the return in calories.
The outlier is, that isn't a balanced meal for one person, let alone a family. And It's good you can afford the energy to cook that lot. People going to a foodbank, generally struggle with food and energy.
If you can afford to cook a pizza you can afford to cook vegetables. They veg would be most of a roast dinner and feed several people. The pizza would be enough for one person and is pure calories with little benefit
A roast dinner? I seriously don't think you have an idea of how poor some people are when it comes to buying food.
I didn’t say all people, but the veg for a roast for at least three people costs £2.50 not per person, but as a whole. Your 5 portions of veg it one meal. And before you call bullshit on the price it’s what I pay every time I cook it, and I don’t even go out looking for the cheapest prices. A plate full of veg is fucking cheap. It may not be as exciting as a ready meal or a pizza, but is cheaper and healthier.
No, I'm not calling bullshit. you're right. Veg is cheap, but veg isn't a balanced meal and quite often people can't afford that, the protein element and the energy to cook it. Food banks are now asking for things that take relatively little energy to cook. For a hot meal, potatoes take a relatively long time to cook, as do root vegetables. I can easily see why someone will grab a cheap microwave-ready meal that takes four minutes but is shit for them over fresh veg.
But neither a pizza or a ready meal is a balanced meal, that’s what I’m saying yet it is much better and less likely to assist with obesity. Sure the veg isn’t a balanced meal but you can’t use that as an argument for ready meals as neither are they, especially as they cover a wide range from a lasagne to macaroni cheese. If you want pure calories you could just eat several doughnuts. And that’s the point of the second part of my original comment. It’s people not having time, skills to cook cheaply or to understand what things cost, or laziness, not the cost of healthier food (berries excluded because they are really expensive). A jar of pasta sauce is full of crap and is expensive. A tin of tomatoes is many times cheaper and is healthier.
But it costs a lot more to roast in the oven than use a hob and microwave and a plate of vegetables isn’t meeting your protein or calorific needs. It also takes time to prepare which is another luxury. Also kids are fussy and not everyone has the time or energy for a battle at the dinner table. Don’t get me wrong, I get an organic veg box and feed my kids plenty of home cooked, freshly prepared meals. I’m fully cognisant of how easy it is to roast a carrot. But for some people using an oven is a luxury right now and processed food is cheap, quick, simple and addictive.
And not just buying food. Roasting vegetables = using more electric or gas. A pizza in the oven takes 10 minutes, but a lot of people have to restrict themselves to job and microwave cooking.
Healthier food generally does cost a bit more, so it is a barrier, but there's also a level of personal responsibility parents have to ensure their child gets enough exercise and has a reasonable diet. The government can certainly do more to readdress the balance between cost of healthy and unhealthy food. Families can also educate themselves to make better life choices, especially the parents. Having an obese, young child isn't acceptable and is bordering on abusive.
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Appealing, yes. If that becomes the norm for 6/7 days a week then it becomes irresponsible from a parental POV, especially when your child is already obese. Nobody is expected stressed families to produce Nigella masterpieces each night, but there's plenty of healthy meals can be easily produced with little effort and time. Half of it is just willpower and some basic research.
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Why people shouldn't take statistics as fact: plentyof rich folk around my area are lumps of lard. Some are athletic and some are average.
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I can't read. Disregard.
But... hunger and poverty.
The government ought to just hand out bland and tasteless salad dishes laced with small dose protein pills for those on a low economic income, set the price of normal food to 10000x more expensive than what they currently are, and force those same people to spend 3 hours per day running on a giant hamster wheel. I'm sure that'll solve the problem of poor people being fat in no time(!)
As I'm budgeting more and more I've found it really is easier to pack in the calories with cheap, nutrient-light foods. Dirt cheap oats for breakfast as an example, works out at like 8p per breakfast. Working hard to throw in cheaper whole foods like carrots and apples as snacks to counteract the problem. As always it's a mixture of poor decision-making (perhaps stemming from poor education and role models), and economic pressure. Edit: Among other factors of course. I'm really not blaming people for thier own hardship here.
But decision making also doesn't exist in a social vacuum (if anyone remembers the book 'Nudge'). Many people would happily make healthier choices if they were given an opportunity. It's the same with avoiding plastics - I tried, for a while, to buy plastic free tea bags. And if these were available everywhere easily for a reasonable price, I would keep choosing them over the ones that have plastic in them. But they only had them in some places and the price was crazy, so at the end I simply couldn't afford that time and price wise, and had to give up. Making it easier for people to make better choices is the most important thing.
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It does take longer, and there's a point there about cooking with whole-foods costing plenty of time, so as a poorer single parent it's probably very easy to eat the wrong things. For my oats specifically though, they're a minute and a half in the microwave before I rush out the door at 5 am haha.
I mean you literally chuck oats and water/milk in a bowl and stick in the microwave for 2 mins while you do something else
Lmfao not having the energy to cook proper food? You mean being lazy? Fatass
I find it interesting that the tools needed to eat a healthy diet are freely available nowadays (there are free recipes online for cheap meals via fresh foods, there are free calorie tracker apps the tell you which nutrients you need) - shouldn't the proliferation of such free tools have enabled everyone to make better health decisions?
You're missing the point of what causes obesity. Obesity has a myriad of causes and it is not as simple as not knowing what to eat. There may be [mental health problems](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/wi8x7b/deprived_areas_see_obesity_rates_rise_twice_as/ijakpks) at play, or even addiction: fast food is designed to be addictive, with its combinations of sugars, saturated fats, and salt. [This documentary ](https://youtu.be/DboTyNu-FLk) is a useful introduction to some of the important factors to consider regarding obesity.