Why do the poor become fat?

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I've read topics like this before in different places and before reading this I'll post what I've read and thought.

Unhealthy food is cheaper than healthy food.

Unhealthy food is more likely to be ready to eat while healthy food is more likely to require more time and knowledge to prepare.

If you live in the city and don't drive your nearest grocery store might be hard to get to.

They may have less education about diet and exercise.

Unhealthy cheap food may taste better than healthy food and be more filling for the same price.

Actually I thought the poor be thin because they wouldn't be able to eat all the time nor be able to eat three meals a day. So they would have to eat less than the middle class or high class. So what would they be doing buying luxury foods and snacking on them? If I were poor, I'd be only eat what I need to eat and not eat in between and only eat like one thing for each meal. I eat like I am poor anyway. Also why would they be going to fast food? That is more expensive than eating at home if they did it everyday or most days.


But unhealthy food is cheaper than healthy food. So they be buying boxed pasta or canned foods. Canned foods is less healthy than fresh fruit and veggies.

I've got some insight into this. There's a Bible verse that's like "For lack of knowledge, my people perish." And I think that's the main situation with the poor in this country on a whole. Partially it's drive, and to a point, drive can explain lack of knowledge, but for many people, it's just lack of knowledge.

The main problem in this country is we just do not cook anymore. It's been lost over a generation, because processed food is part of the culture now. My mother didn't know how to cook, because her mother was on welfare and alimony, and mostly bought frozen dinners and the like. So she just never learned. My father's family was equally low income, and my dad lived in "the hood" so to speak for most of his life, but he had two parents in the house, I think having two parents in the house is kind of a big factor. But in my father's case, both his parents came from relatively recent immigrant families, Polish and Italian, so obviously Italians tend to be pretty decent cooks, and yeah. So my dad knew how to cook from learning from his parents, mostly his mother, but my mother didn't have the role models teaching in her life, and she never learned.

But I think it's mainly lack of cooking food from scratch that's the problem. People get locked into this cycle, because cooking's become like some lost art. Everyone thinks I'm like an amazing cook, just because I can cook like, at all, whereas 40-50 years ago, people would think I suck. I really feel like cooking now is almost an esoteric thing. It's bizarre and sad.

If you cook food yourself, it's quite cheap. All the staples are still really cheap, rice is like 50c a pound, brown rice around a dollar, dried beans about a dollar, meat if you buy boney cuts, like a dollar a pound, and vegetables for the most part aren't much more than a dollar a pound, sometimes they're less. I have an Indian friend, his entire family's budget for Indian food per month is about $90, they do buy soda/bagels/etc for "fun" but their main food is Indian food. An entire family eating on $90 a month (they're vegetarians, too, though), and it possibly includes his mother's catering business.

One valid point is transportation, it is right many cities do not have good supermarkets, and people are forced to buy crappy food from corner stores/etc. That's a bit more understandable, but there's lack of knowledge and motivation there, too. If people really WANTED to eat healthy, they could easily bum a ride from a friend or something and get to where they need to get healthy food, but many times people just don't care. People are willing to travel, to, say, buy a flatscreen TV, or Playstation, but not food.

http://web.archive.org/web/200904012341 ... ge0001.htm
I could go on, but that article about sums up the problem. He's a bit insensitive about it, but yes. That article there explains everything.

Is simple:
Poor people are fat(ter)
because for them, being anything else is hard(er).

Besides processed crap being cheaper, the youth make up more of the population in run down neighbourhoods than the suburbs so there's more fast food consumption because of that too.