This reminds me of Charles Karelis's "The Persistence of Poverty." The basic argument is that the wealthy misunderstand the mental state of the poor, which leads them to make conceptual errors when creating policies to address poverty, or, in this case, obesity. Think of a bee sting, he advises. If you have a single bee sting, you'll go buy some salve to take away the pain. Now imagine three bee stings, a sprained ankle, a burn, a cut, a crick in your neck, a sore throat, and arthritis. Does the bee sting matter anymore?
Karelis argues that this is more the situation of someone in poverty. Obesity is bad, but it may be just one of many bad things. Overdue bills. A horrible part-time job. Endless commuting time on the bus. A mother with diabetes. A child running with the wrong crowd. A leaking roof. In that scenario, slowly reversing your weight gain might be a good idea, but it hardly makes a dent in the overall crumminess of the conditions. It won't replace pain with pleasure. So you do things that are surer to replace pain with pleasure, like have a delicious, filling, satisfying, salty, fatty meal. That may make your overall situation more unpleasant, but then, making that situation pleasant didn't seem like an option in the first place.
This, he would say, is fundamentally different than the situation of someone who is fundamentally happy with his life but thinks he should lose 30 pounds. For that person, those 30 pounds are the main thing standing between him and perceived happiness. It's one bee sting instead of a dozen ailments. The condition seems manageable, and so it gets managed. Conversely, if the aggregate condition does not seem manageable, people are less likely to manage any individual part, because it will not bring obvious reward -- life will still be pressuring and difficult. The things that will bring obvious reward, however, often make the underlying situation worse -- think spending, overeating and drinking. But then, that's why they call poverty a cycle, and obesity fits there, too.
I think that basically sums it up, and jives with my own experience. It's a lot easier to drop that 30 when everything else is going well, as opposed to when you're worred about the kid's school, your ability to make rent, and the fools on the corner.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
"I think that basically sums it up, and jives with my own experience. It's a lot easier to drop that 30 when everything else is going well, as opposed to when you're worred about the kid's school, your ability to make rent, and the fools on the corner."
Yes, and this is where I do agree with Andrew when he compares that experience with cigarrettes (this quote is not meant for anyone in particular, I just like the sentiment):
"I know they're awful. But I find the puritanism and bossiness around them curiously blind to the fact that for many people in rough times and rough places, they are one of life's pleasures. For people with many pleasures, quitting is tough but won't really affect their quality of life. For those with very few, it's one more assault they could do without. Leave people alone."
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/10/sweets-as-a-salve.html
I like the "leave people alone" part the best.
I agree that cigarettes can be a good analogy. A promising analogy in fact as we have managed to lower smoking rates among all classes drastically in only decades.
But food is still different than most other worries we have in life. It is the only thing that, in theory, connects the average human in the West with all other life on earth. Sure - coping better with other issues in life can help you to cope with food problems. But it works the other way too - sometimes even better. If one finds more balance and harmony with food it can help you with other things in your life?
I sometime feel as if we think that we need more energy and self-worth to tackle becoming energetic and feeling better?
Oh I agree with you: many people can stand to have a healthier relationship with food and excercise, for sure.
It's the scolding and bossiness and sense of trying to "make" people do it, that I object to. I have a pretty simple approach actually, and it makes me far less crazy that I would be otherwise: eat as healthy as I can, excercise as much as I can, and then leave it alone. In my experience, anything else leads to a sense of claustrophobic, anxiety-ridden body image issues. I want to be happy, not obsessed with looking like a model.
The idea is not to move from one anxiety driven "obsession" or one extreme to the next. But the issue you touch upon seems important as one hears too many heavy people complain that they will never look like this or that. It implies that they would want to look like models and partly do not start living healthier because of that unattainable goal?
PS: I personally do not even try to exercise as much as I can - quite the contrary. I always stop while still feeling energetic. This is not about pushing oneself to limits as you say - obesity is.
" I personally do not even try to exercise as much as I can - quite the contrary. I always stop while still feeling energetic."
Oh I don't either. I should've said: i do it as much as I can, which means within reason.
"The idea is not to move from one anxiety driven "obsession" or one extreme to the next."
I agree with you there: my point-of-view is that many people are already saddled with quite a "bit on their plate" (yes pun intended) as TNC and Andrews have implied above. What's a realistic approach for some people, may be eating a few more fruits and vegetables when they can, but perhaps not everyday, or something like that. Yes, moderation as opposed to trying to fit in some extreme isn't generally a good idea.
I am operating from this presumption: we live in a culture where fat is discriminated against and reviled. It's not like people don't know it's undesirable.
"But the issue you touch upon seems important as one hears too many heavy people complain that they will never look like this or that."
I don't know of any heavy people that complain about how they can't look like a model or like some other ideal. I do know several thin women who complain about not losing that last 5-10 lbs. and also voice their almost mortal fear of getting fat. But that's neither here nor there. My anecdotes are not data.
Interesting discussion and lots of agreement.
Megan McArdle recently started a blog-entry about obesity with "Wouldn't it be great if we all looked like Jennifer Aniston..."? Megan is not heavy herself I guess but this must come from somewhere? Similarly - your own remarks regarding this must come from somewhere? I therefore do not see the gym where one has the contrast the with the other extreme as a good place to find balance. Exercise is also, in my opinion, overhyped when it comes to losing weight.
People often start dieting and exercising at the same time but it is the food that carries more weight. Worse - they also try to eat healthier. 3 changes at once. Different food, less of it and work outs. This can be a good approach for some - going cold turkey on all your vices at once but I think one generally requires some time off to achieve this (rehab?). From one day to the next: no alcohol, no cigarettes, no junk food, and exercise and you know what - that volunteer work will also make you feel good. No wonder that many burn out before they can integrate this in such a manner that it becomes second nature.
You can eat white bread and chips and pudding and be thin. I would not recommend it but it's not like I am eating only wholewheat bread all the time. It would be a great start to keep your type of food, not change it to healthier options, not start exercising and merely checking if you could consume less of it? Or at least pick only 2 of the 3 to 4 possible improvements to start with? Decreasing your weight is usually in itself a big health improvement.
PS: What has motivated me to change my personal food choices many years ago was the realization that in some cases food is not a personal choice at all. I have omitted "non-personal" foods ever since and do not even consider them as food anymore.
I disagree that smoking is a good analogy for the simple reason that it has a direct negative effect on others. It's a very Republican argument: Don't take away my SUV because it makes me happy; don't tell me what I can do with my wetlands because they're mine; don't take away my semi-automatic assault rifle because I need to compensate for my manhood issues.
There are things that are private and things that a public. Air is public. An individual's eating habits are private.
@ slag
I see what you mean, it's not the best analogy. The part that I did like is where Andrew is basically implying people have a rough go of it as it is, it's not like the smokers or the over-eaters don't know something that the naggers are trying to tell them. I prefer to come at the issue of overeating as this: give people a break. It's tough as it is. Tone down the critical nanny rhetoric. The world isn't going to end if the self-appointed food police stopped the heavy-handed judgment. These aren't hard fast rules of course, I just mean that in general.
Silent,
I agree but I also recall how long it took for health-claims about smoking to sink in. It took decades after the science was available for society to realize it, accept it and then eventually act upon it. And then it worked - we have drastically lowered smoking - but it took many many decades.
Do you find the claims that smoking causes cancers to be crossing the critical nanny rhetoric? Do you find that claiming that most animal foods are unhealthy and derived unethically and involve severe tortures and assault rapes etc? Are claims that animal food diets are destroying the planet nanny rhetoric? Where is the critical line?
As I believe that smoking is a fair analogy - I also believe that obese people should get the same social consideration as smoker do. They should get the same empathy as smokers and alcoholics from us but nevertheless we should try to encourage less consumption and not more.
In the case of smoking - it was not only the positive message "how cool is it not to smoke" but also the negative message that completed our social efforts. I don't think there is a way around the positive and the negative?
Another reason why smoking isn't a good analogy is because you HAVE to eat in order to survive. Smoking is something you can give up and according to most smokers I know, once you've given it up you might have cravings but they decrease as the years go by. Plus smoking is something you have to make a conscious decision at some point in life to start doing. Even before you are born you are "eating' in a sense by taking sustenance from your mother and you never make a conscious decision to start eating.
Lisa,
You don't have to eat certain unhealthy foods like animal fats at all. That is why, in my opinion, smoking is a good analogy.
Karelis argument is essentially this: the utility function of the poor is convex. In simpler terms, this means that marginal improvements to circumstances near the poverty level do not noticeably improve happiness. This is a pretty radical thesis and goes against nearly all the empirical research.
It also has bizarre implications. For example: if small changes to circumstances don't make the poor happier, why not save money by making them slightly worse off? Raise taxes on the poor a bit and cut welfare. The poor will be just as happy (one more bee sting? who cares?) and the rest of us will be significantly happier.
(Note: I'm not advocating this policy. But anyone who believes Karelis thesis and is also intellectually consistent would.)
Keep in mind, the standard argument for progressive taxation is that the utility function for money is *concave*: small improvements help the poor a lot but the rich very little.
A much better explanation is time discounting. If you have a high discount rate, you will take $10/potato chips now over $100/sleeping with hot girls next month. If you have a low discount rate, you'll wait a week for your $100.
(Some background on Charles Karelis. He is a philosophy professor with no clue about economics. From the description of his book: "Using science, history, fables, philosophical analysis, and common observation, Charles Karelis engages us...". Why he prefers fables to empirical research, I have no clue. I'm guessing because fables are easy but ANOVA regression is hard. )
(Note: I'm not advocating this policy. But anyone who believes Karelis thesis and is also intellectually consistent would.)
No, not really. Based on Ezra's example, Karelis' claim is that small improvements don't make the poor any happier. You then conclude that if that is so, marginal setbacks wouldn't make them unhappier. But that's not necessarily so.
The only way marginal setbacks would make the poor unhappier is if the utility function were not differentiable (i.e., had a kink) AND if all the poor were all sitting just above the kink. That's a pretty strong assumption to make.
It basically means there is some special level of poverty (call it X) below which we will start hurting the poor. So we can still tax 100% of poor people's income above X. Or maybe X varies from person to person, and every single poor person is very close to their own individual X? This theory gets even more contrived...
But lets suppose the theory only works for positive changes. It still implies implies we should not waste any money trying to help the poor. After all, marginal improvements in circumstance don't increase utility, and they will harm the rich people paying for them. Any new anti-poverty measure is a complete waste of money, if this theory is right.
There is a huge flaw in your analysis, since you are completely missing the point that if the multitude of miseries associated with poverty are alleviated enough so that the burden of such miseries no longer overwhelms the psyche of the poor, then the poor will be able to defer and abate their need for instant gratification from high-fat solace foods. This in turn will promote the adoption by the poor of positive behaviors of forebearance and delayed gratification that will improve their long-term station in life.
If anything, Karelis's position is an argument for improving the effectiveness of the welfare state in alleviating many of the burdens of poverty, so that the poor will be in a position to forebear from getting instant gratification from spending, and instead focus on saving their money (building their financial capital) and improving their skills and education (building their human capital). This implies that taxpayers need to forego the instant gratification that comes from lower taxes in order to reap the long-term benefits of having a society free from the burdens of having a substantial portion of our populace consigned to generation after generation of dysfunctional poverty.
Economic theory, particularly simplified in this fashion is a terrible lens to use to look at human psychology even in the aggregate. It causes one to make a ton of assumptions that don't hold up at all. Here, you are assuming among many other things that that the function of the perceived happiness of the non-poor has concave or normal shape and that the marginal setbacks or unhappiness that they might experience from higher taxes impacts their happiness in a uniform, linear and significant way. First of all, I think it is ridiculous to talk about happiness in this way, which is why Karelis doesn't, but beyond that there's no reason why, if you could possibly put it on a graph, happiness of the poor or non poor couldn't look like any kind of function. Why it should be imagined as convex as opposed to a parabola or a skewed concavity or double hump is merely a matter of explanation. You could squeeze Karelis' argument into any of these figures or a dozen more. Especially since happiness would probably most accurately be represented by a non-linear, multi-planer function in any case.
Deva, Karelis is the one assuming it is flat. In mathematical terms, his theory says utility(3 bee stings) = utility(2 bee stings). How would you squeeze that into a double hump?
Empirical measurements and common sense suggest it tends to be concave: going from $5,000/year to $10,000/year tends to make you happier than going from $150,000/year to $155,000/year. I'm not sure what a "multi-planer" function is, but a concave function is nonlinear.
What you say makes a lot more intuitive sense. When lots of things are making you miserable, a little immediate pleasure is worth MORE, not less. Losing 30 pounds may, in fact, be worth way more to a poor person than to a wealthy person, if it happened instantly. The problem is the weight loss isn't instant but the oreo frosty is. I've experienced this in my own life- a rough day at work makes it a lot harder to say no to something yummy, even though I know keeping my weight in check is worth more in the long run. I can only imagine the effect would be multiplied if my life was consistently stressful, and particularly if I lived in a really terrible neighborhood and thought I had diminished odds of ever seeing the end result of a couplke of months of dieting.
Ninja Zombie,
Karelis is not arguing that small improvements don't make the poor happier; he is arguing that the short term burst of happiness that comes from eating high-fat, high-salt foods is more compelling to the poor than the long-term benefit of avoiding obesity, because of the multitude of miseries associated with poverty. When one has so many miseries in one's life, sacrificing a short term but potent solace like comfort foods doesn't seem worthwhile on an emotional level, even if one knows intellectually that the sacrifice is worth it in the long run because it improves one's long-term health. When the multitude of miseries gets whittled down to a small bunch of miseries, then it becomes easier to muster the willpower to make the sacrifices needed to prevent the overindulgence of short-term solaces.
When one states Karelis's position accurately, one can see that the welfare state's role should be to help reduce the poor's multitude of miseries stemming from poverty, so that the poor can reach the point where they can muster the willpower needed to forsake instant gratification, and instead make the sacrices necessary to improve their lot in life so that the services of the welfare state are no longer needed. In other words, we middle-class taxpayers should abate our desire for instant gratification from lower taxes, and focus instead on using the welfare state as one of society's instruments for abating the impulse for instant gratification within the culture of the poor.
It you who is not stating Karelis's position accurately. If you don't want to buy the book, you can read a decent summary here:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/
(Of course, the talk of "traditional economics just doesn't apply" just indicates Karelis doesn't understand traditional econ. His thesis boils down to "traditional econ with a convex utility function".)
The standard economics explanation is simply that the poor tend to have a very short horizon. But that's not what either Klein or Karelis are pushing. Time does not play a role in their "multiple bee stings" example at all, or any of their arguments.
No, Ninja Zombie, you are still incorrect. This very summary shows that Karelis's argument is that a state of constant and overwhelming deprivation distorts the economic judgement of the poor, and that this distorted judgement promotes behaviors that have a long term negative consequence for the poor. The implication of Karelis's argument then is that if you succeed in alleviating that constant and overwhelming deprivation to a critical point, the poor then will no longer have the distorted judgement that promotes negative long term behaviors, and thus the poor will now adopt positive long term behaviors.
Why don't you quote me the place in the article where Karelis argues for a temporal discounting model, rather than a convex utility function model?
This is an argument about convexity of the utility function. If you succeed in pushing the poor out of the flat/convex zone and into the zone of increasing marginal utility, then their behavior will change. The critical point you describe is where the utility function starts to slope upward.
You are both pushing the oddly shaped utility functions theory, not the different discount rates theory. The easiest way to see? Your/Karelis argument doesn't involve time. There is only a critical *wealth level* at which people will choose thinness over potato chips. Utility functions vary with wealth.
In contrast, the differential discount rate theory implies that there is a critical *time delay* at which people will choose thinness over potato chips. I.e., thinness in a year vs potato chips now, people choose chips. Thinness in a week (or any time before the critical time) vs potato chips now, people choose thinness.
If I'm wrong, please quote either Karelis's book or the article and show me. I admit, that task would be much easier if Karelis knew basic econ, because then he would express his theory in clear unambiguous mathematics rather than fables...
"Why don't you quote me the place in the article where Karelis argues for a temporal discounting model, rather than a convex utility function model?"
Again, missing the forest for the trees; Karelis's point, expressed in the proper econ speak that you demand, is that the temporal discounting model doesn't apply when you have a state of extreme and constant deprivation. That point is pretty clear even from the summary you referenced. Alleviate that condition to a certain point, and the behavior of the poor falls more in line with the temporal discounting model. Nowhere does Karelis say that time horizons are irrelevant to describing the economic behavior of the poor under all circumstances.
For you to fail to grasp that point suggests to me that you are being deliberately obtuse.
Eltoro, where does he make the claim you say? Please quote it.
So Karelis believes the poor are motivated by long term rewards to the same degree as the rich? Or that they are not? Or does he not discuss this topic at all?
Please provide quotes to back up your claims.
So basically, even if you alleviate poverty conditions, the poor still won't try to improve their lot because their time preferences favor the present?
That's the implication of what you just said. If temporal discounting kicks in after you solve all the poor's problems, they still won't try to improve their lot, because they don't get any immediate gratification from it.
He never speaks about time preferences at all. His theory, as extended by Ezra Klein: utility(poor) = utility(poor + fat), implying no utility gain to putting down the chips.
The temporal discounting theory says that utility(potato chips now + poor) > utility(thinness next year + poor), in spite of the fact that utility(chips now + poor)
You say he talks about time preferences, not flat utility functions. Could you please quote him, or even the article I linked to, and show me where?
From Charles Karelis. I hadn't thought of the application of my theory to obesity and poverty, but it makes sense. After all, if the modest economic rewards of a day's work promise less felt relief to someone who is facing a tidal wave of economic troubles than to someone with very few troubles competing for attention, why shouldn't the same be true for the psychological rewards of the "work" of dieting.
On the comments, Ninja Zombie presumes to instruct eltoro on my theory and the evidence for it, but seems confused whether I wrote a book or an article. Now that my book is out in paperback, may I suggest...
While we're waiting for that, one last thought. NZ seems to think it's alright to attack a scientific hypothesis (mine) by looking at its supposed implications for public policy. This is not a good way to judge scientific hypotheses. Besides (I can't resist) it's a game at which two can play. Take NZ's preferred theory that the marginal utility of consumption is diminishing for poor people. This utterly incorrect piece of conventional wisdom has the bizarre implication that we ought to take dollars away from poor people, since that would raise the marginal utility of dollars to them and make the work required to get dollars more attractive. In other words, if marginal utility is diminishing for poor people, further deprivation ought to increase the motivation of poor people to help themselves by working. Oh wait. We already have that policy. It's called the Welfare Reform of 1996.
Are you deliberately misreading what I wrote?
What I said: "If you don't want to buy the *book*, you can read a decent summary here..." followed by a link to the article (see my 3:11pm post). I also mentioned the book in my first post at 1:43pm.
I never made this claim. The closest I came was making the claim that the marginal utility is concave over all income scales, i.e. dU/dw (U is utility, w is wealth) is higher for poor people than for rich people.
My preferred theory for explaining why the poor are fat is that they have a higher time discount rate. I said this in my post at 1:43pm.
But now that you are here, can you summarize your theory? Is it flat utility functions, higher time discount rates, or something else (if so, please explain)?
Tell you what, NZ. Buy the book, read it--it's short--send it to me c/o the Philosophy Dept. at Williams College, and I'll sign it for you and send it back. Then you won't have to guess at what my views are before you dogmatize about how wrong they are.
The problem with the "leave people alone" approach to smoking (and heavy drinking and drugs) is that the person being left alone isn't actually alone. He's doing something to other people. Somebody is breathing in the smoke (and perhaps having asthma attacks as a result), working extra hours when he doesn't show, paying for his defense when he gets arrested, etc.
Overeating just isn't the same as the actual controlled substances. It takes quite a while to damage yourself severely by overeating, and in the meantime it doesn't harm anyone else or impose costs on anyone else. In that I think it's closer to a serious coffee habit than to tobacco, heavy drinking, or drugs.
Most of the bossiness around overeating does seem to come from people who aren't directly affected. Most of the bossiness associated with other vices comes from people who are affected in some way when others indulge. And the people who are affected may be poor (or at least have limited escape routes) themselves.
It's interesting that sometimes overeating is talked about in terms that don't recognize eating disorders as a psychological and emotional problem. I would think that someone who is truly a compulsive overeater, needs treatment as opposed to more scolding and bossiness. If someone is using food as an emotional crutch, it's the emotional stuff that needs to be taken care of, not the food.
Compulsive overeating, compulsive dieting is still in the same realm of pathology as anorexia and bulimia.
Overeating does affect the rest of us just as surely as smoking or drugs. It raises the cost of third party medical insurance such as employer health care, medicaid or medicare.
Granted, this problem could be solved easily by eliminating third party medical insurance (both government and employer provided). Similarly, the problem of paying for a junkie's defense could be solved by legalizing drugs. But no one seems to like those solutions...
A pretty indirect effect, and one that is widely dispersed in society and over time. But somebody who gets drunk and smacks his wife around is having a very, very direct effect that is instantly visible to people who see him every day. Which is why a lot of families have one group of members working actively to curb the behavior of another group. This is much less common (although not unknown) when it comes to french fry consumption.
To be fair, you often see people (Matt Yglesias for instance) stating that they favor anti-soda/sugar/whatever policies because a person being unhealthy imposes costs on others in the form of increased demand for health care and in the case of poor fat people increased health care paid for by taxes.
I still think most of this 'the government will decide what you eat' BS is precisely that, complete BS, but you cannot say they are not making arguements about externalities. You can say that someone like Matt Yglesias who is himself rather overweight has a LOT of nerve for advocating this sort of thing, but that is another arguement altogether.
The thing about the Soda tax or junk food tax is that the food is subsidized, so why not just end the subsidies? Oh yeah, people need the middle of the country to get elected... *eye roll*
Totally agree with this - ending the subsidies are by far the best way to go, and would start moving towards a more sensible food policy, although i do not see how this would help poor people because HFCS-laden foods and the like are currently the cheapest per-calorie because of those subsidies. it might make meeting basic food needs more expensive for the poor unless cheaper alternatives arise.
Well, that could definitely be a problem, but why not use that money to subsidize healthier food? That's one way of looking at it. Aside from just HFCS, there's also the ethanol issue, which doesn't seem worth subsidizing considering there are more effective alternatives. It's a lot of tax money in the end.
Part of the problem is that subsidies have unintended consequences. Corn is a fresh, healthy vegetable after all.
"Part of the problem is that subsidies have unintended consequences. Corn is a fresh, healthy vegetable after all."
Actually, for people that already have diabetes, corn isn’t that great. It’s starchy, like potatoes and is relatively high in carbs. Yes, fresh veggies can be somewhat bad.
But I understand your basic point and agree with you.
Obesity has two primary components, one - culture and education is related to class, the other - one's emotional state, is not. Undiagnosed, unacknowledged depression probably corellates with obesity somewhere near 100%. I would venture to suggest that the poor are over represented in ranks of the undiagnosed depressives (understandably so). It follows then, that a societal response to this burden on healthcare costs, will need a comprehensive societal approach, addressing more that just calories consumed.
Though one problem with treating depression, especially with SSRI's is that they are thought to lead to weight gain (what they call "paxil pounds").
@DougEMI good point, and therapy as opposed to just medicating is much more costly. But, the SSRI's impact on sexual potency/desire would be a real drain on happiness if it were widely prescribed to the poor, sex is cheap fun for a lot of people.
Has it been demonstrated through controlled studies that income level is negatively correlated to weight (i.e., lower the income, the higher the weight)? Like, if you look at black people in South Carolina, are poor blacks fatter than rich blacks? Or maybe rich white college grads versus poor white college grads in Brooklyn? Would be curious to know if there's statistically meaningful data that demonstrates that economically less successful people are usually fatter.
Sorry if this has been established earlier in this long discussion.
Reminds me of that quote from Orwell, from "The Road to Wigan Pier."
"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. ... 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. The results of all this are visible in a physical degeneracy which you can study directly, by using your eyes, or inferentially, by having a look at the vital statistics."
Just a cautionary word of advice. I would hope --and I haven't seen it so far but it may pop up at some point in time-- that in our discussion of obesity in class we stay away from the gross generalizations that have fallen out of favor when discussing other topics.
There's a fine line between asking a concerned question and indulging in prejudice. I think in other areas of our public discourse these sentiments have been largely weeded out. As an example, most commentators would never ask the question "Why are black people so lazy?" However, sometimes when discussing class there seems to my eyes to be an element of unconscious prejudice from otherwise well meaning people. Sometimes it seems from where I sit that the question "why are poor people so fat?" can be used as a substitute for "Why are poor people so lazy." I don't know for sure, but I wonder if there might not be an a sprinkle of voyeurism with a dash of social-darwinism in this abstract discussion of obesity and poverty. There are plently of overwieght Americans from lower income brackets 99 percent of whom have a voice and are able to coherently express their opinions. We might want to begin by asking them questions about attitudes towards food, corelations between lifestyle and exercise, and more importantly whether being poor generates a feeling of inferiority in a person that is subsequently reinforced by being overweight.
"However, sometimes when discussing class there seems to my eyes to be an element of unconscious prejudice from otherwise well meaning people. Sometimes it seems from where I sit that the question "why are poor people so fat?" can be used as a substitute for "Why are poor people so lazy." I don't know for sure, but I wonder if there might not be an a sprinkle of voyeurism with a dash of social-darwinism in this abstract discussion of obesity and poverty."
And all of God’s children say Amen!
You should post more Sorn. Only realize that’s it's more than a sprinkle.
Well put. Thank you for articulating what's been bothering me for a while about this dialogue on obesity. Your weight is not a measure of moral worth or character. And I'd emphasize the point that I don't know if income levels correlate to obesity. Where's the data?
I agree in principle although I have to say that this thread was an awesome read. With respect to generalizations, there is a thin line between lazy thinking and the attempt to make an original point that moves the discussion forward, even if that point turns out to be too generalizing.
Having said that, I'm not even sure whether this particular discussion only concerns the behaviour of poor people. I have never been really poor in my life, but I think I know that burger, that cigaratte, that drink. In my experience, there is something self-destructive to it, something I would call the "What the hell"-feeling. It is not a rational behaviour in the first place, therefore the utility-based models to explain it do not entirely convince me. It seems to me that eating that burger or having that drink sometimes is an act act against rationality itself, against self-determination. Sure, there is a certain pleasure involved, but it also makes you stop thinking about yourself and your life for a moment. You deliberately trade numbness for personal agency. You refuse to make utility-based choices, moreover, you refuse to make choices at all. In this respect, people don't leave the bee sting untreated because treatment wouldn't matter in the big picture, but because the do other things in order to stop thinking about the bee stings, the burns, and the cuts altogether.
This is slightly tangential, but do you think this might be why so many people are repulsed by obese people? In that it might actually reflect the overall state of their lives?
That's obviously a gross over generalization. There are many people who simply have biological problems that cause obesity. But it seems like your explanation of why it's so difficult to combat obesity among the poor leads some credence to this belief. "If addressing their obesity is so low on their list of problems to address, I can only imagine the other crap they have on their plate"
I don't mean to say that treating people poorly due to weight problems is commendable or even defensible. But what you're saying seems to suggest that obesity really is often a reflection of the overall state of a person's life. (Something I can't say I'd thought a whole lot about before now)
I think our culture's dislike of overweight people has EVERYTHING to do with the fact that it's a proxy for class. I think it's replacing skin color in that respect, and as BMI becomes a better and better immediate indicator than complexion of who is poor/downtrodden/without resources, we're going to hate fat people more and more. I have no statistics to back this up, it's just a hunch.
I'm leaning in this direction as well Lee.
I need help here.
Through a complicated series of events that need not detain us here, I represent (as an attorney) an 11 year old girl who is the beneficiary of a trust of some $500,000. Courtesy of some life insurance policies held by her mother, who died unexpectedly and inexplicably. All the players here except me are black. I'm white. They live in the slums. I live in an upper-class area, not all that far away.
This kid is currently living with her grandmother, who seems a good head, but who lives in the projects, and I hear drugs are being dealt out of that unit. The father is a meth head who lives in his truck. The mother is dead.
I don't care who weighs what. I hear the kid is a bright, alert type.
The grandmom is good hearted, perhaps not the sharpest pencil in the box. I like her. She means well.
This kid now has enough money to go to any college she can get into, which, if she works hard, is any college whatever.
What can I do, as the lawyer, to pierce the walls of color and privilege, and do right by this kid?
I'm not clear on how much influence you have, or how it can be exerted. Do you just control the use of the money, or is there a quasi-guardianship thing going on?
For example, could the money be used to help the grandmother rent a small apartment in a less dangerous neighborhood? Could it be used to provide the child with the sort of outside experiences that middle class kids get as a matter of course--music lessons, karate class? Basically 11 seems awfully young for the level of executive control that puts all the reward for today's hard work off for 7 years.
11 is an age at which she should start to have some opinions about what she wants to do--she likes art, or books, or she wants to travel someday. Talk to her and the grandmother--in the end it will come down to what they're each willing to do.
I can't offer any expertise on this myself, but I wanted to suggest that perhaps TNC could post a thread for this question, which would give it higher visibility, if you guys think it would be useful. You'd be surprised how much the readership here knows.
Ooh, good idea. I'll never forget the open thread on sugar beet resources.
Most of the trusts I have seen allow for living expenses in amounts that child has been accustom to. SO I think if you expend the principal of this trust in a manner that is too extravagant, you are open to action when the minor is able to have at the remainder when the trust expires.
It is always a tricky spot because there is so much subjectivity and from the sounds of it, she isn't in the safest of areas. If the grandmother wants to move, then you might be forced into the situation of picking the next neighborhood
Help me out here, you guys.
I used to be a case manager working with guardianships, trusts, and power-of-attorneys for vulnerable populations such as the one you've described.
I know it can be especially difficult when a minor is involved and you have to navigate complicated relationships with the minor's family and others.
I'd love to share my experiences in another forum. let me know if you'd like to exchange email info.
One way that poverty works is that the poor feel some relief when death is near and they tell themselves "well when I'm dead I'll no longer be in debt and won't have to worry about it."
Well, even that now seems to be changing. Slugger Ted Williams, the Red Sox Hall-of-Famer whose .400 record is yet to be broken, was dupped by his three kids and and Alcor cryonics to be frozen in the hopes of being revived at some future date. It costs up to $150,000 to be cryogenically frozen -- initially, according to Ethic Soup blog. Then it's around $400 a month maintenance fee. Jeeze, Alcor's 10-foot-tall stainless steel container in which Williams' body hangs upside down is no a condo. That monthly bill goes on forever, since they claim it will take at least several generations before science can catch up with the reviving part of the dream (read scam).
That's a lot of money to pay, only to have Alcor technicians use Ted's head for batting practice around the lab -- literally. Greed knows no shame, no limit to abuse. Ethic Soup has a good post on this:
http://www.ethicsoup.com/2009/10/cryogenics-tellall-book-ted-williams-head-repeatedly-abused.html
I wonder if it costs you more to be frozen if you have that extra 30 pounds on you when you die?
Here's the deal.
I'm just the lawyer. The guardianship for the estate (the money) is in the process of being set up. The natural guardian for the person of the child is the father, but he's MIA. Emotionally. The grandmother seems a good head, but obviously isn't all that well on top of her own situation.
I am not the trustee. That's a professional, but I'm not sure how experienced he is.
This is a lot of money.
I see so many possibilities here for this kid than anyone in her own situation sees.
sefoley@foleyfoleylaw.com
Anyone with any ideas is welcome to chime in.
Here's my question for TNC--
There's a certain assumption behind this piece and many other journalistic coverage about poverty that bothers me, but I'm not sure how to deal with it. It comes down to the assumption that middle class life is preferred and the poor should want the culture of the middle class. This has been an assumption of the American middle class since its inception in the late 19th century. White Protestants looked at Catholic Immigrants and started Prohibition movements--which had both good and bad impulses. Catholic immigrant men did tend to drink more to get through their situation and then some of them beat up on their families while drunk. But Prohibition movements ignored the complex ways drink was involved in Catholic cultural and religious traditions.
I guess my question is--is there a way to talk about the poor that doesn't make it sound like their lives are uniformly wretched, while middle class lives are uniformly positive? Is there a way to recognize the good things that African Americans in the hood do and create while also recognizing the adverse affects of drugs, violence, and fast food? I'm tired of conversations that make inner cities seem uniformly horrible and make most of my MI students afraid of going into Detroit.
I think the reason middle class people, at least, prefer being middle class is because their families got that way fairly recently. And not by dropping down out of the ranks of the wealthy. If the individual people posting here didn't make the transition themselves, then their parents or grandparents probably made it for them. I would bet that the majority of middle class people in this country have at least one grandparent (and probably more) who worked at what would now be classed as a low-income job.
Of course that means a lot of family dinners featuring the "you kids don't know how good you have it" lectures. Which tend to stick, especially when they include interesting details like having to sew your own underwear.
Also, a lot of middle class people pass through the fast food/cleaning/landscaping jobs in their youth, as a way to fund their studies. They've worked side-by-side with people for whom that life is not temporary.
This may not apply to the extremely upper middle class, but the middle-middle is not entirely isolated from the rest of the country.
This may not cross racial lines, though. It's certainly my experience of middle-middle class white society relative to poor white society. And I've heard enough to suspect that the same thing happens between middle class blacks and poor blacks. Putting the race line and the class line in the same place adds a level of complexity and distance, though, and I'm not sure how to think that through.
Also, a lot of middle class people pass through the fast food/cleaning/landscaping jobs in their youth, as a way to fund their studies.'
I did a lot of those types of jobs, but the most soul sucking was fast food. It was my experience there that motivated me to go to college, because there was no way in hell I was going to do that for the rest of my life. When I worked there, I knew multiple people who dropped out of high school at 16 so they could work more hours. A lot of this was fed by the very short term prospects of having more money now, even if that means forgoing a lot more money later in life.
I guess what I'm saying is that I agree with a lot of what's said here. After doing those jobs, I can imagine how doing those jobs with no prospect of something better would crush a man.
I'm surprised so many college-oriented parents push their kids to do internships, engaging real contribution ones, rather than some good manual labor. A summer digging ditches or dishing burgers can be educational. I worked the dining hall for a semester in college and it was very motivating. (It also taught me that I much prefer to set my own hours, rather than have fixed ones I need to show up at--you can learn something useful about the work you want to do from any job.)
This is interesting, but I'd ask you to bore down a little harder on what you're bothered by. In other words, what, specifically, in Ezra's formulation bugs you?
Part of the problem may lie in me assuming too much. For instance, I assume that most of us would agree that the lives of the poor aren't uniformly fucked up. I take that as a given. It could be argued that I shouldn't, but in this instance, I did.
When we're talking about something like obesity, I generally only discuss other problems because that's what has bearing. It doesn't mean that the lives of the poor are amoral or can be reduced to drugs, violence and fast food. I've tried, in my own writing, to combat that sort of thinking.
Again though, I wonder what particularly bothers you here.
Well, that is one of the reasons that I read you as opposed to others--i.e. that you thoroughly know and recognize that the lives of the poor aren't entirely fucked up. I guess I just wanted to air this question and it came out at this post.
Forgive me a little narrative--
I was raised in a white Christian church and society that always wanted to "help the poor" because they needed God and salvation and food etc. so forth.
Then I went to Guatemala and the leader emphasized over and again that the poor we were meeting had greater spiritual depth than self-satisfied, materially driven westerners. He also emphasized what it was like to be sick from so many different illnesses at the same time. My patently shallow interactions with the folks we were helping build a church with shored up these observations.
Then I went to grad school and situations in which middle class types tried to enforce their morality on the poor were criticized over and again, but without an adequate moral structure offered in return. Because sometimes it does suck to be poor, without a lot of options, and sick all the time.
And now I read mostly the upper-middle class media (NYT, The Atlanta, The New Yorker, etc), and it sometimes feels like the only way the poor are covered, sans your blog, is in this uniform, need to help them way. And it's the same middle-class, unspoken expectations that went along with the middle-class Progressive types at the turn of the century.
But I think this is the problem you very insightfully get at, TNC--I am camped out in a vague zone. I have a hard time personally distinguishing between values that are something all people should be encouraged towards (education? not everybody actually wants to be in school, and not everybody is necessarily equipped, but that doesn't mean that a program like the Harlem Children's Zone is not wonderful. Obesity? I totally understand eating away one's worries...and is obesity a greater struggle than the kinds of environmental prejudice Majora Carter fights?) Take the HCZ--in the This American Life coverage, the director explicitly said that the poor parents he dealt with needed to learn the middle class way of child rearing.
So maybe my question has nothing to do with this post. Sorry.
Nah, it's fine. No need for apology. I appreciate this post--and the warning to avoid generalizing.
One of the problems in talking about poor people is, I think, a lot of people are wary of assigning too much responsibility, and consequently, blame. The problem with this is that without responsibility there can't be any real agency. And without any agency there isn't much of a point.
In America, in particular, a lot of the dismay, I think, comes from the fact that we're so materialistic. No sector of the country is immune to this--regardless of class.
I think what triggered it in the post was the description of the life of a poor person as inherently stressed, and so they eat more.
And that makes me wonder....yes, poor people do have major stressers like multiple health conditions and not enough money to deal with them. But by simply equating poverty with stress, it seems too easy to notch that into accepted worldviews that middle class folk have got it all and poor people don't. But that makes me wonder if I am not adequately understanding how hard it is to be poor.
Is there some way to phrase the relationship between poverty and stress without assuming that the lives of poor folk is only made up of stress? Or is it all in my own fucked up head?
This too. Back in the day.
My oldest, now 41, was bussed, in San Francisco, to Hunter's Point, a black slum. And there I encountered, as a school volunteer, a young black child, a girl, who tested out as superior on the intelligence tests. Very superior.
I inquired as to her situation, and learned that she was in one of these chaotic family situations, and in foster care. I was 27 years old, white, OK, but with a lot on my own plate. I actually sort of looked into it, but the bureaucracy was incredible. No way could I get custody. I was the wrong color, among my many other disabilities.
So I let it go.
I tell myself it's OK, that it's not my responsibility.
Where is she now, that little girl who leaned on me physically because she didn't have anyone else? She's 41 years old now. What kind of a life has she had? (Hey, maybe she's an investment manager downtown making more money than God, maybe she could buy me and have me torn down, how would I know?)
Do I feel guilty? Of course I do. I was given everything on a gold plate, not because I'm smarter than she is (I'm not sure I am!) but because of color and class.
Get over myself, right?
I'm in the middle of working on a documentary about obesity in Jackson, Mississippi. Spoke to a doctor down there who runs a multi-year, longitudinal study of Black folks in the city to determine who develops heart disease and why.
One of the most interesting of the early findings has to do with the relationship between race, class, and weight.
They've found an inverse relationship between obesity and class amongst whites. As income goes up, weight goes down.
The interesting part? Not so amongst Blacks. Equal amounts of obesity cross class for Black folk.
The article has me thinking about how the aggregate theory would apply here. Could it be that there are some cross-class, psychological, emotional aspects of BlackinAmericaness that people perceive as persisting whether the weight is there or not. Thus, what's the point in trying to lose it?
Could the major contributing factor to "Equal amounts of obesity cross class for Black folk" be something as simple as: the food and the way food is consumed (e.g. perhaps they have more red-meat barbeques than other people) that's prevalent within Black American culture is what makes them more obese?
Also add "more stress" to the list.
I'd be very interested in how you're measuring class. If you look at some of the more recent sociological work on class/wealth/income, one of the things we see is that class doesn't mean the same in black and white communities.
This isn't mere weak-minded relativism. A black family may have the same income, the same home, and the same level of education as a white family that lives next door. But the black family may be one generation out of poverty, whereas the white family may be several. The black family may have other family--cousins, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles--who are still impoverished. They may, indeed, be supporting parents who are still in poverty. And finally, they may not have the same level of wealth, despite looking the same on the outside.
The process of integration doesn't happen in one generation--especially when you're talking about blacks and whites. So many African-Americans can reach out and touch the projects, regardless of their seemingly middle-class existence. This has its effects.
Lastly, I'd be careful about extrapolating from Jackson, Miss. Not that you're doing this. But it's worth considering the implication of assuming that what's true in Jackson is true in Oakland or Cleveland or Detroit.
TNC, I don't know all the deets about the sample they're following in the study. (If you're curious, you can read more about it here: http://jhs.jsums.edu/jhsinfo/).
But I do know this: Jackson is Oakland is Brooklyn (where I live) is DC (where I'm from) is (very likely) Cleveland is Detroit in one respect. If you are of means in any of those places, you're a hell of lot more likely to live in an environment that provides you with everything you need to live the healthiest life possible. You probably have a pricey gym and a Y, a (safe) park or two, a grocery store and/or farmer's market, bike paths, and hell, you have sidewalks.
If you're poor in Jackson, you're probably walking alongside traffic in the street because half the poor neighborhoods don't even have sidewalks. I don't doubt in other Black cities, poor folk are similarly lacking in resources to promote healthy living.
At one grocery store I visited in a poor community there, the only fresh produce in the store (I shit you not) was watermelon. Plenty of jars of pig lips though.
Ezra/Karelis point of view is a useful reminder about empathy and how to talk to people you claim you want to help. But I hope people don't take it as a reason for resignation - an argument poor folks are just going to be obese because they're stressed and that's that.
While poverty does mean stress, that's always been the case, but obesity rates have changed a great deal. Obesity is also going up for every class - for the poor, for the rich and the in-between. So something in the environment has changed - people under stress use high-calorie foods to take the edge off more often than they used to.
If the environment changed for the worse, it can change for the better, if we're smart enough. As a start I'd say that making healthy foods cheaper and more accessible would be a great idea, but obviously we need more than that. I wish I was smarter and knew what else we should do, but I don't; the main point is the culture and environment give people options for responding to stress. We will never all look like Jenifer Aniston (or Usain Bolt), but cutting the obesity rate back to the levels of 20-30 years ago seems like a doable goal over a generation.
Which brings me to the other point - which is that I hope people don't read Karelis/Klein and conclude they should feel guilty if they care about this. What we should take is some empathy - remember that people likely face more temptations if they're in a lousy situation - and a reminder that if you condescend to people they'll usually defend themselves, sometimes to the point of defending behaviors they don't like much themselves.
But ultimately, anybody who knows a lot of overweight people will have first hand experience with the consequences - type II diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, sluggishness and the rest. I imagine a lot of people - including people with weight problems and certainly poor people - know this is a lousy fate and might appreciate help in making better choices if it was available.
"I think that basically sums it up, and jives with my own experience."
It jibes with your experience. Jibes, with a b.
Jibes jibes jibes.
Correcting the language of someone who is not your child is really quite rude.
There's an exception for the internet - bloggers have thick skin and ask for criticism and correction. And it helps that the comment is correct, and not destructive, attacking or trolly.
To be sure, there is no one answer that fits all circumstances. I’m not in grad school any longer so this is a bit free-form, so to speak.
The poverty angle is one I’m sure. Real poverty, not government-defined poverty, as the government has no incentive to be realistic about it. And not temporary poverty, like “college-living poverty” although Mr. Coates gave us a look at what temporary poverty can do to your health. Permanent poverty, like “this is what life is until you die” poverty.
Food is a cheap way to get a little happier for a little bit. And it has been mentioned more than once here, the kind of food that is both cheap and pleasure-inducing is often unhealthy.
Sure, if you eat skinless chicken, brown rice & veggies and wash it down with water, you will not have weight problems. But you will have also given up getting enjoyment from food. If you try to enjoy food, there are minefields everywhere. Forget fast-food joints. And forget about god-awful chain places like “Chill’s”. Let’s just stick to grocery stores
Can we talk about the evils of processed food a little more? Man can make calorie-dense food that nature never could. I remember a little chart that used to run in a magazine, meant as a joke of sorts. It compared a certain manufactured food product with “God’s Perfect Food”, bacon strips. (A not-so-big portion of Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing, I forget how much exactly, equaled the amount of fat that is contained in 18 strips of bacon.) They sell pizzas where one slice is considered 1 daily serving. They sell candy bars, tiny ones, which have nearly 100% of your daily fat allowance. They sell bottles of soda that have 300 calories.
There is a wrinkle to all of this actually. There is healthy, tasty food out there. It’s just really expensive is all.
If you live near a big grocery store, chances are that the grocery store might have a “healthy” section. You’ll find tasty organic foods, soda with real sugar instead of HFCS, soy products everywhere. You can buy a bag of baked potato chips with no fat that taste as good as any you’ve ever had in your life…..but you’ll pay $3.50 for a 6 once bag. Check out the pizzas that “Kashi” puts out or the line of microwave meals that “Amy’s” puts out. They taste better than you would ever believe, they are surprisingly healthy and they cost more than any similar product in the entire store.
This carries over to the rest of the store. The 80% lean ground beef is cheaper than the 96% lean ground beef. The whole milk is cheaper than the skim milk. Store brand diet soda comes in only one flavor. These aren’t the tragedies in the world but they are very germane to the discussion.
Shopping for food becomes an ordeal. Some people can only take so many ordeals. After 8+ hours of a crap job and while dealing with kids, some just don’t have the time or the ability to cook healthy, tasty meals from scratch, particularly with limited resources. So people often turn to processed foods.
Culture is something that we can talk about. I live in the Midwest now, high-carb starches seem to be a big deal here. What they seem to lack in taste, they make up for in quantity. I know more than a few people who grew with nightly dinner consisting of some fried meat and a side of macaroni & cheese, mashed potatoes & gravy, or some other pile of disgusting bland stodge. These people were not rich but most of the time, they were not poor either. The parents could have taught their children better eating habits but they simply cared more about themselves then they did their off-spring. The kids could eat what they were served or go hungry.
It is simply not logical to expect someone who grew up with 18-20 years of this to not have problems with food and a maintaining a healthy diet.
I grew up in a Mediterranean culture on the east coast, even though I’m mostly Irish, most of my family that I grew up with was Madeiran Portuguese. Although food was very strongly associated with pleasure and happiness, a lot of the food was pretty healthy. (I know more about shellfish than you could ever imagine.) So I’ve never been obese or had to deal with the problems associated with obesity. But I’ve known people who do struggle, some of these people I count among my loved ones and I have very few of those.
Yes, personal choices do factor in; everyone that struggles with obesity is not completely a helpless victim. But you can’t tell someone’s life story just by guessing their pants’ size. And they sure as hell don’t need anyone’s scorn, since when is scorn a motivator? (Or is it even about motivating anyone; is it just about feeling superior to another human being?)
A person can have a poor diet for years, become obese, say “fuck it” and continue to have a poor diet. Another person can have a poor diet for years, become obese, say “Christ help me” and try to get healthy. Both might very well already have diabetes, high-blood pressure, chronic pain and a whole host of other aliments. It’s not as if deciding to get healthy automatically let’s you drop 50 pounds. The obese person trying to get healthy starts with a huge disadvantage. It’s not like trying to drop 15 pounds to get back into an old outfit, like I’m doing right now. Unless you get to know the person, you don’t know how hard they are struggling
In church, I was told that God wants us to be holy but even when we fail; God loves us for our struggle, for our continued effort. I think it would be better if we mire mortal could appreciate each other’s struggles a bit more.
The poor obviously aren't the only ones who are obese, but in our society poverty often has the tendency to isolate individuals, not only with stresses such as are raised in TN's commentary, but in relationships. People who have a tough time making ends meet have tough times staying in relationships with others. Depression isn't just an internal organic problem. Some people are depressed by their actual circumstances and lonely.
Food often is the most pleasure giving part of their every day lives. Fat in foods = flavor. In French cooking butter is the flavor sine qua non--butter and sugar actually. In the US, bacon grease is just about everyone's favorite flavoring. 2+2=4. That greasy burger with fries, that pizza, that pork fat burrito, that ice cream. Potato chips come with lunch even at Subway. Added to that, that food can be made and sold so cheaply--value meals, they're called.
And because eating is a meditation in pleasure, we want larger portions than we should have because it engages us longer in the sensory experience.
Finally, and this is true for the wide swath of America, rich, middle class, and poor. We don't do physical labor. When I was young, I didn't have to go to a gym to stay lean, I worked outdoors, physical labor, 8-10 hours a day; I was poor, but I could eat a horse at every meal and stay skinny. When I went back to school and began a career teaching, where most of my work was done sitting at a desk, no amount of exercise was ever enough to keep up with my expanding waistline. Rich and poor alike in the US are not naturally physically active.
Do you think that the faster metabolism that comes with youth also plays a role here?
I mean, do you know your share of aging men who work physically demanding jobs but have big guts on them? (I'm obviously not talking about morbidly obese but definitely overweight.) I know I do.
I'm not arguing that being on your feet all day doesn't help you stay thinner than if you are sitting down for the same amount of time. But I'd think that no matter what your job is, if you keep eating like a horse into middle ages, that you are going to gain weight a lot easier. I could see you having more muscle tone in certain areas of your body and thusly perhaps the weight doesn't look all that bad on you but the weight would still be there.
I think metabolism and diet of course play into it. Not only that but alcohol consumption--beer, wine, hard liquor all rack up the calories. However, I do think as a society we don't naturally in our daily work activity, exercise the way we have in generations past, and that combined with our high fat, extra large portion diets are why obesity is so widespread. Finally, there are obvious pshycological factors as well.
Yes but whoever pays the money should be able to make the rules. If we are to have a national and comprehensive health plan, and I think we should, can't we do something to help or force people not to ingest so much s**t, which makes them ill, which costs the country more? I don't know how you do that in a free country, but I am uninterested in basically subsidizing some people's bad habits.
The problem with that is that again, we're attacking the "victim" and not the problem itself. What many people don't understand is that most low-income neighborhoods are food deserts, and a lot of people living in those areas lack time and resources to get to the 'hoods with the fancy schmancy markets. So the solution isn't to continue to treat the poor like children, it's to get REAL supermarkets into these communities.
Economic racism affects us all.
actually the bee stings may help the arthritis . but that kind of supports the central argument, in a way. that one's goals may actually seem perverse, from the perspective of someone else who is healthy (wealthy, sane, thin, etc).