Poverty and Obesity

One thing a lot of people do not really consider when discussing the obesity problem that plagues the United States is poverty and the availability and usage of healthy and nutritious foods.  

No one is saying that everyone needs to be skinny, but everyone needs to be healthy and excusing bad habits by flocking to the gym after feasting on junk food all day is not the answer...and those people are not the people I am talking about either... while some people choose to be obese...  some people have no choice and that is becoming more and more evident.

Did you know most of the poor neighborhoods do not have ready or close access to grocery stores within an easy distance... many of these people, living in cities and urban areas are faced with doing a great deal of their shopping at a "Corner store" that does NOT have vegetables, fruits, or anything remotely fresh....

Even if they are close to a grocery store... look on your cereal isle... notice...
all the sweet, sugary, bad for you cereals are close to the ground... easier to get to... 

It is OK to eat cake, it is OK to have chocolate and soda and even something that is "bad" for you... but a lot of Americans live off processed foods, fast food, and sugar, sugar, sugar...


There are a few books out right now that connect obesity and poverty and the lack of access to wholesome and good foods.... and for every person who decides that its simply OK to feast on processed and bad for you food and maintain no sense of a healthy diet by choice... there are more who eat what they can get... because they may not have the access to a vehicle or transportation to a place that might have a fully stocked grocery store.


Its upsetting.  When 40% of the country is not overweight, not a little bit unhealthy... but Obese... that is a wake up call... its one of the biggest killers in the country and yet no one cares. People eat what they want in some sort of obtuse rejection of "authority" like eating whatever you want regardless of how sick its making you is some sort of freedom or right... if you want to be unhealthy, sick, and less productive...that is your business... but the trend, the demand kind of fuels the system...
Kids see people with these habits and they think these habits are OK and they are not.  Then there are the kids who have no option and while they go to bed hungry, with their stomachs growling, they are also overweight... facing the highest numbers of diabetes and obesity related health problems this nation has ever seen...

I don't eat a perfect diet... and my family loves to eat, sometimes decadent foods, but there is this thing called balance and knowing what you put in your body and setting up at least an environment at home that teaches our son good foods, bad foods and how to balance it all so he may not struggle with the same issues.   

hunger and obesity, linked in the US, so shocking... and instead of work together to fight it, there are so many people who get indignant because they want their processed fat and corn syrup without thinking of the consequences...