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  #61   ^
Old Mon, Jun-07-10, 18:33
jschwab jschwab is offline
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"To me this is a better (and more realistic) explanation that just " oh well the poor are obese because they are DENIED good food." Please"

I never get this, either. I mean, what is the real difference between grocery stores in wealthy areas and poor areas? It's really not much - maybe the difference between generic chicken nuggets and Tyson. I think the explanation is more that the very wealthy are more motivated and tied to image and so they keep thin. The middle classes are a little less obese than the poor folks, but not by much. All of the VP's/middle managers at companies I know are obese. The CEO's aren't but the VP's are. There was a study out of England showing that the rate of growth in middle-class areas far outstripped what was happening amongst the poor. It's really more abou blaming a general problem on poor people. I see people who are policymakers who are easily 40 BMI talking about how obesity is such an issue with poor people and how they need help. What the heck?
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  #62   ^
Old Mon, Jun-07-10, 20:48
Nancy LC's Avatar
Nancy LC Nancy LC is offline
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Quote:
know I will get blasted for saying this, but my guess would that the same behaviors that lead to poverty are very often similar to those that lead to obesity caused by a poor diet: short-term thinking, impulsiveness, and self-destructive behavior.

The behavior that leads to most people being impoverished is being born to poor parents.

Seems like this thread has a bunch of people who were born at the finish line telling people who weren't, why they didn't win the race. Reminds me of skinny people telling fat people what's wrong with them.
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  #63   ^
Old Mon, Jun-07-10, 21:21
mathmaniac mathmaniac is offline
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I can think of some examples of people who have been hit by events leading to financial hardship and became poor. Or were born into financial hardship.

Getting a college degree is expensive - and people still go into debt, anyway, trying to get that diploma. One reason is that, without it, their income (long-term) will be, on average, lower than that of a graduate. And a degree still doesn't guarantee anything. Borrow money to pay college tuition and it's possible to have debt you must live with for a decade (at least).

Physical disabilities, mental illness, a crippling lawsuit. Fraud, abuse, medical bills that take decades to pay off (if you live in the U.S., you probably know that a high percentage of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills not covered by insurance).

Is there a way, when you are in that situation, living from paycheck to paycheck or reduced to living on food stamps, that you can live in a way that keeps you slim and active? There are poor people who are not overweight, you know! I think it's just harder. The cheaper entertainments are sedentary entertainments. The wealthier you are, the more 'walking around' money you have.
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  #64   ^
Old Mon, Jun-07-10, 21:23
jschwab jschwab is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nancy LC
The behavior that leads to most people being impoverished is being born to poor parents.

Seems like this thread has a bunch of people who were born at the finish line telling people who weren't, why they didn't win the race. Reminds me of skinny people telling fat people what's wrong with them.


Agreed. There is a 10 percentage point difference in obesity between those who make the most and those who make the least - 20% obesity for the richest and 30% for the least wealthy. That's not a very convincing argument to me that people are so behaviorally different. Alot of middle class obese people are in heavy denial about whose problem it is, frankly. I think it's another case of "if you say it enough, and get enough funding to deal with the "problem", it has to be true (that poor people are fat and lazy). I'm not pointing fingers at anyone here, but just wanting to remind folks to be at least as critical of these studies and their conclusions as we are of dietary recommendations.
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  #65   ^
Old Tue, Jun-08-10, 07:36
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Carne! Carne! is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nancy LC
The behavior that leads to most people being impoverished is being born to poor parents.




Correct- but as Taubes says: That's like telling someone they are an alcoholic because they drink too much.

But why are the parents poor? And related to the OP....is poverty and obesity correlated? Could it be that they are SOMETIMES indicators of a larger problem, such as being unable to plan for the future and lack of desire to put off future consumption for a future benefit? There is definitely evidence to support this claim.

I am not saying these are the only factors one needs to look at. America is in no way, shape, or form, a meritocracy.

And Allah knows my family in Peru had plenty of external factors to deal with. However, to assume that it is only factors outside our control that frame our life is disingenous.
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  #66   ^
Old Tue, Jun-08-10, 08:25
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teaser teaser is offline
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I keep posting this study today;

http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v...by2009312a.html

These mice got fatter because they were restricted to 95 percent of the calories that ad-lib fed mice chose to eat. Maybe apparent scarcity works into this whole obesity and poverty thing, having exactly enough food, or watching it peter out towards the end of the month, ending up down at the food-bank.
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  #67   ^
Old Tue, Jun-08-10, 09:29
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Carne! Carne! is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by teaser
I keep posting this study today;

http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v...by2009312a.html

These mice got fatter because they were restricted to 95 percent of the calories that ad-lib fed mice chose to eat. Maybe apparent scarcity works into this whole obesity and poverty thing, having exactly enough food, or watching it peter out towards the end of the month, ending up down at the food-bank.



This actually raises a good point. Taubes mentioned this in one of his many presentations.....some women who lived in poverty where actually pretty fat, while their children were very thin. Yet, they were both suffering from malnutrition. They were both eating crap, but I reckon with time the women's body learned to deal with "famine" by storing as much fat as possible. Maybe something similar is happening with some people in North America. They eat excess calories but it's all sh*t. The body needs to hold on to every ounce because it is getting no NUTRITION and is preparing for famine.
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  #68   ^
Old Tue, Jun-08-10, 09:44
mathmaniac mathmaniac is offline
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That's an interesting study. What I take away from it is that 5% calorie reduction is not enough to lose weight. The figures cited, 30% or 40% reduction, are better choices if you want to lose weight.

I eat around 2000 calories a day. To have a 5% calorie reduction (100 calories), I would eat 1900 calories a day. If it takes a reduction of 3500 calories to lose a pound (not daily, cumulative) as is often quoted, it would take 35 days for me to lose a pound, counting calories carefully. Sounds right. I don't think I've ever had the patience or discipline to do that.

If I used the 30% of calories mentioned in the text of the study, I would shave 600 calories off my daily intake. Yeah, that would be 1400 calories a day - I would feel that - and I would lose weight. WW daily calorie limit is somewhere between 1600 and 1700 calories. This is after all the 'water weight' people usually lose at the beginning of a diet.

I know that is not what I am supposed to get from this study. I'm supposed to get that you gain weight just as surely by eating all you want as by reducing your calories by 5%. Metabolism alters, although to what extent, I don't know. Poor women lose weight on WW just as steadily and predictably on WW as rich women do.

I like the controlled environment of the mice and the piddling little 5% calorie reduction is interesting. But I go to WW every week and people there DO count their calories (points) and live just like I do, for the most part. And do lose weight. Rich or poor. Some of them are disabled and not moving as much as others - they still count points and still lose weight. And plateau, like everyone else on a diet. And persevere and lose the weight.

If they come to the meeting and say they are there because they gained weight, they say, 'I went off the diet.' ALWAYS.

Last edited by mathmaniac : Tue, Jun-08-10 at 09:50.
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  #69   ^
Old Tue, Jun-08-10, 10:00
Zuleikaa Zuleikaa is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by teaser
I keep posting this study today;

http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v...by2009312a.html

These mice got fatter because they were restricted to 95 percent of the calories that ad-lib fed mice chose to eat. Maybe apparent scarcity works into this whole obesity and poverty thing, having exactly enough food, or watching it peter out towards the end of the month, ending up down at the food-bank.

I'll buy that it has some influence. I was raised poor and there wasn't always enough food. When the check came in, sometimes we had feast (feast was more common during summer...no heating bills); at the end of the month/pay period, we had famine. I noticed looking back that any treats such as fruit/snacks got immediately eaten. No food ever spoiled in our house growing up; food never lasted long enough to spoil.

Contrast that with raising my daughter. I was a divorced, single mom on Welfare while going to school. My daughter never went hungry. There was always more than enough food in the house (a coping/comforting behavior from how I was raised). If she was hungry, she ate. If she wasn't hungry, she didn't eat. Food would sometimes sit until it spoiled. To this day, food isn't that important to her. Food is still very important to me.
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  #70   ^
Old Tue, Jun-08-10, 17:14
howlovely howlovely is offline
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Quote:
The behavior that leads to most people being impoverished is being born to poor parents.

Seems like this thread has a bunch of people who were born at the finish line telling people who weren't, why they didn't win the race. Reminds me of skinny people telling fat people what's wrong with them.


I was born in a two room house (we all slept in one room). We had an outhouse - not an indoor toilet. I am 28, btw. Please, do not assume I was born at the finish line. Not even close!

The reason I have made my life a (relative) success is because I made good decisions. I have very, very little sympathy for people who make choices that keep them poor. I could have just as easily stayed in life if I wanted. But because I am not lazy and because I believe every person who has opportunities should forge their own destiny, I CHOSE not to be poor.
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  #71   ^
Old Tue, Jun-08-10, 18:55
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Seejay Seejay is offline
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howlovely, that is lovely for you.

while some can get out of poverty with the right luck and opportunities, mostly I agree with jschwab. Bad nutrition in poverty can, at the biochemical level, even before behavior has a chance to get learned - bad biochemistry can affect impulse control and cognition, ("good decisions"), energy ("not lazy") and self-esteem and righteousness ("every person should").

Course it is true that one little choice at a time is the way out, once you know what is bad.

Just saying, the ability to make good choices is both biochemical and behavioral. Some people get bogged down with both to the point where it's hard to get up, and I do have sympathy with that.
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  #72   ^
Old Tue, Jun-08-10, 20:32
howlovely howlovely is offline
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I just don't like how the answer is always that something is happening to these people, rather than what they are actively doing. Like we are all just victims of our circumstances - all the time. I just don't understand how it helps people. So you tell people their poverty is not their fault at all - there are simply all kinds of external forces making them poor. Now, we're telling poor people they're obese because lots of external forces are banding together to keep them that way.

There is just no way that is entirely true. Plenty of things in your life are within your zone of control. For example, the food you purchase at the supermarket is within your zone of control. Even if you're on food stamps, or a fixed income, or are broke, you can buy healthy food - all the time. I know this because I experience with it.

Why is that not a positive message? How can telling people that something is within their control NOT be helpful?
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  #73   ^
Old Tue, Jun-08-10, 21:04
jschwab jschwab is offline
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"Why is that not a positive message? How can telling people that something is within their control NOT be helpful?"

I don't think anyone is saying that that is not a positive message - I think the debate centers around whether or not people who are poor are much more prone to be obese due to lack of self-control than rich people. I think when you look at the totality of it, that 10 percentage point difference between someone making $90,000 or more per year and someone making less than $6,000 per year doesn't seem like much of a difference. Kids in Philly schools have a 30% obesity rate. In the wealthiest suburbs, it's about 25%. That's just not very convincing to me that success in life makes a squat of difference in how skinny or fat you will be or that successfully wealthy people have that much better self-control than unsuccessful poor people.
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  #74   ^
Old Wed, Jun-09-10, 08:58
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capmikee capmikee is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by howlovely
I was born in a two room house (we all slept in one room). We had an outhouse - not an indoor toilet. I am 28, btw. Please, do not assume I was born at the finish line. Not even close!

The reason I have made my life a (relative) success is because I made good decisions. I have very, very little sympathy for people who make choices that keep them poor. I could have just as easily stayed in life if I wanted. But because I am not lazy and because I believe every person who has opportunities should forge their own destiny, I CHOSE not to be poor.

I was considering responding to the "born at the finish line" comment that the most zealous promoters of the "achievement ideology" are not privileged bums but those who consider themselves "self-made." I've met a lot of immigrants who have this attitude - 'I came to America with nothing and I made the best of my opportunities. If you can't, then you're lazy.'

But it doesn't change the fact that only a small number of people can be hundreds of times wealthier than the rest of the world. How can that selection ever be based on "good decisions" alone? The attitude tends to mask the unmentioned privileges that often allow people to succeed in adversity - an emotionally secure childhood, the belief that it's possible to succeed, cultural values that match the "successful" world, trade skills, and plain old luck.
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  #75   ^
Old Wed, Jun-09-10, 10:58
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Seejay Seejay is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by howlovely
I just don't like how the answer is always that something is happening to these people, rather than what they are actively doing. Like we are all just victims of our circumstances - all the time.
I think I understand what you're saying, but I don't see it as such extremes of either/or, or always/never. Both things are happening at the same time.

Quote:
Now, we're telling poor people they're obese because lots of external forces are banding together to keep them that way.
I would hope that we are telling poor people that it's PART of the story - is it 100% under the control of the person? Maybe food purchasing is - if you can get to a store, and if the food's there.

Quote:
There is just no way that is entirely true. Plenty of things in your life are within your zone of control. For example, the food you purchase at the supermarket is within your zone of control. Even if you're on food stamps, or a fixed income, or are broke, you can buy healthy food - all the time. I know this because I experience with it.
Yes, I agree with that too, IF you know what food is healthy. When my own family was poor growing up, my parents would buy cheap filling starches and cut down on proteins and good fats. My parents didn't know about proportions of protein or any of that. They did not buy sodas or boxed cereals or treats. We lived on reconstituted dried milk, outlet store white bread, margarine, potatoes, oatmeal, ground beef, canned veg and spam. a disaster for me personally. And they thought they were providing healthy meals.

Quote:
Why is that not a positive message? How can telling people that something is within their control NOT be helpful?
that IS helpful, and boy do we need it! But there is a difference between saying something concrete like "you can buy healthful things at the store even when broke," versus something like "if you are poor and fat, it's because of your choices." Sorry if I misread your post.
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