Trey of Diamonds
Well-Known Member
As always, I bow to your superior intellect.
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Childhood Obesity
- Thread starter Trey of Diamonds
- Start date
As always, I bow to your superior intellect.
Viker
Your beloved eccentric Auntie Cristal
Oh No.........
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
the problem with childhood obesity in many parts of the country (like the rural and urban food deserts) is that it is tied up with poverty.
It's much cheaper to fill a child with spaghetti and sauce than with fresh veggies, a bag of chips is cheaper than a bag of apples. Especially if you don't have easy access to a store that provides fresh food at reasonable prices.
The first thing that people will cut in their budget is food... you can't risk losing your home but you can choose ramen and spam over chicken and a salad.
Until we actually deal with the root causes of childhood obesity (access to proper food) then we will get nowhere. These ads only shame people already aware of the problem, no parent wants their children to be unhealthy, but they also need to feed them and cloth them and keep a roof over their heads.
http://www.dailyyonder.com/healthy-food-choices-scarcer-rural-areas-study-says
http://www.asph.org/fridayletter/article_view.cfm?fl_index=1685&fle_index=16184
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/fooddesert/fooddesert.html
wa:do
It's much cheaper to fill a child with spaghetti and sauce than with fresh veggies, a bag of chips is cheaper than a bag of apples. Especially if you don't have easy access to a store that provides fresh food at reasonable prices.
The first thing that people will cut in their budget is food... you can't risk losing your home but you can choose ramen and spam over chicken and a salad.
Until we actually deal with the root causes of childhood obesity (access to proper food) then we will get nowhere. These ads only shame people already aware of the problem, no parent wants their children to be unhealthy, but they also need to feed them and cloth them and keep a roof over their heads.
http://www.dailyyonder.com/healthy-food-choices-scarcer-rural-areas-study-says
http://www.asph.org/fridayletter/article_view.cfm?fl_index=1685&fle_index=16184
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/fooddesert/fooddesert.html
wa:do
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Trey of Diamonds
Well-Known Member
So well said. Many thanks.
Nooj
none
Poverty in America is different from poverty in India isn't it? I imagine that a poor American can still manage to buy junk food, whereas a poor person in India could be undernourished and actually starving. Certainly they wouldn't get fat.
Is it really true that fresh food and vegetables and fruit are too expensive for poor Americans?
Is it really true that fresh food and vegetables and fruit are too expensive for poor Americans?
Me Myself
Back to my username
I would be surprised.
Actually, I am sure that with a good curse on nutrition this would stop to be a problem. Good thing you cite india, because I think vegetarianism would be a very good option for lean nutrition on a budget.
People think that you need that expensive false "meat" to be a vegetarian. Not true. It is nice on the budget, it keeps you lean and away from obesity.
Mathematician
Reason, and reason again
The main ingredient in most fatty foods (corn) is also subsidized heavily by the government, compounding the problem.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
In America it seems everything is geared toward convenience as a good number of folks would rather not bother with the time and effort it takes to prepare and cook a homemade meal. The markets seem to hone into and capitalise well on it.
Shame really in that nothing IMO beats a home cooked meal, and is arguably wayyyy cheaper when you take into consideration the volume on what you actually get per pound.
Kathryn
It was on fire when I laid down on it.
I disagree.
Barring the very rare conditions that make a person obese beyond their control, childhood obesity can easily be averted by parents. But many parents apparently don't have a CLUE when it comes to healthy meals for their kids. These parents are setting their children up for a LIFETIME of rejection, poor health, and likely an untimely death.
It's a very serious problem. Ignoring it won't make it go away. "Positive" messages apparently aren't doing a bit of good, considering the soaring obesity rates in children (and adults for that matter).
I agree that the ads are provocative - which means in some ways that they are successful (drawing attention to the problem).
I don't think that kids who are going to bully kids anyway are going to be impacted much by these ads. For starters, it's not like these ads are going to run in magazines or on programs aimed at kids - kids aren't the problem. These ads will most likely be placed where PARENTS will see them.
Honestly, so many parents are so STUPID about how they feed their kids, it's borderline abusive. DEFINITELY irresponsible and negligent.
Kathryn
It was on fire when I laid down on it.
I do not believe this is true. However, in some inner cities, I could believe that ACCESS to good fresh fruits and veggies would be difficult.
The vast majority of the poor don't live where they can't access fruits and veggies though. It's a matter of making good choices and then enforcing them with your kids.
Most poor families with small kids, for example, would qualify for the WIC program - which provides free vouchers for ONLY healthy foods for kids and pregnant moms. But I know parents who qualify for WIC who "don't like the food" on the program and therefore don't even give it to their kids - they get the food and then SELL it or give it away, and continue to feed their own kids JUNK.
RIDICULOUS!!!
Drolefille
PolyPanGeekGirl
WIC has only recently - and it varies depending on state and locale - added more healthy foods - such as yogurt rather than gallons upon gallons of milk and fresh fruits and veggies rather than sugar filled fruit juice. It's still controlled by the out dated, unhealthy food pyramid style recommendations that also try to count pizza as a vegetable for our school kids.
Most poor kids only get subsidized lunches and often breakfasts too. They're being fed crap by the schools and it's not a shock that they don't have a taste for non-crap.
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
I was on WIC... it was mostly surgery juice, cereal, full fat milk, bread, cheese and a little bit of vegetables. In the summer they had coupons for fresh veg at the farmers market, but budget cuts by the state ended that program a year or two after it started.
It was by no means enough to feed a family, but it did help.
I do know one person who didn't like some of what wic provided... mostly the cereal.
Kathryn, I really recommend you check out the links I provided on food deserts in the USA.
wa:do
It was by no means enough to feed a family, but it did help.
I do know one person who didn't like some of what wic provided... mostly the cereal.
Kathryn, I really recommend you check out the links I provided on food deserts in the USA.
wa:do
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
Pretty much... I can buy a cheeseburger from several places for a single dollar. For five dollars I can get a larger burger with a drink and fries or I can get five burgers and feed myself and my son.
There was one affordable grocery store in my former town... I could get an apple or a small can of vegetables for a dollar. The town before that, you had to go 20 miles to get to a grocery store that had fresh fruit and vegetables.
It depends on where you live. Prices can vary widely from one market to another.
For example.... when we lost our truck (due to the frame snapping from rust damage) my family was initially limited to where we could walk to, in order to buy food. Lucky for us there was a small market a couple miles away. Unlucky for us the prices for food there were more than twice that of the supermarket we had been visiting prior to that.
Plus the selection was much lower... only a handful of vegetable and fruit choices, most of the market was chips, crackers and processed canned foods like spam (those items were about the same price as the supermarket).
A pound of broccoli in the supermarket was the same price as a single floret in the small market. A pound of bologna was just over two dollars in the supermarket, the same brand in the small market was over 6 dollars a pound.
We quickly started to run out of money trying to eat even remotely healthy.
wa:do
Trey of Diamonds
Well-Known Member
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
I'm confused - is it that poor children in America can't help but be fat, or is it that millions of poor American children go to bed hungry every night? Or, does it depend on the rhetoric?
Me Myself
Back to my username
No one ever did any good humiliating someone and that ad (in the OP) can be very humiliating to someone. It could have the opposite result of what they are aiming for. I know it was intended with good intentions, but...
Trey of Diamonds
Well-Known Member
Exactly. I just can't agree to humiliating a child in order to teach their parents a lesson. Counter productive at the very least.
Me Myself
Back to my username
The ads are not making children fat. They got that wide blank on their bellies by their parents incompetence.
Unless their parents actually realize it and while you ar searchng for the most "harmless" solution, the children keep on fat and keep on being bullied and parents keep on telling themselves that´s normal.
It´s like you pretend their fatness isn´t making them bullied right now and this is not what can cause their parents to actually do something about it while it is posible. Every dinner that passes by the child reinforces more and more the bad habits at the table. Every dinner.
Sometimes things get wors before getting better. This very well may be just that.
I don't blame food alone for obese children, I blame video games, 1,000 TV channels, crime, bullying, and other things that keeps kids from exercising, as well.