"An overlooked connection between obesity and class, I believe, stems from varying quantity of personal enjoyment and anticipation of enjoyment.When other aspects of your life aren't going to well, that McFlurry is an awesome pick-me-up. Trust me, I know. I almost hit 300 pounds (298 at the height of my glory) while I was doing the entry work of becoming a writer--spend long hours alone in the library at Howard, writing pieces for 10 cents a word, coming to New York and writing editors who didn't know me from the next wannabee, losing three different writing jobs. I had years when I grossed five figures, years when I worked as a food delivery boy, and years when Samori's pre-school bill was higher than my earnings.
"It is one thing for a successful, financially comfortable, socially accepted and respected person who has multiple things happening every day that are pleasurable (golf, driving a nice car, nice home, stylish clothing, success at work, interesting social events, kids doing well, planning vacations, etc) to take just one pleasurable aspect of life (overeating) and sacrifice some of that pleasure for the good result of losing weight.
"Now, for people struggling financially and socially, trying to just get through the day and keep their lives together to varying degrees...their meals are often the only consistently happy and pleasurable events they can count on each day.
"Obviously, a generalization. But, if one gets up and faces a day with a tedious and unfulfilling job, not much money to spend on anything but necessities, and no "fun" things ahead, how much more difficult it is for that person to also think ahead to a day of denying themselves the pleasure of their mealtimes...."
I gave away my 20s, in large measure, to writing and to my kid. I don't regret that. Everything--from a beautiful son to beautiful commenters--I have now stems from those choices. Still, it was not a fun time. How did I get over? Leaving aside the support of my family, I have two words for you--Breyer's and Entenmann's. It sounds disgusting when I write it. But that little a'la mode pick-me-up made things a little more bearable.
Now, here's the thing. I paid some dues, but I was not living in the PJs. I worried about eviction sometimes, but my parents always had my back. We were poor--but we were creative class poor.Kenyatta and I had chosen our paths. This was what we wanted, even if we didn't know what it would cost. And finally once I saw some return, I needed that pick-me-up a lot less, and sort of like paying old debt, I started shrinking back to the old me. Very slowly, I might add. But, by the ghost of Gabriel Prosser, I'm approaching the self I knew before this odyssey began.
What about people who are born into hardship? Who are born into stress and born into eating as a way of ameliorating that stress? Who grow up in an environment where mostly everyone else does the same? And then this gets conflated with old ideas about food and money--the notion that "All You Can Eat" is a good thing.
There is a culture to being fat, and putting fresh veggies in the hood isn't enough to counter it. The culture is complicated--and its more American than it is hood. I would encourage people to think about all the negative ways we cope. The upper-class may not be fat, but in my experience, they know their way around the tequila bottle.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
This really jibes with a NYT article that ran a couple of years ago about the disastrously high rates of chronic diabetes in poor communities.
Diabetics not adequately controlling their diets ad playing Russian roulette with blindness and amputations, to mention two likely outcomes. Any number of people were quoted to the effect that they just couldn't face their already difficult lives without big doses of candy and other sugar-laden rewards, as well as foods that should be avoided because they raise blood glucose to unacceptable levels.
There is such classism when it comes to judging how people cope with stress. This month's Marie Claire actually had a full article about how, you`ll never believe it, but professional women in their 20's and 30's smoke pot on occasion to relieve the stress of work. The writer was quick to point out that these women wear stilletos and arent fat and gross like you`d assume someone who smokes pot would be (right). So, women drinking heavily or taking valium or dieting themselves down to exoskeletons wouldnt surprise Marie Claire's readers, but light up a J and you're bucking class/gender expectations all around.
If its not clear I think the article was making a pretty clear statement that smoking pot is cool unless it makes you fat which is gross and just for poor people who have no brains and dont care about how they look.
Let the church say amen. On point observation T-NC.
Actually, according to certain NFL backs, dropping tequila can lead to shocking weight loss.
Food and class? Definitely an interesting topic. There is this great story about the young Indian who first comes to the US and his first big surprise was that the poor are all fat. It was heaven on earth for somebody from India.
As we have a progressive tax system - the rich pay more than the poor as a percentage of their income to support society. We think that is fair because they have so much and it hurts them less to help others in need than if somebody is poor himself. Liberals generally want to see more of that. Conservatives warn that if this goes too far - the poor will eventually suffer too.
But is there not somebody out there who is even poorer than our poor? Isn't there somebody out there who would consider our poor to be rich and powerful compared to them. Isn't there somebody out there, in fact billions, who are at the mercy of the poorest poor? Who envy their freedom and their opportunities? Our fat poor (or poor fat) people have TVs and microwaves and sometimes even cars?
Now - there is always somebody richer and poorer than you. How are we to treat those above and below - no matter where we find ourselves in? Is food a personal choice? Is food a personal choice when it involves another being (aka person)? I believe we have the right to put in our mouths what we please and as much of it as we want - but I do not believe in the right to derive what we want how we want. Neither the rich nor the poor should have that right.
not sure if this crosses the line from thread-jackin to outright troll-ing but either way is off topic.
Then why do you do it?
I imagine much this dude says on this blog going forward is going to be viewed through the prism of his incoherent, arrogant parade of rape apologia yesterday.
While I agree with G.D. that a lot of people will now label me a child rapist for a long time here - I do not agree that I am apologizing and hence promoting rape or sex with minors. I find this insulting on many levels but also very educational and interesting. Still - I am looking forward to a discussion about words vs thoughts vs action in the near future - especially in the context of prevention vs treatment.
"As we have a progressive tax system - the rich pay more than the poor as a percentage of their income to support society."
I believe this is incorrect. The rich pay more *income* tax. But if you include *payroll* taxes, which are regressive, overall I think the figure I've seen is rich and poor pay ~30% of income in taxes.
farmgirl,
You right. But some will claim that having a logarithmic tax system and not a nominal flat-rate is progressive enough in itself. 30% of a lot differs from 30% from much less.
The point here is that rich and poor have the same psychological set ups, they are of the same animal species, but live in different environments. Clearly your motivation to be healthy and attractive can increase "by itself" when you do not have to worry about basics. Anyone who was poor but strikes it rich can experience this. But it goes both ways as I often believe. And only because this is the case does not mean that poor cannot be healthy. It just has to happen by yourself and not itself.
But I agree that obesity per se is not the worst problem we have. Compared to poorer nations it is a luxury in fact. Even if obesity reduced our life-expectancy for the first time in decades - we would still live much longer than most humans before us. Emotionally, obeseity is not about health but about looks and what other people think? What it comes down to really is not survival fear but fear to live? I understand why obese people feel needlessly shamed when they get dirty looks or claims. The question is not: is it shameful to think that obese people look unhealthy? I rather think the question is: do obese people feel that they are ok? I imagine scolding somebody who already feels bad about oneself and that is not cool but tragic. But can we talk of real victims here who are somehow forced against their will?
I think it can only help us all to realize that there are indeed real victims involved in our food. People speak badly of those poorest of the poor. They don't even look at them so below are they. I believe that as long as that situation and willful ignorance prevails there will be no peace on earth. Not wanting to be involved in that can motivate you, even if you are poor, to become more conscious of your food. But it won't happen all by itself.
Thank you for bringing this up. Orwell made the same point back in the 30s, but it's very easy to forget.
I'm used to the idea that food is love and food is safety and food is how you know whatever's wrong is going to be okay.
And yet I notice that I still expect it to come from the stove, not the box or the place down the street. Cheap meat cooked too long, canned vegetables boiled, corn bread and biscuits, rice or potatoes with butter piled on, cake and pudding and gelatin salads are what I remember falling into. Switching the vegetables to fresh and microwaved is all I'd really change to get from 1969 to 2009.
In my grandmother's house, and my mother-in-law's as well, the cooking was a strong way of keeping fear and sorrow at bay. It was also the economic equivalent of a half-time job, adding to the fatigue at the end of the day but making the household expenses far easier to manage. Entenmann's and Breyer's showed up for major celebrations, but were considered out of reach the rest of the time.
How does that difference between cooked and bought fit into the puzzle. Is it generations? The fact that we're rich enough now as a society to have McFlurries on every corner? Or some kind of cultural divide that fits the word "class"?
I only know that when I bring dinner home in a box, I think it's a sign that fatigue is winning and I'm losing ground. (I do it often, of course.)
Dinner in a box is a concession, while going out is still living the high life (even when you know you shouldn't be putting it on the credit card). It's a weird thing, psychologically, isn't it?
that mcdonald's on every corner idea isn't that big an exaggeration. in the whole US you're never more than 145 miles from one. here's a map of mcdonald's in the US...
http://www.good.is/post/map-of-every-mcdonalds-in-the-country/
Fallows has his A-game rolling (we gotta talk some McCaughey in the open thread I think). I do agree with a lot of the thesis, but I'd also say that marketing plays a big role in obesity. The companies that market the most typically have the fattiest food. Generally speaking, people don't like eating to be an adventure and they'll go with what's safe. There are still people (probably even most people) that don't know that there is cooked sushi, or even what raw sushi tastes like. That's just an example, but I think it's a fair one. I've never seen an add for anything like sushi
this is an interesting theory, but wouldn't it imply that we have it harder now than our parents and grandparents did? that may be the case if you're an auto worker in detroit, but not if you're working class black folk. in that case, wouldn't increassing obesity, or substance abuse, be more about the crumblings of various support mechanisms?
Actually I don't think Black people have ever eaten particularly healthy. When you look at how our eating habits have changed from our grandparents, it's really just that the actual unhealthy food has changed from unspeakable pig parts, to high fructose corn syrup.
However, at one time, they were probably eating vegetables they picked fresh themselves. When it came to meat, yes, they ate the cheapest parts of the pig. But think about foods like collard greens and sweet potatoes, staples of soul food cooking. Before you add the hamhock to the greens and all the sugar and butter to the sweet potatoes, those are two of the healthiest veggies in your garden.
And JR, I think the lack of support mechanisms today might have something to do with added stress.
Black people (and white people) in rural areas also had more incentive and more safe places to exercise or do physical work. You were burning off that sugar on your sweet potatoes.
Not necessarily. For one thing, black folks in the country used to have fresh veggies just by picking them. Yes, they used to eat the cheapest parts of the pig, because that's what they could afford. But think about how healthy (on their own, before you add stuff like fat and sugar) some of the staples of soul food cooking are: collard greens, sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas. Those three items include serious vitamins, minerals and fiber (even more so if you're eating the fresh!), and are naturally low-fat.
Sorry about the similar posts. When I wrote my first response, I got an error message and the comment didn't appear, so I re-wrote it.
"Actually I don't think Black people have ever eaten particularly healthy." Those who use broad brushes usually paint ugly pictures.
The "original Alice Waters (of natural food/Chez Panisse fame)" was a Black woman named Edna Lewis. Google her and find out that Ms. Edna was a terrific writer and superb chef. Read Zora Neale Hurston's books and stories and savor her descriptions of delicious (and we now know healthy) meals.
My mother, a Black woman from Texas, started cooking her greens with smoked turkey over 30 years ago. My sister, a Black woman from NYC, was on the front page of USA Today advocating natural and organic food almost 20 years ago. My son, a Black man, works at one of the largest natural food co-ops in the country and is a wonderful vegetarian cook (who also on occassion eats meat.) My husband, a Black man from Arkansas, hasn't eaten pork or beef for 40 years.
These are just my own personal examples. Over my lifetime I have met many, many Black people--rich, poor and in-between, who eat all kinds of food, good and bad. Let's leave the stereotypes at the door.
You don't really think that I meant that all black people, without exception, eat/ate unhealthy do you?
Lack of support mechanisms might factor in, but I'd guess that one big one is now the incredible cheapness of the crappiest kinds of food. If you're eating potato chips and soda, you can be overweight and still malnourished. If you have a limited amount of money to spend, and you really want the relief/pleasure of sugar and/or fat, it's easy to buy those and skip other things. They're also ready-to-eat, so you don't have to spend the time and energy preparing them, which can also feel like a treat...
In strict economic terms, are working-class black folk better off now? My impression is that in terms of real dollars, once upon a time, IF you could get a decent job (such as auto worker, or another manufacturing job, and I know that's a big if), a family could lead a middle-class life on one salary. Now that is really difficult to do because of the tremendous rise in the costs of housing and health care.
This is not to diminish the hardship or parents or grandparents.
However, as others in the thread have already pointed out, a lot probably has to do with the type of food available to poor people has changed, in large part because of specific government policy in the late 60s/70s with regard to agriculture, and food processing and marketing to do something with that surplus (corn syrup).
@ poly and mr. s,
none of this is mutually exclusive. my point is that all those factors (economic hardship, racism and other social pressures, kids who can walk into any corner store and buy a twenty-five cent snack cake... ) become much harder to deal with without an intact nuclear family, close relatives near by, and neighbors who know and care about you. the institutions that developed in their place largely function as impersonal government bureacracies. and bureacracies can do many things well, but keeping people thin is not one of them.
Sorry, in re-reading my post I realize that I minimized the lack of support mechanisms more than I meant to. On the other hand, I'm not sure how much the "intact nuclear family, close relatives near by, and neighbors who know and care about you" have changed in the time that obesity has become so much more common, say since the seventies or eighties. Obviously it's changed some, and I wouldn't claim to know in any precise way how much. But given that humans are humans, I guess my intuition would be that a fundamental change in the cost, availability and nutrition of food is the more likely to have changed in that time?
Jim Harrison often includes this line in his novellas and essays: Only in the Midwest is overeating considered an act of heroism. (In his memoir, he attributed this line to his buddy Jack Nicholson, but in any event it's pretty funny.) There are all kinds of impulses, circumstances, and customs that can cause overeating and obesity to be normal in certain populations. TNC's use of Breyer's as a means of feeling good amidst hard times is one example, but there's also addiction, depression, competition, prestige, and so much more.
On the other hand, no matter what the impusle is, many of us do a pretty good job of enabling ourselves and each other to eat way more than necessary. I've never understood how the families of 600-pound shut-ins——the "forklift" cases who end up on Maury——can act so bewildered about what to do with their morbidly obese loved one whose fat rolls need to be swabbed with towels wrapped around broom handles, yet every week they drive off to Safeway and bring home crates of eggs and bacon, the gallons of ice cream, the vast quantities of ground beef, and so on.
Co-sign those McFlurries being awesome sauce. Don't sleep!
What about office work? In the old days, working class people did heavy physical labor and most likely walked everywhere they went. (If they did ride in a wagon, they probably had to take care of the horse afterwards.) Now a lot of low-wage work isn't very physical and doesn't burn off hundreds of calories a day. And people drive, or ride the bus.
I also sometimes wonder about adult female obesity and small families. In the days when women had 4-5 kids and breastfed them, weren't they eating a lot of calories that went into someone's body other than theirs?
Add in the fact that a lot of people now expect dinner every night (and sometimes lunch) to look like what used to be Sunday dinner only. Being relatively prosperous makes this possible.
I think there's a related effect. My understanding is that historically, being fat was seen as being a sign of wealth, because you had enough to eat and didn't have to work so hard you burned it off. Ergo, it's hard for the poor to be fat, but the rich could, so it was a sign of class.
In a sense, the reverse is now true. Almost everyone, including blue collar workers, have jobs that aren't that physically demanding. Meanwhile food has gotten really, really cheap. Gym memberships and the time to work out, however, are luxuries that people who are struggling can't afford. Ergo, it's hard for poor people to be thin, but the rich can, so it is a sign of class.
Obviously that's a simplification, but I find it one useful way to look at it.
Randomly related to mothers: my mom says it used to be said that you lost a tooth for every baby, because the fetus leeched calcium out of the mother's bones. It's kind of amazing that since maybe the 1950s that's changed so dramatically that it wasn't even on my radar until she said it.
Good points all, though I don't think the last one about teeth and calcium is true. Maybe if the mother had no access to anything that could restore calcium, but my grandmother is 90, had three kids, and has all her teeth.
Yeah, it's a saying, not a fact. It is true that the body will take from the mother to supply the fetus if necessary.
It came up because my mom was mentioning how you see far fewer "little old ladies" these days that are very hunched over/have extreme osteoporosis. A lot of this has to do with including more milk in our diets over the last century. Of course, there was always a range, but I think the center of the distribution has definitely shifted upwards.
In other news, many people my age have never heard "no white before Memorial Day or after Labor Day." I only ever heard it to laugh at it. I'm glad both are dead, really.
Wow, I just read some of the George Orwell book linked to in another post and just by coincidence found this:
"The most obvious sign of under-nourishment is the badness of everybody's teeth. In Lancashire you would have to look for a long time before you saw a working-class person with good natural teeth. Indeed, you see very few people with natural teeth at all, apart from the children; and even the children's teeth have a frail bluish appearance which means, I suppose, calcium deficiency."
Just a minor note, but the poor have plenty of time to work out. Most poor people don't work (and are not even looking for work). The remainder who do work rarely work more than 40-45 hours week (and many considerably less).
The poor may not have money, but they have plenty of time.
Some do, some don't. Just because you felt someone else painted with a brush too large doesn't mean that you have to as well. Some working poor people, especially ones with children, do have limited time. Just like some affluent people. But to say that "most" poor people are choosing not to work doesn't seem right to me. Although I guess that depends on what you mean by 'poor.'
this is a ridiculous generalization and I'm not even sure of your point. many "poor people" are working two to three jobs just to put that big mac on the table. problem being they're making $8/hr. plenty of "rich people" are making $300/hr, play golf half the day and have expensive memberships to fully stocked gyms.
@stacy
Is 80% "most"? 80% of the poor (29.8 million people) are not in the labor force, i.e. they are not working or even looking for work. By 'poor', I mean the US government's definition of poor.
@Wili
Not that many. Only 10% of the poor (3.9 million people) "usually" work full time.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2007.pdf
NZ -
You are perfectly entitled to post as often as you want, concerning whatever topic Mr. Coates chooses to blog about.
But if I were you, my posts would feature fewer comments about how the poor are lazy and if they worked harder, they wouldn't be poor. As soon as I starting reading this thread, I knew you were going to write a post about how the poor deserve what they get. Do you want to be predictable like that?
But if you must post in such a way, do you have to do it in such an illogical fashion? Must you paint with such a broad brush, generalizing to the point where your words get immediately discounted? After all, I like the idea of this forum having honest, decent conservative voices, so as to avoid an echo chamber effect. (And I’m trying to be relatively inoffensive here as well.)
Consider how poverty is usually determined by the federal government's federal poverty line. The federal poverty line is a joke. One can earn a salary far above it and still be forced into a very humble lifestyle. So forget the poor, talk about the "working poor", the "working class" or the "lower middle class".
Many of these people earn salaries from jobs where there is no possibility of career advancement. So no matter how hard they work, these people would find it a great challenge to ever significant improve their economic standing. If they are lucky, their employers "allow" them to work 40 hours a week or more. As you might know, many employers don't want to be forced to offer employees health insurance, so they pull every trick they can to make their employees "part-time". Of course, that doesn't stop these same employers from scheduling their workers any way they see fit. Such scheduling can come in the form of unpredictability from week to week, or just plain odd hours. Either way, the result is the same; a second job can become impossibility.
To look at it another way, do you think the people who clean public toilets for a living are paid well? (Or any other kind of work most people would characterize as performing “menial tasks”.) Or do you think that they are lazy or that it’s an easy job for fat slackers?
Don't worry though; there is still a way to totally prevent empathizing with those Americans who make up the "lower classes". Simply hold the view that they made "poor life choices". This way, when you wish to heap scorn upon them you will often be right and it will be harder for people to disagree with you. I mean, I still feel empathy for some (but not all) Americans who do end up economically challenged through bad life choices…..but you don't have to.
Nuada, the idea of the hardworking poor person is a persistent myth. I'm simply doing my part to dispel that myth.
I'm not sure what you consider illogical about my posts. All I did was cite facts. You claim I generalize, but I did nothing of the sort. I specifically stated that *most* of the poor don't work, and the rest *rarely* work hard. I even cited a source to prove it.
I'm not sure what you mean by "humble", but so what? I'm responding to a post about the poor. Sorry for using the standard meaning of the term. By the way, you should read about the "humble" lifestyle lived by the poor.
http://www.heritage.org/research/welfare/bg1713.cfm
Being unable to work full time was a problem for 3% of the poor (1.1 million people). See the source I previously cited.
Why don't you actually do some research before commenting further? The government collects all sorts of interesting data, and a lot of it is publicly available. Some of it is inconvenient. But no worries, you can simply call the data you dislike "illogical" and "predictable" and then ignore it.
There is a culture to being fat, and putting fresh veggies in the hood isn't enough to counter it. The culture is complicated--and its more American than it is hood. I would encourage people to think about all the negative ways we cope. The upper-class may not be fat, but in my experience, they know their way around the tequila bottle.
Good Lord but that's a lot said - and said well - in one paragaph!
As for the culture being complicated, let me just add that it doesn't help that we've adopted an agricultural policy that subsidized the production of produce that can be turned into cheap, sugary additives. I started paying attention to how just how many things on our supermarket shelves have high-fructose corn syrup added to them and it blew my mind. And then I noticed just how much cheaper those products were than healthier alternative to fruit and vegetbales. We may have a cultural issue with food in this country, but our government has become a gross enabler.
Another f'rinstance that reinforces thsi point is my health care benefits. They are pretty solid overall, BUT I wanted to go see a nutritionist a year ago figuring that better dietary advice would help me to lose weight and thus become healthier in the long run. But guess what? That's not covered in my plan. I marvel at how counterintuitive we can be sometimes.
As for alcohol, well, I've come to believe that addiction is the great social leveller for the human race.
Regarding corn syrup--I was looking for canned cherries in the grocery store recently, and I found out that maraschino/"salad" cherries in corn syrup were actually cheaper than ordinary cherries canned in water.
When a substance gets cheaper than water, you know something's wrong.
I would bet this is more of a matter of economy of scale - it isn't that the corn syrup is cheaper than water, it's that cherries in syrup are in much higher demand than cherries in water, and therefore the plants producing cherries in syrup can get their cost per can down lower.
I'm not so sure on that. I cook at home a lot, and if I make food in bulk, then freeze it, it's still a lot cheaper than the pre-packaged stuff. Pre made health food is more pricey, for sure. But if I buy raw ingredients and make my own food, I'm saving money and eating better.
On the other hand, I do shop at costco. If I were to buy in local groceries, your point about costs might hold, or prices might become equal.
It's also a cost in time and storage capacity, though. You have to have the leisure time to make food in bulk and enough room in your freezer to store it.
Hahah. Leisure time? No. I have that other kind of free time. It's called underemployment. And I'm eating better now than I was when I was employed full time.
I doubt even when I'm working full time that taking 4 or 5 hours out of my week to cook is something that people who're poorer than me can't do just as well. As for room in my freezer? Yeah, I have that. I store food in recycled chinese take out and yogurt containers, as well as reusable cheap ziplock containers. One meal = 3 cups of food. I stretch things by using 1 cup rice, 2 cups whatever I just made.
I can almost always eat cheaper and better than pre-packaged food, and all told, I only spend a few more hours a week cooking. I doubt the average life of a fast food fan is so busy that they can't spare the time.
I don't think the point of the post was for us all to parade our virtue in our food habits compared to the poor shlubs who don't seem to understand that all it takes is a little effort.
Too late!
Tequila? New-Yorker-published-Harlem-resident-said-what?
The upper-middle-class and wealthy people I know who use alcohol in the way you describe using food as a substance here--and they do, because they can't afford to get fat because thin is a marker of class--use single-malt. Except the self-consciously Hispanic, who drink Patron.
And yeah, you're right on point here. When we were broke and struggling, I didn't eat (my childhood included a lot of government cheese and scanty home-cooked meals) and my wife, who grew up middle class, gained 50 pounds. Now that things are more stable, we eat and (oddly enough given height disparities) weigh roughly the same.
Better to be a rich country and have to worry about our poor people being too fat, than to be a poor country and have to worry about our poor people dying from famine. Obesity is the better problem to have.
Not saying that to be complacent, just to put this in perspective.
What you're missing here is the common factor of malnutrition. People can be obese and suffer from the same lack of necessary vitamins and minerals as people dying from famine because the foods they eat are nutritionally deficient.
I think there's a disconnect going on here where fat people are given more attention because they stand out.
I live in a fairly mixed neighborhood in NY. Most people here are relatively fit, and trust me, Dominican food is not low cal by any measure. But we've also got parks and ball fields.
In some ways, a morning workout is becoming my drug of choice. I feel a lot better when I work out.
I make myself go to yoga about twice a week. The reason for that is the endorphin buzz after class. I feel like I'm a foot taller. Early middle-age (I just turned 39) has forced me to recognize the need to get fitter, but it's the buzz that keeps me coming back.
Argh!! I just turned 41! Early middle age! Bite your tongue. I will now go to the gym and run three miles.
There's really nothing like an endorphin buzz with an added caffeine buzz for feeling good during the day.
Dude, you are trolling and thread-jackin here.
But since we are it - poor crack junkies also tend to be skinnier than the food addicts. I believe that being able to balance your drugs is a very important aspect of modern life. Be it alcohol, coffee, cigarettes, pain killers, cocaine, marijuana or food. It is usually when we get accustomed to only one way of finding relieve that we overdo it and the golden principle of nothing in excess finds its end?
The rich can usually afford more active and diverse distractions than the poor and are helped that way to no only smoke, not only drink or not only eat etc? I also believe that the existential angst of the rich feels different than for the poor. If your main fear was that you are getting old and ugly it would feel differently from the fear of being able to to sustain and feed your family. Food then becomes the cheapest and best drug. What I do not quite understand is the middle-class - why the middle class is so hung up on food?
And I stand by my comment that we should have the right to consume what we want but that we should not have the right to derive it as we please. Food can be a personal choice. It can also not be a personal choice. As nobody is starving in the US as Dave writes - I believe the issue of ethics to be more important than those of esthetics and more health.
Sorry - this was meant as a reply to DaveinHackensack above.
Very well put, TNC. We all have our ways of coping with the issues in our lives. We all have to deal with the ghosts of our pasts, the reality of our present, & the question of our future, from the CEO to the temp clerk. And we all have our own way of getting through the day the best we can. But it seems that so often an overweight person is judged much more harshly than those who get drunk, chain smoke, or are addicted to drugs, sex, or other high-risk behaviors. Maybe because it doesn't show as much, I don't know. But I do know there's not too many a fat person who doesn't know exactly what they are 'doing to themselves' and would change if they could, but haven't found the key-yet. If you have, great. Give the ones that haven't a break from judgment & show a little understanding for their struggle-because we're all struggling in our own way, dealing with it the best we can with what we have.
I think partly this is a change in the way we see drinking and alcoholism. Have you ever read the book "Alcoholics Anonymous," the basis of the program of the same name (and all other 12 Step programs)? When I read it, I was struck by how the attitudes towards drunks then (1930s) was so much like the attitude towards fat people today: they must be stupid, lazy, immoral or crazy. They were called "dipsomaniacs" back then, too. In the decades since, I think there has been a societal change, where we now see it as an addiction and understand that it's not quite as simple as "you should be able to just stop drinking." Obviously, attitudes still vary, but in general we see it very differently.
There is a 12 Step program for overeating called Overeaters Anonymous. A lot of people, including overeaters, have never heard of it, and it never occurs to them that they might be (ab)using food the way alcoholics (ab)use alcohol... but in many ways the psychological addiction is the same, even if the physical effects are different. Not everyone who is overweight is addicted to food, but I'd guess that the ones we'd consider morbidly obese probably are.
I think it's absolutely a question of class. If you know you can splurge on a blowout $200 meal with wine when you feel like it--all made with the finest imported ingredients--it's not so much to deny yourself fattening food the rest of the week, or the month.
But if your budget is considerably more circumscribed, you can't go for the blowouts. And eating healthy every day isn't cheap, either--it's the corn for all that corn syrup that's subsidized, not arugula and grape tomatoes. And no one has ever denied that a Big Mac has the taste sensations--sweet, salty, fatty--that humankind craves. So why not treat? What else do you have?
This discussion made me think of a line from Common People, by Pulp, about how the common people "dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do." Some things are just cheaper to do, so that's what you do. Doesn't make it right; doesn't make it wrong. It is what it is.
And eating healthy every day isn't cheap
Define "cheap". How much per meal are we talking when we say "cheap"? Once we get that figured out, I'll tell you how to cook "cheap".
Cheap is relative, indeed. But a salad made out of good, dark, leafy greens, tomatoes, and cucumbers is never going to be as cheap or as filling as one made from rice or potatoes or pasta.
If we can't have a definition of "cheap" that makes sense, we can't have much of a conversation about "can one eat cheap and healthy". You can live on good quality tasty food in an urban setting on $6/day. That's still only a about a third of federal poverty level income.
And you can't live on salads anyhow.
This is getting irritating.
You seem to be consistently and majorly missing the point of the original quote and commentary. Maybe it's purposeful, in your world it seems to absolutely inconceivable that poor and middle class people have any sort of reason for being over weight. There apparently is no reason anyone else can come up with that your superself cannot solve for this issue. Since you seem to know so much I suggest you take your all encompassing knowledge to the streets and help those poor folks out instead of battling it in here with your 'their just not doing it 'right' you big dummies' attitude.
Now to get to the 'cheap' aspect you seem to know oh so much about.
Please do tell me 'oh i know how to feed a family of 4 - 2 when the nearest healthy but not affordable market is at least two buses or a bus and a train away and your are working two jobs on alternating schedules(lucky if you have another income also with alternating schedules), the closest market closes a hour after you get out of your commute (has no truly viable fresh fruits or veggies) if you actually leave work on time, leaves you time to cook a meal within 30 mins, but enough time to get your household to bed and help the kids do homework without losing sleep, (without prep on the weekend already precious time which is likely to be filled with overtime or a second job) has the belly full and is done under $25 (oh lets be really generous $40 for the week)' and please note i'm positive i'm missing factors but since you are also oh so positive you can trump and battle all of them (because apparently you have lived through this) while you do that please provide the incentive that is one of the key points of what is being discussed here for a person to do so.
Yes please tell us how to cook "cheap" because cost seems to be the issue that bothers you while other issues (social, emotional some few minor details being mentioned) are clearly being included and finally covered but no lets backtrack and nit pick on what exactly is meant by "cheap"
Now to get to the 'cheap' aspect you seem to know oh so much about. Please do tell me 'oh i know how to feed a family of 4 - 2 when the nearest healthy but not affordable market is at least two buses or a bus and a train away
OK, I live in NYC, and I can't think of any neighborhoods that have that problem. Perhaps it's different where you are. I have no idea. It was the same in LA. Heck, even South Central had groceries that were only about 15 minutes away.
What I'm talking about has nothing to do with weight. All I'm saying is that as long as you have a fridge with a working freezer, you can probably eat cheaper and better than fast food. I'm sure you can think of people who don't have the time, but don't tell me that they're the majority. I live in a minority neighborhood. I know what people who live here deal with. And I've lived on that little before myself.
I'm done here. Feel free to have the final word if it makes you feel better.
There was a recent book pointing out the extent to which processed food is scientifically designed to be really really good, and encourage you to eat more: Easy to chew. Hits the fat/salt/sugar trifecta. So if you're getting a little pleasure from a food indulgence, processed snack food is a great choice--economical and a lot of bang for your buck.
I'd like someone to tackle Fallows' correspondent about rural living--the writer lost weight just keeping the property in shape, fast food was a long drive away, but the average size was bigger. Processed food? Food as lowcost treat for a life with fewer joy notes in it?
Mr. Coates,
I do enjoy your blogs and think you definitely have a strong argument here. I would love to share it. So, brah, what's up with the deactivation of the "SHARE THIS" option?
McDonald's and the rest of them should be very pleased. This idea that eating their food is rewarding ourselves with something special is the result of decades of billions spent on advertising. It's creepy and sad to see how well it has worked. They're selling un-food and have convinced the masses that eating a meal with them is a pick-me-up or a pleasure.
Without the billions in marketing behind it, would anyone want to eat this food? Imagine the same exact food from a nameless place on your next road trip, without the name and without the packaging. There's a reason they spend all that money on commercials.
Yes. My kids were raised without tv, but the first exposure to McD's they were each charmed--simple food in the Happy Meals that is very appealing to kids. Good fries. People actually do like the taste, for the money spent.
It's not worth it to them to wait a long time for this food--there's a BK in the next town that would be ideal for a gymnastics-to-soccer quick meal but they have mysteriously slow service, so the kids would rather I bring them something. We don't have a McDs or BK in town, so the question doesn't come up often; if we had one I'm sure they would as small kids have asked for it as a takeout dinner option. But with age each found it much less appealing. (True story: A few weeks after the neighbor emoted to me about how the other preschool moms invited them to come to McDonald's, but her child would never deign to eat such unsophisticated fare so how were they to socialize, I had her son in the car. We passed a McDonald's. "Look! It's McDonald's! They have really good food," exclaimed the tyke. I brought this up and she admitted that, having tried it, he was not quite so resistant as she'd imagined.)
Also when the kids were small I'd happily endure McDonald's in exchange for the play structure to burn off carseated energy.
So, yeah, the commercials work. But it's not all they have going for them.
Well, I have to admit that, even without the marketing (which is generally absolutely lame and not very compelling to me, i.e. "I'm lovin' it!" Ick.) I still eat McDonalds once every couple of months when my wife is out of town, and on very special occasions, we'll go to Wendy's together. Times when a Wendy's meal is called for are generally for lunch after a 10K or half-marathon, or after a long bike ride (>40 mi), though the most recent Wendy's excursion was after the first ultrasound of our child, which is due in December. The point is, MODERATION! I like Double Quarter pounders, Big Deluxes, and don't even get me thinking about Whoppers, but don't eat it all the time.
Of course, I can afford a $2000 road bike and endless pairs of running shoes, and I'm in a culture in which road and mountain biking and trail running and hiking the 14,000 foot mountains an hour from my house are something almost all of my friends do. So, the culture aspect of it is certainly the biggest factor, IMO.
You wouldn't believe flak I've taken for showing up to a morning group ride with a Sausage McMuffin with Egg in my hand. The point, Jennifer, is that even if it american fast food were an unbranded product, I would still eat it and be satisfied by it. I'd actually prefer that it be unbranded, I think.
Jennifer,
Since our last encounter I am almost afraid to mention that the consumer might carry some responsibility as well. Careful - that does not mean that I do not also agree with your statement regarding McDonald's and the food industry in general. I have been fighting lobbying in this regard for many years with action and not mere words. And still - I would rather see that consumers change cooperations than the other way around and I believe we can. We just have to take responsibility into our own hands and not wait for the government or the justice system to get those bastards. If we change - they will follow!
Poverty affected me differently.
We had NO money, no, not any, we were on welfare and food stamps. This is 40 years ago, though, which may make a difference.
So we shopped with Extreme Discernment. (We had little kids.) We drank reconstituted powdered milk, which tastes horrible, by the way, because we couldn't afford liquid milk, and we forced the kids to drink it anyway. (I am glad to report that they all have good strong bones now.) We ate ground beef heavily cut with soy. (Yuck.) Lots and lots of stuff from the produce aisle, where you can get plenty of bulk for very little money. Lots of brown rice, bought in bulk. No "prepared" foods. No cookies. No soda. The nutrition dollar had to go for nutrition.
It never occurred to me to "waste" money on junk food, for myself or anyone else.
By necessity, I didn't view food as a pleasure. Most of it, frankly, was not pleasurable. Stew where you needed a microscope to find the meat. Chili which was 99% beans. "Tasteless" as our 39 year old daughter now says, and truly. (She has the money to do better, congrats, daughter. Remember who paid for your education? No? I'd be glad to remind you!)
Is this what we're reduced to now? A life and a society where all you can look forward to at the end of a hard day is a Hostess Ding-Dong or a Big Mac?
We found our rewards elsewhere. Getting toddlers out in the sun in the park and watching them run around. The feeling of the wind on your face on a windy day. Sleep, good restful sleep. A long bike ride. Looking up at the sky. A walk in the evening twilight. Love.
If TNC has really located the cause of the obesity epidemic (which is not, sad to say, confined to people who have little money) then it's a sad commentary on something or other.
My work as a grocery store cashier in grad school completely confirms this story. The people that I waited on with food stamps usually fell into two groups-- the ones who spent every dime of the stamps on the most nutritious foods they could locate or ones that tossed around the stamps on Count Chocula and frozen corn dogs. The second group always seemed to have a couple of cases of pop in the cart as well.
Juaquin-- hope you have a bit of money now to toss around on a good glass of wine and a nice plate of olives, maybe even a good steak if that's what you like. It sounds like you deserve some treats for yourself these days.
lebecka, thanks for the good wishes! We do have a bit of money now, but old habits die hard. We still are very tight with the food dollar, but that's not all bad. We still cook with raw materials (you know, "processed foods" charge you for the processing, big surprise! No!), but if you have the funds for good materials, cooking from scratch tastes better anyway. More meat in the stews these days, at least.
I still look to toddlers out in the sun (grandkids now), the wind, sleep, bike rides, walks and love for my primary gratifications at the end of the day.
It can't be all oral. There's more to life.
I still think it comes down to a lack of physical activity and a surplus of high fat/high protein animal foods. Also sugars for some people, but most middle aged people I know aren't overindulging in sweets. It's the meat and cheese, not just in Big Macs but in steaks and good deli sandwiches. Good food is also much more readily available than it was as recently as the 80s.
I think the human stomach is just sized to accomodate the amount of food you need for a physically active life, based on the assumption that plant food (including fruit and whole grain -- not just salad) will be a big part of the total food volume. Also to accomodate childbearing, for women. If we eat a smaller total volume of food than that, we get hungry. If we eat the right total volume, but of high fat stuff, then we need a lot more sustained physical activity than many office workers have time for. It's not all that mysterious.
It used to be the custom in a lot of cultures to get people partially filled up on soup or starch before bringing out the meat. Meat was the centerpiece of the meal, but it was just too expensive to let people fill up on. This may be one reason why multicourse meals sometimes help people lose weight. It seems counterintuitive, but it makes sense from the standpoint of calorie density.
Thoughtful article and a very interesting assessment.
Definitely a reason why obesity is rampant in our communities, but not the only reason, and honestly not the primary reason. It's an overgeneralization.
We both know that some in our community wear unhealthy eating as a badge of honor. To me that's more conditioning than anything else.
Hard to attribute why I saw an 11 year old girl weighing a 150lbs to coping through food. She most likely is being fed unhealthy food, with little insistence on exercise and activity. I'd go a step further and say that the added weight over time will take down her self image. I actually despise the following statement, "There is a culture to being fat, and putting fresh veggies in the hood isn't enough to counter it." It minimizes the role of healthy eating and the existence of "food deserts" in our communities, and the de-emphasis of exercise as a necessity for our people.
If every fast food joint in the hood were replaced by Food For Live Supreme and/or a Bryant Terry influenced Soul Food restaurant, sure there would still be the issues that caused the eating disorders, but it wouldn't register on the scale so prominently and people would be healthier, more alert and better equipped physically to tackle some of our more daunting problems.
That being said, you did say something that was profound in its simplicity--"And then this gets conflated with old ideas about food and money--the notion that "All You Can Eat" is a good thing."
Having witnessed church bus trips to "Home Town Buffet". That is an excellent observation. But the bottom line is, these companies have the wherewithall to market to black folks. If places that offered healthy food alternatives did the same, I'm sure we'd see some weight problems and health problems reduced.
The vodka bottle and whiskey bottle, too.
Reading your account of your 20s gives me even more respect for you TNC. And makes me realize I am a lawyer only because, in my 20s, I didn't have the balls not to be.
...putting fresh veggies in the hood isn't enough to counter it.
You are absolutely right about the emotional/coping and cultural aspects of over eating and being poor. My MIL refuses to eat out anywhere accept all-you-can-eat buffets like Golden Coral because, "you're paying too much for a little plate of food," anywhere else and only at all-you-can-eat places do you "get your money's worth."
No matter what, we can't convince her of the folly of this conviction, it's mind boggling.
But I must say, putting fresh veggies in the hood for a fair price (not half again what they cost in middle class neighborhoods) sure wouldn't hurt.
Reminds me of an article I read in Newsweek a few years ago, about why Burger King decided to go against the healthy trend with its new line of super-fatty-beefy burgers. The articles described the marketing logic thusly:
"stock the pipeline with items for these 'Super Fans': men, 18 to 34, who like football and are 'gray collar' workers, because their jobs aren't a bright spot in their lives."
I found the concept of the "gray collar" workers unbelievably depressing, but also pretty persuasive. If your job sucks, you want a big ass burger for lunch.
Here's the article: http://www.newsweek.com/id/52122
If your job sucks, you want a big ass burger for lunch.
Forgive me. My job sucked in 1967. I was a "payroll clerk" for a company which has since gone out of business, and that couldn't have happened to more deserving folks(!). My job consisted of adding up numbers on an adding machine all day (the usable computer hadn't been invented yet). A less rewarding job would be hard to create.
Did I want "a big ass burger for lunch"? Sort of, but not really. Actually this thought never occurred to me at the time. I ate a lunch I brought myself, which was sometimes a ketchup sandwich. (Yum!) I was making so little money that what I most wanted was to take some money home for my family so we could make the rent.
When did "rewards" get to add up to, and only add up to, a big fat mouthful of fat? Is this what we're living for?
Boring jobs are eternal. Walking along following a mule pulling a plow all day is pretty boring too. A lot of being a lawyer or a doctor, to be blunt, is about that boring.
When did all "rewards" for working come out to be a Big Mac?
An interesting question. Obviously, it isn't that way for everyone, and even people who use food that way have other pleasures. But on the other hand, food is easy, cheap and consistent in its purposely engineered pleasure. You know every time you pick up a Big Mac or a bag of chips of the same brand, it will taste exactly the same. You can get one regardless of the weather outside. You can eat while working, while watching the TV, while sitting at the computer. It can take the edge off boredom while doing those things.
If you go to the park, it may or may not be fun. If you go to a movie, you may or may not like it. If you go on a date, even with someone you already love, it may or may not be great. But you know exactly what you'll get when you eat a food you know. Food is a no-risk, low (immediate) cost mood lifter.
Obviously it's also a false or hollow mood lifter. But there's something about the conditioned response in there...
I understand this is personal for you, and you're right to not want to be painted with a broad brush. Not everyone who is poor and/or has a crappy job wants a big-ass burger for lunch. But I don't think BK would have made a successful marketing campaign out of it if it didn't ring true for the targeted demographic.
And I'm not sure thinking of it as a "reward" for working is correct. To me it seems more escapist than that. TNC talks about coping. I've worked some boring jobs too - I'm grateful they were lucrative enough to support myself and my family - and definitely have gotten excited by the sudden appearance of sweets or some sort of junk food as a distraction, a moment of enjoyment. For most humans, I think a jolt of sugar and/or fat is a biological fact - it feels good. You get a burst of energy. Some kind of pleasure center is triggered.
What I'm saying is, it's not noble, but I know I've experienced that feeling. Other pleasures, like you mention up-thread, are certainly more durable. They're not mutually exclusive.
This whole discussion causes me to be faintly nauseated at the thought of eating a Burger King hamburger.
From chapter 6 of The Road to Wigan Pier:
So perhaps the really important thing about the unemployed, the really basic thing if you look to the future, is the diet they are living on. ... The first question is whether it is even theoretically possible for three persons to be properly nourished on sixteen shillings a week. When the dispute over the Means Test was in progress there was a disgusting public wrangle about the minimum weekly sum on which a human being could keep alive. So far as I remember, one school of dietitians worked it out at five and ninepence, while another school, more generous, put it at five and ninepence halfpenny. After this there were letters to the papers from a number of people who claimed to be feeding themselves on four shillings a week. ...
Now compare this list with the unemployed miner's budget that I gave earlier. The miner's family spend only tenpence a week on green vegetables and tenpence half-penny on milk (remember that one of them is a child less than three years old), and nothing on fruit; but they spend one and nine on sugar (about eight pounds of sugar, that is) and a shilling on tea. The half-crown spent on meat might represent a small joint and the materials for a stew; probably as often as not it would represent four or five tins of bully beef. The basis of their diet, therefore, is white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea, and potatoes--an appalling diet.
Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't.
Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we'll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don't nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the English-man's opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.
Juaquin, you made the right nutritional choices. You are sensible and extraordinary all at once. But it's a very understandable human failing to not always do the right thing for yourself.
Oh, I love him so much.
Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots
I am not an extraordinary human being. I am an ordinary human being, and so it is not fair and not true to say the "no ordinary human being" is going to "ever" so such a thing as make sensible nutritional choices. I would not "sooner starve" than live on brown bread and raw carrots, and I have proven this by my own behavior.
There is something else going on here than the fallibility of "ordinary human beings" plus the ads of Mickey D. What? I'm not sure. But please, do not slander the intelligence of the "ordinary human being." That is a profoundly elitist, and a profoundly unfair, point of view.
We "ordinary" people out here are not such fools as this whole thread would make us out to be. ("Oh those poor low-wage folks, they are dummies, really, don't you get it, whatever, they don't know or care to know the difference, but to stuff themselves and their kids with Big Macs, that's the only satisfaction they understand.")
Being poor is not the same as being stupid. (A lot of rich folks are obese too, you know! Oh, and by the way, a lot of them are stupid too!!) I don't understand myself what the problem here is, but it isn't that "the less money you have the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food." That is profoundly insulting to people who, for whatever reason, are not rich.
I really do not understand what the problem is. That there is a problem is undeniable, but that it is attributable to simple poverty (or that poverty=stupidity) seems simplistic, to say the least.(!)
We need to dig deeper, people. What is it that is lacking in our ordinary society, our ordinary social structures, which is so seriously lacking that all people can think to do about it is to stuff their faces?
I don't think you know much about the commenters here; some may have privileged backgrounds, but plenty do not. You're far from the only person here who comes from poverty. And to read any of this as saying poverty=stupid is just not to be reading very closely.
You are, apparently, able to live in healthy way that serves you very well, making smart choices for yourself most or all of the time. Yay. I mean that. But you're refusing to hear other people's experience. It's not my experience. I find it hard to make smart choices for myself when my life gets difficult. I look for comfort, and often comfort doesn't equal what would serve me best. I extrapolate my experience to people who are living what look to be more difficult lives than mine.
I think you'll fine that people will pay you a lot more heed when you don't generalize about them. More than that, if you disagree with something that someone's said, then disagree with them--specifically and precisely.
I'd love for you to quote someone saying, or even implying, that poor people are stupid. I'd love for you to quote someone claiming that it's simply poverty. The first step in digging deeper, as you say, is not to assume the motivations of those you disagree with, not to inflate what they're saying (i.e. claiming that they're saying poor people are stupid) and doing the necessary work of taking people's arguments seriously, and respectfully engaging with what they've actually said.
That's the bare minimum here. People take time to write these things out. They deserve your consideration and your honesty. They deserve your respect.
Fair enough, and I apologize if I insulted anybody.
Just because Burger King or McDonald's offers fat, unhealthy food does not mean that anyone has to buy it.
You say "What about people who are born into hardship? Who are born into stress and born into eating as a way of ameliorating that stress? Who grow up in an environment where mostly everyone else does the same?"
Well, what about us? We all have choices. Being "born into stress and born into eating as a way of ameliorating that stress" does not necessarily mean we have to unthinkingly buy into that behavior and just go with it.
If enough people, rich and poor, refuse to buy the artery-clogging garbage at Mickey D's, they'll stop selling it. This food isn't really "pleasure" in the fullest sense of that term.
I'm wondering why so many people, rich and poor, cannot think of anything more pleasurable to do with their spare time than eat fatty, unhealthy food. If you walk down the street you can see that an awful lot of people are doing this, but why? Why is this the refuge of choice? Why is this the best thing we can think of to do when we are in emotional pain?
I don't disagree with a thing you've said. I don't believe that people have to do anything. I think it helps to understand the context that may be guiding the choices of a large numbers. But I don't believe those choices are etched in stone.
Moreover, I regret that this conversation has focused on poor people. The obesity stats extend way beyond the poor.
The last part of your statement is key. That is the question.
Very fair.
It's not just the poor. The whole culture has become mouth-centered. Lots of rich people are fat too.
So, what gives here? Is it that there's just too much food available? Or does it go deeper than that?
I'm suspecting deeper problems. A society in which 50% of marriages end in divorce, for example (with the associated confused children, confused adults and economic disasters associated with the same. Only to mention one of many problems.
It's not all about food. We have worse problems.
I understand that you can go quite a long time on nothing but potatoes, milk, and oatmeal. It would be boring, but it wouldn't be a nutritional catastrophe. Lots of people had ancestors who survived this way, at least through the winter.
Nothing but white bread and tea would probably kill you, though. As would the potato thing if that one crop failed.
I had a conversation not two hours before reading this about the importance of a "big" meal as pleasurable ritual in our lives. Too cool that I would log in and find your words paralleling mine but taking a whole different path.
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Our conversation was about how hard it is to eat many small meals a day instead of big ones. Not just fitting them in, but they always feel like a snack and not like an event. And we humans need event markers in our lives to break the monotony. You remember if you did something before or after dinner, even days later. You don't hang memories on your snacks. (Unless they're particularly delicious snacks that are more special, in some way, than dinner. British Tea with all its ceremony would qualify as an event more than a throwaway snack.)
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I also feel like I need to have a certain number of bites of something for it to feel substantial. 3 bites is a snack. 20 bites is an entree. But what is 10 bites? And is 20 bites too many? I'm overweight almost entirely due to portion size, so this is something I struggle with. After your post I'm going to have to look to see if I'm missing the joy elsewhere too. Well, off to the farmers' market before they close on me.
TNC I saw that video of you and Andrew and you look fantastic! I totally understand what its like to pack on a few pounds. I had to wear size 33 jeans once and it was awful! Keep workin those rice cakes and arugala and maybe someday you will be as skinny as our prez.
Thanks man. Still a ways to go. Fortunately there are no public photos of my at my worse. Not cute.
Have you ever been in a poor neighborhood?
the healthiest thing that you can purchase is SUBWAY, if you are lucky. in a Black neighborhood. driving through poor Latino neighborhoods, I can't say that I see anything different.
but, in Latino neighborhoods, there are fewer food deserts. i see more markets in Latino neighborhoods. not the national brand chains of supermarkets, but localized markets that serve fresh fruits, veggies and meats.
I don't think the ' Black' diet has changed. what has changed is-
1. our ancestors GREW a lot of their own vegetables. they grew them themselves or got it out of a neighbor's garden. a neighbor that didn't used pesticides.
2. our ancestors drank a lot of water. outside of alcohol, they drank water, and maybe iced tea and lemonade on special occasions. there was no consistent consumption of pop.
3. our ancestors walked everywhere. they walked during their daily lives.
4. our ancestors did NOT consume foods full of transfats or high fructose corn syrup.
5. children were given one directive - be in this house when the streetlights come on. that was it, meaning that most children during the summer months, were OUTSIDE doing some sort of physical activity. children had RECESS, sometimes twice a day, AND GYM when we were growing up. children did NOT stay inside all day doing nothing but video games, tv and the computer.
6. fast food portions were SMALLER when we were younger. this has been proven. from fast food to what they serve at the movies, everything was SMALLER when we were younger.
emotional eating is a fact, and can't it explained away with some simple-simon explanation.
the healthiest thing that you can purchase is SUBWAY, if you are lucky. in a Black neighborhood. driving through poor Latino neighborhoods, I can't say that I see anything different.
Yeah. I live right near Kingsbridge. And there's plenty of decent grocery stores. A bit overpriced, but not much different than a Subway.
Thanks for this post. Obesity is a many faceted problem. But the eating "bad" food as comfort rings very true to me, I do it whenever I'm feeling really blue. For me, Ben&Jerry's or Entenmanns. Because of my background and experiences I exercise regularly and eat a mainly vegetarian, whole foods diet. The occasional night of inhaling 1,500 fatty calories does me little harm. But every time I let myself indulge in this way it reminds me not to make judgments about others eating habits. It does momentarily stave off the terrible blueness and helps me get through the night. I'm thankful for the life experiences and social network which then the next day or two jolt me back to exercise and healthy eating.
I appreciate reading about these additional factors not usually delved into when the rants on this issue take off. There is definitely a commonality... humanity to the issue that is usually denied and a dividing line of willpower vs 'lack of' that comes down harshly without taking a look at the system (social-personal-economic-spirtual... not sure) that may possibly bolster that so called will power. This touches on it and i again appreciate it.
OK, does ANYONE know why the "share this" option has been deactivated?
Too fattening.
This rings true for me, and yet I also want to point out that significant, repeated research has shown that most of us seem to hover around a setpoint with our weight (hovering can be within 12-30 pounds or so, depending on one's metabolism). The weight of adopted person has no correlation with the weight of his or her adoptive parents, but is highly correlated with the weight of his or her biological parents. There are exceptions: depending on the weight loss technique, between 4-10% of people can lose weigth and keep it off.
There are a few good books about how the "obesity epidemic" is almost entirely a myth--created by a combination of lowering the standards of what counts as overweight and an average weight gain across the U.S. of about 12 pounds since 1970. (Some of that is probably because we are, on average, older than we used to be, but age doesn't explain all of the weight gain.) Rethinking Thin and Fat Politics are both great.
That said, I know I hit the upper side of my own personal set point whenever I am stressed, and comfort food combined with less time to exercise tend to do it.
(The "obesity epidemic" being a myth doesn't mean that there aren't health problems associated with eating poorly and not getting enough exercise--those problems are well established, and occur in thin people who don't eat well or exercise, too.)
"I had years when I grossed five figures," well, TNC, most of us don't think that's so bad. You just disparaged the incomes of 90% of Americans as if we are all destitute. Of course, I realize most of us don't live in New York either, so I cut you a break. I realize to most New Yorkers (and NorthEasterners generally) the rest of the country in the "fly-over" states only exists in theory, but here, "five figures" isn't necessarily so bad, unless the first number is a 3 or 2.
PTR
We're hurting. As a people, as a nation, and as individuals. And so one of the things we do is feed our faces with food that we know very well is unhealthy. Because it's there. Because fat tastes very very good, for evolutionary reasons, and so does sugar.
I am personally a comfort-eater, so I don't at all speak from a position of superiority here. When I'm hurting, I eat.
Is this better than drinking or using drugs? Maybe, but not for sure. It's plenty damaging, that much is certain.
It's not all about how Mickey D offers unhealthy food, because no one is standing at the door with a gun forcing me to buy and eat the stuff, even if I really really like french fries. (And I do! Yes!) If people stop buying this crap, depend on it, the fast food joints will stop selling it. It's not all about how most people can't afford healthy food, because most people can, even people without a lot of money. Veggies are really cheap. Healthy food isn't more expensive than unhealthy food. Cheaper, actually. The schools have been handing out the requisite information for three generations, so there's no excuse for not knowing the facts. Poor people are not stupid.
And besides, as TNC rightly points out, not all obese people are poor. Hardly!
Black people, poor people, Latinos, who live in areas without supermarkets and who don't have cars, mostly live on bus lines, at least where I live (California). Those buses go to places with wholesale grocery stores which have produce departments. Grocery carts with little wheels are to be had for very little money.
Not, of course, to mention the obese rich, who don't even have these (bogus) excuses.
I really do not think the obesity epidemic is a figment of anyone's statistical imagination, rosmar. I was a kid in the 1950's, and fat kids were very very rare. Most of them had serious medical problems. It wasn't like every fifth kid!
So if I'm right, if we're fat because we're hurting, why are we hurting? Where is all this pain coming from, which apparently wasn't operative 50 years ago?
I wish I knew.