I visit family in other states and I get comments like “I can’t believe you are so thin.” For context I am a healthy weight and I eat what I consider a reasonable diet. I sit and smile while I watch them drink soda and eat pure sugar and salt. I don’t care about your life choices but don’t act surprised by someone that’s a normal weight.
How closely does this match a heatmap for poverty levels?
Junk food is cheap so there is a correlation. It isn’t a perfect match but it is close.
What is more interesting is looking at obesity by race.
Got it. So Colorado should be predominantly rich white people.
Oh hey wait look at that, 76% white and 10% immigrant labor. With a white poverty rate of only about 7.5% (1)
21% of the state is also of Hispanic or Latino descent and growing, but yeah, predominantly white.
Colorado here. You nailed it. We got a lot of these unbearable “health is life” turds.
Actually the white population for the US is one of the highest.
An obese poor person really is a paradox!
It’s far more expensive to eat in a way that would make you fat, so maybe not poverty, but (nutrition) education levels would be a better correlation?
It’s always funny to me to watch single people who have been skinny their entire life try to coach the world on how to be like them.
There is an entire world outside of your little shell, very few people will fit in to the narrow view of the world you have and those that do don’t need your advice, they already look and eat like you.
There are myriad luxuries that contribute to your, apparently quite successful lifestyle. Had you actually encountered the hardships you claim to be able to resolve with some fucking oats, you’d be able to grasp the true depths of how idiotic the suggestion is.
I congratulate you on your success, but please shut up. The poors are in no further need of out of touch advice, they get plenty.
You assume that I’ve been both skinny and well off, so I can’t speak to the topic?
Well, you’re wrong.
And the reality is, the MAJORITY of the population is dangerously overweight, so this isn’t a “some people can’t do what you do!” situation. There are SOLUTIONS, and they don’t have to be difficult or out of reach to anyone.
Why wouldn’t you want more people to be educated in nutrition? Why would you want poverty to be an excuse to not try? Give people a chance, man.
While ingredients for healthy food are cheaper that processed ready to made or fast food, the time and energy to cook is an expensive luxury that no everyone have.
Check out this Folding Ideas video, about food, class and the cost of cooking https://youtube.com/watch?v=V-a9VDIbZCU
Class and the cost of cooking?
I could hop on Amazon right now, find you a $30 range and a $7 toaster oven at a flea market. You can bake anything that fits into it.
If you have a home, a sink and a power outlet, you can cook, and I know a ton of you have that before you have your next Little Caesars, and if you can’t cook, you’re in luck as learning new skills is entirely free sans the time.
You’re so close. Time is a luxury. Time. Poor people are working multiple jobs. Time. Time. Time.
I would reject that statement on the basis that preparing a decent meal does NOT have to be time or energy intensive.
For example, you can make overnight oats with about 10 to 15 seconds of effort. It would be filling, healthy, cheaper than packaged cereal, and can be done with something that most people already have in their home or apartment (a fridge).
And with a visit to the thrift shop, you can get a rice cooker for like $10. And make all kinds of dishes without any effort at all.
There are so many “hacks” to make cooking quick and easy, that I’d say it’s more effort to always feel shitty because of a poor diet.
I love to cook and always have. When I was working 2 jobs (and some additional freelance/part time) to keep a roof over our heads, there was zero chance I had the time, money, and energy to cook. Living in a food desert, I would have to spend gas money I didn’t have to go to a proper store to buy things and that would eat about 50 minutes more of my already-sleep-deprived day. Don’t even get me started on when I lived out of a car for a while. And I’m fortunate that I even had the car. Public transit was terrible where I lived at the time and basically useless unless you want to spend 3-4 hours a day commuting. There were no sidewalks and multi-lane roads with high speed limits. The social safety net is also in terrible shape, moreso today than back then.
“Only $10” also shows how out-of-touch you can be for the real situation that people have, particularly in areas of the rust belt and coal mining areas where the employers frequently left. I also worked in worker’s comp in healthcare IT and let me tell you that people with lifelong problems from the mines frequently get denied care as the mines fight just about everything, so there are people who have a really rough time and need more care for their families which is still more time and money in places with few jobs left to go around. These people also don’t have the resources to “just move”, either. This doesn’t even go into the opioid epidemic that also is an issue from overprescription in those areas and other confounding factors.
Friend, I don’t know why so many people believe that simply feeding yourself require a tremendous amount of time, money, or energy.
You can make a week’s worth of food, with little more than a few minutes to dump the ingredients in a rice cooker, slow cooker, or pressure cooker. When times are tough, and money is tight, this would be the most ideal way to do things.
Do food deserts exist? For sure. I completely understand that not everyone has access to unlimited amounts of food.
But the reality is, over 90% of the American population live within 15 minutes of a Walmart (with three quarters being within 5 minutes from one), and that’s if they don’t already have more than one grocery store in their area. If they live further, Walmart offers free shipping or very low cost shipping. And that’s just Walmart. Pick whatever grocery chain or even Amazon, and there really is no such thing as a food desert.
Please don’t diminish someone’s ability to really improve their life with very little effort. The worst thing we can do is convince people that they are powerless, when in fact, they have way more control over their dietary choices than they think.
Good luck eating “overnight oats” everyday on dirty plates in a dirty kitchen, cause looks you don’t think cleaning is part of the food preparation process.
Goddamn, where are you eating your meals, bro?
Cleanup is SUPER EASY.
I don’t understand what everyone is doing to make food prep and cleanup such a nightmare, but it really doesn’t have to be difficult, unless you make it difficult.
Sounds like you’re not the one who cook or clean in your home.
Yes, I do, along with the grocery shopping. For a family of 4.
Since the pandemic, we really had to tighten up on our grocery budget, so we learned where to save money on food while making food prep easier (so we aren’t relying on convenience foods).
As an example, we were spending something like $15 to $20 per week on non-dairy milk. So, we just make that at home for pennies at a time. Takes <10 minutes to make a week’s worth, then we reuse the glass jars. No waste, no running to the store, no filler ingredients.
We do also make use of an instant pot and bread machine. Low effort, but high-quality food that’s cheap.
Food prep (and cleanup) is a skill that I hope everyone can take at least some time to learn. It carries through to the rest of your life, and you’ll have better health as a result.
Don’t get me wrong, we definitely still buy convenience and packaged food, but they aren’t the meal. Even as snacks, these foods are far too expensive to have all the time.
It sounds like you were like most people in the western world - uneducated on nutrition, cooking and basic life skills. This isn’t a jab at you this is just the world that we live in. Most people don’t have a good understanding of these things so the go with what is easy, fast and feels inexpensive. This drives obesity.
It’s great that you took the initiative to learn home economics and it sounds like it has helped you and your family. Many others have not gotten to the “so we learned” stage yet for whatever reason.
Home economics used to be an elective.
Sad to say, but I feel cooking is an essential, base skill that everyone should have at least a small grasp on, at least for their own wellbeing.
It’s amazing for me to consider that anyone could bake a loaf of bread in their kitchen in a few hours, and nobody, not even Musk could taste it, not even if he wanted to. It’s a sense of ownership and accomplishment, and you… won’t die of starvation, so it has that going for it too.
That’s such a wonderful perspective! And funny enough, I’ve got a loaf in the bread maker! 😂
The 1% can eat the most expensive steak ever produced, the most valuable cake ever baked, the most rare and exotic delicacy, but those shitheads ain’t having a LICK of this goddamn bread. It is exclusively, an experience for you and anyone you share it with and no one else. That is the big revelation to cooking. Every single dish is one of a kind if you treat it that way.