More Bunk From Time Magazine

SO true!

Wrong again Laurie.

What is more critical to biological functioning? Energy or nutrition? Energy obviously. First and foremost a biological process requires sufficient energy to carry out its functions.

A person who is genuinely poor will starve to death eating peaches and broccoli.

You can buy more calories for less money when they are not perishable. This is basic economics. Something that can sit on the shelf for months tends to cost less.

If I am on the verge of starvation and someone offers me a peach or a bag of sugar, I'm taking the bag of sugar.

But clearly what we need is just more Government hand outs to try and subvert natural selection. Not.

You've obviously never really been poor. You've never had to use food stamps to buy your food.

Go to any grocery store with $100. Split that into half and buy $50 worth of healthy food - fresh fruit and veg, lean meat, and whole grains. Then buy $50 worth of not healthy food - white bread, canned fruit and veg on sale, snack foods, processed lunch meats, etc.

Your healthy choices will fill one of those hand baskets. Your unhealthy choices - especially if you buy store brands on sale - will fill a cart.

Our entire food distribution chain is built around low-nutrition foods that can be grown/made, packaged, and distributed cheaply. Even taking junk foods like potato chips and coke out of the equation: You can get 2 family sized boxes of cereal on sale 2 for $5 and think you're being "healthy", not realizing that the store-brand raisin bran has more sugar and calories in it than a regular coke. Just as an example.

I consider myself very lucky that I'm able to afford fresh fruit and veg from the grocery store and that I have a farmer's market nearby where I can get even more for less money. I also can afford to buy lean cuts of meat, and to be picky in my preparation of them. I have time to cook and the facilities in which to cook - a clean kitchen with running water and electricity and a refrigerator and freezer to store food. Many people - yes right here in America - don't have those luxuries.

I agree with you that most middle class and upper middle class Americans are fat because they choose to be - consciously or not.

But poverty and obesity ARE linked, so it would be nice if you could drop the snide, upper-middle-class-entitlement attitude about it. There are people who are so poor they can't afford fresh food - or a refrigerator to keep it in.

I believe the bag of chips and soda example cited in TIME is using a calories per unit of cost average if someone should by in bulk.... i.e., a large bag of potato chips or 24 pack of soda from Costco.

I am getting so tired of this arguement. There is never a need to buy junk food and soda if you are on a budget. Never! What happened to taking the weekly sale ad from your local grocery store and plan your weekly meals accordingly? Each week there are amazing deals that include healthy fruits, veggies and meats including seafood. You don't need to survive on a box of mac and cheese and ramen. It just seems so amazing to me that the people that cry poor are the ones you see buying the 24 pak soda and the carton of cigarettes. Believe me, I know. I live in a very poor area where people have never even heard of Whole Foods, Trader Joes, etc. I see it everyday!

I have NEVER understood the argument that people can't afford to eat enough calories of healthy food. You can't blame obesity on people who are buying the processed food because it's cheaper per calorie, because then presumably they'd buy tons of calories at a cheap price and then eat an appropriate amount per meal. No one does this! To clarify: you don't compare a 200 calorie chicken breast to a comparably priced 1200 calorie bag of chips and then go, "oh, the bag of chips will be for six meals, so I'll portion it out accordingly!" Most people would eat the whole bag of chips, getting way more calories than they need, and thereby ignoring the calories per dollar part of the equation. Remember, obesity is caused by too many calories, whether they come from potato chips or broccoli.

Now, if the argument was that people are nutrient-deficient because they don't have money to get healthy foods, that's another topic altogether...

I think part of the problem is education. If you've never been taught to cook a whole chicken (or even a package of chicken legs), you're probably not going to buy it, even if a fresh chicken is cheaper than frozen chicken nuggets. I've spent a good deal of time and money purchasing the cookbooks, special ingredients, proper utensils, etc needed to cook healthy. If I didn't have access to all these things, it would be pretty difficult to cook like I do.

Another problem is the food culture in certain areas of the country. I'm from the South, where fresh vegetables are cheap and easily available to all economic levels for a good portion of the year-- but then it's all fried! Fried okra, fried corn, fried green tomatoes, fried potatoes, fried bread, fried chicken, fried ham, fried catfish, fried bacon, fried fruit pies, beans boiled with lard or ham hocks, and then what hasn't been fried or boiled into oblivion is coated in thick, greasy gravy. I just don't see that changing, because it's one of the things that defines the culture, for better or for worse.

I think healthy foods are not that expensive. Its just that the people who are not health conscious prefer not to eat these good foods. or shall I say they feel they are yet healthy and there's no need for them to choose the kind of food they wanted to eat. Oh well, prevention is better than cure!

Before you judge financially disadvantaged obese people too quickly for their seemingly lazy food choices, please consider their access to healthy food. I live in Baltimore City, where we have our share of obese residents. In the city there is scant access to regular grocery stores with regular produce aisles. I can get in my car and get what I need from any variety of stores - organic produce here, hit a farmers market there, the other store for inexpensive paper products over there. I can make my grocery money work for me because (one) I have it to spend and (two) I have transportation. Most poor folks in big cities have to walk to whatever store is close - in the case of Baltimore, these are convenience stores filled with processed, packaged food that are inexpensive and filling because, as Kara pointed out, they are manufactured that way. Read some Michael Pollan for a good overview of food manufacturing and distribution in America. I recognize that individuals are responsible for making day-by-day choices that affect health, but I also recognize that I am richly blessed with education and access to healthy food choices. It's not impossible to eat well on a low income, but it is a legitimate challenge for a lot of folks.

While it is true that some people who are poor make poor budget choices (such as buying things like pop or chips), I've been in a situation where I had to survive off of things like ramen, canned soups, and maybe some canned vegetables here and there. At a regular grocery store, you can get 2-3 packs of Ramen for $1. That's 2-3 MEALS! Imagine if I could've bought it in bulk! Canned corn was less than $1 per can and condensed soups a similar price. I would skip breakfast or eat an egg and maybe some sausage ($2 for a carton of eggs and about $4 for a rather large thing of packaged sausage that would last me nearly 2 weeks). Oh, not to mention hotdogs which including buns might run you $1-2 per meal (depending on if you eat one or 2). I gained over 20 lbs in one year eating like this, but you try to find better deals. I was not a fast food goer, but if you take into account the fact that most places have a burger (a potential meal) for under $1 you can quickly see how these problems can occur.

Um, what about buying rice/other whole grains and dried beans (lentils are good) in bulk? Boil water and let the rice and beans sit overnight in a widemouth thermos or blanket-wrapped casserole dish.