How to eat healthily on £1 a day • Hacker News Board

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#101

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 8:07 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #99

yummyfajitas wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your claims are a little surprising, at least from an American perspective. Our various welfare programs are so generous that our poor can (and often do) eat like gluttons. I was under the impression that UK welfare benefits are far more generous than those in the US - is that incorrect? (Full disclosure - I've spent a grand total of 5 days of my life in the UK, most of it in zones 1-2 of London. I know virtually not…

Your citations show a link between poverty and obesity, not gluttony. If welfare programs were generous poor people might be able to afford fresh vegetables and other nutritious foods less linked with health issues, rather than the cheap, high-calorie, low-nutrition foods.

Obesity is a direct product of gluttony (i.e. eating more than you need). If the poor were really financially constrained, they would eat a smaller quantity of high caloric density foods.

(There is one exception to this - tall muscular people. This is a known problem with BMI.)

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#102

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 8:11 PM UTC

batemanesque wrote: post #100

yummyfajitas wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least among children (the only group for which I could find this data, see the citations I added to the post you responded to), this is not correct. The number of poor children who don't get enough to eat is virtually the same as the number of rich children who don't - about 5%. In the last few years, the number of people using foodbanks in the UK has increased dramatically, for instance. This does not mean people…

very much doubt that only 5% of poor children don't get enough to eat. citation?

It's the same citation I added to my original post. You'd know this if you bothered to read the post you just responded to.

http://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa11/hstat/hsa/pages/221oo.html

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#103

Post by ceejayoz » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 8:15 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #101

ceejayoz wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your citations show a link between poverty and obesity, not gluttony. If welfare programs were generous poor people might be able to afford fresh vegetables and other nutritious foods less linked with health issues, rather than the cheap, high-calorie, low-nutrition foods.

Obesity is a direct product of gluttony (i.e. eating more than you need). If the poor were really financially constrained, they would eat a smaller quantity of high caloric density foods. (There is one exception to this - tall muscular people. This is a known problem with BMI.)

> Obesity is a direct product of gluttony

It's also a product of low exercise (common if you're scraping by with two minimum-wage jobs), depression (common when you're poor), eating (cheap) junk food instead of fruits and vegetables, etc.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#104

Post by Genmutant » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 8:17 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #85

claudius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to live on 700 €/month for three years, where I spent 310 €/month on rent (including warm water and heating for a 1-room + kitchen + bathroom flat of 40m²) and saved a further 100 €/month, plus ~50 €/month for university fees (~250 €/6 months). So I lived off (700 - 310 - 100 - 50 = 240 €)/month, which I found to be no particular problem – ~150 €/month on food, toothbrushes etc. (general groceries), 30 €/month…

Did you have a similar mix and quality of clothes at the end of tht period as at the start? Similarly, was you washing machine (if you had one) of similar quality? T.v, computer? It is relatively easy to live on a budget starting from a position where you have all relatively new stuff, and where you have a full closet of relatively new clothes. Also: €25 for eating out once or twice plus clothes?

It's really not that difficult. I live on basically the same budget (also a student in Germany), as do many others I know. I have a washing mashine which is over ten years old, but still works fine. Got it from somebody who bought a new one for free. My tv is really old, I got it from a friend who got it some years before that from their grandmother. About once a year I buy a new jeans and 1-2 tshirts.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#105

Post by peripetylabs » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 8:26 PM UTC

I've always disliked the perception that poor people necessarily eat poorly. Rice, wheat, barley, oats, beans, and root vegetables are grown in abundance in developed countries and so are inexpensive; they do not spoil quickly; and are very healthy. Most vegetables will keep for weeks in a refrigerator and months in a freezer. Sardines (fresh) and eggs provide much better protein than meat.

I think the cost of "healthy food" is mostly rooted in ignorance and a taste for simple sugars:

"For a Brit, there can be no greater comfort food than a custard cream."

There's your problem.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#106

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 8:33 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #103

yummyfajitas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obesity is a direct product of gluttony (i.e. eating more than you need). If the poor were really financially constrained, they would eat a smaller quantity of high caloric density foods. (There is one exception to this - tall muscular people. This is a known problem with BMI.)

> Obesity is a direct product of gluttony It's also a product of low exercise (common if you're scraping by with two minimum-wage jobs), depression (common when you're poor), eating (cheap) junk food instead of fruits and vegetables, etc.

Low exercise doesn't cause obesity. Low exercise combined with high caloric intake does. I.e., eating more than you need.

I successfully maintain a healthy bodyweight through periods of low exercise (typically resulting from injury). Right now I put in the effort to eat 4500 (reasonably clean) cals/day. When I'm unable to train, I cut it to 3000.

People suffering depression may choose gluttony at a rate higher than others, but that doesn't mean depression causes obesity. Gluttony does.

If a person were truly financially constrained, they couldn't engage in gluttony if they wanted to.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#107

Post by DasIch » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 8:52 PM UTC

claudius wrote: post #83

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is simply not true. I live in the third most densely populated country in Europe (after Monaco and Vatican City), the Netherlands. It has 1287 people per sq mile. Yet, the country has plenty of rural areas from where it takes hours to walk to the nearest town or even the nearest shop. Belgium, the UK, Germany, and Italy are ranked 4, 5, 7 and 9 respectively. They too have large rural areas. In the less densely p…

On one hand, I cannot recall a single village of more than, say, 1000 inhabitants (in Germany) which did not have a decent supermarket (Aldi, Lidl etc.) – at most, it might be at the other end of the village a few kilometers away, but, well. On the other hand, you ignore that bicycles are perfectly fit for use as transportation, especially in rural areas with little traffic, reducing the need for a car even further.…

Living in Germany I can assure you that there are towns and villages spread out so far that getting to the nearest supermarket takes hours by foot. Bicycles are not an option, if you know what Mittelgebirge[1] means in practice, you know why and if you use public transportation in rural areas, every trip to the supermarket turns into an event that needs to be scheduled.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#108

Post by takluyver » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 8:59 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #97

takluyver wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is rather political. I think you can probably find something similar in both the UK and the US: some 'poor' people are getting enough money that they can afford to eat a lot of cheap, unhealthy food, while others genuinely struggle to get enough to eat. The difference in money isn't all that much when compared to factors like whether you have children, which area you live in, and which benefits you're getting. T…

At least among children (the only group for which I could find this data, see the citations I added to the post you responded to), this is not correct. The number of poor children who don't get enough to eat is virtually the same as the number of rich children who don't - about 5%. In the last few years, the number of people using foodbanks in the UK has increased dramatically, for instance. This does not mean people…

Most parents probably prioritise feeding their children above almost anything else. Then there are provisions like free school meals. So I wouldn't really expect the statistics to show many children not getting enough to eat.

You seem to be focussing on the correlation between poverty and obesity. That's well known, but there are a couple of key differences from the discussion at hand:

First, the poorest category is generally quite broad. I'm looking at one of your citations now, and it lumps all households below about $20k into the 'poor' bracket. The fact that obesity is more prevalent overall in that bracket doesn't mean that everyone in it gets enough to eat.

Secondly, getting the food you need isn't just about calorie intake. After all, a cup of vegetable oil has almost all the calories you need for a day. People need a balanced diet, including vitamins and protein and so on. So waistline measurements alone aren't enough to determine how many people aren't getting adequate food. News stories such as tinyurl.com/cqw7r43 suggest that poorer households are cutting back on fruit and veg as money gets tighter.

Finally, when people can't afford enough food, they are likely to turn to unconventional sources like foodbanks and dumpster diving. That people need to rely on charity and scavenging is a failure of society. We don't need to see people literally starving to death to accept that people have a problem getting enough food.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#109

Post by jiggy2011 » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 9:01 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #101

ceejayoz wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your citations show a link between poverty and obesity, not gluttony. If welfare programs were generous poor people might be able to afford fresh vegetables and other nutritious foods less linked with health issues, rather than the cheap, high-calorie, low-nutrition foods.

Obesity is a direct product of gluttony (i.e. eating more than you need). If the poor were really financially constrained, they would eat a smaller quantity of high caloric density foods. (There is one exception to this - tall muscular people. This is a known problem with BMI.)

I think poor people often do eat calorie dense foods.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#110

Post by yoster » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 9:36 PM UTC

The easiest way for everyone to save money is to cut fastfood out of the picture. Another way is to invite friends over for Friday night instead of drinking at the bar. Personally, I went through a period where I got lazy and worked sporadically for a year, and only worked to pay bills and survive. Life was honestly pretty crappy that year looking back on it.