Obesity and the Poor

Studies are showing that the states with the most poverty also have the highest obesity rates. I'm not surprised.

Life is about choices, no matter where you are in mobility and income. We start making these choices very early, most by observing what the people around us do. In the U.S., the largest group of poor people (certainly not all) are women with children. Early in life, probably mid-teens, these mothers made the poor choice to have sex, get pregnant, not finish school and if they married, it was after the birth of one or more children, or they didn't marry the father of their children.

These women probably also make poor food choices. Even if they have a minimum wage job and are technically "poor," with all the government programs available to them, they actually have the equivalent of purchasing power greater than many women earning a bigger paycheck--earned income tax credit, medicaid, food stamps, school lunch and breakfast programs for their children, and special education opportunities for training. So having enough money to buy the right food is not the issue, although for some, transportation to a supermarket may be a problem. Most American cities do not have good mass transit. Even so, a supermarket just presents us with more variety and more choices--like 8 types of Ritz crackers, or 10 types of potato chips, and gallons of varieties of soft drinks.

I think I could walk to a corner store or a Seven Eleven (small grocery attached to a gas station) and buy adequate food, but I'd have to ignore their primary product--snacks and high calorie, highly processed packaged food. They do have milk, cheese, bread, peanut butter, some fresh fruit, small cans of fruits and vegetables, pasta and yogurt. But a life time of making poor choices is a huge wall to climb.