This is severely lacking in empathy.
You know WHY they are obese, especially including the woman featured here? Junk food is dirt cheap. When you work your ass off for two weeks and have all of $200 dollars to show for it, you are not going to be cooking healthy foods and free range Chicken eggs. You are going to get the cheap stuff, the highly caloric, highly processed stuff. And guess what, she works at McDonalds, which gives employees some food every 5 hours worked.
Or if you don't work there, you can hit a Taco Bell and fullfill your hunger with $5. $5 may be enough to get ingredients to cook a better meal, but again, this person works her ass off in multiple jobs and has a long commute by bus.
If you work there, it is. But I was talking about Taco Bell for non McDonalds workers, which IS cheap.
Your groceries list again is assuming there is enough time(and energy) to prepare the food.
Which includes: 1) Owning a pan 2) Owning a cooking surface 3) Selecting, cleaning, and cutting vegetables 4) Dishes, or owning a dishwasher
vs 1) access to food 2) access to disposal of wrapping material
> Which includes: 1) Owning a pan 2) Owning a cooking surface 3) Selecting, cleaning, and cutting vegetables 4) Dishes, or owning a dishwasher
It's also worth noting that food deserts are a thing, and they make it much more difficult to eat healthily.
Not everyone has the same boundaries for that situation.
Can you use the cracked pepper that someone else bought? People have different opinions on that.
If economics and policy actually worked, there would be regulatory feedbacks, but not in 'murica
Now imagine an anorexic woman who recovers, but she overcorrects and ends up overweight in the eyes of her anorexic friends. They shame her for overeating and she tries to eat less, which puts her adipose cells under stress. Is it possible that she'd keep gaining weight from the stress of undereating? If it's impossible, how do you know? If it's not impossible, should we blame anorexics the same way we blame people with habits that you think are bad?
It's also as much portion size and controlling intake of fries and soda as it is about the food items themselves. Adding a large coke to any meal is probably worse than the food itself. 80g of sugar with no nutrition or fiber.
I'll give you that its a low source of nuts and unbreaded fish. But if we are talking about working at McDonalds and not having meal prep time, that could be supplemented by bags of almonds, pistachios, peanuts, cashews, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and cans of tuna, salmon, and sardines at home.
That leaves dark veggies. Their bacon ranch salad says its "romaine, baby spinach, baby kale, red leaf lettuce, ribbon-cut carrots and grape tomatoes." Youd probably want to supplement some cooked greens at home.
Being able to buy the above food at 50% off would, imho, be a great foundation to a healthy diet, if you can control portion and avoid temptation.
What you're saying is true, but that's not what everyone believes. If you watch any episode of My 600 Pound Life, you will realize just how unwilling some of these people are to help themselves because it's hard work (and many people featured on the show die as a result). Yes, those are obviously extreme examples, but they're all extremely well documented.
I absolutely agree we should focus on taking care of ourselves before it leads to enormous health issues, but weirdly it doesn't seem the US healthcare system is designed for that.
Please don't use point-and-gawk trash TV shows to make generalizations about the world.
[1] The network of "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" fame
Anyway, I concede it's a bad talking point for the point I was making.
EDIT: On second thought, my original comment is such a tangent I probably should not have made it. While I may disagree with some of the details of your reasoning, I agree with your overall point.
That's true. Your average interaction with a physician in the US to a 20 minute conversation while they fill out some forms in Epic, barely paying attention, then kick you out of their office as quickly as possible. A month or more later the bureaucratic machines of both hospital and insurance finally get around to sending you a bill for $250+.
Doctors should be paid for how healthy their patients are, not for continuing treatments of the chronically ill.
So my rheumatologist gets nothing for continuing to monitor and advise and prescribe treatment for my arthritis? Which isn't exactly something I can willpower away...
I don't like you.
In truth the change I was hoping for would happen at a slightly higher level than an individual doctor. More "health system" or municipal healthcare group.
I wasn't suggesting "willpower", nor making claims about your particular situation. I have observed cases where doctors are more willing to prescribe ongoing medications for chronic conditions, rather than investigating more holistic solutions to help alleviate symptoms. Arthritis symptoms can often be greatly reduced by diet or lifestyle changes. If your doctor helps you test and implement those – great! I've seen many cases where they don't, and my point is that they're not incentivized to do so.