240 lb Woman Worries About Going Hungry

Desh said:
No you are missig the point entirely!

You get paid and then you pay the bills. Elec ,gas ,water ,rent, take out bus fair , buy the kids some new shoes at Kmart and look at what you have left after all that. Then you go to the store and buy enough with what is left to last the whole week. Each meal has to be really fucking cheap and enough to feed everyone.


It kills me just how hard it is for peopel to REALLY understand what it is like to be poor.


Some people just can't get it I guess?
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Yes Desh, but many of the poor will not prepare their own food, even if they have the means to do it (a kitchen).
They could eat better and cheaper if they prepare it .

Hence my lazy comments.
 
We've all got anecdotal stories about being poor once, and pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and always choosing to do the right thing, whether diet or otherwise.

The reality is, as a public policy issue, people aren't individual islands that operate in a vacuum. Broadly speaking, people need support and help to be successful and healthy.

Personal choices and personal responsibility always plays a role. But, you know what? Visit Denmark, and tell me how many obese people you see. When people have access to proper healthcare (and doctors who will harass them and educate them about diet), when people have adequate education, information, and economic opportunities, when people have adqueate and affordable child day care and significant paid time off of work, they are less likely to be stressed out. They are healthier. They are in a better frame of mind to focus on making right choices. They have a doctor who will harass them and educate them about their health. They don't live in day to day fear about whether they can find day care for their kids, a doctor for their baby. So on.
 
I wonder how many hours of TV a day the average person in denmark watches ?
Other differences and attitudes will come into play as well.
 
Desh said:
Tia when you have ten people to feed and you dont have enough money to buy enough meat to have enough protien in their diet you certainly are not spending 5 bucks on a bag of salad big enough to feed the whole family and then 5bucks on salad dressing for it.

You get the big bag of pasta the cheap ground meat and the cheap bottle of catsup.

I swear some people just refuse to understand.

Your Grandma had better cheaper food available in her time than what the poor have now. When you would have to take the bus acrossed town to the grocery store which actually has fresh salad you have to then add that cost to it.

Your grandma had local farms which supplied her mom and pop store. Now they food is produced on a mega farm and is shipped acrossed half the country and the little local store can afford it and the possible spoilage.
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I agree 100% that food of yesterday was a lot healthier than it is today. But people DO have the power to make small changes that will have much better impact on their health and lives overall and I think its important that we communicate that rather than accepting the fact that being poor will inevitably lead to obesity and health problems because its simply untrue.

Getting back to your example of the cheap pasta, instead of getting cheap ground beef (1 lb probably = ~$3), every now and then maybe they should try using a few cans of tuna instead with the pasta. Collard greens are under a dollar per pound, frozen mixed vegetables go on sale for under a dollar, potatoes and rice are inexpensive as well. People can make better choices and they need to know how to unless they want to end up with a ton of health problems.
 
Good points Tia and I also think we should not just call it enevitable.I say we force the corps to use better ingredients and not produce food which is bad for your health. I say we take parts of parks ad turn them into food growing co ops. How about even stocking ponds in parks with catchable fish people can eat. There are ways we can make it better.
 
Desh said:
Good points Tia and I also think we should not just call it enevitable.I say we force the corps to use better ingredients and not produce food which is bad for your health. I say we take parts of parks ad turn them into food growing co ops. How about even stocking ponds in parks with catchable fish people can eat. There are ways we can make it better.
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You know those houses they condemn in the inner cities and put them on a demolition list? Turn them into community gardens...
 
There are creative ways to make it better.

The right leaning people always just want to dismiss the poor as being undeserving of any concern.

That way they can sleep while they ignore starving Childern.
 
LadyT said:
two words: Rice & beans

.
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I'll add a third.... oatmeal. about 17 cents per serving. So for Desh's poor family with TEN people.... that equates to $1.70 per day for all ten.

I got to say Desh, I do love the exagerations. I thought those poor families with 8 kids were a Reagan myth?

That said, all fat people are not poor. There are plenty of middle and upper class fat people that most certainly can eat better and exercise more.

The poor can be taught to shop better and eat better as well. Because as mentioned by many on the site, there are cheap ways to eat that are also healthy for you.
 
DigitalDave said:
Rural areas just have to get to know their neighbors and work with them as much as possible. In a small town, you pretty much know everyone, at least from my experience. Neighbors are always willing to help if they can, unless your a dickhead. Then you're on your own.. lol
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Since the invention of the car, modern rural areas could hardly be called a "small town". Houses are far apart. That's why I said "suburb". There are about 5 or 6 houses on my road, I know all the people and half of them are family. But there are also a lot of isolated houses that aren't very close to other people in rural areas.
 
Superfreak said:
I'll add a third.... oatmeal. about 17 cents per serving. So for Desh's poor family with TEN people.... that equates to $1.70 per day for all ten.

I got to say Desh, I do love the exagerations. I thought those poor families with 8 kids were a Reagan myth?

That said, all fat people are not poor. There are plenty of middle and upper class fat people that most certainly can eat better and exercise more.

The poor can be taught to shop better and eat better as well. Because as mentioned by many on the site, there are cheap ways to eat that are also healthy for you.
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Oatmeal is like eating vomit. I know it's good for you, but I can't eat it. It's not the taste, it's the consistency.
 
LadyT said:
It wouldn't really be mass transit. It would be a shuttle service for a grocery store. They'd get more people in their store and they'd get money for the bus service.
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Since everyone I know around me has a car, I wouldn't know about that. But it just seems like no one would organize it. If anyone doesn't have a car they're probably the only person in for a long distance without one. Neighbors a mile away might have one, but it's pretty easy to get socially isolated from your neighbors a mile away in a rural area. "Small towns" pretty much don't exist anymore.
 
LadyT said:
two words: Rice & beans

My mother grew up pretty poor and my grandmother had to feed 5 kids while she worked a full time job, and she still managed stressed the importance of a balanced meal in South East DC. I'm nto saying its necessarily easier, but if people make a concerted effort to buy healthy foods they can. For instance, Wendy's dollar menu has a salad option. I'm not suggesting that you can feed an entire family on that every night but certainly when poorer people go out to purchase foods they should be thinking about options that are better for their health. Simply acting like they have no choice in the matter and not encouraging them to make better choices will harm all of us in the long run.
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A Wendy's salad might as well be a big bowl of french fries.
 
DigitalDave said:
I got your point Desh. They have no money so they need to find something cheap and has to fill them up. They aren't going to think clearly and make a choice based on nutritional value of the food. That's what I'm saying.
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Well, it's just interesting that so few people choose to do that. If it's such an obvious choice, then why don't any of them do it? It doesn't matter if people can if no one does, and I think that's a big problem that Libertarians refuse to realise.
 
Watermark said:
Since everyone I know around me has a car, I wouldn't know about that. But it just seems like no one would organize it. If anyone doesn't have a car they're probably the only person in for a long distance without one. Neighbors a mile away might have one, but it's pretty easy to get socially isolated from your neighbors a mile away in a rural area. "Small towns" pretty much don't exist anymore.
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In a farming area, if people have to walk, would see their neighbors more often than those that live next door. Farmers are almost always outside, and they talk to one another. We baled hay together on my Aunt's farm with a bunch of the neighbors, and she lived isolated down in a little valley. Now if someone was poor and isolated out there, they might as well share crop. Allow the neighbors to use their land. You have to have interaction in that kind of setting or things won't get done.
 
I mean, you either stick your head on the ground and blame the stupid poor people, or you devise someway to fix the problem. Either way, it doesn't effect me.
 
DigitalDave said:
In a farming area, if people have to walk, would see their neighbors more often than those that live next door. Farmers are almost always outside, and they talk to one another. We baled hay together on my Aunt's farm with a bunch of the neighbors, and she lived isolated down in a little valley. Now if someone was poor and isolated out there, they might as well share crop. Allow the neighbors to use their land. You have to have interaction in that kind of setting or things won't get done.
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LOL. No one farms these day, DD. It's more efficient to work at the gas station and get paid minimum wage, and buy stuff from the huge massively subsidized agribusinesses, than to work 16 hours a day on a farm and barely even get enough to eat.
 
Watermark said:
LOL. No one farms these day, DD. It's more efficient to work at the gas station and get paid minimum wage, and buy stuff from the huge massively subsidized agribusinesses, than to work 16 hours a day on a farm and barely even get enough to eat.
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My aunt had her property farmed to make food for the local beef and diary farmers. Of course, property taxes are what made her decide to up and leave. But, her property was just sold and split into 5 different properties. It is true that local family farms are a dying breed.
 
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