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ORIGINAL: MileHighM


RENT?!?!?!!? R U Fing kidding, that is not part of the meal cost, unless you intend on being homeless---Electricity: you won't spend more than 10$ month on all your meals unless you are doing all gourmet shit. Some people are using the cast iron pots their great grand parents used, you just have to be smart about it.

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ORIGINAL: MileHighM
Same is true about the price if you drive through Mc D's-----I can go to the grocery store once a week, and cut my cost----So maybe spread 5$ in trip cost over 15 meals---not too fucking bad

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ORIGINAL: MileHighM

BS, eating from the grocery store is always cheaper---get off your ass and cook

I agree and disagree with you at the same time. Agree that "everyone" should learn to cook, it can be healthier than eating pre-made stuff with beetle parts and duck wing feather extracts...*shudders*

However, if you think fresh fruits and veggies, whole meal breads, and decent low fat meats are affordable for low income people...think again. It is cheaper to buy soda and koolaide than to buy milk or fruit juice, more economical to eat white flour pasta and stripped grains than veggies and fruits, and low quality lunch meats like bologna instead of...organic low fat meat.

Each winter I put on 10-20 lbs because when the heating bills go up, we eat more white bread, pasta, rice, and other grains instead of the uber expensive fresh stuff I'd rather be cooking from scratch or eating raw.

I'm fat. I do not eat seconds, have junk food, like a slice of pizza at Sams, only a few times per month, if even that often. Soda pop with sugar? Potato chips? French fries? Doughnuts? Candy bars? What the f*** are those? They are stuff that went away with childhood, something I see thin people glutting out on with almost every blessed meal. Can I say how unfair it was to have a friend of mine in 8th grade eating seconds, eating candy bars, having dessert every blessed night after dinner...who remained six pounds underweight?

Anti-depressants usually make women gain weight. Each time I had chemotherapy (four times), I put on weight. I almost starved to death with all the nausea and avoiding eating food, and then vomiting it up when I did manage to eat...but I still managed to gain weight. Obeying my doctor about keeping my right leg from swelling up, basically I was ordered to keep it elevated as much as possible, made me put on weight. I eat less calories than my five foot tall mother who is half my size.

Some of us are uber sensitive to carbs and need to eat meats, cheeses, and lots of low carb veggies and low carb fruits to maintain a decent weight. Unfortunately my food budget doesn't allow for this kind of eating for more than four or five months during the year.

This past week, some doc suggested a nutritional supplement drink. The cost of this would have taken up my entire food budget for myself each month, leaving nothing left for other food. It was meant to be only a drink, not a food replacement, to be taken once or twice per day. A jug of milk and loaf of bread has doubled in price these past two or three years, and yet my cost of living increase went up...nada. Gasoline prices have gone through the roof. How do you think low income people afford prices hiking up? By cutting back on what they spend on food, lowering the quality and nutrition of what they buy.

Many of us cannot afford the cost of health clubs, going regularly to swimming pools, paddle boating and bowling and keeping up a busy, active lifestyle. I remember when each neighborhood had a park within walking distance, now I would have to drive too far to afford going on a regular basis. Part of what is making America fat is...poverty...not ignorance.

Also, when people have to work two full time jobs as well as driving an hour each way...when they get home they're too tired to do all that cooking from scratch. When I lived in California in the 1980's I had to work two full time jobs, after taxes making only $380 per month from each job...the cheapest place I could find to rent costed $600 per month. If you think I ate well during those years, think again. I lived on cheap pizza, often using coupons that gave me two or three pepperoni pizzas for $5, I would freeze them and eat one slice for breakfast, and one for dinner. Skipping lunch. I was anemic and overweight. I walked everywhere and sometimes took busses to go shopping; I had a lot of exercize, mkay? I was still overweight.

As for my life right now, the only solutions I can think of are ones I've already set in motion. I bought some non-electrical exercize machines that will be better suited for my needs and when I have made room in my house, I will put them in the room I am in right now and plan to use them every day. I was used to doing exercizes at home every day, but since my knee injuries have been unable to get down and up from the floor to do them. (I destroyed my full sized bed by trying to do them there for two years.) I am also going to have several indoor greenhouses (cat proofed) so I can grow fresh, organic veggies all year round and will not be dependent on the overpriced and often low quality stuff at grocery stores. Yes, I also made myself an outside veggie garden and planted lots of dwarf and semi-dwarf fruit trees...but yanno...today we had HAIL once again. Broken, dying veggie plants. Dead flower blossoms on fruit trees.

End of my ranting.

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

FR

I see this has become a fat thread. Well, we haven't had one in a while.

Scientists at the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio, Texas, recently published research on obesity in marmosets, which they consider "an appropriate model for obesity in humans." They found that marmosets with more body fat at one month were likely to be fatter than their peers at one year.

Michael Power, a scientist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's nutrition lab based at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C., said, "It appears that developing obesity is something that can happen to an animal or a human before they have a real choice."

Source: Smithsonian's National Zoo

N.B.: I probably need to clarify that I'm not discounting the importance of lifestyle, just that it appears not to be the only factor.

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ORIGINAL: MileHighM

So it is only the fast food companies fault we are all fat?????????????? Wrong!!!!!! Its cause we would rather spend money on cable TV than healthy food, that's AHMuRicA for you.

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I am also going to have several indoor greenhouses (cat proofed) so I can grow fresh, organic veggies all year round and will not be dependent on the overpriced and often low quality stuff at grocery stores. Yes, I also made myself an outside veggie garden and planted lots of dwarf and semi-dwarf fruit trees...but yanno...today we had HAIL once again. Broken, dying veggie plants. Dead flower blossoms on fruit trees.

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Each winter I put on 10-20 lbs because when the heating bills go up, we eat more white bread, pasta, rice, and other grains instead of the uber expensive fresh stuff I'd rather be cooking from scratch or eating raw.

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ORIGINAL: LadyPact

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ORIGINAL: MileHighM
Same is true about the price if you drive through Mc D's-----I can go to the grocery store once a week, and cut my cost----So maybe spread 5$ in trip cost over 15 meals---not too fucking bad

Who mentioned the drive through?  You're assuming that everybody can afford to own a car. 

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Don't forget the "food deserts". When I lived in downtown San Jose there was 1, count 'em, one grocery store. I shit you not.

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

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ORIGINAL: MileHighM

So it is only the fast food companies fault we are all fat?????????????? Wrong!!!!!! Its cause we would rather spend money on cable TV than healthy food, that's AHMuRicA for you.

Still insisting that it's 75% self inflicted and social factors are irrelevant, then?

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ORIGINAL: MileHighM

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

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ORIGINAL: MileHighM

So it is only the fast food companies fault we are all fat?????????????? Wrong!!!!!! Its cause we would rather spend money on cable TV than healthy food, that's AHMuRicA for you.

Still insisting that it's 75% self inflicted and social factors are irrelevant, then?

Well I recommend you watch Demolition Man (a piece of shit stallone movie), they managed to ban salt and everything unhealthy in the movie---I assume that is what you are angling at? Sure there are social factors, but that doesn't require you to be a sheep and not self reliant. End of the day, people in Western nations whining about the cost and availbility of food is about polite as as waiving a steak dinner in front of a Somalian village. Everyone in the West has a sob story about how hard it is to make good eating choices, yet somehow nearly all of them own a TV, many pay for cable, some smoke, other smoke pot, many can afford a beer, etc. The truth is the average Westerner is lazy. They want someone to fix their eating problem instead of working at it as a priority in their lives. They demand juice and milk, but complain soda and Kool-aid is cheaper, how about water? cheaper than all of that crap.

It is all excuses, that's all it will ever be in the West.

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ORIGINAL: erieangel

This question was posed to me the other day and I was a little surprised by the answer.

What is the largest minority group in the US?

Hint:  This group increased by 24% between 1990 and 2000

Nearly 1/3 of the adults in this group earn an income below the poverty level and the people of this group are nearly 2X as likely as those of the general population to earn an annual income of $15,000 or less

There are approximately 54 million people in the US among this group.  It is expected to double in the next 20 years.

Does anybody know the answer?

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I would have to agree with that one. My ex roommate joined and he's not even disabled. Just a really good liar.

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ORIGINAL: MileHighM

So it is only the fast food companies fault we are all fat?????????????? Wrong!!!!!! Its cause we would rather spend money on cable TV than healthy food, that's AHMuRicA for you.