Time to repost one of my favorite articles:

http://www.counterpunch.org/levine12042009.html

The bottom line - sometimes the truth isn't what sets you free, it's morale.

I have an elderly friend who uses food stamps and a food pantry to be able to eat.
The pantry has what it has that week - the selection varies. You can't request a certain thing and be certain you will get it. Even if that is a type of bread.

https://www.angelfoodministries.com/

I suggested this to her but she wasn't interested! You have to pick the food up at the church (which serves as the distribution point) and you don't pick the food out yourself. You buy 'packages' of food and you have to pay in advance. An elderly person, on a limited income, has to budget carefully to be able to do that.

What a cool article CapMikee.

Although - learned helplessness and the cycle of abuse can also be turned around with better nutrition... see an interesting article by DesMaisons, "Dance of Abuse" .

http://www.radiantrecovery.com/resourcecenter/abuse.htm

Great article!!!

Another good article. My dad's family has a reputation for bad tempers - I call it the family "curse." My dad is an alcoholic (sober almost 25 years, and on Atkins now) and my uncle is diabetic. It all fits together...

I know what you mean. I never look at an angry "user" the same way, now that I have this idea of how it all fits together.

Great article! I've sent a link to some of my friends.

Someone mentioned earlier that the cheapest entertainment doesn't involve much activity. I have to disagree with that.

Cable is expensive (we don't even have it now). So are video games and movies. The cheapest entertainment is very active. Going walking or to the local park cost nothing. I was extremely active as a poor kid.

For vacations, we did a lot of hiking and camping when I was a kid. All it cost was the gas money and $20 for a camping spot. We had an old tent from an army surplus store that we used.

It is interesting that outdoor wilderness activities are mainly done by white people. When I asked one of my friends who was a poor minority why they didn't go to the wilderness, they said they just weren't interested. That might be a subculture difference?

And yet, good choices do come into play, with or without better nutrition. My father had a childhood straight out of Dickens. He was born in 1915. Both parents were alcoholics. His father disappeared when he was small. He had memories of being sent to the corner bar with a bucket and a nickel, to get beer for his mother and her latest boyfriend. When he was 12, he came home from school one day and found that his mother had MOVED. He lived on the streets, doing odd jobs and sleeping wherever he could, often on the subway, until he was old enough to join the army. You can be sure he never had anything close to adequate nutrition. He eventually married and had a family. He worked at as many jobs as necessary (and that he could get without an education beyond grammar school) to provide us with a good home and plenty of food.

My sisters and I all struggle with sugar (me) and alcohol (them), so it's obviously part of our biology. But we know that we can make right choices, based on his example.

What an amazing story, HappyLC. It's just like the article CapMikee listed - when you have encouragement and the morale from your dad's example, you know you can do the right thing.

I'm not saying that bad nutrition is destiny, yuk! We can change it, that's kind of cool I think.

It reminds me of something I heard about PTSD. The long-term effects of a crisis depend critically on how you see your role in it. Disaster victims who feel like they've taken control of a situation, for example by extracting themselves from the wreckage or rescuing another victim, tend to grow from the experience and come out stronger people. On the other hand, those who viewed themselves as helpless - the one being rescued, for example - are more likely to be scarred by the event and to continue to act helpless.

"It is interesting that outdoor wilderness activities are mainly done by white people. When I asked one of my friends who was a poor minority why they didn't go to the wilderness, they said they just weren't interested. That might be a subculture difference?"

My upper class, white friend is married to an African who grew up poor in a rural village. Sleeping in a tent outdoors with no toilet or running water and eating bad food is SO not what he considers fun.

Interesting comments. Sorry if I sound too harsh earlier - bad day, little patience.

I just wanted to add one last thing. I am always bothered a bit by these articles because they always make a big assumption: that people WANT to change. My guess would be that most research scientists are highly motivated, intelligent people with a thirst for information. IMO, they are horrible about projecting that attitude on their subjects.

They see someone who is obese, poor, and smokes. They conclude that this person must be totally miserable and simply be lacking information/resources to not be like that. It never occurs to them that some people - heck most people - just don't care!

Also true. Change is pretty low on the list of most people I know, including myself when I get tired of thinking about it all.

I was reminded of the Onion's famous spoof which made me smile yet again.

Nation's Experts Give Up http://audiokitty.posterous.com/nations-experts-give-up

"They see someone who is obese, poor, and smokes. They conclude that this person must be totally miserable and simply be lacking information/resources to not be like that. It never occurs to them that some people - heck most people - just don't care!'

Very true - most people I know consider Type II diabetes to be a natural consequence of aging and couldn't care less if they could run ten feet to save their life.

It's a positive message. But I have my doubts about the relative ability to receive that message. The way a person feels affects thinking. Maybe encouraging people to be more hopeful would help. If a person is in the wrong frame of mind, telling them that something is within their control may not make them hopeful, it may just make them feel at fault. I used to have teachers tell me that I was underperforming, I could do much better. The message I received was mostly that I wasn't making enough of an effort, trying hard enough was just one more thing I was bad at.

Edit; of course, not telling people that they're helpless is a good step in the right direction.