pornclerk says:
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I don't know if I am really buying the whole argument that poor people are fat. Where is this information coming from? If you see a fat person who is poorly dressed, it doesn't mean they are poor necessarily. I don't recall walking into a grocery store and thinking that the healthier foods are more expensive, in fact I think they are cheaper.
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Two different points there, pc. I work for social services here, in food stamps - now being called "nutrition assistance" - and I see a
lot of overweight poor people. (There's also a difference between "poor" and "homeless", folks, but I'm seeing those terms used interchangeably on this board.) The healthy food is more expensive, certainly- it doesn't last nearly as long in the case of fresh vegetables and it's not as much "fun". I've been to the store at the same time as some of my clients, and have seen carts piled with crab legs and packages of steak, along with soda, chips, and ice cream. This is not to say all low-income households on assistance don't know how to shop or manage food money, but we (at DSS) see a lot of what some of you have been talking about-- nutritional understanding and the ability to stretch a food budget are lacking in most of our clients.
A university here is working on that- we're trying to explain nutrition, cheap and fast but healthy recipes, and how to stretch a meager amount of food benefit dollars- but it's hard to make some of the ideas stick. I know just how easy it is to buy ramen and have a quick, crappy, nutritionally empty meal rather than cook the rice and the beans. Back to the OP, though- this really is part of the problem. The "bad" food is easier and tastier, and you don't have to work for it.