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Old 09-05-2014, 01:34 AM   #1
Shuckle
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Poverty and Health

We had this debate on Skype and I'd like a chance to more calmly discuss this. The rapid, casual nature of Skype chat and its constant interruptions, as well as my apparent condescending attitude, is not good for such a touchy topic.

I'd like to focus on Western countries, Rangeet. I don't need to hear about how awful people in India have it. Quite frankly, Indian poverty problems are night and day compared to American poverty problems. I also have trouble accepting the idea that low income in India leads to obesity the way it does in America, and am more inclined to believe that it leads to malnutrition/bad living conditions/slums and related disorders and illnesses, based on what I know of India.

I firmly believe that money is not an impassible barrier to healthy eating and healthy living. It is not expensive to eat healthy foods. It is expensive to eat HEALTH foods, because health foods look like this and healthy foods look like this.

As I'm headed into some serious weightlifting, I'm realizing more and more that food is just food, and nutrition is simple. It is simpler now than ever before because now the package tells you what's in the food, and about 5 minutes of googling will set you on the right track to develop a meal and exercise plan. The problem is that many people don't even realize this is something you can actually do. They don't google "how to make your own meal plan," they google "meal plan weight loss fast." Ultimately, the problem lies with misconceptions about fitness and nutrition, and with people believing that experts know more than common sense will tell you.

I've been hopping around on Google, assembling factoids here and there, and the result is clear; fast food is disgustingly expensive, NOT a cheap and convenient, though unhealthy, alternative to cooking. They're not actually that unhealthy, really. Speaking from a nutritional perspective, they provide plenty of protein and fat, both of which are essential to healthy body function. However, if you are not physically active, that protein and fat goes straight to your belly.

Spoiler: show
Quarter Pounder with Cheese: Contains 2 leaves of lettuce, 1/4 pound of ground beef, 2 slices of cheese, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, 2 slices of pickle, about 1/4 an onion, and 2 slices of bread. Cost: $3.79.

Lettuce cost (by head): $.79. 36 leaves per head = 2 cents per leaf.

Ground beef cost (per pound): $3.88. Divide by 4 = 97 cents per quarter pound.

Cheese slices (per package at Walmart): $3.49. 24 slices per package = 14 cents per slice of cheese.

1 onion: 50 cents. 1/4 of an onion: 13 cents. Most kids do not even want the onions or the pickles. The pickle cost is likely negligible because pickle slices are stupidly small and I don't like them anyway.

Hamburger buns: around $1 per package of 8. That's 13 cents per bun.

You could probably steal condiments from fast food places if you pretend you're waiting in line. Just ignore them, your kids won't care.

A quarter pounder with cheese costs $1.55 to create, and contains less grease than the McD's version. Every single one of the ingredients listed can be found at every WalMart or Costco in the country. It takes 10 minutes to shape a pound of ground beef into 5 or 6 patties, sear it in a frying pan, schlep it into buns and feed it to your little hellspawn. Your drive to McDonald's is not only longer but also more stressful.


I will reluctantly cut my tirade short here because I do want to hear outside perspectives on this issue. I do live in a fairly middle class area and I'm having my transition to abject poverty softened for me thanks to the US government, so I may not have the same perspective on the problem as most other people might have.

(EDIT: I would like to note that I'm not going to be personally offering much in the way of counterattacks or counterpoints. I'm only going to listen and give my observations.)
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Old 09-05-2014, 01:43 AM   #2
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I'm sorry but in what world do you live in that a head of lettuce costs 79 cents? I've paid over three fucking dollars for a head of lettuce. You cannot use wholesale prices as the average consumer doesn't have access to such prices. If they /aren't/ wholesale, then you need to provide proof that those prices are not only true but also the same everywhere.

Which they aren't.
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Old 09-05-2014, 02:13 AM   #3
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>5 minutes of googling
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Old 09-05-2014, 02:17 AM   #4
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yes the sarcasm is stronk in this one i'm out.

I don't deal with people who don't put the evidence on the table when told to.
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Old 09-05-2014, 02:26 AM   #5
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I've got two points to add onto this: proximity to food and caloric consumption.

When people work 8 hours a day, they're consuming more calories than their typical 2,000 calorie BMR (let's call it 'work burn'). This is especially true for people who are overweight: someone with a BMI over 30 is also going to require more energy to sustain that size, which is going to be equal to their BMR + work burn. That means either more food, or higher calorie food.

Another thing you have to consider too is proximity to the food. When I lived in the South, the nearest grocery store to me was 3 miles away, and I had no car. I had to run over there and back, and it took 20 minutes to get over there by foot, but an hour to walk back (since I can't run with food). Fast food was <2 minutes away, versus here in California it's 3 miles to fast food and <2 minutes to the grocery store.

Since I ran, I incurred no cost, but for people who have to drive that's 6 miles if they want fresh food. It was $3.47 for a gallon of gas there, and most vehicles are 18 miles/1 gallon. If you bought fresh food every day, that's an extra $1.16 added on to however much you purchase.

For most people living on minimum wage, $7.25 per 8 hours, and live in the suburbs away from town, they're commuting at least 10 miles to and from work, so that's roughly 9 hours a day - or 40% of the day - in action burning calories. If you assume 6 hours sleep, which isn't even a full night's rest, that's 9 remaining hours for other activities. Even if the person is single - and most aren't - most of their money gets tied up in expenses. At minimum wage 20 days a month, I'd make $1160 a month. My rent alone was $800, my cheap Obama insurance was $150, I drove 400 miles a month ($77 for gas) - which adds up $1027.

The driving is fictional, but many of my classmates had greater distances with less efficient cars. I spent $40 a week on food, which was $160 a month, and I ate a lot of fast food. So, if you follow my plan, my monthly savings would be...a whopping $33.

For many of these low-income people - especially those who are already overweight - eating healthy is also eating calorie poor food. And this makes sense, no? If you have to lose weight, you have to eat fewer calories per day than you burn, and it's really hard to work at full capacity if you're eating sub BMR food. You get dizzy, you lose concentration, and you could lose your job. That creates stress which leads to cortisol secretion, promoting further weight gain and psychological sanctuary through comfort eating.

To make up the deficit with 'healthy' food, you have to eat a lot of it. And that's where the cost becomes an issue. If it's calories, junk food is a cheaper and more efficient source of energy. Bread is literally the worst food you can consume from a dieting perspective but it's the staple food of most of the world, because it's energy rich. It also tastes good because it's bad for you. If I can't work today, I can't eat tomorrow, so the short term of succeeding at my minimum wage job > the long term health benefits of staying skinny.

At the Burger King I loved to frequent, the only person who was not morbidly obese was the manager. It makes sense they'd eat unhealthy to stay healthy, it's a positive feedback loop.

Losing weight, IMV, is something you can do if you have the luxury of doing it. Losing weight while on the job is either a function of some serious luck in how you can consume calories and stay awake and/or serious dedication (like in exercising).
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Old 09-05-2014, 02:31 AM   #6
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I didn't do heavy, investigative, targeted research, Blaze. And you aren't dealing with me, I'm dealing with you.

You are correct that lettuce costs $3-5 per head, and I'm actually surprised that didn't trip my "that can't be right" feelings. Still only adds 25 cents at most to the price of a homemade burger. Still lasts longer than the 2 pieces of lettuce you get at McD's. Still costs less.

The rest of the prices are ripped straight from Wal-Mart and the USDA so if you'd like to continue to find inaccuracies you are unfortunately going to have to take it up with them.
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Old 09-05-2014, 02:49 AM   #7
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Quote:
eating healthy is also eating calorie poor food.
Eating unhealthy is worse on your system and on your energy levels. 2000 calories of bread will make you feel much, much, MUCH worse than eating 1000 calories with a balanced diet. Calories are not the be all end all of dieting; in fact, when it comes to feelings of hunger and fatigue, calories factor in only at critically low levels. Nutrition is far more essential to energy and health. You can eat a dozen donuts and still be hungry for more donuts, but try to eat an equivalent amount of ground beef and you will barely finish the second donut-shaped patty.

It turns out your body tracks nutrients better than it tracks calories, which makes sense because calories are just made-up numbers that standardize food energy. Nutrition is far more important than calories for the body. And in fact, eating healthier and with better nutrition actually improves your energy and concentration, making you do a BETTER job. The idea that eating healthy food makes you tired because there's less calories seems like hobo pseudoscience to me.

I can see how proximity to a grocery store would be a big problem, though, especially for those without access to vehicles in hot places like the South. I can't help but feel, though, that this same issue would cause similar problems with all kinds of food acquisition, including fast food. Still, I'll accept this as an argument for why poverty and healthy living are difficult to reconcile; if you don't have a fridge or a vehicle, it can be difficult to buy food in bulk and store it, and it might be worth the extra money not to have to find massive workarounds for the problems of food storage and transportation.
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Old 09-05-2014, 03:28 AM   #8
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The brain runs on sugar. Literally. The body also runs on energy, which you get from, mostly, glucose, i.e carbohydrates.

Nutrition is not more important than calories for your body. Until you start getting serious malnutrition problems, your body- which is to say, your brain- doesn't give a damn about anything other than how much energy you have. Your body finds fatty, carbohydrate-rich foods to be the most tasty for a reason- it's what we needed, and it's what we need. In the short term, calories will win over nutrition, every damn time.
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Old 09-05-2014, 03:55 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shuckle View Post
Eating unhealthy is worse on your system and on your energy levels. 2000 calories of bread will make you feel much, much, MUCH worse than eating 1000 calories with a balanced diet.

Calories are not the be all end all of dieting; in fact, when it comes to feelings of hunger and fatigue, calories factor in only at critically low levels. Nutrition is far more essential to energy and health. You can eat a dozen donuts and still be hungry for more donuts, but try to eat an equivalent amount of ground beef and you will barely finish the second donut-shaped patty.
I disagree completely. If you eat the bread over the course of the day, rather than all in one sitting, it's more efficiently utilized by the body's muscles (since brain glucose is fairly constant throughout the day). All glucose is metabolized, but timing of consumption dictates where it gets routed for energy use.

Also, you need to explain what you mean by "nutrients". I am highly suspect of you drawing causal links between macronutrients and satiety because not all of them are linked to it. By general inference, people who meet their daily food pyramid nutrients through diet and supplement (like my Dad and sister, who work full time) shouldn't be morbidly obese if they eat healthy.

Yet my Dad, a diabetic, consumes 0% carbs and almost 80% vegetables, and my sister (a vegetarian) consumes no meat while subsisting on $20 a week. Yet, they both have BMI's over 40. Both take vitamin supplements to make up for their micro and macronutrient deficiencies that they can't make up in diet. The problem is they eat way too much to make up for their poor diets - my Dad is notorious for eating cheese, peanuts, and sugar-free cakes and chocolates - and my sister downs highly carbon rich foods and thrives on bread.

How can I, who ate fast food almost daily, be not only in shape but healthier than them? Part of it is because I worked out under BPK's tutelage, but even as intense as my workout regime in March was, that was still nothing compared to the diet. I didn't lose anything, but I didn't gain any fat during my lifting either - I kept my diet under 2,000 calories while mass consuming protein and nothing but.

Quote:
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It turns out your body tracks nutrients better than it tracks calories, which makes sense because calories are just made-up numbers that standardize food energy.
Glucose and simple sugars are metabolized much more quickly than macronutrients, taking an hour or less to be routed to the cells that demand them. Macronutrients that don't immediately act on adipocytes require hormones secretion, which is going to take longer to initiate satiety than the energy boost of sugar.

Satiety is also not a hard cap on food consumption, it's physiology that's heavily suggestive on the psychology. But mind can trump matter. Someone who really wants to gobble down a cookie for desert isn't going to be held back by a sense of fullness just because they ate a wholesome dinner.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shuckle View Post
Nutrition is far more important than calories for the body. And in fact, eating healthier and with better nutrition actually improves your energy and concentration, making you do a BETTER job. The idea that eating healthy food makes you tired because there's less calories seems like hobo pseudoscience to me.
Okay, I'm not going to touch this. I know two people in particular who are far more qualified to debate these points.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shuckle View Post
I can see how proximity to a grocery store would be a big problem, though, especially for those without access to vehicles in hot places like the South. I can't help but feel, though, that this same issue would cause similar problems with all kinds of food acquisition, including fast food. Still, I'll accept this as an argument for why poverty and healthy living are difficult to reconcile; if you don't have a fridge or a vehicle, it can be difficult to buy food in bulk and store it, and it might be worth the extra money not to have to find massive workarounds for the problems of food storage and transportation.
While I do feel poverty is a big problem, I'm more of the attitude that the most notorious issues are sleep-based fatigue. Coffee and energy drinks, which both stimulate cortisol secretion, are popular for their caffiene rather than their caloric benefits, with which they are quietly synergistic. The primary reason people drink these things is to combat the need for more sleep. Earlier I gave 6 hours as the normal, but 8 hours is the typical minimum for a full refresh and that's a third of the day. 9 hours - given the 9 for travel I mentioned earlier - means one only has 6 hours to do all non-work, non-sleep daily activities. Can most people cram their lives into 6 hours? I seriously doubt that - such efficiency isn't very typical.
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Old 09-05-2014, 07:33 AM   #10
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Heads of lettuce sell for 99˘ here year round.

One complication in US poverty discussions is the fact that the fifty states each largely fend for themselves when it comes to food. The closer you are to the exporter end of the spectrum, food (especially homegrown food) is cheap. The closer you are to the importer end, food is expensive.

Just some examples of Indiana food prices that come to mind ...
  • whole chicken = 99˘/lb (usu. $5 per unit)
  • ground beef rated 80% = $3.49/lb
  • store-brand pasta sauce = $1.25/jar
  • extra sharp cheddar cheese = $3.29/lb
  • large eggs = $2/dozen
  • yellow onions = $2.50/bag of six
  • potatoes = $3.50/10-lb. bag
  • white sandwich bread = $1/loaf (approx. 20 slices)
  • bagels = $2/half dozen
  • ears of corn = $3 per 10 ears when in season
  • canned corn = 79˘/can at most, frequent sales of 50˘/can
  • Van Camp's baked beans = $1/can, semi-regular sales of 50˘/can
Contrast this with California, suffering a drought. Contrast this with New England. Contrast this with NYC. Some things may be cheaper where you live. I doubt that most will be though. And that's because Indiana is an ag state with a long awareness of this fact.

Just last week, the grocery had all 24-ounce bottles of ketchup on sale for $1. We can do this because Indiana grows its own tomatoes. A state that imports its tomatoes from other states is going to have to compete with 30+ other states over (this year) a very limited supply due to the drought in California.
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Old 09-05-2014, 12:16 PM   #11
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Something about the statement "living off of bread" confuses me and sounds very wrong but I am not sure where to start on that.

Sorry for 3am logic on calories. I think I probably sounded like I did research, but that's not the case. I'm listening.

>someone who really wants to gobble down a cookie

I want to know about poverty, and about how many deem it fully impossible, full stop, to lose weight or be healthy when below an income threshold. Gobbling down extra cookies does not sound like a problem that affects the poor, and if you are gobbling down extra cookies even if you feel full then you are probably not unhealthy purely due to poverty.

I Googled "how much exercise do you need per day" and got 30 min/day minimum. Assuming you cook things like eggs, chicken, beef, and occasionally vegetables, it shouldn't take you more than 30 min/day to cook. Assuming you have food storage, you should be able to buy enough food for 1 week and eat it all over the course of that week with good planning, plus whatever leftovers you decide. That falls well within the realm of 6 hours per day. It takes 10 minutes to prepare a breakfast and a lunch at home, simple, small, and healthy, and 10 minutes to prepare a healthy, delicious dinner. Do some pushups and run around the block a couple times.

Most of the "impossibilities" of poverty, under the magnifying glass, just end up being cases where priorities get mixed up. For instance, America has an almost 1:1 television:person ratio. That's $300, possibly with extra money on top for TV service, that could be spent on things like food or saved for later.

I am not about to suggest that the poor are "not trying hard enough" because I am fully aware that poverty does things to you and can often be out of your control, and I always go out of my way to help. But I think that it's definitely not impossible to eat healthy and live healthy when poor.
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Old 09-05-2014, 12:28 PM   #12
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Logic Flaw: Home made burger only costs $1.55 is cheaper than McDs burger.

McDs Dollar Menu. Your home made burger is $0.55 too expensive. Even if we applied a 10% tax on the burger, you're still not cheaper.

I have had friends who were living paycheck to paycheck paying their bills and racking up credit card debts that I can't even imagine the amounts for and basically said they could just barely squeak by each week if they just ate food off the McDs Dollar Menu. They knew McDs is shit quality food, but they didn't have many option.
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Old 09-05-2014, 12:37 PM   #13
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Home made burger that costs $3.75 at mcdonald's is cheaper at $1.55 or so.

The Mcdouble is around 2 oz of ground beef, which is 1/8 of a pound. Add a hamburger bun, a piece of lettuce, and a single slice of cheese and you have a 65 cent burger compared to McDonald's $1 burger.
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Old 09-05-2014, 12:44 PM   #14
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First of all, there's an important difference between not having a healthy diet and eating predominantly unhealthy food. Just because you don't eat Doritos and McDonald's does not mean you aren't malnourished. People who live off of predominantly bread and peanut butter, pasta, and rice are going to be vitamin deficient for things primarily found in fruits and vegetables.

The poorer you are, the more you tend to economize your food purchases. You aim for the best calorie-to-dollar ratios as well as the best volume/fillingness-to-dollar ratios. Pork and beef are far more expensive than chicken, and chicken is far more expensive than processed meats (that are mostly animal fat). You're not going to find many families on welfare making homemade beef patties for dinner every night. And you're quite likely to find them sending their kids to school with bologna sandwiches instead of turkey or chicken sandwiches. Deli meat is ridiculously expensive when you're poor -- $5 per pound may not sound like much to you, but considering that that's even more than the ground beef they can't afford ($3.50/lb), you should understand that poor families aren't going to be able to afford your lean Sara Lee turkey.

Second of all, it's just the way life is that:
  1. the majority of foods with the longest shelf lives and lowest costs of production are low on vitamin content
  2. the majority of foods touted for their vitamins spoil quickly and/or are difficult to produce, either of which contributes to higher prices


For example, 6 ounces of blackberries cost $1.99. For that same amount of money, you could get an entire frozen pizza. (Small enough that it only serves one satisfactorily but if you're impoverished it can be used to feed two.)

For another example, a single avocado -- just one! -- costs 99˘. For that same amount of money, you can purchase twelve eggs when they're on sale. (Eggs regularly go on sale here for one week out of the month where their prices are cut in half from $2/dozen to just $1/dozen.) If you're poor, which would you rather get: an avocado? Or twelve eggs?

Don't get me wrong. Eggs are definitely a healthy food item, healthier than M&Ms or Doritos for sure. But they're not going to be giving you all of the essential vitamins and minerals you need. Some, yes. But you really do need some fruit and vegetables in your diet to make it a balanced, healthy one. And for most poor people, the choice is clear. Immediate survival on a shoestring budget trumps trying to eat like someone who makes six figures.
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Old 09-05-2014, 02:10 PM   #15
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Quote:
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I Googled "how much exercise do you need per day" and got 30 min/day minimum. Assuming you cook things like eggs, chicken, beef, and occasionally vegetables, it shouldn't take you more than 30 min/day to cook. Assuming you have food storage, you should be able to buy enough food for 1 week and eat it all over the course of that week with good planning, plus whatever leftovers you decide. That falls well within the realm of 6 hours per day. It takes 10 minutes to prepare a breakfast and a lunch at home, simple, small, and healthy, and 10 minutes to prepare a healthy, delicious dinner. Do some pushups and run around the block a couple times.
What? Anyone interested in fitness will tell you it's the intensity and distance, not the time. If it took 2 hours to walk 2 blocks, that wouldn't be all that helpful for anyone.

If you want to burn as much as you intake for the day, doable for most people is to run to the tune of 14 miles at 6 mph. For my Marine Corps training I've drilled 3 miles (about 5K) and can do it in 21 minutes (which translates to 14.2 mph) and at top sprint speed, I'm confident I can run at least 20% more than that, so about 17 mph. That's only 600 or so calories burned. Or, another way of putting it, equivalent to eating a Burger King Whopper without ketchup (-100 calories) or mayonnaise (-100 calories).

You have to do that DAILY to offset the damage done by eating a hamburger. And most people are not as strong and fast as I am, so that means MORE time doing cardio that they just don't have in the day.

Exercise is important, don't get my wrong. But it's secondary to diet.
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Old 09-05-2014, 02:26 PM   #16
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I'm pretty sure you JUST said that people burn 2,000 calories a day just by existing. Heavy exercising like what you just described adds 600 calories to that number. Instead of going 600/2000 with a Whopper and satisfying 30% of your calorie needs for 1 day, you're going 600/2600 and satisfying 21% of your calorie needs. Eating 3 whoppers a day plus soda will put you over the threshold of one but not the other.
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Old 09-07-2014, 08:02 AM   #17
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I will probably contribute to this later but as an opening remark, putting "apparently condescending" and then writing a hugely condescending tirade in the OP of a debate is so incredibly short sighted that I'm really wondering if you even thought about your words before hitting the post new thread button. I am legitimately under the assumption at this point that you're just stirring and have no real desire for a proper discussion, that's how ridiculous your post is. That or you are somewhere slightly along a spectrum that makes you not necessarily understand the implications of your words, which makes it more understandable.
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Old 09-07-2014, 11:41 AM   #18
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So ok. The point is that the poorer you are the more of a poverty premium you have to pay. This applies to pretty much all goods but to keep it to food, it means that you can't afford to save money via value deals. So, perhaps a loaf of bread costs Ł1 in your fictional grocers but you can buy three loaves for Ł2 if you do it in one go. Well, that's clearly much better value if you need that much bread to feed your family, but what if you don't have Ł2? If you can only scrimp Ł1 for bread, repeatedly, you're locked out of the savings you could have made. This is a silly small fictional example but you can take it further. If I go direct to wholesalers and buy 40 cans of baked beans for next to nothing compared to buying the individual cans or multipacks, I'm saving a huge amount of money, but I'm only able to do that because I have the requisite money.

Now, that's general food economics. I find that a much more relevant debate than the slight silliness that is healthy food vs fast food. There are many reasons that poor families eat a lot of fast food and in a lot of ways the clue is in the name. Holding down two jobs and supporting several children does not come easily and cooking a healthy meal for them takes time you might not have, as well as effort you can't afford to expend because you work so hard. Fast food is generally considered to be tasty and happens very quickly, much of it by delivery. While there do exist services which will deliver you healthy food or premade food, the reality is that most families simply can't access them due to the reality of their situation. You dismiss 30 minutes a day as easy cooking but it's not. If you're using fresh ingredients it's longer, you have to know what to do with those, you have to have the energy to make the food. Poorer people may not have adequate food storage. If you're not in a city, maybe you don't have ready access to the materials needed for this anyway.

In the grand scheme of things, if you don't get enough energy from your food, you die. Nutrition is clearly important but starvation isn't the same as malnutrition and starvation kills your first.
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Old 09-08-2014, 05:06 AM   #19
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From personal experience as well, a lot of coupons and deals aren't quite as accessible for people on food stamps. I know that most of the time, for me to use coupons and food stamps simultaneously, there is a bit of tax I end up having to pay at the end. Not entirely sure why, but it happens. Since this cannot go onto my card that is only good for purchasing food, and I have little to no actual money, it means I often can't get these wonderful deals without paying out of pocket, and this accumulates. If I have to spend five dollars I don't have to save thirty dollars in food stamps, chances lie with me choosing to save the fiver, since food stamps reload automatically each month and cash doesn't.
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Old 09-08-2014, 12:39 PM   #20
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Not that I have personal experience of this but it then extends to stuff like nappies and medicines or supplements which can't necessarily be bought with food stamps or other aid. So you're sort of stuck if you're foolish enough to get pregnant without having two decent incomes.
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Old 10-01-2014, 12:17 PM   #21
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While preparing to lecture some poor fool in the TO about the importance of good nutrition, I found this handy resource from the federal government, of all places.

It seems like even if you're on kind of a tight budget and have trouble getting the food you want, you can still have a resource that will help you eat healthier. I'm saying it's POSSIBLE to eat healthy on a budget, not that it is EASY or SIMPLE. It's easier and simpler than you're making it out to be, but it's not exactly basic arithmetic either and there is time and effort that needs to be put in.

We know that diet is the most important part of losing weight, but many people simply don't understand what calories are or how to read nutrition facts, a problem compounded by fast food restaurants which hide or cover up their nutrition sheets. Many Americans simply do not understand what calories are or how much they should be getting, and for most normal-weight sedentary people a 2000 calorie diet is actually more than they need, and they will settle at around 30-40 pounds overweight. The resource linked is just a very simple, very general attention-getting starting line to good health and nutrition that is "budget-conscious." It presents information on health and nutrition in a friendly, judgment-free way that could be a lifesaver towards families whose financial situation is a bit of a sore spot. It's colorful and easy to use.

So why aren't people using it?
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Old 10-01-2014, 07:50 PM   #22
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I would assume at least some problem slightly lies in tl;dr. I couldn't even read your entire post, probably not going to browse through that entire thing, and I'm sure many others don't have the time for all that shit. Also, a lot of people who are poor actually don't have teh interwebz. I'm also not sure how much variation it allows for food intolerances, allergies, and good old differences in age and metabolism.
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Old 10-01-2014, 08:09 PM   #23
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Shuckle is missing one key point: without sufficient food, your basal metabolism goes down because your body goes into a starving state, thereby endeavoring to preserve fat as long as possible (makes sense from an evolutionary perspective). This starving state alters insulin levels and prevents glycogenolysis. Hence, stored fat is accumulated rather than lost, and basal metabolism drops. Unless you are so poor that you're literally starving and have nothing to eat, even eating a little can make you unhealthy. Also, various processed foods, including McDonalds and tinned meats, are very cheap and remarkably unhealthy.

Tl;dr, unless you have absolutely no money and/or live on a farm, your percentage of body fat will rise if you're eating properly. And lower SES often coincides with this phenomenon. "Poor" people may not all look fat, but their body fat to muscle ratios can be very unhealthy, and various cancers and cardiopulmonary problems are in fact more prevalent among the poor.
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Old 10-01-2014, 09:29 PM   #24
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Shuckle is missing one key point: without sufficient food, your basal metabolism goes down because your body goes into a starving state, thereby endeavoring to preserve fat as long as possible (makes sense from an evolutionary perspective). This starving state alters insulin levels and prevents glycogenolysis. Hence, stored fat is accumulated rather than lost, and basal metabolism drops.
From what I heard, this only happens from a sharp drop in caloric intake, which would signify a total lack of things to eat. I'm not sure if it could be triggered through attempted weight loss from morbid obesity. That would be a good subject for a stronger study. However, for the general population, simply changing your daily caloric intake to something sensible will not cause your body to believe itself to be starving. Your body will just use up the fat reserves in order to continue normal functions. It's what they're there for, after all.

Yes it is hard to lose fat. But that only starts to become a major, noticeable issue at the kind of obesity that makes you say things like DAAAAAMN. Also, far more pernicious enemies to face when losing fat are the habits that put the weight on in the first place.

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Unless you are so poor that you're literally starving and have nothing to eat, even eating a little can make you unhealthy. Also, various processed foods, including McDonalds and tinned meats, are very cheap and remarkably unhealthy.
Eating a little will not make you healthy or unhealthy from a weight perspective. It can cause malnutrition if you live off of bread exclusively, as Dopple said (how can someone live like that???), but it cannot cause you to gain weight because you ate nothing but a cookie today.

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Tl;dr, unless you have absolutely no money and/or live on a farm, your percentage of body fat will rise if you're eating properly. And lower SES often coincides with this phenomenon. "Poor" people may not all look fat, but their body fat to muscle ratios can be very unhealthy, and various cancers and cardiopulmonary problems are in fact more prevalent among the poor.
Ideally, your body fat percentage should fluctuate around 10-20%. It will do this if you eat the correct amount of calories for your body type and activity levels.

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I would assume at least some problem slightly lies in tl;dr. I couldn't even read your entire post, probably not going to browse through that entire thing, and I'm sure many others don't have the time for all that shit. Also, a lot of people who are poor actually don't have teh interwebz. I'm also not sure how much variation it allows for food intolerances, allergies, and good old differences in age and metabolism.
Basically: Nutrition is important and can be done even on a budget, but many people think they know nutrition already and do not think they can be healthy.

I hope you feel better, by the way, I know most psychoactive meds can really do a number on your concentration and reading comprehension.
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Old 10-02-2014, 05:14 PM   #25
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> From what I heard, this only happens from a sharp drop in caloric intake, which would signify a total lack of things to eat. I'm not sure if it could be triggered through attempted weight loss from morbid obesity. That would be a good subject for a stronger study. However, for the general population, simply changing your daily caloric intake to something sensible will not cause your body to believe itself to be starving. Your body will just use up the fat reserves in order to continue normal functions. It's what they're there for, after all.

Actually, depression, which is pretty bad in impoverished families, can also trigger the same "starvation" state. Which means someone both depressed and getting low food intake or poor food intake, gets it pretty damn bad.

> Basically: Nutrition is important and can be done even on a budget, but many people think they know nutrition already and do not think they can be healthy.

It's much more difficult to be done on a budget, however, and in fact with very low budgets, or with any significant changes in nutritional needs (peanut allergies being a big one, as peanuts are a very common and cheap source of protein and carbohydrates in everything from granola bars to peanut butter sandwiches, but allergies to peanuts are fairly common), it becomes exponentially worse.

Oh, and thank you for the concern.
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