vanblah

Same reason.

It doesn't take a "lot" of food to make someone fat; just bad food and not enough exercise. Forget expensive fast food; all processed foods are the same--they all contain fat, corn syrup solids, HFC or tons of salt (if not ALL of the above). It has very little ... if anything at all ... to do with the socioeconomic status.

Can you clarify what you mean by "poor" and "fat"? I'm guessing you're not talking extreme or abject poverty nor morbid obesity here.

Telluride

I'd say that the person is complacent, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

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SSJTWIZTA

I live in a trailer park and dont even have a car, im pretty sure i qualify as poor, and im pretty damn thin...dont stereotype us. :P

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squeeeb

i don't mean to sterotype at all...but let me ask you...how many others living in that trailer park are really overweight?

you guess correctly. by "poor" i mean in debt, can't afford new clothes, living below the poverty line, living without heat, in a rundown house or trailer... by "fat" i mean 30+ pounds overweight up to really really really obese

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Menoman

I think I can clear this up.



lolololol poor people ARE fat aren't they hahaahaha

damn fatties

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blazhead

That the true statement of the year. Most poor people are lazy and do not want to work, they can get govt food all day long but they sell that for half of what it cost and go buy McDonalds

Supple Cow

I think another part of the equation is that you might not be poor and staying poor. Being upwardly mobile sort of takes you out of the control group when we're trying to consider a correlation between long-term poverty and poor nutrition leading to being overweight. I grew up poor and am some place between poor and not quite poor anymore now. I was never fat, but then I don't consider myself to be your average poor person. I always considered myself to be upwardly mobile. Some people (a lot of the people who stay poor) don't tend to have that attitude. If you could account for the upwardly mobile people, I bet the correlation between poor and fat would be even stronger.

safronlove

Weight gain or over weight is not related to poorness but it is related generic DNA and mental state of mind, daily activities, age factor etc..

lurkette

Care to back up a bigoted stereotype with any data?

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Supple Cow

Okay, I kind of think you're missing the point of the thread. Obviously DNA, other biological factors, and self control are directly involved in causation. But I think there's something to the correlation. That doesn't mean if you're poor, you are then also fat. It just means that maybe there is some connection. That does not necessarily mean cause and effect.

Baraka_Guru

Actually Safronlove has a point. The question shouldn't be, why are poor people fat? but instead, what contributes to obesity in poor people? Another valid question (and interesting conversation) is, what contributes to obesity in rich people? But this last question is not a part of this thread. To put things into perspective consider the following data:


Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: National Center for Health Statistics. “National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.” 2002. (Table 70).

I've crunched some numbers for you for clarity:

First column: overweight %
Second column: obese %

Less than $20,000 30% 24%
$20,000 or more 35% 21%
$20,000 - $34,999 35% 23%
$35,000 - $54,999 35% 24%
$55,000 - $74,999 36% 23%
$75,000 or more 37% 18%

Isn't it interesting? Weight problems are pretty similarly distributed across income levels here. I know this data is six years old, but I doubt the percentages have changed drastically in that time.

So, yes, there is some connection between being both fat and poor, the specifics of which might be different than those causing weight problems in rich people. For example, I would suggest the following are somewhat unique in poor people: lack of free time, no money for gym memberships and other cost-bearing exercise activities, lack of access to health-care providers, etc. And I'm sure poor food choices is one as well, but the reasons are varied, I'm sure: too tired, too depressed, lack of education, etc. These factors make junk food look more appealing, don't they? So what about the rich people?

I think many of us don't tend to see many fat rich people mainly because we don't see many rich people, period. *Tongue stuck firmly in cheek* I can't say my daily activities and hangouts allow me rub elbows with the rich too much. I think they're too busy milling about in the upper-class societies and gated communities. Poor people are more visible because they don't magically transport themselves from floor 32 of the office tower to their suburban monster house via shiny, rapid BMWs and Lexus (Lexi?).

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Supple Cow

Well I guess that sort of ends the thead then, doesn't it?

All I was getting at was that you can't disprove a generalization by saying "I'm in that group and I'm not that way" the same way you can't really prove a generalization by pointing out a small number of non-random examples.

Maybe we should be talking about all of the borderline offensive things people said before somebody found a chart and threw some numbers up here. Aw, heck, I'm sure there are still a handful of people who are going to argue vehemently that those numbers don't hold any water.

Baraka_Guru

Supple Cow, if you had taken the time to think about what I posted, you would find that it was supportive of both your and safronlove's posts. It points out that the "poor correlation" isn't a nebulous "fat/poor connection" but real factors that are likely affecting that group (eg. specific activities, state of mind, etc.) At the same time, it illustrates that the being poor "cause and effect" isn't necessarily true because the poor aren't the only ones who have these issues.

So, no, it doesn't end the thread but puts it into perspective: what is it about the poor that contributes to their weight issues? How does this differ from the other classes? What can be done? etc, etc.


[Nice tone, by the way. Well played. Was that retaining water pun intentional or no? ]

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

JumpinJesus

We could put up all the charts and graphs and neat statistical crunches to try to determine why a certain group of people are obese and yada yada yada.

Leave it to us to overthink a simple problem.

We eat food for energy. Energy in food is measured in calories. Once that energy is taken into our bodies, we convert the food energy into motion. Any excess of energy is stored in our bodies as fat. If we take in more calories than we use, we get fat.

It doesn't matter if we have a slow metabolism, genetic predispositions for obesity, fat cousins, food allergies, whatever. The same thing is still true: if we take in more calories than we use, we get fat.

It doesn't matter if we're rich, poor, middle class, marxist, capitalist, socialist, etc. The same thing is still true: if we take in more calories than we use, we get fat.

It doesn't matter if we eat nothing but twinkies and zingers or apples and oranges, the same thing is still true: if we take in more calories than we use, we get fat.

The only real question is: how dumb do you have to be to not understand this?

It's not the economy, stupid; it's science.

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Supple Cow

Unintentional, I assure you.

Cynthetiq

sure you can say science, economic classes... but that only works in the USA or better yet, places where poor aren't poor compared to the rest of the world's poor.

Black Eyed Peas singer Apl did a song called the Apl Song. When I was in Manila just after Katrina hit, that's the OP is what people asked me, "How come your poor people in the US are fat?" They could not understand it at all. We have "poor" people who have cable TV, microwaves, a building over their heads, where in contrast, many poor in India or the Philippines live in shantys or mud huts, those that happen to have a TV steal electricity and cable signal.



From Time Magazine

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Menoman

its probably more because poor people look like trash normally, and dont take care of themselves, therefore they are more memorable than the fat people who aren't poor and take care of themselves.

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Plan9

Poor Americans are fat. This is not the mold for the world.

I've seen midget skeletons with burnt skin in Afghanistan. Might call them kids.

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