Under Obama, Poor, Middle Class Incomes Fall Sharply, But People Are Getting Fat!!! WTF?

Answer--

Unhealthy food is cheaper than healthy food.

Yes, it's called high fructose corn syrup.

yep
combined with things like the "dollar menu"
and lack of cheap healthy foods in inner cities
one grocery store 5 blocks away vs. 10 fast food restaurants within just a few blocks...

Calories in vs calories out.

Totally. Add into the mix, parents working long hours, no one home to cook nutritious meals, reliance on fast (fat) food, and there it is! Back in the Jurassic age (when I was in High School), we were actually taught nutrition, and how to cook. It was called "Home Economics". They taught us how to sew and keep house as well (how anti-feminist of them). Consequently, I know how to make a food budget, how to get the most nutrition for my money, how to fix things when they break, and I also know how bad fast and convenience foods are.

That's because a box of Mac N Cheese costs $.50. A head of lettuce costs $2.00.

Not quite true. It's the poison they call food now. It does a lot more than make people fat. You're never going to find a healthy person that eats at McDonalds or makes tv dinners every day no matter how much they exercise. There's a lot more to health than weight.

Depression causes many to eat more of it as well....

Also lets not forget..less people working equals more food stamps and more folks at home doing nothing but eating poisonous foods.

I think there are a lot of contributors to the obesity problem.

And here is another one that I didn't know about till recently that BPA is having an effect also.

"New study shows BPA may cause teen and childhood obesity"

[link to www.kndo.com]

It's like just about everything for consumption in this country is having direct effects on behavior, obesity, health etc.

Yes.

The food is making us fat. High fructose corn syrup, Genetically altered wheat and corn (wheat was geneticlly altered back in the 1970's without public knowledge), hormones in dairy, fats that are difficult to digest, meats injected with chemicals and hormones, fast food, processed foods and an overload of salt and sugar, pesticides on fruits and veggies.
Along with this food being tainted, we have an incredibly stressful society, too much work or much too little to do but depend on government(for whatever reason), drinking and drugs to cope, depression, anxiety, overload of constant war, suffering animals(when we consume and take on their abused energy), poison in water and land depleted of nutrients, bad education system, on and on.
We can shed the weight by taking responsiblity for ourselves by research, care for our community, unity in working towards intention for a better world (prayer and meditation), and get off those Big Pharm chemicals (most are not necessary and cause genetic changes and further disease).
The time is ripe, things are bad, but with a little motivation and self education we can navigate to make a shift change for a better world. We are waiting on folks to wake up out of their slumber and take our power back and together we can restore mother earth and all her inhabitants.

There's an epidemic of baby obesity now as well.

Someone explain that to me, when all they drink is formula and cannot exercise? Babies used to stop eating when they're full. Parent never needed to monitor the amount of food they were eating.

So someone explain that to me in a way other than it's the food? For babies' case, it's the genetically modified soy in formula.

Its exactly this.

High carb meals, usually based around cheap pasta and Bread, are elevating insulin levels, which induces fat induction..

Unless you are a bodybuilder, no-one understands the value of Protein consumption, but cant afford it anyways.

Protein gives you the Full feeling, as where carbs triggers the need to gorge, opening the gateway to obesity.

Spaggeti dinner like last night, 2adults/2 teens

Hamburg- $5
Pasta-$2
Can sauce/can paste $2
12 bread sticks- $4 (could be cheaper, but these things are amazing)
Lettuce- $2


$15

By far once of the cheapest dinners available to a family.

Very full, some leftovers for Wife work lunch.

But, what if we all ate Keto diets?

Moderate protein/High Fat/Low carb

Just the meat alone, would be around $20, so your already over $20, and thats just the main course.

The average per family member for dinner, we average aound $5

$600 for a month, and thats JUST Dinner.. for 4 People.

People on some days might not get the total amount of calories they need, maybe even for a few days, then they eat, and gorge out, and it goes all to fat storage, because the body is afraid of starving again, so it packs on supplies,( Fat) to use just incase you pull that shit on the body again, its ready..

You should eat like a cave man, eat noting in a box..

Now, its super cheap to get a burger for $1, a fry for $1, a Drink $1, and heck, Graba Pie for $1, or go to KFC and get 2, for $1.. LOL..

I just went to Burger King a few days ago, and seen they now take EBT card..

Go look at pics from the 30-40's, and count how many people are fat you see..

Alot of people even just dont give a shit how they present themselves in public. You fat fucking slob, wear a fuckin shirt that fits your fat ass, no-one wants to see your fucking gut, we know your lazy, you dont have to advertise it..

No self discipline to count calories, no desire to exercise, nothing.

Theres a fix, but lazy people arnt down for it..

Yeah, its about motivation, with-in yourself.

You see, i started this off with the PROBLEM, and there is a solution. But the solution is fucking hard, and fuck, no-one wants to do hard work anymore.. So, you get fat people..

Dam, that story was like the Youtube journey, when you ask yourself, " How the fuck did I get here"?

The poor are getting fat because they can't afford healthy over-priced food at the supermarket, dumb ass! Don't you read the news? Instead of going off half-cocked, do a little research!

Also, the poor are being given cheap ass fatty food from the Food Banks, such as Kraft boxed mac 'n cheese to eat, which you put a half a stick of butter in to get the nasty cheese to stick to the diabetes-causing sugary macaroni! Along with that people are eating HOT DOGS cuz they cost like $.65 a pack at Walmart, along with nasty air-pumped white bread full of sugar and more grease on sale at Grocery Outlet for $.99 cents a loaf! Along with nasty pink slime hamburger the food/meat industry is poisoning us with!

So quit trying to make a case for Romney insulting 47% of America when people are suffering out here without jobs crum-bum employers keep firing because of their greedy accountants' suggestions to make profits for themselves by not paying for employee health care plans and salary.

I'd LOVE to see your ass in a Food Bank line or in line for food stamps because you don't have money in the bank to pay your rent and bills. Then you'd sing a different tune you little whelp.

Now get a life and quit criticizing others and laughing at them cuz karma's a bitch and you'll pay for your spreading nonsensical bullshit around like this.

Goddamn little bastard.

YES -- they sooo need to teach children home economics these days. Those are the most important things you can learn, at the end of the day. But, they don't because the less you can cook, sew, woodwork and manage your budget, the better a target you are for all kinds of corporate interests. It's all about keeping kids dumb. Sad, sad, sad.

Incomes fall and they eat cheap high fat, sugary products and gain weight...

Go to the grocery store, consider how much a person like that would have to spend and just look at what things cost. Look at the ingredients in the things within their price range.

Its all crap. Most of it is boxed. Lots of low income people participate in WIC and WIC pushes milk like crazy so lots of kids drink it like water instead of.. ya know.. water. Not to mention soda. Blech.

Like someone else said, a box of mac n cheese is about .50c while a head of lettuce (decent lettuce, not iceberg) is about $2.00. Tomatoes run about $2.00/lb, grapes are upwards of $4.00/lb, apples are usually around $2.00, strawberries are almost $5.00 a pint. Carrots and celery are a bit ridiculous too at around $3.00 a pack a lot of the time. Then there's meat.. meat is horribly high right now. To buy a 6lb pack (will last us about a month) of ground beef that I know is processed in house and without junk added in is about $25.00.

Good food is expensive. Even things that look like they're good food aren't always good. Packages are deceiving. People don't know what they're really buying and can't afford to buy much of anything better.

Program has been cut from schools. My mother was a home economics teacher. I had to take her class, actually. When she was laid off the position was cut. If it exists at all in schools today it probably isn't in very many and the program probably doesn't get decent funding to actually teach the kids much of anything.

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... when PROTEIN leaves the diet ...
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... no meat, cheese ... and who wants to live on beans! ...
.
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There needs to be a lot more urban farming. Farming everywhere actually.

Russia has it right.
[link to www.naturalnews.com]

I'll let you into a secret about the middle class and obesity. The nutritional value of fresh food (fruit and veg) is now only about a sixth of what it was only 30 to 40 years ago!! Even that is before taking into account the distance/time to get to market, compared with selling locally in days gone by. Of course the major factor is overproduction (depletion) followed by selection of crops according to profit margin rather than nutritional value.

So where does the middle class come in, they're eating right? Wrong. They might have been 30 or 40 years ago but now they are only getting one sixth of what the body needs. The body knows when it is missing something so craves more food in order to get the nutrition back. Bingo - obesity.

Well, yes food prices are getting out of hand, I won't argue that.

I'm vegetarian so I do sort of live off beans, oddly enough. Split pea soup and Navy bean soups, rice & beans, chili, lentil soups...these are good cheap foods if you really need to survive on a budget.

But, good meat stretchers are stews and soups. I loved homemade vegetable soup with a bit of meat in it as a child...or look up recipes for Chicken soup and spaetzle. Ghoulash is delicious (even the cheap Americanized kind) and Irish Stew can really stretch out meat nicely. Irish Stew is a great, inexpensive, hearty autumn meal, and you can make Irish Soda Bread from scratch with your kids to go along with it. And meatloaf makes a fine, comfort meal with some homemade mashed potatoes, gravy and frozen vegetables. So, I hope that inspires some of you who are on a budget...just google around and you can find some fine, healthy and inexpensive meals. Enjoy cooking them.

Quinoa has a lot of protein too. That's my new favorite.

Beans are a great solution to protein needs on a budget, and they are a weight loss food.

You're in Wisconsin... no cheese? Srs?

Yes they are. I sub beans in for a portion of the meat or all of the meat in a recipe much of the time. My husband complained at first but seems to like it now.

Answer- it's called Dollar Menu!

Wow. Can vitamins/supplements balance this out at all?

7% that's not so bad.. here in Canada the poorest 20% are earning 40% less today then they did in 1996. Here in the North we call it Harper inflation, it's kind'a like Hyper inflation, but not.. really, eh.