poverty and obesity

[undergroundpanther]

Something I have been pondering....

It's interesting to think of the obesity/poverty/stress/size stigma and starvation/obesity issue in a bigger framework than the usual stuff you hear about the demon of obesity and the magical willpower games people play to be thin or bash fat people with....

It's worth asking questions about coorelations..I bring up some here considering the levels of depression and obsessive compulsion and other"disorders" in America,and the way obesity is linked to a reaction to starvation now that dieting since the 1960's has been popular ever notice the obesity statistics have gone up in the population ? Maybe this"obesity epidemic all began with "twiggy"?And has grown the more thin became"in" culturally..
Coincidence? I dunno but it's pretty damning evidence to me.
Did you know a 1600 calorie diet was considered a starvation level food intake in the 1940's? And most average diets focus on 1200 calorie limits nowadays.Starvation diets dip as low as 500 calories..Why is that..have people'evolved'to use less calories since the 1940's or have they been socially engineered regarding their beliefs about food and conditioned by diets and fat phobic peers to lower their own bodies calorie burning set point and hate themselves for it?? Profit soars when people are unhappy.

Could it be thin is in is a way to not only profit off misery but to keep a population irritated messed up psychologically and sick enough to not be able to bond with one another as equal human beings.just enough to reduce brainpower and dumb us down in teen years,just enough to keep us desperate,on a biochemical level so we never become a threat so the'elites' can feel secure dominating us all?
Obesity is the perfect disguise to tell ourselves we are not being slowly starved by the pursuit of this thin is in bullshit.What a scam!

How come when obesity becomes a"big problem" it's interesting to track the growth of obesity over decades into a "problem" I ask has the cult of dieting, the rates of anorexia/bulimia that hits 5 year old kids,a general fat phobia that rages on ,in a culture wide scale, due to ignorance about starvation and it's effects on the body and mind.

It's strange to note poor people are more likely to be fat,and minorities,and fat people are one last class of people besides gays and 'hillbillies' who can get stigmatized by insecure people with no severe social repercussions like racists face.All this is going on while we have an increased wealth disparity ,a government dominated by little cotton Mather puritan hypocrites wanting to take over the world,profound social inequality,..along with high rates of child abuse,violence,..we have high rates of depression and other anxiety disorders.stress etc?

Is starvation/obesity cycling of a huge amount of people who diet and yo yo again and again part of this obesity issues and a problem with our inability to deal with each other's differences harmoniously? And what makes a person want to diet to begin with? is it Vanity or is it something deeper like a fear of rejection, Fear of feeling like a disease,being treated like an object of disgust a contamination,as a 'thing' that does not deserve to exist,because it is marring a perfect thin mono-culture utopia we are all taught we must want to belong to to be worthy of love,and acceptance that the dominant wealthier class wants to pretend is superior? How much of marketing is about telling people what they should prefer and want? Is this why clothing styles and how we decorate our homes are so much ALIKE.

The feeling of rejection ,being unwanted,and the feeling of being less than human,? Isn't that the hell we all fear that really hurts a e person most? Every article I see on the evils of obesity inevitably has a picture of a faceless gut or butt,to demonstrate how disgusting fat is, this cropping reinforces a person is a disease,a sickness in a human like shame not really a person.It's the same thing if you saw only a woman's crotch and boobs in a photo..no face,no identity of who's crotch or body parts they belong to..... what is that saying on a primordial level? That women are not whole people they are nothing but objects that exist to be fucked & used Both cropped pictures remove the person hood of the person in the picture rendering them into objects not really people...
Coincidence?

I would love to see a study done on correlations between calorie intake,social discrimination/stigmas/class ism/poverty and depression or obsessive compulsive disorders /nutrition deficiencies,pollution(body carrying capacity).
See how much of this epidemic of mental illness is really undetected starvation for nutrients,slow poisoning by chemicals in our environment, poverty and the effects of stigma created in sick hierarchical cultures that are not socially or otherwise more egalitarian and accepting of differences in people's bodies or of who they are..



I have some articles here from different writers,
Talking about poverty obesity starvation etc.
Taken together an interesting correlation occurs.

what happens to people when people get too hungry
http://jaoii.lunarpages.com/starve.html

Obesity and starvation at the same time? Is it possible?
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/uom-oid0...
http://www.undp.org/fojam/obesity_speech.htm

Cognitive disconnect between obesity and starvation?
http://www.techcentralstation.com/113004E.html

Thin: a cultural brownie point to be gotten at any cost?
http://h05.cgpublisher.com/proposals/190/index_html

Diet industry and the numbers
http://www.overcomingovereating.com/campaign.html

Obesity and diet relapse
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-04132001 -

joke...

The History of Medicine 2000 BC
Here, eat this root.

1000 BC
That root is heathen.
Here, say this prayer.

1805 AD
That prayer is superstition.
Here, drink this potion.

1940 AD
That potion is snake oil.
Here, swallow this pill.

1985 AD
That pill is ineffective.
Here, take this antibiotic.

2000 AD
That antibiotic doesn't work
anymore. Here, eat this root.
— — Anonymous

[adamd]

1. obesity/poverty link

A lot of the obesity/poverty link is prima facie.

If you're poor, you can't afford the nice, expensive food. You can't afford to pay $10 a plate to feed your family often, if ever. Organic foods or even more healty foods are more expensive and end up priced out of the impovershed budget.

Look at what kind of food is available on the cheap. Fast food, which we all pretty well know how bad that is, and heavily processed foods. Those processed foods (things such as frozen meals, box meals like mac & cheese or hamburger helper, etc.) are full of sodium, fats, oils, and all kinds of artificial preservatives. Additionally, most of that stuff comes with very little or no vegetables or fruit. And if you do get canned, and some frozen, vegetables...you run into the same problem. A number of those artificial preservatives are linked to metabolism problems, nutrition deficiencies (they often leech vitamins out of the food), depression, temporary lethargy, and so forth. These in turn reduce the body's willingness to exercise.

You can even look at the cheapest meat for most people...hamburger. This is not healthy stuff to eat all the time. It's full of fat. And the only reason it's that cheap is because the beef industry lobbies for massive subsidies from the federal government. Absent those subsidies, a pound of hamburger would cost $7...about what you pay for unsubsidized organic beef. Hamburger provides a cheap and filling meal for a family, even cheaper than vegetables. So you end up having poor people eating a lot of meat and not enough vegetables.

Add to that the constant inundation of advertisement for candy, beef, dairy, and fast food. It doesn't matter how you build a food pyramid, it doesn't compete against the billions spent on advertising this other stuff.

People should be consuming mostly whole grain carbs (Atkins is a terrible diet on the body) and vegetables. Add to that lesser portions of fruit (there is sugar in it, after all), dairy, and meat.

[RazzleCat]

2. amad got it right

If you look at the average food stamp allotment you will discover that you can't eat cheep healthy food. Compound into the cost factor that going to a farmers market is both most likely not available (they are very rarely located in side of government housing, or in poorer neighborhoods), and they don't take food stamps. So if you end up on food stamps you will find yourself making lots of starch centered meals. Such as Mac n' Cheese, pancakes, potato's, and rice. I was on the stamps for over a year and found that by the end of the month I was lucky to be able to afford any sort of fresh veggie or fruit.

[Gormy Cuss]

4. Some states encourage food stamps/voucher use at farmers' markets

Massachusetts used to have a program that issued farmers' market vouchers and it aggressively tried to place farmers' markets nearer to low-income communities. California has some sort of voucher program too. That doesn't address the lack of farmers' markets in the poorest neighborhoods, nor the availability of affordable fresh fruits and vegetables in winter. There are many urban low-income neighborhoods where the local stores are really in the business of selling liquor and cigarettes with only enough groceries to qualify as a market. Those types of shops can't be bothered to stock perishables. It'd be a great step forward if they stocked frozen veggies for Pete's sake. There are rural areas where the only market gets a produce delivery once a week and the 'fresh' fruits and veggies are expensive and not so fresh.

People who haven't been around poverty don't consider the other barriers to good food consumption. In addition to poor choices at the grocery, there's the simply stocking of a kitchen to consider. A working oven or reliable refrigerator/freezer isn't a given, nor are sufficient pots and pans to cook. A microwave can be had for about $50, and popping those ready made treats into the microwave sure cuts a lot of time and effort out of meal preparation.

A basic cookbook is also an item lacking in some homes. If the food didn't come in a box with instructions, good luck. Cooking fresh veggies is daunting to some people who weren't raised in homes where it was done. I could go on, but it's probably preaching to the choir here.

[Biased Liberal Media]

3. I was watching CSPAN

and there was a House session going on about some bill (can't remember what), well there was a Democratic House Rep talking about fixing poverty and the Republican who was against the bill was talking about the epidemic of obesity and poverty "isn't an issue when we have obesity problems". Talk about moran. The Dem house Rep told him about how obesity has been caused by poverty due to lack of education on food choices and low income. I thought, THANK YOU!!!