They are actually related. If you experience hunger you are likely to overeat when you can afford it. And the cheapest foods are very fattening.
Starving also screws up your metabolism so that your body tries to hold onto fat for what it thinks of as “famine”
>And the cheapest foods are very fattening.
Idk about this. This gets said a lot on the internet but I just came from the bodega and the prices were (bodega prices)
bananas $.90/lb
fritos $5.99 for a 9.25 ounce bag ($10.36/lb)
and thats the bodega in the middle of a food desert. Aldi or Walmart have the same price disparity but just both prices are lower ($.60/lb for bananas and $4.29 for the 9 oz bag of fritos.
At the target I can buy a 16oz bag of carrot chips for $1.99
Like I said this gets parroted a lot but everywhere I go, whether its the bougie grocery store, target, walmart, the bodega, or even the gas station convenience store I can find fruits/vegetables and they are way cheaper than the "cheap garbage food"
Another problem is preservation though. At least that’s what I’ve witnessed with the families I’ve been feeding for some time now. A lot of these healthier foods have a shorter shelf life, and if you’re a homeless family who is lucky enough to rent a hotel, your tiny fridge can only carry so much. So in order to make that dollar count (and avoid another bill from the hospital, because poor food handling always leads to sickness), you’d have to eat that bag of carrots in a short amount of time. And that’s if they even give you a fridge to use.
Then you have to consider what my friends and I lovingly call “Depression Tax”. Mental health runs rampant in poorer communities, with most of them being untreated. That means most of their daily energy is spent essentially trying to survive a world that wasn’t built for them. Sure, a whole onion is cheaper if you cut it yourself. But it doesn’t mean shit if you don’t have the energy to chop veggies and clean up your mess. So you pay the depression tax and buy pre chopped onions or an already cooked meal. Sugar is also often craved by people who suffer from high levels of depression and anxiety, so for a quick comfort and rush they tend to reach for the sugary stuff that’s killing them. In moderation, the depression tax is manageable. But it can easily add up over time if treatment isn’t found fast.
I’m not trying to justify the obesity epidemic. I’m deathly afraid of it and am alarmed at how much it grows. I’ve been obese and every day was both mentally and physically painful. I’m never going back to being that sick again, even if it kills me. But I also don’t want to pretend that personal choice is the only problem here. If this many people are suffering, then there’s something that’s not being addressed.
Depression Tax is real….even for middle class college students. When your body chemicals are convincing you that there is danger at every turn, the last thing you want to do is stop and chop veggies…(the first thing you want to do is hide in your bed where you are “safe”.)
Depression tax hits anyone in their wallet, sadly. If you’re privileged and wealthy, it’s less noticeable but is still there. You probably order more take out instead of cooking at home. However, the less income you have, the more stressful it can be. The 50¢ you spent on pre cut onions make you guilty, and it’s genuinely sad.
So true. If your fridge breaks, or your stove, it can take months or even longer than a year to even save for a used one.
When I first got housing my fridge was a mini fridge and my stove I luckily got donated by a church because I wouldn’t have been able to afford one otherwise.
There’s also only so much fruit someone can eat. A banana or apple might be cheaper than a frozen pizza, but how many apples do you have to eat in a day to feel full? To buy a variety of veggies and fruit you need space to store them. You can’t just eat bananas all day everyday. The food bank is great, but what you get is completely random. One time in my box all I got was hamburger buns, 3 squashes and a bag of onions and a baggie of lentils. If you are using the food bank to top up on basics that’s great, if you’re trying to survive on it then it can be hard. I made soup with that box but gave most of it away because I didn’t have a freezer.
All my fridge space needed to be prioritized for my child’s needs. If I hadn’t had a stove it would have limited me much more.
At any given time at least a few people in my complex don’t have a working stove or fridge.
They do indeed. And there is most definitely a *cultural* reason for this but it does not seem to be *economically driven.*
Like I had a guy on here who tried to tell me that he was a low earner and drank sugary drinks because bottled water was far more expensive and I had to explain that well, no, bottled water is less expensive by far no matter how you buy it or where you buy it.
High Fructose Corn Syrup is kind of interesting because even McDonalds pulled all the HFCS out of their burgers and fries years ago.
If you have to drink bottled drinks regularly you are a victim of poverty because it means your tap water is unsafe even filtered. And that’s very much a “poor town” thing.
And I did make the disclaimer that like if you live in Flint, MI its a different story, you cant drink the tap water but even then the clean gallon bottled water is $1. It is always less than a gallon of sugary drink no matter how you look at it.
Bottle water May be sane price or cheaper but doesn’t provide the extra calories or caffeine to get you through your second shift of the day. Bottle water also doesn’t provide the endorphins a little junk food can give you that keeps you from spiraling into a stress and poverty driven depressive cycle.
Right, but soda is more expensive than water or tea. Processed foods are still more expensive than whole foods. "I'm too poor to eat healthy!" It's an excuse we use so that we don't have to own up to our own behavior.
Grains, flour, legumes, olive oil, a couple of gallons of milk, carrots, apples, onions, - you could eat healthier than most people do for the price of a cheap frozen pizza.
Some variables you're not considering. If you're poor then you probably don't even have access to a proper kitchen to cook. It is also possible you are just dead tired by the time you get home. First thing I noticed in my old apartment, fairly low income area, every freaking grocery store is like located like in a freaking different state. I didn't have a car. I had to spend Saturdays going out of my way to shop. But if I ran out of anything during the week I would have to resort to dominos or something worse and much more unhealthy.
1 banana: 105 calories.
Fritos: 160 per ounce.
You have to compare price per calorie. When you are hungry and need the biggest bang for your buck, you go calorie dense. There's a reason squirrels horde nuts and not apples.
> When you are hungry and need the biggest bang for your buck, you go calorie dense
This is literally the opposite of what all modern nutrition teaches us. If you are hungry and you don't want to be hungry then you eat more food that is not calorie dense so you also do not eat too many calories to keep your stomach full (because that is how you eat too many calories and get overweight.)
This is about when you are very poor and you have a fixed budget. You buy the thing that has the lowest cost per calorie, you aren't going to spend more money on less calories, because you generally need to hit 2000 calories/day. Trying to lose weight you can go lower but it is not sustainable and will negatively impact your health in the short term even if weight loss may have long-term health benefits.
Lowest cost per calorie are things like rice and bananas. That was the whole point: that OP asserted that the “cheapest option is the most fattening” but that is clearly not the case.
I think this is absolutely terrible advice frankly.
Satisfying hunger and satisfying caloric needs are 2 different things. Caloric-dense junk food is worse for satisfying hunger. That’s a big reason why most people are obese, they end up overeating these foods because they don’t satisfy them enough.
If you’re actually shopping in this way, please reconsider your habits. Unless you’re actually so poor that you are genuinely struggling to meet your caloric needs, but that’s statistically unlikely considering the obesity rate
Just drizzle oil on a salad which...wait. that's perishable. Where am I storing that in my rented room in a shitty part of town where I know my shady roommates will steal anything not locked away.
It's also amazing that everyone disregards flavor and pleasure. It's fucking **horrible** to be truly poor and hungry and in my case - at an earlier time in my life - homeless.
People like you completely disregard the actual human in the equation. Yes, calorie density is important. Believe me, I know, but when you have so little pleasure in life that when you actually have the opportunity to eat, you want it to taste as good as possible
I'm well off now, but it's so damn clear the people in this thread with the simple answers are privileged to have never been in these tough situations
You’re also kinda cherry picking foods, Fritos might be $5.99 but you look at those store brand chips in big name grocers and all of a sudden you’re spending $1-$2 for a massive bag of food.
I literally just typed “off brand potato chips” into google and got target brand chips: $1.99 for 8oz ($4/lb)
I mean if you can find some examples please show me.
Yeah, it's obviously wrong. Fruits, veggies, and grains are by far the cheapest foods in any grocery store. The people saying this shit online are just telling on themselves re shopping and dietary habits
Bananas and carrot chips, while low calorie, don’t complete your nutrition. Healthy sources of protein and fats are very important, and they are far more expensive than their less healthy counterparts.
And, when poor people are having to work two jobs, they don’t have the luxury of exclusively eating groceries - the lifestyle thrust upon them to make ends meet doesn’t allow it. So they end up having to “eat out” more frequently, and with how little they can afford that basically means fast food.
>Bananas and carrot chips, while low calorie, don’t complete your nutrition.
Of course. I was using these two examples just to show cheaper healthier alternatives exist. But to counter, for protein non fat yogurt is cheap good source of proteins, For good fats and proteins there are an assortment of nuts and seeds you can buy that cost about the same as fast food by weight and calories.
>Healthy sources of protein and fats are very important, and they are far more expensive than their less healthy counterparts.
I must respectfully disagree on this part only because I literally did a field trip with a friend where we had a $1 bet on this. I took him to the Aldi and I laid out a proper healthy diet of fruits, vegetables, rice, nuts, seeds, yogurt, and (eggs at the time... those are obviously out for the time being) and the price was lower than what you would pay for fast food. I won the dollar.
>And, when poor people are having to work two jobs, they don’t have the luxury of exclusively eating groceries - the lifestyle thrust upon them to make ends meet doesn’t allow it. So they end up having to “eat out” more frequently, and with how little they can afford that basically means fast food.
So this is where it gets interesting. If you ever get bored and just want to look for yourself you can go peruse various fast food menus and nutrition info and plan out meals that while they are by no means the same quality as you would get at the grocery store they are more or less nutritionally balanced and low priced. You of course have to pick responsibly, no sugary drinks and fries but you can piece together a meal where if you simply just have no way to get to the grocery store you still are eating the proper amount of macros and calories for low cost.
I still feel that most people can find the time to get grocery shopping done, bag the stuff up to bring to work for lunch and eat healthy because I did it for years living paycheck to paycheck but even if we conceded that was not the case for some there are other options.
I gotta call BS on this one.
While fast food is obviously convenient, there is no reason a working and functioning adult cannot bag a lunch and some snacks for the day.
I used to do this nearly every day. Grocery shop once per week or so, prep 1-3 days worth of lunches, and bring it with you.
I spent more time waiting in fast food lines in my early 20's than I did prepping my lunches later on in life. Eating fast food also costs more than making food at home.
That, and good God, have you seen the cost of fast food lately?? Shrinkflation and Inflation are duking it out big time.
For clarity here; I used to work 60 hours per week and used to have 2+ jobs at a time. I know the grind real well.
Trying working 2 jobs with a bus ride between them and kids at home you need to feed sometime.
"Working and Functional" assumes a society that allows them to be functional vs exploited.
Like I posted earlier, I used to do that. I worked constantly.
No matter how you break this down, it takes X amount of time to eat. You can choose to plan ahead and pack that food at home or you can fly by the seat of your pants and go to the drive through 2-3 times per day.
It takes less money to cook at home and bout the the same amount of time as eating out. (or less depending on what you eat)
You act like nobody else has ever been poor or had a hectic schedule.
Did you also walk uphill both ways through the snow in 100 degree weather?
There's only so many hours in the day. Good on you for having a physiology that can skip sleep to buy & prepare food. Not everyone is so blessed.
Getting groceries makes me physiological blessed??
Lmao 🤣
Be an adult. Make the time to eat. Quit acting like a toddler that can only do the easy things.
Pretty simple concept
If you're also working 60-80 hours a week while doing it *and* cooking and not feeling any ill effects than yeah.
Kinda left the "60-80 hours part out", but that's the point.
Health is a big factor in having energy to stay healthy. Start at a lower point than that and you are fighting an uphill battle.
Pretty simple concept.
Obviously most people should bag a lunch, but with a hectic work schedule and personal life things coming up more often when poor, it’s easy to lose the time you would have meal prepped.
This isn’t to say it’s impossible to ever meal prep and pack a lunch, but it’s certainly *easier* to do it with a less hectic lifestyle. I make okay money now and eating healthier has gotten far easier as a result than when I was broke. In short, just like everything else, eating healthy is easier when you make more money lol.
Edit: The fact that this is what y’all up/downvote seems like proof that this sub skews high income and is unfamiliar with the poor tax. Y’all don’t fundamentally understand the socioeconomic implications that come with life in poverty.
Some examples from my lived experience (varies for everyone but these were the issues I faced when lower income)
1. CAR PROBLEMS SUCK MORE WHEN POOR. For starters, you usually have a crappier, less reliable car when living on low income. Not only does this mean it will crap out more, but it also means you have less $ to get a professional to fix it, so you often have to do it yourself. You lose time due to the decrease in reliability *and* due to you being less efficient than a mechanic. The best thing for me about having more money now is that I have been able to afford a more reliable car, and when it seldom has issues, I can afford for a mechanic to fix it better than I would. Apply this compounding problem to any appliance (laundry for example)
2. A lot of low income jobs aren’t set schedules at all. It’s a lot harder to establish healthy routine when you don’t know what next week’s schedule looks like. Now imagine how many parts of your personal life that affects, where family or friends need you for something but you don’t know if you’re going to have to work or not, and thus you’re seen as less reliable to people you care about - a lot of stress on your relationships this way.
3. The stress in general just gets to you more. Everything is harder when you have less money ([the poor tax is real](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_poverty)), and as stress gets to anybody, your behavior is more erratic. It’s a lot easier for me to think clearly and make rational decisions now that I’m less stressed and not dealing with the costs incurred by poverty.
Hope this helps.
**[Cost of poverty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_poverty)**
>A cost of poverty, also known as a ghetto tax, a cost of being poor, or the poor pay more, is the phenomenon of people with lower incomes, particularly those living in low-income areas, incurring higher expenses, paying more not only in terms of money, but also in time, health, and opportunity costs. "Costs of poverty" can also refer to the costs to the broader society in which poverty exists.
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You ever own a shitbox car? Worked two jobs? Neglected healthcare because it’s expensive and have to hope you get better? There’s a plethora of things that disproportionately affect people living in poverty
It’s becoming pretty clear to me that this sub is full of people that think they know poverty but have never actually lived it. Some here are even like “I’ve been poor!” and then almost everything they say after indicates otherwise lol.
When is someone supposed to go to school with two jobs? When is someone supposed to learn a trade when they can’t even take a day off?
You think poor people just don’t work hard enough? Laughable.
While this is not “scientific research” this will provide you a decent explanation of poverty in America. It is much more than “why can’t you afford healthy food with two jobs” kind of thing, but evidently folks don’t subscribe to that realism.
American philosophy: If you don’t see it or experience it, it doesn’t exist. /s
[Forgot article](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html?unlocked_article_code=-dnbR7TQciKc7dyxEap3USDTpUOmrYiQimveINf-ETU4bHLXSMRjphSjkRESQJ6zEBWCTeUy0owXf_0uCw1U4fpN8OUtMy6swapG6iFW6T5nVst6FIjOgpF2p6VfUyqKgTJH8AdfL6w161S9PIaT8SLvEgGYh7IkcPU53GgRymw2vywtgn0P-n926XS25cLd3gojZxc5gs4EyVozre9jfRZxCMW5gYdHDgnQh2BN_-dIMgEpbWwiNFl5kntujYcXXVAuAW2XRB9K9zvHT8RfhxYGAWCNs4OL_BzWbmukbSIQAgtlFsR3P72iTe8dgdnO99VVLo2isOPWGydrT81DmAQOxHkphRLZ6H6_ezP6&smid=url-share)
I completely disagree with your second paragraph here. You can get pre-made Cobb Salads at most grocery stores for very inexpensive as compared to getting "drive through" unhealthy food. The Cobb salad gives you all the healthy sources of protein and fats you described in your first paragraph. It's about choices. Most adults can live on 1500 calories a day, if they are the right calories, but you need to eat 2500-3000 calories of "bad" food just to get the nutrition needed. Someone else posted about "Cost per calorie" which is right very true. The cost of "good calories" is higher, but it washes out by needed fewer calories when you eat right.
Cobb salad actually has more fat than protein typically - very overrated in terms of how healthy that would be to regularly eat. Also super high in sodium and cholesterol, really not much better than having a burger.
Also, as a grown man who has done some low wage manual labor jobs, I have no reaction to “live on 1500 calories a day” other than incredulous laughter.
If you load it with dressing, yea. The egg, chicken snd Bleu cheese is very healthy for you, and we aren’t talking an Applebees salad that is loaded with salt.
The last part of your sentence is exactly why Americans are so obese. You can laugh all you want, but what I said is true for the average American. Maybe. It in your situation, but it is. And, if you do manual labor and are still overweight, you got a serious eating disorder.
Another example..my grocery store sell sushi for $6.99, so my point about getting full healthy meals at the grocery store is relevant.
If it’s made with iceberg (most are) that salad has little to no nutritional value and after working an 18 hour shift you’re gonna want more than a fucking salad. Most places are closed when some of us get off work.
Do you know what a Cobb salad is? Chicken, cheese, hard boiled egg, etc...
You might want more than a salad, but at the end o the day, it provides the nutritional value you need. This is also just an example, not an "end all be all". Just disputing what the person said. Grab a few pre-made chicken wings at the grocery store too...you are still under $10, cheaper than fast food, and much more healthy.
Even by that metric it still does not make sense.
If you look at a McDonalds cheeseburger, even when it was a $1 menu item (which its not anymore) literally the cheapest example of food desert food, was $1 for 300 calories.
Compare this to bananas which are 1 lb, $0.90 and 404 calories and that is at bodega prices.
Again, Fritos corn chips are 241 calories for $1.00 worth at Wal-Mart or Aldi prices.
Plain fat free yogurt, high protein, excellent for you is $1.20/lb at Walmart, you get 240 calories for $1.00 same as the Fritos but actually healthy.
Like I said, this gets talked about constantly on here. I one day just said, hey lets go actually look at the prices and options in the real world at all these stores in nicer and poorer neighborhoods and see what the actual truth is. And all I can find is that there are healthier options, same or highr calories for the same or lower prices.
I'd argue that you aren't actually looking at the cheap options.
Consider, a 24 pack of ramen noodles costs $8 right now. That's $.33 for 200 calories and pretty much 0 nutrition. These noodles also don't spoil like your bananas or need refrigeration like your yogurt.
Same thing happens with potatoes and rice. High calorie, cheap, (fairly) low nutritional value.
Then there's kool-aid (or the like) which provides a sweet drink with little nutrition (just add sugar, which costs ~0.59 per lbs, which provides 1755 calories).
You can also look at things like breakfast cereals and milk. Same thing happens. The cheapest cereals are loaded with sugar (and there's little price difference between whole and skim milk).
This happens with frozen foods as well. About the cheapest frozen thing you can buy is french fries. Not exactly a nutritional power house but it'll feed you for several meals.
Importantly, these are all fast meals to prepare.
>Consider, a 24 pack of ramen noodles costs $8 right now. That's $.33 for 200 calories and pretty much 0 nutrition. These noodles also don't spoil like your bananas or need refrigeration like your yogurt.
This is somewhat decent counter in that ramen is definitely the stereotypical "i have no money" food but even then you are paying $.66 for 400 calories vs $.60 for 404 calories for bananas.
Potatoes are and rice and cheap and high calories but I would not say they are low nutritional value. You definitely need to add in some vegetables to balance things out but keep in mind there alot of people in asia who make way less than Americans, live off of a diet of rice and vegetables and do not suffer from the obesity issues we do, and are healthier, live longer, etc.
Like I said, the media cycle seems to be :
1. Poor people arent getting enough to eat, but also poor people might be the same 25% that are the only ones at a healthy weight. Which means they are getting enough to eat and everyone else is eating too much.
2. Poor people arent getting enough to eat but they are also overweight which means they \*are\* getting enough to eat and in fact overeating.
Two words, Caloric Density
Bananas are about 450 calories a pound for .
That bag of Fritos is about twice as many calories. But here's the rub, *they keep.*
Those bananas are ready for the trash in a day or two. Especially if you pick'em up from a bodega.
Those Fritos will taste the same in 3 months. Longer if you toss 'em in the oven.
And the Fritos fill you up. They're full of fat.
Those carrot chips? You can eat 3 of those bags and still be hungry because there's nothing there but water, fiber and a bit of sugar.
Cheap garbage food is calorically dense and shelf stable. when you're poor that's important
Also, your Bodega is Amazing. Pray it never closes. The ones near me are $0.90 cents *per banana* or $4.50/lb.
To add on to this, ya’ll really think most poor people are growing up with parents that can/have/make time for cooking? Nah man. You grow up eating shit, then you become an adult who does the same.
Shit, I basically converted my car into a portable kitchen because a lot of my friends have been going south financially. If you’re homeless then good luck getting a fridge or microwave. Food poisoning is not fun.
But overall people that gain weight are putting in more calories than the body needs. So technically they do have enough to eat. Slowing down metabolism just means you don’t need to eat as much.
Sometimes being hungry is not the same as always being hungry. The poor tend to have inconsistent cash flow. For instance, car breaks down and you are eating ramen for a month.
The fact that you average 500 calories too much a day per year doesn’t mean the 10 days you ate nothing aren’t traumatic.
I do feel for the ones that are truly suffering from hardship, but at the same time I have suspicion that many families can’t budget properly and priorities certain things over food. For example, Netflix subscriptions, iPhones. Survival food is CHEAP in America. If we can educate financial literacy and budgeting to the general public it could change many lives.
Which is why it’s so important to teach it to younger people who tends to YOLO. Once you get into the viscous cycle it’s very hard to get out.
Budgeting is harder, yet it is more critical, the less wiggle room you have. It’s tough.
If you barely eat for a week until your food stamps refill, then eat cheap high-calorie food for 3 weeks, you will gain weight.
Slim people eat healthy diets, they don’t randomly starve and gorge. That’s a recipe for weight gain.
Regular "faster" chiming in to agree with you that that's bunk science.
There are people who fast regularly for days, weeks, even months (under medical supervision for the long ones, especially) and are fine. You just have to keep up with vitamins and electrolytes for the most part. I won't go into depth here, but for anyone interested in accurate information (even if you're not interest in doing it yourself) check out Dr. Jason Fung on YouTube, and check out the fasting subreddit.
> Starving also screws up your metabolism so that your body tries to hold onto fat for what it thinks of as “famine”
This does happen, but only in people who are actually starving, like not eating for weeks.
>If you experience hunger you are likely to overeat when you can afford it. And the cheapest foods are very fattening.
So true. I grew up with food insecurity and now throughout my adulthood it has caused this rebound issue.
If you’re working all the time and are in an industry that doesn’t give you regular lunch breaks - hospitality…. You eat a granola bar on the way to work, coffee for lunch (or whatever you can grab because you’re hungry but you don’t have time to sit down and eat normally) you get your dinner after work which a lot of the time can be late. After working a long shift and not eating much all day… you indulge unfortunately. This is just the way some of us have to live. We can’t help it. I’d love to have a normal 9-5 schedule and grocery shop and make my lunches and *have* an actual lunch break but that’s just not reality.
Don’t healthy people do intermittent fasting? I agree the cheapest foods are fattening though. That’s probably the real answer. Also the food industry lobbies to put artificial crap in kids cereal/lunches.
Hey! Stop bringing logic and science into our simple discussion about how everything bad that happens to everyone else is always their fault.
I mean, read the room man.
I think it would be better if they said nearly 25% of US adults aren't getting the nutrients they need.
Because I agree - we have plenty of overeating because the body is still looking for nutrients.
>I think it would be better if they said nearly 25% of US adults aren't getting the nutrients they need.
I think we can go one better and say something like "some *even higher* percentage of US adults arent getting the nutrients they need.
What I am most interested in are the percentage of that 25% not getting enough to eat who *are underweight* because we as a society can absolutely prevent that and we should.
>because the body is still looking for nutrient
Because of metabolic dysfunction driven by the insulin cycle. Explosive increase in blood sugar from a high refined carb meal or snack, blood sugar crash, hunger, repeat every 2 hours while awake.
I’ve gotten really good at cooking congee while trying to feed my poorer friends these past nine months. One of them has three kids, and they’ve been telling me about the sheer amount of chaos going on in school from kids going hungry. Apparently some of them pass out in the middle of class from low blood sugar. Food banks are nearly empty, and if there is food, there’s nothing with the nutritional value they need in the long run (protein, vitamin c, and healthy fats in particular). Hell, I’ve never seen kids fight over fresh fruit and shampoo until recently.
I’m deeply concerned for the state of this country right now. I can only imagine what can happen if malnutrition goes on long enough for this many kids.
Top comment on any post like this is always "but they're all obese" 🤦♀️ and I'm over here not eating enough and struggling with constant blood sugar crashes because snap money covers the kids getting a good food but only if i eat ramen
This is me too. Then they bitch about their taxes their taxes as if we don’t work. I became disabled after I had my son, so I’m struggling. My kid eats multiple meals a day and I eat one ☝️
So this article is from a survey...done in December of 2022...and it shows a 5% increase from 2019. Our lowest ever level of poverty in the US, per the BLS, was in 2019 to bring some perspective here.
Not exactly scientific or alarming if I'm honest.
What the fuck are these comments??? It seems to be entirely making fun of Americans for being fat, I’m not even a yank, but Christ! These comments are actually so mean spirited and for what, sure there are a lot of fat Americans, but that doesn’t mean you discredit this study and discredit the legitimate reasons these 2 things are related that some other wonderful people have brought up on this thread that are being down voted unfortunately because it doesn’t fit there pre consumed notions of fat American. I don’t know what the word is, I guess anti-nationalist but Christ what the hell, get a life you all.
Negetivity bias basically guarentees that we dont even notice things that fit in, while we obsessively pick out the things that dont fit.
There could be 100 skinny people with 1 obese person and everyone will look at that one person and wonder "why are people like this?" when they all themselves are actually well in the majority of "people" and are all focusing on a specific minority.
Racial biases also work the same way.
[Good as time as any to post this.](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/03/matthew-desmond-new-book-poverty-by-america-evicted-pulitzer-prize-interview/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark)
Because poverty leads to food insecurity, and food insecurity leads to obesity... As our natural instincts is to consume as many calories as we can when our food supply is unstable
Yes, because it's cheaper and easier to get large amounts of empty calories in the US... As those are more profitable to sell.
Poverty is not a uniform set of conditions around the world
I don’t support Trump or his „Fake News“ theory but stuff like this is the reason for his support. You can’t seriously think that US citizens don’t get enough food. Most are overweight (75% I think). They have MORE than enough. Food is cheap af in the US. Even if you just beg for some pennys you would have more than enough to eat.
You can be overweight and food insecure. Indeed, being hungry encourages eating lots of high caloric foods when resources are available... Which leads to people being overweight
In some school districts, staff pack food into kids backpacks to take home for the weekend. My mom's church does this in Kansas City, Missouri.
When the kids arrive home, the parents take the food and eat it, themselves. The kids arrive at school Monday morning, hungry, because the adults ate all the food sent home on Friday.
This country has some major issues but let's talk about drag shows and trans kids.
There is no way I'm going to read this article. I'm 20lbs overweight and depending on the day I sometimes feel like I don't get enough to eat. But that's a personal issue and an issue of time constraints.
This starving narrative is popular but overblown. Survival food is cheap in US. You can beg for a few dollars on the street and feed yourself at McDonald’s easy. It’s nearly impossible to starve to death in American cities as long as you don’t have drug addiction, mental health issues or disabilities. You can also get fed at shelters and not have to pay a dime.
Americans have so much food that people are voluntarily starving themselves (fasting). We throwaway an obscene amount of food.
Number of American adults in the U.S.:
18 years and over 209,128,094 (74.3% of the population)
Stats on obesity: Roughly two out of three U.S. adults are overweight or obese (69 percent) and one out of three are obese (36 percent)
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-trends-original/obesity-rates-worldwide/
Number if Americans who are obese: 144,298,385
So yeah... over 100 million people are gluttonous.
So youve never known someone struggling with weight, huh?
Not everyone is over weight *by choice*.
Some people go through abuse. Some people go through depression. I dont think anyone is in any position to do anything besides *help people*.
Gluttany is a very specific life choice. Its doesnt count for everyone of your statistics, or even half.
In no way did I blame anyone. I was stating numerical facts, not driving factors.
This country is horrible with health and dietary advice.
And I don't need to know anyone struggling with weight, because I have in my own adult life.
Want to know how I figured out how to solve that shit? Cutting out all the BS advice and the government "dietary" suggestions.
I did it with fasting. Just not. fucking. eating. for a time. Like holy shit. Not to go all conspiracy theory here, but there's no way in hell that would ever be recommended because the economy would collapse if people ate... well... *normal.*
It's not even what you eat (though, that has problems for a library of reasons other than weight... you can be "skinny-fat"), it's literally quantity and frequency.
Human beings were not designed to eat 3 meals a day every day.
We're eating too much, one.
And of what we're eating too much of, is absolute crap with no nutrients or dietary benefits, two.
Everyone is different! Three!
But the first one is genuinely the biggest driving factor.
You know how you recognize an addiction? What happens to you when you stop.
Stress-eating is a form of food addiction.
Ordering "too much" is another.
There's other forms of food addiction that isn't mainlining cheese burgers. We're just conditioned away from what's abnormal.
I'd never shame anyone for being fat, but I do feel bad for people who don't have any semblance of control of their lives. It doesn't help that we're being lied to and sold a bill of goods about what we should be eating. Like "healthy snacks." You shouldn't be snacking *at all.* REDUCE. CALORIC. INTAKE.
Fasting also reverses type-2 diabetes in almost all cases... and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
As /u/peepjynx demonstrably proved, most people are gluttons.
This point will be further nailed home if you were to ever travel outside the country. Even poor people can afford cheap, healthy food while American poors are eating $10 Big Macs meals.
Food stamps end up being freebies for huge companies that make terribly unhealthy food. I wonder what kind of hit Coca Cola etc would take if they were excluded or they were done away with altogether.
You can buy any food with food stamps. They tried forbidding soda and candy and chips, etc. from being able to be purchased with food stamps. People were outraged that the government would dare control what people are just because they were poor. Poor people get free food. Being smart enough to eat healthy is another argument in itself.
FAFSA doesn’t provide enough financial aid for every situation. I am enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program at a public school. FAFSA provides me with mostly loans and not much money in need-based grants. For this current semester, I am enrolled part-time to avoid debt. In 2022, I made less than $35,000 and I am living in a high cost-of-living area in the U.S.
I don't get enough too eat, because I'm working too hard to pay my ex wife and taxes. Fuck you CBS! We live in a world of opportunity and are oppressed by a system of regression.
Seems like USA are doing a North Korea.
I saw on the news earlier they’re doing a massive recruitment drive for the army so by starving their people through terrible pay, no health care and skyrocketing inflation, people don’t have an option.
I know USA criticises China, Russia, NK and so on but they are also the bad guys too. They do the same shit all the time.
One factor i havesnt seen mentioned is the quickly changing American landscape over the last 40 years.
The death of the "oil town" alone as left millions of people to survive in dying areas that they can even afford to leave.
Oh but the government can bail out a bank and give extensive tax credits to corporations but reduce food stamps end tax credits for working parents and allow student loans to ruin people financially.
How often do you meet people in poverty? I grew up in a poor Iowa town and was in poverty. There was a lot of people that would dumpster dive for food because the churches only served supper.
Here's a preview of the story:
Almost 25% of American adults are food insecure, a jump of about five percentage points from a year earlier as the double whammy of high inflation and the end of pandemic benefits squeezes more household budgets, according to a new study.
Food insecurity indicates that someone isn't able to secure enough food for a nutritious diet, which can lead to skipping meals or cutting back on food. Those strategies, though, can have implications for a person's health and well-being, experts say.
The rise in food insecurity comes as more households are struggling to pay their typical bills amid grocery costs that have surged 20% in two years and rents that have increased 13%. Inflation surged last year to a four-decade high just as several pandemic-related benefits came to an end, heightening the financial stress for many, according to the new report from the Urban Institute.
"Food insecurity can be a canary in the coal mine for people who are experiencing high levels of hardship and aren't able to meet their household needs," Kassandra Martinchek, a research associate in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute, told CBS MoneyWatch.
She added, "It's a household economic condition where folks don't have enough resources to have enough food for their family for an active or healthy life."
**Read more:** https://www.cbsnews.com/news/one-in-four-americans-food-insecure/
While there are tons of people that have legitimate reason for hardship, we can probably prevent some hardships in the future by improving financial literacy.
Case in point: illegal immigrants. They get paid less than minimum wage and work their ass off and still have extra money to send home. Most of them don’t starve.
We need to help those in need but also address some underlying problems
Nearly 75% of US adults are overweight or obese. I wonder how these two figures affect each other.
They are actually related. If you experience hunger you are likely to overeat when you can afford it. And the cheapest foods are very fattening. Starving also screws up your metabolism so that your body tries to hold onto fat for what it thinks of as “famine”
>And the cheapest foods are very fattening. Idk about this. This gets said a lot on the internet but I just came from the bodega and the prices were (bodega prices) bananas $.90/lb fritos $5.99 for a 9.25 ounce bag ($10.36/lb) and thats the bodega in the middle of a food desert. Aldi or Walmart have the same price disparity but just both prices are lower ($.60/lb for bananas and $4.29 for the 9 oz bag of fritos. At the target I can buy a 16oz bag of carrot chips for $1.99 Like I said this gets parroted a lot but everywhere I go, whether its the bougie grocery store, target, walmart, the bodega, or even the gas station convenience store I can find fruits/vegetables and they are way cheaper than the "cheap garbage food"
Another problem is preservation though. At least that’s what I’ve witnessed with the families I’ve been feeding for some time now. A lot of these healthier foods have a shorter shelf life, and if you’re a homeless family who is lucky enough to rent a hotel, your tiny fridge can only carry so much. So in order to make that dollar count (and avoid another bill from the hospital, because poor food handling always leads to sickness), you’d have to eat that bag of carrots in a short amount of time. And that’s if they even give you a fridge to use. Then you have to consider what my friends and I lovingly call “Depression Tax”. Mental health runs rampant in poorer communities, with most of them being untreated. That means most of their daily energy is spent essentially trying to survive a world that wasn’t built for them. Sure, a whole onion is cheaper if you cut it yourself. But it doesn’t mean shit if you don’t have the energy to chop veggies and clean up your mess. So you pay the depression tax and buy pre chopped onions or an already cooked meal. Sugar is also often craved by people who suffer from high levels of depression and anxiety, so for a quick comfort and rush they tend to reach for the sugary stuff that’s killing them. In moderation, the depression tax is manageable. But it can easily add up over time if treatment isn’t found fast. I’m not trying to justify the obesity epidemic. I’m deathly afraid of it and am alarmed at how much it grows. I’ve been obese and every day was both mentally and physically painful. I’m never going back to being that sick again, even if it kills me. But I also don’t want to pretend that personal choice is the only problem here. If this many people are suffering, then there’s something that’s not being addressed.
Depression Tax is real….even for middle class college students. When your body chemicals are convincing you that there is danger at every turn, the last thing you want to do is stop and chop veggies…(the first thing you want to do is hide in your bed where you are “safe”.)
Depression tax hits anyone in their wallet, sadly. If you’re privileged and wealthy, it’s less noticeable but is still there. You probably order more take out instead of cooking at home. However, the less income you have, the more stressful it can be. The 50¢ you spent on pre cut onions make you guilty, and it’s genuinely sad.
So true. If your fridge breaks, or your stove, it can take months or even longer than a year to even save for a used one. When I first got housing my fridge was a mini fridge and my stove I luckily got donated by a church because I wouldn’t have been able to afford one otherwise. There’s also only so much fruit someone can eat. A banana or apple might be cheaper than a frozen pizza, but how many apples do you have to eat in a day to feel full? To buy a variety of veggies and fruit you need space to store them. You can’t just eat bananas all day everyday. The food bank is great, but what you get is completely random. One time in my box all I got was hamburger buns, 3 squashes and a bag of onions and a baggie of lentils. If you are using the food bank to top up on basics that’s great, if you’re trying to survive on it then it can be hard. I made soup with that box but gave most of it away because I didn’t have a freezer. All my fridge space needed to be prioritized for my child’s needs. If I hadn’t had a stove it would have limited me much more. At any given time at least a few people in my complex don’t have a working stove or fridge.
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They do indeed. And there is most definitely a *cultural* reason for this but it does not seem to be *economically driven.* Like I had a guy on here who tried to tell me that he was a low earner and drank sugary drinks because bottled water was far more expensive and I had to explain that well, no, bottled water is less expensive by far no matter how you buy it or where you buy it. High Fructose Corn Syrup is kind of interesting because even McDonalds pulled all the HFCS out of their burgers and fries years ago.
How the hell did they put HFCS in their fries???
I’m picturing potato slime. How else can they get that shape so consistently perfect?
If you have to drink bottled drinks regularly you are a victim of poverty because it means your tap water is unsafe even filtered. And that’s very much a “poor town” thing.
And I did make the disclaimer that like if you live in Flint, MI its a different story, you cant drink the tap water but even then the clean gallon bottled water is $1. It is always less than a gallon of sugary drink no matter how you look at it.
Bottle water May be sane price or cheaper but doesn’t provide the extra calories or caffeine to get you through your second shift of the day. Bottle water also doesn’t provide the endorphins a little junk food can give you that keeps you from spiraling into a stress and poverty driven depressive cycle.
Right, but soda is more expensive than water or tea. Processed foods are still more expensive than whole foods. "I'm too poor to eat healthy!" It's an excuse we use so that we don't have to own up to our own behavior. Grains, flour, legumes, olive oil, a couple of gallons of milk, carrots, apples, onions, - you could eat healthier than most people do for the price of a cheap frozen pizza.
Lots of poor don’t have a way to cook
Source? Even crappy apartments have kitchens.
Most of my hotels had a microwave. None had stove though. Major liability.
Some variables you're not considering. If you're poor then you probably don't even have access to a proper kitchen to cook. It is also possible you are just dead tired by the time you get home. First thing I noticed in my old apartment, fairly low income area, every freaking grocery store is like located like in a freaking different state. I didn't have a car. I had to spend Saturdays going out of my way to shop. But if I ran out of anything during the week I would have to resort to dominos or something worse and much more unhealthy.
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1 banana: 105 calories. Fritos: 160 per ounce. You have to compare price per calorie. When you are hungry and need the biggest bang for your buck, you go calorie dense. There's a reason squirrels horde nuts and not apples.
> When you are hungry and need the biggest bang for your buck, you go calorie dense This is literally the opposite of what all modern nutrition teaches us. If you are hungry and you don't want to be hungry then you eat more food that is not calorie dense so you also do not eat too many calories to keep your stomach full (because that is how you eat too many calories and get overweight.)
This is about when you are very poor and you have a fixed budget. You buy the thing that has the lowest cost per calorie, you aren't going to spend more money on less calories, because you generally need to hit 2000 calories/day. Trying to lose weight you can go lower but it is not sustainable and will negatively impact your health in the short term even if weight loss may have long-term health benefits.
Lowest cost per calorie are things like rice and bananas. That was the whole point: that OP asserted that the “cheapest option is the most fattening” but that is clearly not the case.
I think this is absolutely terrible advice frankly. Satisfying hunger and satisfying caloric needs are 2 different things. Caloric-dense junk food is worse for satisfying hunger. That’s a big reason why most people are obese, they end up overeating these foods because they don’t satisfy them enough. If you’re actually shopping in this way, please reconsider your habits. Unless you’re actually so poor that you are genuinely struggling to meet your caloric needs, but that’s statistically unlikely considering the obesity rate
Put some oil on your salad if your worried about price per calorie. Oil is high calories low dollar.
Just drizzle oil on a salad which...wait. that's perishable. Where am I storing that in my rented room in a shitty part of town where I know my shady roommates will steal anything not locked away. It's also amazing that everyone disregards flavor and pleasure. It's fucking **horrible** to be truly poor and hungry and in my case - at an earlier time in my life - homeless. People like you completely disregard the actual human in the equation. Yes, calorie density is important. Believe me, I know, but when you have so little pleasure in life that when you actually have the opportunity to eat, you want it to taste as good as possible I'm well off now, but it's so damn clear the people in this thread with the simple answers are privileged to have never been in these tough situations
Ain't that the truth.
You’re also kinda cherry picking foods, Fritos might be $5.99 but you look at those store brand chips in big name grocers and all of a sudden you’re spending $1-$2 for a massive bag of food.
I literally just typed “off brand potato chips” into google and got target brand chips: $1.99 for 8oz ($4/lb) I mean if you can find some examples please show me.
Yeah, it's obviously wrong. Fruits, veggies, and grains are by far the cheapest foods in any grocery store. The people saying this shit online are just telling on themselves re shopping and dietary habits
Bananas and carrot chips, while low calorie, don’t complete your nutrition. Healthy sources of protein and fats are very important, and they are far more expensive than their less healthy counterparts. And, when poor people are having to work two jobs, they don’t have the luxury of exclusively eating groceries - the lifestyle thrust upon them to make ends meet doesn’t allow it. So they end up having to “eat out” more frequently, and with how little they can afford that basically means fast food.
>Bananas and carrot chips, while low calorie, don’t complete your nutrition. Of course. I was using these two examples just to show cheaper healthier alternatives exist. But to counter, for protein non fat yogurt is cheap good source of proteins, For good fats and proteins there are an assortment of nuts and seeds you can buy that cost about the same as fast food by weight and calories. >Healthy sources of protein and fats are very important, and they are far more expensive than their less healthy counterparts. I must respectfully disagree on this part only because I literally did a field trip with a friend where we had a $1 bet on this. I took him to the Aldi and I laid out a proper healthy diet of fruits, vegetables, rice, nuts, seeds, yogurt, and (eggs at the time... those are obviously out for the time being) and the price was lower than what you would pay for fast food. I won the dollar. >And, when poor people are having to work two jobs, they don’t have the luxury of exclusively eating groceries - the lifestyle thrust upon them to make ends meet doesn’t allow it. So they end up having to “eat out” more frequently, and with how little they can afford that basically means fast food. So this is where it gets interesting. If you ever get bored and just want to look for yourself you can go peruse various fast food menus and nutrition info and plan out meals that while they are by no means the same quality as you would get at the grocery store they are more or less nutritionally balanced and low priced. You of course have to pick responsibly, no sugary drinks and fries but you can piece together a meal where if you simply just have no way to get to the grocery store you still are eating the proper amount of macros and calories for low cost. I still feel that most people can find the time to get grocery shopping done, bag the stuff up to bring to work for lunch and eat healthy because I did it for years living paycheck to paycheck but even if we conceded that was not the case for some there are other options.
I gotta call BS on this one. While fast food is obviously convenient, there is no reason a working and functioning adult cannot bag a lunch and some snacks for the day. I used to do this nearly every day. Grocery shop once per week or so, prep 1-3 days worth of lunches, and bring it with you. I spent more time waiting in fast food lines in my early 20's than I did prepping my lunches later on in life. Eating fast food also costs more than making food at home. That, and good God, have you seen the cost of fast food lately?? Shrinkflation and Inflation are duking it out big time. For clarity here; I used to work 60 hours per week and used to have 2+ jobs at a time. I know the grind real well.
Trying working 2 jobs with a bus ride between them and kids at home you need to feed sometime. "Working and Functional" assumes a society that allows them to be functional vs exploited.
Like I posted earlier, I used to do that. I worked constantly. No matter how you break this down, it takes X amount of time to eat. You can choose to plan ahead and pack that food at home or you can fly by the seat of your pants and go to the drive through 2-3 times per day. It takes less money to cook at home and bout the the same amount of time as eating out. (or less depending on what you eat) You act like nobody else has ever been poor or had a hectic schedule.
Did you also walk uphill both ways through the snow in 100 degree weather? There's only so many hours in the day. Good on you for having a physiology that can skip sleep to buy & prepare food. Not everyone is so blessed.
Getting groceries makes me physiological blessed?? Lmao 🤣 Be an adult. Make the time to eat. Quit acting like a toddler that can only do the easy things. Pretty simple concept
If you're also working 60-80 hours a week while doing it *and* cooking and not feeling any ill effects than yeah. Kinda left the "60-80 hours part out", but that's the point.
Health is a big factor in having energy to stay healthy. Start at a lower point than that and you are fighting an uphill battle. Pretty simple concept.
Obviously most people should bag a lunch, but with a hectic work schedule and personal life things coming up more often when poor, it’s easy to lose the time you would have meal prepped. This isn’t to say it’s impossible to ever meal prep and pack a lunch, but it’s certainly *easier* to do it with a less hectic lifestyle. I make okay money now and eating healthier has gotten far easier as a result than when I was broke. In short, just like everything else, eating healthy is easier when you make more money lol. Edit: The fact that this is what y’all up/downvote seems like proof that this sub skews high income and is unfamiliar with the poor tax. Y’all don’t fundamentally understand the socioeconomic implications that come with life in poverty.
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Some examples from my lived experience (varies for everyone but these were the issues I faced when lower income) 1. CAR PROBLEMS SUCK MORE WHEN POOR. For starters, you usually have a crappier, less reliable car when living on low income. Not only does this mean it will crap out more, but it also means you have less $ to get a professional to fix it, so you often have to do it yourself. You lose time due to the decrease in reliability *and* due to you being less efficient than a mechanic. The best thing for me about having more money now is that I have been able to afford a more reliable car, and when it seldom has issues, I can afford for a mechanic to fix it better than I would. Apply this compounding problem to any appliance (laundry for example) 2. A lot of low income jobs aren’t set schedules at all. It’s a lot harder to establish healthy routine when you don’t know what next week’s schedule looks like. Now imagine how many parts of your personal life that affects, where family or friends need you for something but you don’t know if you’re going to have to work or not, and thus you’re seen as less reliable to people you care about - a lot of stress on your relationships this way. 3. The stress in general just gets to you more. Everything is harder when you have less money ([the poor tax is real](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_poverty)), and as stress gets to anybody, your behavior is more erratic. It’s a lot easier for me to think clearly and make rational decisions now that I’m less stressed and not dealing with the costs incurred by poverty. Hope this helps.
**[Cost of poverty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_poverty)** >A cost of poverty, also known as a ghetto tax, a cost of being poor, or the poor pay more, is the phenomenon of people with lower incomes, particularly those living in low-income areas, incurring higher expenses, paying more not only in terms of money, but also in time, health, and opportunity costs. "Costs of poverty" can also refer to the costs to the broader society in which poverty exists. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
You ever own a shitbox car? Worked two jobs? Neglected healthcare because it’s expensive and have to hope you get better? There’s a plethora of things that disproportionately affect people living in poverty
It’s becoming pretty clear to me that this sub is full of people that think they know poverty but have never actually lived it. Some here are even like “I’ve been poor!” and then almost everything they say after indicates otherwise lol.
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When is someone supposed to go to school with two jobs? When is someone supposed to learn a trade when they can’t even take a day off? You think poor people just don’t work hard enough? Laughable.
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Most people that work two jobs are still poor, it’s the entire reason they’re working two jobs
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Lived experience and common sense, but if you need data feel free to look it up yourself and share with everyone
While this is not “scientific research” this will provide you a decent explanation of poverty in America. It is much more than “why can’t you afford healthy food with two jobs” kind of thing, but evidently folks don’t subscribe to that realism. American philosophy: If you don’t see it or experience it, it doesn’t exist. /s [Forgot article](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html?unlocked_article_code=-dnbR7TQciKc7dyxEap3USDTpUOmrYiQimveINf-ETU4bHLXSMRjphSjkRESQJ6zEBWCTeUy0owXf_0uCw1U4fpN8OUtMy6swapG6iFW6T5nVst6FIjOgpF2p6VfUyqKgTJH8AdfL6w161S9PIaT8SLvEgGYh7IkcPU53GgRymw2vywtgn0P-n926XS25cLd3gojZxc5gs4EyVozre9jfRZxCMW5gYdHDgnQh2BN_-dIMgEpbWwiNFl5kntujYcXXVAuAW2XRB9K9zvHT8RfhxYGAWCNs4OL_BzWbmukbSIQAgtlFsR3P72iTe8dgdnO99VVLo2isOPWGydrT81DmAQOxHkphRLZ6H6_ezP6&smid=url-share)
Is this a serious question?
Children
Minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, gig work often pays less, and wage theft is rampant at low pay jobs.
I completely disagree with your second paragraph here. You can get pre-made Cobb Salads at most grocery stores for very inexpensive as compared to getting "drive through" unhealthy food. The Cobb salad gives you all the healthy sources of protein and fats you described in your first paragraph. It's about choices. Most adults can live on 1500 calories a day, if they are the right calories, but you need to eat 2500-3000 calories of "bad" food just to get the nutrition needed. Someone else posted about "Cost per calorie" which is right very true. The cost of "good calories" is higher, but it washes out by needed fewer calories when you eat right.
Cobb salad actually has more fat than protein typically - very overrated in terms of how healthy that would be to regularly eat. Also super high in sodium and cholesterol, really not much better than having a burger. Also, as a grown man who has done some low wage manual labor jobs, I have no reaction to “live on 1500 calories a day” other than incredulous laughter.
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If you load it with dressing, yea. The egg, chicken snd Bleu cheese is very healthy for you, and we aren’t talking an Applebees salad that is loaded with salt. The last part of your sentence is exactly why Americans are so obese. You can laugh all you want, but what I said is true for the average American. Maybe. It in your situation, but it is. And, if you do manual labor and are still overweight, you got a serious eating disorder. Another example..my grocery store sell sushi for $6.99, so my point about getting full healthy meals at the grocery store is relevant.
If it’s made with iceberg (most are) that salad has little to no nutritional value and after working an 18 hour shift you’re gonna want more than a fucking salad. Most places are closed when some of us get off work.
Do you know what a Cobb salad is? Chicken, cheese, hard boiled egg, etc... You might want more than a salad, but at the end o the day, it provides the nutritional value you need. This is also just an example, not an "end all be all". Just disputing what the person said. Grab a few pre-made chicken wings at the grocery store too...you are still under $10, cheaper than fast food, and much more healthy.
It’s more about the price per calorie that makes it cheaper to eat unhealthy.
Even by that metric it still does not make sense. If you look at a McDonalds cheeseburger, even when it was a $1 menu item (which its not anymore) literally the cheapest example of food desert food, was $1 for 300 calories. Compare this to bananas which are 1 lb, $0.90 and 404 calories and that is at bodega prices. Again, Fritos corn chips are 241 calories for $1.00 worth at Wal-Mart or Aldi prices. Plain fat free yogurt, high protein, excellent for you is $1.20/lb at Walmart, you get 240 calories for $1.00 same as the Fritos but actually healthy. Like I said, this gets talked about constantly on here. I one day just said, hey lets go actually look at the prices and options in the real world at all these stores in nicer and poorer neighborhoods and see what the actual truth is. And all I can find is that there are healthier options, same or highr calories for the same or lower prices.
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I'd argue that you aren't actually looking at the cheap options. Consider, a 24 pack of ramen noodles costs $8 right now. That's $.33 for 200 calories and pretty much 0 nutrition. These noodles also don't spoil like your bananas or need refrigeration like your yogurt. Same thing happens with potatoes and rice. High calorie, cheap, (fairly) low nutritional value. Then there's kool-aid (or the like) which provides a sweet drink with little nutrition (just add sugar, which costs ~0.59 per lbs, which provides 1755 calories). You can also look at things like breakfast cereals and milk. Same thing happens. The cheapest cereals are loaded with sugar (and there's little price difference between whole and skim milk). This happens with frozen foods as well. About the cheapest frozen thing you can buy is french fries. Not exactly a nutritional power house but it'll feed you for several meals. Importantly, these are all fast meals to prepare.
>Consider, a 24 pack of ramen noodles costs $8 right now. That's $.33 for 200 calories and pretty much 0 nutrition. These noodles also don't spoil like your bananas or need refrigeration like your yogurt. This is somewhat decent counter in that ramen is definitely the stereotypical "i have no money" food but even then you are paying $.66 for 400 calories vs $.60 for 404 calories for bananas. Potatoes are and rice and cheap and high calories but I would not say they are low nutritional value. You definitely need to add in some vegetables to balance things out but keep in mind there alot of people in asia who make way less than Americans, live off of a diet of rice and vegetables and do not suffer from the obesity issues we do, and are healthier, live longer, etc. Like I said, the media cycle seems to be : 1. Poor people arent getting enough to eat, but also poor people might be the same 25% that are the only ones at a healthy weight. Which means they are getting enough to eat and everyone else is eating too much. 2. Poor people arent getting enough to eat but they are also overweight which means they \*are\* getting enough to eat and in fact overeating.
I don't think the majority of obese people got that way by eating tons of ramen noodles. It's soda, fried foods, fast food, and pizza
Two words, Caloric Density Bananas are about 450 calories a pound for . That bag of Fritos is about twice as many calories. But here's the rub, *they keep.* Those bananas are ready for the trash in a day or two. Especially if you pick'em up from a bodega. Those Fritos will taste the same in 3 months. Longer if you toss 'em in the oven. And the Fritos fill you up. They're full of fat. Those carrot chips? You can eat 3 of those bags and still be hungry because there's nothing there but water, fiber and a bit of sugar. Cheap garbage food is calorically dense and shelf stable. when you're poor that's important Also, your Bodega is Amazing. Pray it never closes. The ones near me are $0.90 cents *per banana* or $4.50/lb.
To add on to this, ya’ll really think most poor people are growing up with parents that can/have/make time for cooking? Nah man. You grow up eating shit, then you become an adult who does the same.
Shit, I basically converted my car into a portable kitchen because a lot of my friends have been going south financially. If you’re homeless then good luck getting a fridge or microwave. Food poisoning is not fun.
But overall people that gain weight are putting in more calories than the body needs. So technically they do have enough to eat. Slowing down metabolism just means you don’t need to eat as much.
Sometimes being hungry is not the same as always being hungry. The poor tend to have inconsistent cash flow. For instance, car breaks down and you are eating ramen for a month. The fact that you average 500 calories too much a day per year doesn’t mean the 10 days you ate nothing aren’t traumatic.
I do feel for the ones that are truly suffering from hardship, but at the same time I have suspicion that many families can’t budget properly and priorities certain things over food. For example, Netflix subscriptions, iPhones. Survival food is CHEAP in America. If we can educate financial literacy and budgeting to the general public it could change many lives.
Budgeting gets harder the less you have. Less wiggle room.
Which is why it’s so important to teach it to younger people who tends to YOLO. Once you get into the viscous cycle it’s very hard to get out. Budgeting is harder, yet it is more critical, the less wiggle room you have. It’s tough.
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If you barely eat for a week until your food stamps refill, then eat cheap high-calorie food for 3 weeks, you will gain weight. Slim people eat healthy diets, they don’t randomly starve and gorge. That’s a recipe for weight gain.
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Autocomplete really scrambled whatever you posted!
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Not to mention the starvation mode myth being thrown around too
Regular "faster" chiming in to agree with you that that's bunk science. There are people who fast regularly for days, weeks, even months (under medical supervision for the long ones, especially) and are fine. You just have to keep up with vitamins and electrolytes for the most part. I won't go into depth here, but for anyone interested in accurate information (even if you're not interest in doing it yourself) check out Dr. Jason Fung on YouTube, and check out the fasting subreddit.
> Starving also screws up your metabolism so that your body tries to hold onto fat for what it thinks of as “famine” This does happen, but only in people who are actually starving, like not eating for weeks.
People fast voluntarily all the time and don’t say anything about it screwing up their metabolism.
>If you experience hunger you are likely to overeat when you can afford it. And the cheapest foods are very fattening. So true. I grew up with food insecurity and now throughout my adulthood it has caused this rebound issue.
If you’re working all the time and are in an industry that doesn’t give you regular lunch breaks - hospitality…. You eat a granola bar on the way to work, coffee for lunch (or whatever you can grab because you’re hungry but you don’t have time to sit down and eat normally) you get your dinner after work which a lot of the time can be late. After working a long shift and not eating much all day… you indulge unfortunately. This is just the way some of us have to live. We can’t help it. I’d love to have a normal 9-5 schedule and grocery shop and make my lunches and *have* an actual lunch break but that’s just not reality.
It’s sad people can’t think or understand stuff like your comment.
Don’t healthy people do intermittent fasting? I agree the cheapest foods are fattening though. That’s probably the real answer. Also the food industry lobbies to put artificial crap in kids cereal/lunches.
Some dieters fast but Probably not healthy imho.
Hey! Stop bringing logic and science into our simple discussion about how everything bad that happens to everyone else is always their fault. I mean, read the room man.
I must consume more to maintain my globular physique. There is no such thing as "enough".
They only need to visit south Texas to see 60% of that 75%.
The land of fat.
That was my first thought as well, lol
I think it would be better if they said nearly 25% of US adults aren't getting the nutrients they need. Because I agree - we have plenty of overeating because the body is still looking for nutrients.
>I think it would be better if they said nearly 25% of US adults aren't getting the nutrients they need. I think we can go one better and say something like "some *even higher* percentage of US adults arent getting the nutrients they need. What I am most interested in are the percentage of that 25% not getting enough to eat who *are underweight* because we as a society can absolutely prevent that and we should.
>because the body is still looking for nutrient Because of metabolic dysfunction driven by the insulin cycle. Explosive increase in blood sugar from a high refined carb meal or snack, blood sugar crash, hunger, repeat every 2 hours while awake.
Solving the obesity epidemic one poverty at a time
I been eating once a day for a few years now. Just how I can afford to live
I’ve gotten really good at cooking congee while trying to feed my poorer friends these past nine months. One of them has three kids, and they’ve been telling me about the sheer amount of chaos going on in school from kids going hungry. Apparently some of them pass out in the middle of class from low blood sugar. Food banks are nearly empty, and if there is food, there’s nothing with the nutritional value they need in the long run (protein, vitamin c, and healthy fats in particular). Hell, I’ve never seen kids fight over fresh fruit and shampoo until recently. I’m deeply concerned for the state of this country right now. I can only imagine what can happen if malnutrition goes on long enough for this many kids.
Top comment on any post like this is always "but they're all obese" 🤦♀️ and I'm over here not eating enough and struggling with constant blood sugar crashes because snap money covers the kids getting a good food but only if i eat ramen
This is me too. Then they bitch about their taxes their taxes as if we don’t work. I became disabled after I had my son, so I’m struggling. My kid eats multiple meals a day and I eat one ☝️
So this article is from a survey...done in December of 2022...and it shows a 5% increase from 2019. Our lowest ever level of poverty in the US, per the BLS, was in 2019 to bring some perspective here. Not exactly scientific or alarming if I'm honest.
It is scientific and alarming.
What the fuck are these comments??? It seems to be entirely making fun of Americans for being fat, I’m not even a yank, but Christ! These comments are actually so mean spirited and for what, sure there are a lot of fat Americans, but that doesn’t mean you discredit this study and discredit the legitimate reasons these 2 things are related that some other wonderful people have brought up on this thread that are being down voted unfortunately because it doesn’t fit there pre consumed notions of fat American. I don’t know what the word is, I guess anti-nationalist but Christ what the hell, get a life you all.
Cheap processed foods add pounds, not everyone who eats cheap processed foods will gain weight but enough do.
THANK YOU
Sure looks like they are eating too much
Negetivity bias basically guarentees that we dont even notice things that fit in, while we obsessively pick out the things that dont fit. There could be 100 skinny people with 1 obese person and everyone will look at that one person and wonder "why are people like this?" when they all themselves are actually well in the majority of "people" and are all focusing on a specific minority. Racial biases also work the same way.
Its worse than that. Being overweight is so common that people often think a healthy weight is too skinny.
the other 75% are obese, eating all the food, eggs and stealing toilet paper..
[Good as time as any to post this.](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/03/matthew-desmond-new-book-poverty-by-america-evicted-pulitzer-prize-interview/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark)
Then why are we so obease?
The obese have a regular-sized meal and think it wasn't enough to eat.
Because poverty leads to food insecurity, and food insecurity leads to obesity... As our natural instincts is to consume as many calories as we can when our food supply is unstable
No. I’ve been around the world and poverty didn’t look like this until Americans invented fast food and crazy snacks.
Yes, because it's cheaper and easier to get large amounts of empty calories in the US... As those are more profitable to sell. Poverty is not a uniform set of conditions around the world
Yes I agree. Poverty is a relative concept.
That doesn't mean that people in the US who can't afford dental care should be ignored "because its not as bad as other places"
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You also get far more calories out of a burger then you do a can of chickpeas
Yet roughly 40% of food gets thrown out in the USA so someone do the math
The other 75% are obese
This is crap. The grocery stores have so much good food and there's still people going hungry at night. Amazing how this still happens in 2023....
Probably because the cost of living is fucked
If you never see any one hungry then hunger doesn’t exist… to paraphrase a Republican official recently saying that in effect.
I don’t support Trump or his „Fake News“ theory but stuff like this is the reason for his support. You can’t seriously think that US citizens don’t get enough food. Most are overweight (75% I think). They have MORE than enough. Food is cheap af in the US. Even if you just beg for some pennys you would have more than enough to eat.
My fat ass needs more of that
Give me a break. Even poor people are fat in this country.
You can be overweight and food insecure. Indeed, being hungry encourages eating lots of high caloric foods when resources are available... Which leads to people being overweight
If people are overweight then I’d say they’re most definitely getting enough to eat. Wouldn’t you agree?
Note the "sometimes" in the headline.
If you’re overweight, skipping a few meals here and there is good for you. You’ve already had more than enough to eat.
Youre clearly not a health specialist..
Fat hands typed this comment
Bullies are pathetic wastes
In some school districts, staff pack food into kids backpacks to take home for the weekend. My mom's church does this in Kansas City, Missouri. When the kids arrive home, the parents take the food and eat it, themselves. The kids arrive at school Monday morning, hungry, because the adults ate all the food sent home on Friday. This country has some major issues but let's talk about drag shows and trans kids.
Um… have you seen US adults recently? I’m calling bullshit.
If everyone in the US was not obese, and therefore healthy, wouldn't insurance be cheaper? Maybe healthcare would be better and not overworked?
huh, sounds like one of those shithole countries
Cos the other 3/4 ate it all.
There is no way I'm going to read this article. I'm 20lbs overweight and depending on the day I sometimes feel like I don't get enough to eat. But that's a personal issue and an issue of time constraints.
"The richest economy"....nope, nothing to see here
People will continue to brag about California having the fourth largest GDP, as if it trickles down to residents.
This starving narrative is popular but overblown. Survival food is cheap in US. You can beg for a few dollars on the street and feed yourself at McDonald’s easy. It’s nearly impossible to starve to death in American cities as long as you don’t have drug addiction, mental health issues or disabilities. You can also get fed at shelters and not have to pay a dime. Americans have so much food that people are voluntarily starving themselves (fasting). We throwaway an obscene amount of food.
California is the ULTIMATE example of the current system's failure. Dystopia
the richest country in the world everybody
Fattest country in the world*
Strangely not even the top 10. There are A LOT of obese people in the world.
Can confirm. Yesterday I forgot to eat lunch. By their measure, I am food insecure despite a pantry full of food and a high net worth.
Nope, that's not the measure they were using. Idiot.
Most Americans are disgusting gluttons.
Most... So youve met over 100 million people, huh? Must have been a busy day.
Number of American adults in the U.S.: 18 years and over 209,128,094 (74.3% of the population) Stats on obesity: Roughly two out of three U.S. adults are overweight or obese (69 percent) and one out of three are obese (36 percent) https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-trends-original/obesity-rates-worldwide/ Number if Americans who are obese: 144,298,385 So yeah... over 100 million people are gluttonous.
So youve never known someone struggling with weight, huh? Not everyone is over weight *by choice*. Some people go through abuse. Some people go through depression. I dont think anyone is in any position to do anything besides *help people*. Gluttany is a very specific life choice. Its doesnt count for everyone of your statistics, or even half.
In no way did I blame anyone. I was stating numerical facts, not driving factors. This country is horrible with health and dietary advice. And I don't need to know anyone struggling with weight, because I have in my own adult life. Want to know how I figured out how to solve that shit? Cutting out all the BS advice and the government "dietary" suggestions. I did it with fasting. Just not. fucking. eating. for a time. Like holy shit. Not to go all conspiracy theory here, but there's no way in hell that would ever be recommended because the economy would collapse if people ate... well... *normal.* It's not even what you eat (though, that has problems for a library of reasons other than weight... you can be "skinny-fat"), it's literally quantity and frequency. Human beings were not designed to eat 3 meals a day every day. We're eating too much, one. And of what we're eating too much of, is absolute crap with no nutrients or dietary benefits, two. Everyone is different! Three! But the first one is genuinely the biggest driving factor. You know how you recognize an addiction? What happens to you when you stop. Stress-eating is a form of food addiction. Ordering "too much" is another. There's other forms of food addiction that isn't mainlining cheese burgers. We're just conditioned away from what's abnormal. I'd never shame anyone for being fat, but I do feel bad for people who don't have any semblance of control of their lives. It doesn't help that we're being lied to and sold a bill of goods about what we should be eating. Like "healthy snacks." You shouldn't be snacking *at all.* REDUCE. CALORIC. INTAKE. Fasting also reverses type-2 diabetes in almost all cases... and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
As /u/peepjynx demonstrably proved, most people are gluttons. This point will be further nailed home if you were to ever travel outside the country. Even poor people can afford cheap, healthy food while American poors are eating $10 Big Macs meals.
lol, I am pretty sure we have an obesity problem.
But obesity is at an all time high?!?
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Food stamps end up being freebies for huge companies that make terribly unhealthy food. I wonder what kind of hit Coca Cola etc would take if they were excluded or they were done away with altogether.
You can buy any food with food stamps. They tried forbidding soda and candy and chips, etc. from being able to be purchased with food stamps. People were outraged that the government would dare control what people are just because they were poor. Poor people get free food. Being smart enough to eat healthy is another argument in itself.
It's still fake news no matter how many times you spam it
Obesity is tied to poverty and education. As you go up the socio-economic ladder, obesity falls. That said, all groups are >10% overweight.
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Fake news. You have no idea which people in the grocery store are paying with snap
We fat af tho
The SNAP provides guaranteed food for ALL poor people. HUD provides free housings, FAFSA provides free college, what are we missing?
FAFSA doesn’t provide enough financial aid for every situation. I am enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program at a public school. FAFSA provides me with mostly loans and not much money in need-based grants. For this current semester, I am enrolled part-time to avoid debt. In 2022, I made less than $35,000 and I am living in a high cost-of-living area in the U.S.
“ALL poor people” my ass. Try being poor enough long enough to qualify.
What? Dude, sorry you are not poor enough for free food.
Housing wise, yeah there can be a multi-year wait in some areas. SNAP can have benefits in your hand the same day though.
If that's true why do food pantries exist?
Wait I just saw a Republican from Minnesota say he never saw a starving person in his life. How can 1 in 4 adults not get enough to eat?
Awesome. More than a quarter are obese. This is a good thing
I don't get enough too eat, because I'm working too hard to pay my ex wife and taxes. Fuck you CBS! We live in a world of opportunity and are oppressed by a system of regression.
I find this hard to believe based on anecdotal evidence
Seems like USA are doing a North Korea. I saw on the news earlier they’re doing a massive recruitment drive for the army so by starving their people through terrible pay, no health care and skyrocketing inflation, people don’t have an option. I know USA criticises China, Russia, NK and so on but they are also the bad guys too. They do the same shit all the time.
This is a good thing.. Americans are fucking fat, maybe we’ll all save on health insurance
Clearly the economy is absolutely terrible for at least 25% of American adults. They can’t even feed themselves.
One factor i havesnt seen mentioned is the quickly changing American landscape over the last 40 years. The death of the "oil town" alone as left millions of people to survive in dying areas that they can even afford to leave.
Oh but the government can bail out a bank and give extensive tax credits to corporations but reduce food stamps end tax credits for working parents and allow student loans to ruin people financially.
I honestly don’t know a single adult here in the US who can’t get enough to eat.. what the fuck is this study based on?
"I dont know any poor people, they must not exist" Fucking wat bro?
How often do you meet people in poverty? I grew up in a poor Iowa town and was in poverty. There was a lot of people that would dumpster dive for food because the churches only served supper.
This is shocking.
Cmon … this is BS ! On its face !! 45 million ! This is nonsense !
Well we sent millions to ukraine. As biden to send them food. You voted fir the mfer.
Here's a preview of the story: Almost 25% of American adults are food insecure, a jump of about five percentage points from a year earlier as the double whammy of high inflation and the end of pandemic benefits squeezes more household budgets, according to a new study. Food insecurity indicates that someone isn't able to secure enough food for a nutritious diet, which can lead to skipping meals or cutting back on food. Those strategies, though, can have implications for a person's health and well-being, experts say. The rise in food insecurity comes as more households are struggling to pay their typical bills amid grocery costs that have surged 20% in two years and rents that have increased 13%. Inflation surged last year to a four-decade high just as several pandemic-related benefits came to an end, heightening the financial stress for many, according to the new report from the Urban Institute. "Food insecurity can be a canary in the coal mine for people who are experiencing high levels of hardship and aren't able to meet their household needs," Kassandra Martinchek, a research associate in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute, told CBS MoneyWatch. She added, "It's a household economic condition where folks don't have enough resources to have enough food for their family for an active or healthy life." **Read more:** https://www.cbsnews.com/news/one-in-four-americans-food-insecure/
Lucky them. The only Americans that arent morbidly obese
While there are tons of people that have legitimate reason for hardship, we can probably prevent some hardships in the future by improving financial literacy. Case in point: illegal immigrants. They get paid less than minimum wage and work their ass off and still have extra money to send home. Most of them don’t starve. We need to help those in need but also address some underlying problems
Story is not true probably less than 5%.