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.
“Community kitchens” - great post!
I was in Whole Foods yesterday, they were selling heirloom tomatoes for $5.99/lb that I grow in my backyard FOR FREE. (Well, not for free free, the seedlings cost $2.99 at Home Depot)
>There are real people facing real obstacles not of their making.<
I am not sure I have ever met anyone who was forced to eat a lousy diet. Most of the stories and times I can recall are about eggplant, broccili or some other healthy food.
Ever heard of a crockpot? Toss the ingredients in, let it simmer while you are at work.
You can cook rice in a ricecooker with about 2 minutes of work.
Add the contents of the former with the latter, and you'll have a cheap, tasty meal in less time than it takes to stand in line at BK.
Chicken or the egg? Do poor people have problems because they lack community spirit, or does their lack of community spirit (and self-reliance) make them poor?
What sounds better to me is a kind of "Salvation Army" rooted in nutrion rather than drug abuse! ;^)