Are poor people fat?

[malumbu]

Great question on questiontime, paraphrasing and selectively quoting from a health minister.

[Salsaboy]

Depends how much food they eat and how much they exercise.

[shaman]

Often are because all the cheap food is packed with saturated fats and high sugars these fill the person up but the sugars are burnt up quickly causing the body to demand more simple sugars, while retaining the cheap bulking agents like hydrogenated fat which the body cant metabolise easily. Hi Gi foods are usually cheaper and sweeter then low GI foods. The food industry wants you to keep shopping, additives in the cheaper foods like MSG make you more hungry. So a ? for packet of horse burgers sells quickly.

[Marmora Man]

Being fat is statistically related to relative income and relative education. The lower the income and the lower the education levels the more likely, but not conclusively, it is that you and your family will be overweight.

The question is cause and effect. Does being poor make you fat or being fat make you poor?

[Pickle]

There was a discussion on This Morning today on this topic (I wasn't watching daytime TV, honest), which ended up taking it further with the health minister extending it to "because poor people don't have dining tables" (perhaps not quite in those words).

[Annette Curtain]

Does this include Americans ?

[maxxi]

Who was on the panel? Nicolas Soames, Eric Pickles, Diane Abbot, Dr Therese Coffey (MP), Baron Martin of Springburn, and Fat boy Prescott?

[Top Banana]

Depends on your definition of "poor", which is something this country does not understand. If you have NO money, then no, you are not fat by definition because you cannot afford meals in any sort of regularity to define having a diet.

If you are fed by the state via benefits, then you have a guaranteed income to do with as you wish. Then you are into the realms of crap food, take-aways, access, education, and our personal favourite in my line of work - whether you actually give a fuck. You CAN find decent veg, meat etc and learn to cook for very little money. You can find time for personal fitness and wellbeing. Hell, I did.

I earn just under 45K a year, and come across "the disadvantaged" on the same via state benefits only every single day.

Its a lifestlyle choice.

[Marmora Man]

In the US, reportedly, a ban on large sugary drinks (as part of an anti obesity drive) has become a Civil rights issue http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21201680

[bon3yard]

I'm a lardarse but tend to eat only Foie-Gras and Swans, which demographic does my gargantuan backside fall into?

[Burbage]

Marmora Man Wrote:

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> The question is cause and effect. Does being poor

> make you fat or being fat make you poor?

Correlation is still no evidence of causation, and the consistent failure on the part of our finest advisers and opinion-formers to find such evidence is no guarantee that it exists. I'd hazard a guess that if you lead a harrassed and worrisome life, with the sort of stress that doesn't earn you a few hundred grand and a chubby pension, you're not really going to care very much about prolonging it. As is often pointed out, the healthcare industry has been very good at adding years to our lives, but they've not been added at the healthy end. That's especially the case for the vast majority of people for whom sunny pension ads are a distasteful fantasy. And it's why each giant leap for the medical trade seems only to deliver a painful shuffle for mankind.

The link with education is similarly spurious. It's only sustainable as an argument if you wilfully confuse ignorance with indifference. That hasn't stopped some of our most enterprising chefs and biddable politicians forcing us to sit through over a decade of five-a-day advertising, curricular blather and patronising chef-based telly, but none of it has had the slightest detectable effect on public health; a fact that, whenever it's published in the papers, results in calls for more advertising, more curricular blather and more patronising chef-based telly.

The interesting question is not so much why poor people are fat or vice versa (though even well-heeled fat people earn less than their scrawny counterparts), but how it is that the people who shouldn't really have much choice in the matter, and perversely fail to meet our formal educational targets, seem to be so much better than the rest of us at cost-benefit analysis. Eating broccoli might mean you get to live longer, but it also means adding years to the sentence of indignity, isolation, pain and poverty that most of us will reap in return for a lifetime of hard-won and soon-lost work. If that's the bargain on offer, I can see why it gets few takers.

[LondonMix]

So eating crap food is a type of suicide to escape a miserable life and destitute old age?

[womanofdulwich]

I wonder if there is any possibility that if people who would traditionally have more manual jobs- and therefore used to eating more calories, just have not been able to adjust their eating habits to the fact that they are not working manually and not using up so many calories? I know I eat far too much and have to do sport to keep up with my love of food( with limited success) :(

[Burbage]

LondonMix Wrote:

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> So eating crap food is a type of suicide to escape

> a miserable life and destitute old age?

Yes. Like any other risky behaviour. Whether it's cake, coke or woodbines, or more explicit forms of self-harm, a balance is struck between action and consequence, at least subconciously. The assumption that poor people are uniquely incapable of making appropriate calculations is not just patronizing, it relies on the complete and utter myth that everyone's life has the same potential and that people can sustain themselves indefinitely on unsubstantiated optimism.

That might have worked in the days when a pointlessly painful life was a necessary preparation for an eternity in paradise. But now it's supposed to be its own reward.

[Coman]

Luxury foods, such as cake and hot takeaways have VAT on them. The VAT now applies to hot pasties and pies

[Chillaxed]

Bleak. Are you saying that a life of (relative) material poverty is not worth living? Aren't the best things in life free?

Burbage Wrote:

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> LondonMix Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > So eating crap food is a type of suicide to

> escape

> > a miserable life and destitute old age?

>

> Yes. Like any other risky behaviour. Whether it's

> cake, coke or woodbines, or more explicit forms of

> self-harm, a balance is struck between action and

> consequence, at least subconciously. The

> assumption that poor people are uniquely incapable

> of making appropriate calculations is not just

> patronizing, it relies on the complete and utter

> myth that everyone's life has the same potential

> and that people can sustain themselves

> indefinitely on unsubstantiated optimism.

>

> That might have worked in the days when a

> pointlessly painful life was a necessary

> preparation for an eternity in paradise. But now

> it's supposed to be its own reward.

[LondonMix]

The explanations int his thread are all partially right I think.

Burbage?s comment while perhaps too nihilistic touches upon some research that has been done regarding food choices in sub-Saharan Africa. People who are chronically malnourished, when they get extra money, are much more likely to spend it on something that brings them pleasure (like a TV) than extra food at first. Life is a fine balance between pleasure and taking care of yourself. If the only luxury you can afford is what you believe is tasty high fat treats, then it makes sense. However, I don?t think anyone making poor food choices is intentionally attempting to shorten to kill themselves or shorten their lives.

The other extreme argument that poor people are fat because they are undisciplined and lazy again slightly touches on some truth while again being too extreme. Long-term thinking and impulse control are associated with being wealthier and healthier later in life. There was a study on this as well looking at children who could resist eating a cookie for 15 minutes for the reward of getting 2 cookies instead when the time was up. The kids who lacked will power, when followed up later in life, were fatter and did worse in school and were more likely to have had run-ins with the law.

Cultural and eating habits of those who traditionally may have done manual labor have also probably been slower to change to reflect more sedentary lifestyles now.

Ignorance about nutritional issues does play its part?I?ve seen how information from doctors has transformed some of the eating habits in my own extended family despite cultural norms about eating very starchy, heavily fried foods in West Indian culture.

[Jeremy]

Coman - there's no VAT on cakes!

[Annette Curtain]

Jeremy Wrote:

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> Coman - there's no VAT on cakes!

Ergo - no wonder fatties eat cake.

[Coman]

Jeremy Wrote:

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> Coman - there's no VAT on cakes!

Jeremy, whilst many cake products are zero rated, there are also many food products widely considered to be cake on which VAT is charged and it behooves me to list some of the more obvious:

Rice cakes (unless unflavoured.)

Cakes supplied in the course of catering

Cereal bars and Florentines

Inedible cake decorations sold on their own.

Chocolate coated biscuits.

Ice cream gateaux and cakes.

It seems that while you may believe your cake is free of VAT, many products thought of as cake have VAT on them.

Well done on noting the technicality. I have remembered this for the future.

[RosieH]

Rice cakes are thought of as cake? What godforsaken punitive planet is that???

[aquarius moon]

bon3yard Wrote:

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> I'm a lardarse but tend to eat only Foie-Gras and

> Swans, which demographic does my gargantuan

> backside fall into?

The toilet

[Coman]

RosieH Wrote:

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> Rice cakes are thought of as cake? What

> godforsaken punitive planet is that???

Rosie H

It is a difficult task to decide what products are a luxury and which are a necessity, and the line has to be drawn at some point. Savoury food does not have VAT on it if further preparation is required for it to be consumed. A clear example might be plain flour. On this basis, a savoury unflavoured rice cake has no VAT. In the same way, a flavoured rice cake has VAT on it, this is because it can be consumed immediately, without any further preparation.

You could argue that you could eat say plain flour without preparation if you were sufficiently hungry, but this is not the intended purpose.

Where the rice cakes are sweet they are deemed to be a biscuit not covered in chocolate and are therefore have no VAT. I am unfamiliar with a rice cake with a chocolate covering, however VAT would be added to the cost of purchasing this product. Change the coat from chocolate or a substance similar in taste and appearance to a coating which does not contain chocolate such as icing and again no VAT.

The rulings seem daft by these have been decided historically by the courts and attempt at a distinction between luxury and necessary food items.

I hope this helps

[maxxi]

Coman Wrote:

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> Luxury foods, such as cake and hot takeaways have

> VAT on them. The VAT now applies to hot pasties

> and pies

Not if they are hot from the oven (as any Cornishman will tell you) - I am waiting for the 'Pasty App.' that sends an alert from one's nearest bakery when they're about to come out.... (On the South coast they are going to use flags!)

[LondonMix]

Rice cakes are NOT cakes! No one on earth would consider a rice cake an actual form of cake...