We think we are civilized, but we are just as barbarous as the world of Hugo's Les Misérables. We live in a world filled with Inspector Javert's spending their lives chasing their Valjeans.
Also, I've lived in Massachusetts my entire life and I've never heard anyone say "eat to live".
Also, that link doesn’t say whether this is 45 minutes drive, and since it does not reference any source, it’s hard to look that up.
These are called food deserts, and there is a ton of research on them. From what I've read there is not a direct line between food deserts and higher obesity rates, but it is a relevant factor, especially when abundant dollar stores and fast food places are offering cheaper and more accessible food than the nearest grocery stores (if there are any). I've also seen this described as a "food swamp".
I've never seen any research or data showing disparities in American obesity rates are influenced by cultural attitudes toward food.
Can’t be much harder than it was 100 years ago, when everyone was extremely poor by today standards, and visiting a grocery store was often a whole day trip, no? Obesity didn’t seem to have been a problem at that time. Seems like it really is not about lack of access to affordable healthy food, which today, by any historical standard, is very easy even in most deprived places in US.
> If it's an urban area where a significant portion of people don't have easy access to a car, then you wouldn't look at driving times.
Most poor people in urban areas do have easy access to a car. Cars are extremely cheap in US, poor Americans enjoy high consumption levels by global standards, which typically entails access to cars.
In any case, for this to support your argument, which that lack of access to affordable healthy food drives obesity, we’d need to have that in urban areas, carless people are significantly more obese than people with cars. To reiterate, your argument is that drivers are less obese than people who are too poor to drive. Is it actually the case? I seriously doubt it, but you’re welcome to show data supporting your theory.
> These are called food deserts, and there is a ton of research on them. From what I've read there is not a direct line between food deserts and higher obesity rates, but it is a relevant factor, especially when abundant dollar stores and fast food places are offering cheaper and more accessible food than the nearest grocery stores (if there are any).
Yes, I’ve heard about this stuff, and most of this stuff is highly motivated logic with extremely meager support in facts. Even you admit that the whole food desert thing has little actual observed causal impact on obesity rates. Instead, the poor just go to convenience stores and buy crap, and they do this even if they have healthy options easily available (this is true, because otherwise you’d see clear correlation that people close to grocery stores with cheap and healthy food are not obese, which you don’t).
Here, let me propose an alternative theory, which matches facts on the ground much better: many poor people in US are low in conscientiousness and long term thinking, and so instead of engaging in relatively complex activity of buying bulk staples and cooking simple and healthy meals, prefer to spend extra for convenience of unhealthy foods from dollar stores and fast food. This is possible, because their “poverty” is not an absolute level, but rather relative measure. By this I mean the fact that by global standard, American poor enjoy quite high consumption levels, so they can easily afford these unhealthy habits. Making healthy food easier to obtain for them will, as you admit, not change much, because people will just not take advantage of it, instead preferring easy and unhealthy food instead. Instead, what you’d need to do is to immiserate them even more by either taking away convenient and unhealthy options nearby, or reduce their purchasing power to make them unaffordable. This is, of course, seen as immoral, so it will not happen.
I mean, no. 100 years ago was the 1920s. Not really sure what you're referring to and this is not a useful comparison anyway, obviously many many aspects of the US food system and economy have changed in 100 years. I don't really know how to respond to this.
> To reiterate, your argument is that drivers are less obese than people who are too poor to drive. Is it actually the case?
Yes, because obesity is very strongly linked to poverty. Rich people tend to have more cars and eat healthier food because it's more accessible. Here's a study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S222658561...
Obviously I disagree with your opinions in the last two paragraphs, but if you have some evidence for them I'd be happy to look at it.
It is extremely useful comparison, and this is why you don’t really know how to respond to it. Your theory hinges on the fact that worse access to fresh food makes people more obese, but 100 years ago (and 150 years ago, even more so) most people had even worse access to fresh, healthy foods, but nevertheless obesity was not a problem at all. This is a problem to your argument, which is why you are lost for words.
> Rich people tend to have more cars and eat healthier food because it's more accessible. Here's a study:
The graph you linked shows that men with a car have higher BMI than men with no cars. Thanks for supporting my argument with evidence, I guess? In any case, this is just purely correlational study, which does not even attempt to answer whether access to car causes lower obesity. You might as well show me a graph of square footage per person against BMI and argue that small houses make people fat. On the other hand, it is perfectly consistent with the theory I elucidated above, which is that conscientiousness causes people to both be wealthier, and less fat.
Small stores out in the county mostly don't have much fresh stuff, but probably a few things.
Isn't this just that MA is richer than AL, and richer people are less likely to be obese?
Maryland has comparable median income to Massachusetts, but much higher obesity rates. Vermont and Kansas have similar incomes, but Vermont has much lower obesity rates. (Same is true for Virginia versus Colorado, Montana versus South Carolina, etc.)
There are a variety of reasons people get fat, and a variety of reasons people stay fat. Treating the specific reasons for the specific people is a lot safer, and easier, than just having people eat less.
No it doesn't, just eat more filling foods with lots of fiber. Veggies are cheaper than dirt, far cheaper than junk food, and far more sating. Junk food is engineered to leave you feeling hungry, to encourage you to buy more. Stop buying junk food completely; no more chips, colas or frozen pizzas. Buy vegetables, particularly the leafy ones, and eat as much as it takes to make yourself feel full. You'll lose weight and save money at the same time.
The chips are a good idea, but my diet is already so limited to PB&J, hummus and cheese and mixed green sandwiches, and the occasional whole grain rotini + prego chunky garden (and mixed greens), oatmeal, apples, frozen blueberries, bananas, and the occasional frozen quinoa dish that chips and occasional ice cream or Italian ice are a nice change of pace.
I haven't had a soda or the like since, I think pre-COVID.
I just eat too much, and don't exercise enough. I could probably use more water, too, but I don't like using the restroom at work. I do find that when I'm working I can often not eat without feeling and hunger pains, but I usually make up for that by eating a lot at night when I get home.
You should really try vegetables. I know bread is a processed plant product, but we generally don't count bread as a vegetable.
Poor people aren't living high on spinach and kale. They're eating butter sandwiches for lunch because they're too poor for nut spreads and jam. They're eating 5 boxes for 2$ mac dinners. They're checking which of the soup cans they bought on a 10 dollar for 10 cans sale years ago are still good (aka not puffy) even though they're long expired. The cheap vegetables are starchy roots, but even the 50c/lb carrots don't hold up to processed food prices.
You can spread out 1 cup of rice with 9 cups of water as a soup. I was stirfrying cabbage with almost no seasoning. And it would still be cheaper and more filling to indulge in mac dinners and hamburger helper.
Since we're in a technology forum. Let's say you're a product owner and your app is suffering from severe performance issues. Would a "solution" of telling the developers of the app "just write code more efficiently! Use Google if you have to!" be acceptable to you? Do you think it would produce the results you want?
Say your app takes 5 minutes to load the first page and 1 minute to switch between pages after that. Instead of blaming the developers, blame the users for expecting too much of the app. Personal responsibility and all that.
It's the users fault they are using the app during peak times. If they really needed access to X part of the app they should have done it before it got busy.
If you're morbidly obese, it is because you chose to eat too much and you chose to exercise too little.
It was your choice to stuff all that food in your face, no-one else's. You did it.
People are hungry across the world because there is a lack of food. They cannot just decide to feed themselves food that does not exist.
Terminally online cryptobros who get triggered by comments like "It was your choice to stuff all that food in your face, no-one else's" are not suffering from a lack of food, they are suffering from an excess of sugary poor-quality food. You decided to stuff that fourth twinkie in your face hole, you fat fuck. You can also decide to *stop* stuffing them in there.
Not you *you* obviously, the rhetorical you.
I'm pretty sure it does. Unhealthy food is a lot cheaper.
It can if you live in a food desert:
> USDA’s Economic Research Service previously identified more than 6,500 food desert tracts in the United States based on 2000 Census and 2006 data on locations of supermar- kets, supercenters, and large grocery stores. In this report, we examine the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of these tracts to see how they differ from other census tracts and the extent to which these differences influence food desert status. Relative to all other census tracts, food desert tracts tend to have smaller populations, higher rates of abandoned or vacant homes, and residents who have lower levels of education, lower incomes, and higher unemployment. Census tracts with higher poverty rates are more likely to be food deserts than otherwise similar low-income census tracts in rural and in very dense (highly populated) urban areas. For less dense urban areas, census tracts with higher concentrations of minority populations are more likely to be food deserts, while tracts with substantial decreases in minority populations between 1990 and 2000 were less likely to be identified as food deserts in 2000.
* PDF: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45014/30940_er...