But many of the people you're insulting do not have the luxury of eating healthy meals and going for 30 minute runs every other day.
Poverty level for a 4-person household (which a single mother with three children would be) is $22,050/year. 3-person is $18,310.
50 hours a week @ $7.25/hr (federal minimum wage) * 52 weeks/year = $18824.
Although, good luck finding 50 hours a week of work in this economy.
And that only applies to US citizens. Never mind undocumented immigrants. (Though many do earn minimum wage and pay taxes.) Restaurants will often split low-income workers to avoid either restaurant giving them more than 40 hours a week, so they can avoid overtime and benefits.
First, I cited statistics from 2007, before the economy went down. Second, the statistics show that 80% of the poor are not looking for a job and that only 10% of them work more than 35 hours a week. Third, only 3.5% of the poor want to work more than 35 hours/week but are unable to find work.
Lastly, minimum wage is more or less irrelevant. Only 1.7 million workers (373k of whom were under 19) earned minimum wage or less in 2007. Assuming everyone earning min wage or less is poor [1], that's only 4.5% of the poor.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2007.htm
Also, to respond to a statement you made in your previous post: I work more than 50 hours/week, yet I still manage to find time to exercise and to cook healthy food. (Yesterday: work from 9 to 7, 3 hours of martial arts, dinner, work from 12-1.) If I can do it, why can't the poor?
[1] Teenagers earning min wage, but living in a non-poor household are not counted as part of the poor.
Let me start off by saying that I don't disagree with the statistics you quoted or your interpretation of statistics. I'm only disagreeing with what I quoted.
Cooking healthy food and practicing martial arts both come at a cost. This cost can be a cost in money, in time or effort spent, etc. In my experience, poor people usually can't afford that cost easily.
I think the poor could manage some exercise or preparation of healthier food if they wanted to.
Simply making the declarations that poor people don't want to work, and poor people are generally fat, even if true, ignore sizable quantities of people for whom exercise and healthy eating are not feasible.
You have to wonder, how much of the problem is actually caused by government's interventions.
I remember the world bank propping up coffee production in Vietnam, leading to poor quality coffees everywhere.
Or are you simply saying "people I don't like wrote the report, therefore it must be invalid"?
It correctly points out that the USDA doesn't associate "food insecurity" with hunger. However, what it doesn't point out is this was a recent controversial renaming. This Washington Post editorial dissects the "Orwellian" 2006 renaming.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11...
In 2008, nearly 15% of US households experienced "food insecurity." Not only that, but this number explicitly excludes the homeless, as they weren't surveyed. (It may be also the case that it excluded those without phones and little free time, though I have to look more closely.)
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/
The CDC points out many reasons why prisoners of war and others whose food is restricted may end up showing obesity; and that cheaper, lower quality food is high in fat. Those who wish to pursue this further can google for "food insecurity obesity".
The reduction in quality and variety is the key to the bad health outcomes of diet anyway. When a daily Big Mac is cheaper and more readily available than a variety of healthy and well-prepared foods, health problems ensue.
One of the greatest ideas in the OPs article was the deal the government made with farmers: we give you affordable access to prime real estate in the city, but in exchange you regularly take your better-quality food into poor neighborhoods that otherwise lack access. Obviously it takes more than just showing up with good food to get people to eat it, but it's a start.
Unless you believe fat people are perpetual motion machines, this is obviously a true statement.
Regarding healthier food, anyone with access to a Big Mac also has access to a "Premium Southwest Salad", or a number of other fairly healthy options. If they choose to eat so many big macs that they get fat, and ignore the "Premium Caesar Salad", that's the very definition of gluttony.
In paragraph two, the article explains that the USDA defines "low food security" as a episodic reduction in the _variety_, not the quantity of food. 5 paragraphs later, the article says these same people are going hungry during parts of the month. Which one is true? They can't both be.
As for the Premium Southwest Salad - well, meeting your daily calorie requirement with that dish versus the Big Mac costs just over twice as much. ( http://www.smartmoney.com/Spending/Budgeting/Fast-Food-Fixes... - Big Mac is on slide 8 )
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/labels.htm
As for "meeting your daily calorie requirements", we are discussing people who are already exceeding them. Such people can either a) consume less and save money or b) consume the same dollar quantity of food, but substitute low calorie items for high calorie items. I.e., a person getting 2500 cals/day who needs 2000 can either go from 5 to 4 big macs + more money, or go from 5 big macs to 4 big macs + 1 salad.
Would you agree with the premise that the government has had huge impacts on the quality and variety of food available (I'm talking subsidies of commodity crops here), and therefore shares some of the blame for the fact that the American version of "hungry" is "overweight and under-nourished"?
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2007/11/Hunger-Hyst...