What? Again?
The Gap Between Rich and Poor Americans' Health Is Widening
81–90 of 136 posts
Re: The Gap Between Rich and Poor Americans' Health Is Widening
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whole grains aren't unhealthy as part of a balanced diet. Bread or rice makes vegetables more palatable, adds some protein, carbs, fiber, and minerals. Carbs are vital if you're doing physical labor. Grains are more calorie dense than veggies, cheaper, and store longer, than veggies - all big pluses for low-income households.
Carbs are vital? I've been living for 7 years on a sub-20g net carb diet. I'm relatively active and participate in several century bike rides throughout the year. I don't seem to be missing out? Actually, carbs are the only macro-nutrient your body can completely do without.
I feel utterly miserable performing heavy exercise on insufficient carbs. People have different physiologies.
Re: The Gap Between Rich and Poor Americans' Health Is Widening
#83EDIT: Apologies for the rant, went a little overboard oh well. For the overwhelming majority of heavy hitting chronic diseases (Diabetes T2, Obesity, Heart Attacks, even likely cancer). They are completely preventable though diet and other lifestyle changes. Good food, grass fed meat, fish and fresh vegetables aren't that expensive people could afford it if they thought it was an actual priority. For those suffering…
> They are completely preventable though diet and other lifestyle changes.
Does this mean that some of those Americans are to blame due to living such an unhealthy lifestyle?
Re: The Gap Between Rich and Poor Americans' Health Is Widening
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ironically something negatively affected by lead exposure, yet the comment you reply to seems to be judging people in poor area's decisions as being a factor in theit health outcomes while at the same time minimising lead poisoning's impact.
I don't blame poor people for their plight. I didn't bootstrap myself to high executive function, the universe just gave it to me. Those affected by environmental lead are no more in charge. But we have to get to the root cause of inequality to begin talking about a solution. Most people have poor health because they make poor decisions. So either we disallow them agency and act as their perpetual nanny, or accept th…
From your writing, it sounds like from your perspective there are only two outcomes:
* Unacceptably nanny people
* Do nothing and accept inequality in life, and make no mitigations to prevent it
You have listed a lot of things that you think won't work. What do you think _will_ work, that allows people agency and doesn't require acting as their perpetual nanny?
Re: The Gap Between Rich and Poor Americans' Health Is Widening
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> convenience plays a big role No government regulation should be imposed on the country as a whole so that some people can find things more convenient. If people can't be bothered to put some effort into being healthy, I'm not sure why I should care if the "gap between rich and poor American's health is widening" or not. Edited to remove judgement.
You may have missed other parts of this conversation where people point out how corporate interests have had great success in getting the government to promote and subsidize unhealthy foods (see: corn subsidies, the food pyramid, subpar food labelling, cheap junk food in public schools). The government (at various levels) should certainly have a role in ensuring a healthy population. But if nothing else, the governme…
> The government (at various levels) should certainly have a role in ensuring a healthy population.
this is an opinion. to the extent that the government publishes nutrition recommendations or information, it should of course be accurate, but I really don't want to see what the government actively "ensuring" my health looks like.
Re: The Gap Between Rich and Poor Americans' Health Is Widening
#86EDIT: Apologies for the rant, went a little overboard oh well. For the overwhelming majority of heavy hitting chronic diseases (Diabetes T2, Obesity, Heart Attacks, even likely cancer). They are completely preventable though diet and other lifestyle changes. Good food, grass fed meat, fish and fresh vegetables aren't that expensive people could afford it if they thought it was an actual priority. For those suffering…
> They are completely preventable though diet and other lifestyle changes. Does this mean that some of those Americans are to blame due to living such an unhealthy lifestyle?
Personally I think they do shoulder some blame. But I certainly think things could be made significantly easier for the average person to do the right thing.
Nutrition science is very complicated with very strong biases and conflicting results. It makes it difficult to actually know what to eat, the media doesn't help by regurgitating every single crappy study that has a catchy or provocative conclusion. (The rubbish getting published and the peer review process is another can of worms)
There are many companies with a vested financial interest in selling appealing but unhealthy food. People are effected by advertising and what is easy, that isn't their fault.
Exercises for staying reasonably healthy doesn't really get taught. Things could certainly be made easier, for the average person.
Re: The Gap Between Rich and Poor Americans' Health Is Widening
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unhealthy foods are cheaper than healthy foods, partially due to sugar subsidies. This is what happens when corporations run the government. They lobby for things that are beneficial to their bottom line rather than what's better for the well being of the population.
Processed unhealthy foods are cheaper than processed healthy(er) foods. Beans and grains are cheap. Staple fruits and vegetables are cheap. Chicken is cheap (especially dark meat). Eggs are cheap. You can feed a family of 4 a very healthy diet for ~$100 a month if you're willing to put in the work sourcing and cooking. That's the crux of the issue, though. Food deserts combined with a lack of nutritional and culinary…
I grew up on a poor diet and eating various (not all) veggies seemed bland. It only took about 2-3 weeks of clean eating (no meat, minimal sugar/salt) to "reset" my palette to where everything natural started tasting delicious.
Re: The Gap Between Rich and Poor Americans' Health Is Widening
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Processed unhealthy foods are cheaper than processed healthy(er) foods. Beans and grains are cheap. Staple fruits and vegetables are cheap. Chicken is cheap (especially dark meat). Eggs are cheap. You can feed a family of 4 a very healthy diet for ~$100 a month if you're willing to put in the work sourcing and cooking. That's the crux of the issue, though. Food deserts combined with a lack of nutritional and culinary…
I have a few friends on the poverty line. They all live in houses and apartments without access to a working kitchen. Many rented rooms don't come with kitchen "privileges." In addition they work 60+ hours a week making time consuming food preparation less practical. The result is a lot of cheap pre-packaged food and fast food.
Cheap, gross pizza is a thing, and you just have to pick it up. IIRC a Costco combination pizza will provide enough calories for a largish adult for two days, and is $10. No oven, no kitchen, no gadgets, no cooking required. It'll even probably still be fine to eat day two without refrigeration. Ditto all sorts of other dirt-cheap gross pizza joints, not just Costco. Math works out almost as good. Or cheap frozen pizza on clearance (talking like Totinos or store brand here, not even anything as fancy as Freschetta) if you got a freezer and an oven.
It's also incredibly unhealthy if you ate it regularly, but hey. Cheap, tasty-enough calories hitting every "food group" from the good ol' pyramid. Though arguably not fruit, I guess.
[EDIT] I'm always confused when folks talk about healthy, fresh food being a slam-dunk price win over bad food. I can only assume they are not familiar with what's actually out there, in the bad food universe, and are just looking at how expensive full-price Frosted Flakes are or whatever. I find it damn hard to compete with $5/day/person like that Costco pizza, without resorting to a bachelor's rice-n-beans-n-whichever-veggies-were-about-to-go-bad diet.
Re: The Gap Between Rich and Poor Americans' Health Is Widening
#89We Americans are living in a pretty stressful time as well (i.e. politically, financially, among other things). I can't name the study(ies) to show it, but psychology has told us that stressful environments correlate with poverty and other awful factors, which also cause even more stress, so people tend to go down and stay down in a vicious cycle, unless they make a significant effort to turn it all around.
(for example, say your job stresses you out so much and takes so much time out of your day that you can't cook, then suppose you feel pressured enough that you settle for fast food, and exercise less. So you gain weight over time. Now your weight might just stress you out too; now you have to deal with the detriments of that, on top of your shitty job. Sounds hard...)
So it makes sense to me that poor Americans's health is getting worse. For rich people, I'd have to assume they have the time/resources (possibly chefs) to get the healthy food and such that they need, so it's not changing much.
EDIT: Oh, and from my experiences growing up in a pretty conservative environment: lots of Americans honestly feel there's too much confusing info out there about diets, workouts, etc. It's always in the news, so you get tired of hearing about it and how you're going to die at 40 because of the terrible things you're doing to your body (McDonalds every week, or whatever). Plus, we've seen so many diet/fitness program commercials on TV and heard so many stories of them not working. I think people are well aware they should make a change, but how to do so is such a noisy topic with mixed success, that it stresses them out just thinking about it. Even if you were to provide them a new, easier way to get fit, it would look exactly the same as all those fake diets and exercise programs they saw on TV. Who knows if your new shit's gonna work or not? They'd rather not even bother.
Re: The Gap Between Rich and Poor Americans' Health Is Widening
#90It’s really hard for me not to be skeptical of a study that starts with the premise of measuring everyone else against “the most privileged group,” aka. white men, and then calling their metric “health justice.” I don’t know the stats off the top of my head but I’ve heard many times that men’s health issues are under-studies relative to women’s — ie breast cancer versus prostate cancer. I’ve also seen that mental hea…
Statistically speaking, white men are far and away the highest income earners in America. They are literally the most privileged group. Until 2008, 44 of 44 of US presidents were white men. White men dominate the Fortune 500, Wall Street, and leadership in the government. The paper also explicitly defined health justice as "a measure of the correlation of health outcomes with income, race/ethnicity and sex; and a sum…
Consider this:
Who do you think is more privileged, with "privileged" meaning access to money, support, opportunities and potential for advancement: Will Smith's kids or a white poor guy who grew up in West Virginia?
I think the point the parent is trying to make is that at any individual's level income and wealth are a far better measure of privilege than race. Yes, wealth is highly correlated with race in the US, and a lot of that has to do with legally enforced racist policies in our past. And there are also certainly some examples of privilege that do correlate more with race than income (e.g. racial profiling by law enforcement). But if your headline is "Gap between rich and poor Americans...", why not just focus on those who are actually rich and those who are actually poor.