Why are there so many fat Americans?

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In some neighborhoods it's easier to find drugs or a gun than a tomato.
It would be great if there were more community gardens in urban areas,food for the body and the soul.

Some of it has to do with the Anglo-Saxon basis of the culture.

Obesity has always been more prevalent in the British Isles than on the continent.

Compare English or Scottish food to North American food, then contrast with most of the continent. Meat, potatoes, white bread, and rich pastry. Also evenings spent drinking beer and ale in a pub, after supper, followed by fish and chips wrapped in a newspaper.

The first time I was in England, I was astounded how similar the food was to the US. If you'd only ever been in the UK or the US, you might be more aware of the differences. But those differences are negligible when compared with what you encounter on the other side of the Channel.

On the other hand, the only times in my life when I've lost weight without trying (not counting when I had an operation a few years back) was when spending several weeks in France. This happened at least twice.

I'm guessing if you offered your average "poverty stricken African American" the choice between Micky D's and health food it would be Micky D's that would win out 9 timed out of 10. There's a reason why you still find fast food in the poorer inner city; it actually sells.

Of course, food that's genetically engineered and processed with the goal of pushing all the eater's biological food pleasure buttons will ALWAYS win out over healthy food. In the prehistoric age, sweet fruits (to say nothing of other naturally sweet foods like honey) were rare, and so was fatty meat, most game was stuff like rabbits. So, humans were "designed" by nature to seek out sweetness and fat. Well, today we can produce endless amounts of sweet stuff and fatty meat, so those sweet and fat pleasure buttons keep getting pressed, and add on top of that a cynical food corporation mantra of "give them what sells". I rarely go to a certain local supermarket because the layout infuriates me, produce is exiled to the supermarket equivalent of Outer Siberia while baked goods and candy are the first thing you see when you walk in the main door. That store is just so blatant and cynical in its layout that I finally got fed up and quit patronizing them. As for what inner city residents would prefer to buy, I saw a photo years ago of a produce truck in Detroit being guarded by mercenaries, real ones with Kalashnikov rifles at the ready. Since nothing ever gets erased on the net, you should find that pic with some googling.

That's why they are in business; to sell stuff. It's the consumer's responsibility to select what they buy.


I never thnk about how any grocery store displays things as long as I can find what I want. I know what I want before I go there so it's only a matter of finding each thing then getting out of there. the one thing I do find irritating is that some produce seems to have very little flavor while others do. Example: One brand of strawberries are like eating candy and another brand has little more flavor than water.


I'd be skeptical of that being staged. Just picturing that the first thing that comes to mind is criminal and liability nightmare.

Even if that's so, it would be nice if people in inner cities actually had a choice in what they eat. And I seriously there isn't a choice in their neighborhoods because they just didn't want to buy healthy food.

They have been trying to get community gardens going here in Cleveland. It is part of their attempts to address abandoned properties. The plan was to tear down abandoned houses and turn them into community gardens. Unfortunately, the make-up of the city council changed (along with budget priorities), so the only community gardens that got started are in middle class neighborhoods where the university was providing funding.
Most of the empty lots in the poorest neighborhoods (like mine) can't be touched because they don't own them or else they get to just stare at collapsing houses full of squatters.

The key there is improving one's lot so they will be in a better position to make those choices.....

What I don't understand is that Americans eat much more meat than Europeans, but then complain that vegetables are expensive. Here in the Netherlands meat is expensive and most vegetables are dirt cheap. Onions, leek, tomatoes, kale, carrots... all are extremely cheap. Tomatoes especially, I have no idea how people can make a profit on those.
Cans of pea soup or beans are also not expensive, and quite healthy.

As a U.S. citizen who has traveled in the UK and France, I had a similar experience. So much starch in my UK meals. I had no accidental weight loss, although no weight gain either. But in France I actually did lose weight by accident. And that was with having pastries. But those pastries were microscopically small, although very dense and flavorful. Looking at US equivalent (sort of) pastries, I'd have to eat a much larger one to get the same flavor experience and unfortunately sometimes have. The French cuisine seemed to do so much flavor layering- compared to US and UK- that my tastebuds were satisfied with small portions. There is something about less flavorful food that makes it easy to eat too much.

Or maybe I just lost weight climbing those Montmarte steps.

I heard an American complain about the portion sizes in France. "Don't go to France for the food. In fact, bring food with you because meal sizes are too small".

Too much food
Not enough movement
equals
fat person

It depends on the area. Some places have cheap veggies and expensive meat, but some places are the opposite. In my area, there is a place that specializes in corned beef and it costs less than $5/pound, but getting a head of iceberg lettuce (of questionable freshness) at the store a block away would cost about the same. You could go to Trader Joe's a few miles away, but they are not exactly affordable to the people around here. McD's Dollar Menu is often referred to as "dinner on a dime" by my neighbors. It is where dinner comes from when the budget gets tight. Dollar fries and a dollar burger. $2/person is cheaper than you could do at the store around here unless you were going to try to live off of nothing but Ramen (which is also a big part of their diet).

Here's a contrarian view from Slate.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food ... esity.html



Their conclusion is that poverty itself leads to the unhealthy food choices- that if you are under constant financial stress, your decision-making faculties are tapped out by the other more immediate decisions. And also that poverty leads to a higher concentration of stress chemicals, which has been shown in other research to promote obesity.

This does make sense to me. As a middle class person, when I think about health risks for myself and my family, I think about cancer, stroke, diabetes, exposure to pesticides. These are things that kill at an unspecified time in the future. For people whose health risks are the more immediately fatal ones of being caught in gang crossfire or mugged by a junkie, diabetes won't even register as something to be actively prevented. Education, Michelle Obama style, does nothing because it doesn't displace the more immediate concerns.

This brings up the question of why the obesity epidemic is new even though poverty sure isn't. There the blame is on competition from crap food like McD's. That competition didn't used to exist and the default was to cheap, home cooked food which was far healthier despite being high in saturated fat. Yes, McDs is a business and it's their job to make money. People could choose to go back to their native (inexpensive) cuisines and would be healthier if they did. But a Big Mac punches the flavor buttons in a way pork and beans never can. Some black leaders are trying to fight back against this by making it a class issue. If they can convince young black people that avoiding McD's is empowering, then power to them. I hope they succeed.

^^^ Sounds like that place needs an Aldi. You'd expect that budget grocery stores would pop up in poor neighbourhoods. Here there are two Aldi stores and a Lidl store in the poorer sections of town, and they get a lot of customers (also wealthier people who go there to save money, I often see Mercedes and Audi cars parked there). I think Aldi sells some products at a loss to attract customers, hoping they make it up by also selling luxury products. I think the bread, milk and beer (! !!) are sold at a loss there, especially the beer.
If often get cans of pea soup from there, they cost 99 cents and I get two meals out of a can (and it's easy and quick). It's fairly healthy since it's mostly peas and other vegetables. This is ideal for poor people who are not really skilled cooks. I even found a picture of the can. Even the packaging looks healthy with all those vegetables on it:

NO CANS!!

they are full of vile preservatives. Fresh or frozen are better options.