http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...eless-obesity/
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Makes sense. If you panhandle for $8 in a day are you buying a salad, or 8 double cheeseburgers with the proceeds? Politics aside; we subsidize corn to the extent that corn based foods, including most fast foods especially those containing beef, is only as cheap as it is because we give farmers/corporations welfare for their crops.
We subsidize corn to the extent that a large part of the crop goes toward ethanol production, making the rest of it more expensive. But, that is not the issue. Are they starving, or not? Are they broke, or not? Maybe they're just stupid.
This to my opinion is the worst case that could be in any society, and it's absolutely linked to the goverments.
The healthy nutritious food(which should be mainstream food, vegetables, fruit, chicken, basic dairy food) is now the expensive food, and the unhealthy, high carb, zero protein, and extremely high in trans fat food- is actually very cheap and mainstream up to the point that poor people are obese.
In many countries where people are poor they live off a very simple nutrition of fish, rice, vegetables from whatever they can grow and some other basic elements that make them skinny but very healthy and somehow useful as humans for a long time.
It's absurd that the average lifespan in countries with no health care or technology to treat anything would soon be equal to western countries that eat themselves to death.
Nowadays you see Chinese farmers in rural environments live up to their 90's earning 1 USD a day. Saw an example about some poor old runner from India who completed a marathon on his 100th bday a few months ago(WTF, I can't do that now I think)
That's the sad truth that every one knows but no western govt. would ever give a shit to change.
Every man is motivated by the coin in his pocket.
It's really not very hard, drop the taxes and encourage companies that supply vegetables, fruit, and basic ingredients, and add that same rate of tax gradually on fast food.(A government could help a company very easily if needed)
As was the case with cigarettes, people would at first be pissed off, but the ones that wanna smoke would still smoke, it would just be harder and less convenient to begin with, and voila you have less and less smokers(at least it is that way in my country)
And the companies would cry out that the acts used against them would collapse their business blah blah(most would still continue to earn major coin, maybe a bit less, but still earn a lot)
But no govt. has the balls nor the interest to make you healthier, may it come from ignorance or whatever I just can't see it happen anytime soon
I actually don't find this very surprising. There is a big difference between homeless and starving. There is certainly some overlap, but not being able to afford rent in a high cost of living area such as Boston is not the same as not having enough money for food.
From the article:
"Some 65.7 percent were overweight, of which half — 32.3 percent of the study’s total homeless population — were formally obese."
Do these statistics not roughly match the rest of the nation? This article just tells me that homless people make approximately the same choices about food that non-homeless people make.
Their numbers generally matched obesity rates expected among the general population, a surprising finding among people ostensibly too poor to buy enough food.
Homeless Bostonians just as fat as Bostonians with houses. I don't find that a particularly-surprising finding.
This is hard to wrap an intelligent thought or analysis around. Homeless, hence poor so the article says. But rich enough too eat enough to be considered obese. OK, I guess. But it calls into question what poor and obese actually mean if they have enough money to be fat while living on the streets.
Contrary to popular belief more of the homeless are there as a matter of choice rather than giving up the intoxicants of one kind or another. Then there are the insane or whatever PC term we're supposed to use now that should be in some form of custodial care. Some of the latter refuse to take their meds which certainly doesn't help them or anyone else. Both of these groups strongly resist any kind of step up or out of their situation like a mission care program. But they will show up for the food. I don't know what these two together comprise in terms of the total percentage of the homeless, but it only poses another conundrum to the premises put forward by this article.
I would go with stupid, but some other terms come to mind as well …
Many years ago, I was talking with a psychiatrist who worked at one of the jails near Austin…we were discussing the guys (and gals) that stand near traffic lights with the signs that tell a story and ask for money…he told me he would see some of those guys periodically at the jail…his words were “those guys are scammers, I wouldn’t give them any money…”