Posted on 08/30/2007 4:38:04 PM PDT by blam
Interesting relataionships here. But, are they causal relationships; i.e., does having a lower income cause obesity?
Could intelligence be the causal factor for just about all of these things?
Sitting on your butt all day eating free food is bound to do something bad.
How does the left reconcile obesity with their line that poor people are starving?
Is it related to lacking the ambition to get your kiester off the couch and do something?
The can’t and they don’t. They just keep telling the same lie until they blur the truth. That’s their MO.
>> How does the left reconcile obesity with their line that poor people are starving?
They don’t. Attempting to reconcile their “feelings” with truth & logic would make their heads explode.
True.
Not entirely. To be honest (and as conservatives, WE should be honest truthseekers rather than Leftist dreamers), it has more to do with depression. The poor are, for any number of reasons, suffering from some form of depression. This results in all sorts of negative behavior, overeating and zoning out being two of the more benign results. Hardcore drug use being the most malignant.
Poverty is more than a number on an index. It is a lifestyle. Generally, people who are poor make poor decisions in nearly every aspect of their lives. Whether it is spending $250 a month on cigarettes or $500 a month on fast food.
For about the cost of one meal for a family of five at Burger King, you could buy a rice steamer (a one time purchase), 5 lbs of rice, 5 lbs of chicken and frozen vegetables and eat healthy for days. Poor people don't think like this. Burger King is just much more convenient.
Tax the rich and give it to the poor so the lower income people can start eating better.
What I can’t get from this article is, is 2% statistically relevant?
Or does obesity causes lower income?
There is nothing more to it than that.
Studies like these begin with drunken and offensive notions proposed at a bar, and then brought into the laboratory the very next day.
bump
No, obsesity is a behavioral issue.
*sigh*
Pizza boxes, HO-HO boxes, chocolate milk jugs, all pre-prepared foods, compliments of y’all
It certainly contributes. Poorer neighborhoods have crappy grocery stores with a limited selection, and folks working two jobs don't have time to cook. I'm not surprised that there's a stronger correlation to home values than to household income -- healthy eating doesn't cost more money than junk food. It takes time, knowledge and access to good ingredients.
There are plenty of middle-class and up couch potatoes, and eating right and getting some exercise are conscious decisions. But folks in more affluent neighborhoods have safer places to walk, jog or ride a bike, and better supermarkets, not to mention farmer's markets and specialty stores like Whole Foods or Trader Joe's. Folks in less affluent neighborhoods have to try harder.
I've said many times before that in my judgment, the war on poverty is over, and we won it. Of course, solving one set of problems creates new ones; the old programs don't address the new needs.
What the inner city needs is community kitchens -- start with at least seven families, one for each night of the week. Someone from one family cooks a nutritious, tasty dinner for everyone participating. The program could even expand to prepare pre-packed lunches for kids to take to school. Or invest in one of those vacuum-sealer machines, and have ready-made meals in a plastic bag ready to reheat. If you have an able-bodied adult in the house, you participate on the work or you don't partake in the meals.
Get help from a nutritionist, maybe even an occasional visit from chefs at local restaurants -- soul food, Mexican, Asian, maybe even more fancy fare every now and then. Get the chefs to offer simple, fast and easy recipes, compile them into a cookbook, and sell it as a fundraiser.
Churches are the obvious folks to coordinate the effort -- they have room, roots in the community, volunteer labor, and some sot of vehicle that can bring in ingredients not available at the corner bodega. Maybe their own resources, maybe block grants or corporate donations. Wheel in a van from the nearest Publix, Kroger, Safeway or Super Wal-Mart once a week.
When the New Deal and Great Society programs were created to combat poverty, the problems were malnutrition, substandard housing, disease, and substandard , often segregated schools.
Today, the problem is broken families a poverty of values, not a lack of material goods. Public housing projects were an improvement over shanty towns, but now their time has come and gone. There are no role models, because by definition success means getting out. So we dump kids in a "community" where the only folks who have anything like material success are the pimps and drug dealers who stay in the 'hood because that's where their "business" is. The role models are either running a fraud, running a crime, or in the case of folks with real character and ethics, working themselves half to death.
The challenge facing the poor today is not the lack of a roof, but the lack of a real community. Housing projects are nothing more than a warehouse for hopeless people. Tear them down, or if you have good structures in a good location, auction them off as apartments or condos. as part of a real neighborhood. Offer tax credits -- enterprise zones are one of the best programs of the last 20 years -- to being needed businesses and services into the neighborhood.
There are real people facing real obstacles not of their making. The way to help those people, and to help them all fend for themselves and achieve success so we're not forever supporting or incarcerating generation after generation, is to get smarter and more adaptive to specific local needs. Grants to local groups, including religious groups, that are immersed in the community and responsive to local needs are far more effective than a one-size-fits-all monolithic federal plan.
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