Submitted 6 months ago by jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/1ed403e3-2fee-4edb-8508-bd1df5da34fe.jpeg
I got fat af when I was piss broke. When I could start to afford things other than carbs, the lbs starting going away.
I get there are people even more broke who can’t even afford rice, but don’t assume that being fat and being poor run contrary to each other. Shit food is cheap.
Not really. The cheapest food is often loaded with fat and sugar
Poverty is strongly correlated with obesity.
It’s easy to get. Healthy and nutritious food can be more costly, and being poor you have very limited amount of funds. It can take more effort to make and being poor, you might have much less time for yourself and have a physically or mentally pretty crushing job so less energy to prepare food. It might not be as satisfying for the brain as unhealthy food, and being poor thing might suck balls so you might not want to give that up and just want something good in your life that makes you a bit happier, even if it is not great for your body.
Last part is true for beer related weight gain too. And lot of it goes for having active and healthy lifestyle.
This.
Also, food deserts are a thing. Poor communities often don’t have access to good food, at all.
It’s expensive to be poor, and in this case the price is in one’s health.
No, it makes you fat on a nice white carb and grease diet. Let’s be realistic, we have calorie sufficiency in the developed world, it’s malnutrition in the face of excess calories that is the problem.
Yeah, no.
First: eating strictly healthy is more expensive than eating trash.
Second: Time. Poor people tend to have less of it available, which means that it’s harder to cook meals at home (which, in theory, should be cheaper to eat healthy). That same lake of time also makes exercise challenging.
Until you get to the point of poverty where you’re risking starvation, poor people are more likely to be overweight than people that are in better circumstances.
Sure healthier might be more expensive, but eating less energy isn’t more expensive.
If you consume less energy, but end up malnourished because you weren’t getting enough micronutrients, then you haven’t really come out ahead, have you? Rickets and scurvy ain’t cool.
So here’s the kicker that SO many people forget to consider:
Jobs that pay shit in the U.S., and/or have garbage benefits, are often also the ones that make you move around an extraordinary amount, or have you on your feet for 8-10 hours with a 50/50 chance of being allowed to sit down for 15 minutes.
Both of the activities above illustrate one incredibly important unseen factor: Energy. Use more, eat more, spend more.
Do the math.
Moreover, in these highly stressful positions eating generates the elusive dopamine. Which combined with 15 minutes to shove food down your throat often means sugar, grease, and salt.
I feel like way too much emphasis is put on cost. It’s really easy to find cheap stuff to eat that is healthy. It’s almost all of the second point: it just takes time and effort.
If you want to eat quick with little effort, it’s cheaper to eat unhealthy. Which is ultimately the problem. But if you put in the time to cook for yourself, it isn’t. It’s almost more expensive to eat unhealthy if you spend time to prepare and cook.
And I think too many people use this as an excuse to eat unhealthy. “Well, it’s too expensive, so I might as well not even try. Let me go get McDonald’s.”
But if you put in the time to cook for yourself, it isn’t
I already addressed that, and you have conveniently ignored it. Cooking for yourself takes time. Time is a commodity that poor people often don’t have nearly enough of. If you’re poor, you’re going to tend to have a longer commute to get to work, and you’re more likely to have more than one job that you have to juggle a schedule around. You’re more likely to live in a neighborhood where you don’t have ready access to grocery stores at all.
When I lived in Chicago, the last neighborhood I lived in was poor/working class. The closest real grocery store—not a corner store that had a couple of bananas and some slightly soft apples–was about two miles away. If I didn’t have a car, that would have been a pretty long walk, or a 30 minute bus ride with one transfer. Public transit from where I lived to where i worked? About an hour and a half one way, by bus, train, and then a 2nd bus. With an 8.5 hour day, that means that I’m away from home a minimum of 11.5 hours. If I can get up, grab coffee, get a shower, and be out the door in one hour, that’s 12.5 hours for my day so far. When I get home, I still have daily cleaning, laundry, etc. Best case scenario, if I don’t want to get anything else done in a day, that’s 3.5 hours at the end of the day before I have to be asleep. If I’d had a second job instead of coming straight home, well, there goes sleep and any time to do general daily housework. I’m certainly not going to have time to go to the gym, or take an hour run in the morning.
I made gyudon for myself tonight; it took about an hour and a half between prep time, cooking, and clean up, give or take. I used top round (it was cheap at Costco, and is very lean). Between all the ingredients I used–the top round roast, onions, rice, sake, soy sauce, hondashi, togarashi, ginger, and eggs–I probably spent about as much as a super-sized meal at McDonals, but it took me 85 minutes more time. And that’s a pretty simple meal.
Not really true, in fact starvation is so rare that for the first time in human history more people are dying of obesity related maladies than of starvation or deficiency of some kind.
The poor have never been so well fattened up in history, we’ve some the fuck how overcorrected, they’re not failing to find bread anymore, they’re taking to well note that the twinkies are cheaper for the calorie and more available at quantity for a standard sized family.
But, the poor people are the fattest ones.
OP is stuck in the XIXth century (which is valid, I’m not century shaming!).
Depends on what you call poor.
Yeah, probably taking America poor, not Africa poor.
You have to be really poor to lose weight because of it. Cheaper food is usually high in calories and low in nutrition.
I remember detoxing from alcohol and I could not even stand the smell of food for days and weeks. I felt like it will always be like that and I would never be able to eat more than 3 spoons a day. It felt like I would never have problems with my weight again.
So my weight loss tip is to just become an alcoholic and then stop drinking alcohol, you’ll lose a crapton of weight, problem solved!
most poor people have higher BMIs than wealthy people on average. Poverty is far more likey to make you fat…in USA anyway
Not really, because it’s easier to get high carb crap food. Most of what food shelves have that isn’t produce is carbs and sugar.
I’m diabetic and cannot get the ozempic I am prescribed with because there isn’t enough because of people that want to lose a few kg
I’ve had this experience; the poverty, not ozempic. I didn’t have a job first year of college and basically starved. My BMI was under 18. Everyone said my eyes looked sunken.
I takes abject poverty to lose weight though. Carbs are cheap and highly addicting. Poverty often brings a high bmi but poor nutrition.
Extreme poverty definitely, but if you’re just below the poverty line then sugary foods are typically still cheap enough to buy.
Self loathing works great too
You should change the bottom one to meth. Its a lot cheaper, and waaaaayyyyyyy less side effects
Depression in combination with poverty, sure.
Where can I get a prescription for this “poverty”?
I’ve got some! Real high-quality stuff. Wanna trade?
Crack works too
Why does everyone flock to the shitpost comment section to show off how smart they are about social problems
It’s surprising that people talk about social problems…in a post about social problems?
Have you tried eating less?
True that. My health fucking skyrocketed after getting approved for food stamps.
Kefass@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It’s often cheaper to buy fastfood than healthy food
Mercival@lemm.ee 6 months ago
It is a fair point, being obese and poor can definitely be a a horrific feedback loop to get out of. In developed countries anyways, you don’t really see it in places where food is scarce, of course.
stoy@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
This is just wrong, the tiny island nation of Nauru have a huge obesity problem as the only food they can get in any decent quantity are preprocessed food with very low nutritional value.
Alenalda@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I don’t know about that. A combo meal at McDonald’s is inching closer to 15$ in a lot of places. You can go down to the grocery store and get a good amount of food for that much. Healthy doesn’t necessarily mean only the expensive organic, free range, non GMO whatever foods are worth eating.
Daxtron2@startrek.website 6 months ago
It’s more than just the monetary investment though. It’s time and energy spent creating healthy meals, that if you’re working 12-14 hr days just becomes too much to handle.
scottywh@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’m about to eat my fourth or fifth McDonald’s free double cheeseburger so far of this month just because someone on the local baseball team got a double and they give away a free one in the app to anyone who claims it in the state the next day.
With promotions and deals (which are pretty much always going on) it’s actually tough to get cheaper than eating fast food a lot of the time.
Gigan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I wouldn’t say cheaper, but it’s definitely easier.
CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If time is money, than fastfood and processed foods are way cheaper than healthy options that require preparing and cleaning of pots/pans etc
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Fast food implies prepared food. What healthy prepared food are you thinking of? It’s generally much cheaper. Ops post makes no sense. Poverty is not inversely proportional to weight at all
idunnololz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That and food deserts. Poor places in the US lack easy access to nutritional food.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 6 months ago
Jamie Oliver’s War on Nuggets: youtu.be/V-a9VDIbZCU
IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 6 months ago
You can still lose weight if you eat unhealthy shit. Like I know people that eat McDonald’s everyday yet they ain’t fat. While you still don’t get all the necessary nutrients being unhealthy skinny is still better than being fat.
Kase@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Why do you say that? I guess that “unhealthy” isn’t very specific and could mean a lot of things. But health issues that are caused by malnutrition can certainly be worse than being fat. It just depends on the individual situation, I would think.
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I’d be surprised if that was actually true. I think what really matters is how much time and effort making your own food takes vs the speed and simplicity of buying fast food.
Price, time and effort can be minimized by making a large amount of the food in one guy that you eat for some days, but apparently some people hate eating the same food two (or more) days in a row, which, okay(?), I guess that’s one reason not to do it.