Over the last year or two I've noticed a growing conventional wisdom consensus that inequality in America has something to do with nutrition. For example, Paul Krugman uses the word "nutrition" three times in today's column:
The failure starts early: in America, the holes in the social safety net mean that both low-income mothers and their children are all too likely to suffer from poor nutrition ...
Think about it: someone who really wanted equal opportunity would be very concerned about the inequality of our current system. He would support more nutritional aid for low-income mothers-to-be and young children. ...
And the Congressional wing of his party seems determined to make upward mobility even harder. For example, Republicans have tried to slash funds for the Women, Infants and Children program, which helps provide adequate nutrition to low-income mothers and their children ...
I don't watch as much sports on TV as I used to, so maybe I'm missing out on a trend that's obvious to Krugman in which we see NFL and NBA players increasingly suffering from rickets and stunted growth. I don't know, though. For example, linebacker James Harrison of the Steelers is one of 14 children, but he seems full grown to me.
Seriously, is there something substantive I'm missing in the growing handwaving about "poor nutrition" causing inequality?
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108 comments:
Seems like another case of elite busybodies wanting to micro-manage the poor into aping the elites.
Like, "Hey, if only they had our easy access to organic poodle spit, they'd do better in school and earn more money."
Poor people do have horrible diets (mostly starches and sugars), but so do the vegans and vegetarians who we're supposed to be more like. So it's not a serious attempt to improve the diet of poors, but to make them eat a different crummy diet, the one that SWPLs eat.
Protein calorie malnutrition and lack of micronutrients around and after weaning can contribute to poor mental development in young children, but outside of the absolutely remotest corners of American life I doubt it's a factor.
The taboo is on any examination of heritability of intelligence, and any notion that there are differences in intellectual ability between ethnic groups not due to environmental factors. If it's discussed at all it's in the context of epicycles like "stigma anxiety," designed to salvage pure environmentalism and "psychic unity" notions.
The racial gap is being noticed in toddlers, therefore liberals want to blame it on nutrition.
Poor nutrition causes inequality. Hmmm...
Do they ever consider that inequality causes poor nutrition? Five minutes at Walmart or 7-11 might educate these pundits.
I think poor nutrition, especially lack of protein, may account for the all the idiocy among liberals. Maybe they should eat more red meat.
So, there you go. To fight PC, we must make sure the liberal elites eat a more balanced diet. They are not really stupid or dishonest; they just keep hallucinating stuff because of the deficiencies of nutrition.
Or maybe the reason why so many white people are 'racist', 'reactionary', 'hateful', and etc is due to their lack of proper nutrition. So, their misguidedness is not really their fault but merely the product of their poor diets.
So, in order to decrease 'hate' among white people, I propose closing the borders and ending 'free trade' so we have more decent-paying jobs for white Americans who will then make better wages and be able to afford better meals. And then their 'racism' will vanish.
Feed Paul Krugman, poor baby. He's so malnourished he can't think straight.
It's probably an inside baseball pundit dog whistle about food stamp use.
The use of food stamps has skyrocketed during the Obama administration. Since the dear leader can do no wrong, pointing this out is crimethink.
But if one portrays food stamp use as a blow against inequality, win! Then the ballooning use of food stamps is a sign of Obama's success.
Ghetto children do have very poor diets, mostly because their parents are idiotic scumbags. I shop at our local grocery stores all the time, and these people go through great lengths to avoid the produce section as they stuff their carts with pop tarts, chips and soda. Also, I though kool-aid was for suicidal cult people. Why is everyone here drinking it and eating it dry?
I've always been thoroughly unconvinced by the leftist argument that seems to blame the legions of low-income American fatties on something called the 'food industry' that somehow forces low-income folks to buy 'cheap' pre packed and boxed unhealthly and calorie laden 'convenience food' whilst somehow fresh, raw vegetables are said to be beyond the reach of the 'poor'.
My objection is his.I've argued the toss many times before, but surely fresh fruit and veg plucked out of the ground with no further processing has little mark up or added value and is thus pound per pound is the cheapest food you can get - and nutrionists tell us it is the most healthy.
But 'no , no, no' chant the leftists.They sneer at me at being ignorant and never actually going to supermarkets and insist to the point of apoplexy that the ready prepared TV dinner that's gone through a shed load of processing, trading, value adding, transport, taxation etc is the cheaper option, so the 'poor' are being rational by buying it, and what's more they are 'victims' of an evil 'food industry' by plumping for it.
You haven't heard of second sibling syndrome. When two siblings are both close together, sometimes the second sibling isn't as well developed physically. ie broad face, good dentition. This is because the first sibling uses up the mother's resources (micronutrients, omega 3 stores) before the mother can replace them. Better spaced births, breast feeding for a longer period of time and better maternal nutrition would reduce this phenomena.
You should read Weston Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. It shows how important nutrition is for proper physical development. It examines native peoples around the world and the diet that they eat.
Lastly, you don't get the paleo diet. Or you have never blogged much about it. It is a gold mine of opportunity, both personally and professionally. Personally, it will improve your health. Professionally, it ties into evolution, government policy and spending. Nutrition matter a lot.
It's some kind of Displacement activity going on, I think.
#1 We have plenty of evidence that poor nutrition lowers the IQ of Africans in Africa.
#2 Ergo, poor nutrition must be lowering the IQ of African-Americans too!!
Problems:
1) The strongest evidence for #1 is the big gap between the median IQ of Africans in Africa vs African-Americans and other (non-elite) Africans in Western nations.
2) US IQ data over time does show big gains at the low end of the bell curve, such as would be expected from improvements in nutrition. But that particular Flynn effect tailed off a good while ago.
Overall, I suspect there are still marginal gains in IQ to be made through improved nutrition of the 'Jamie's School Dinners' variety, but these will be pretty small beer, and will be found as much or more among poor whites as poor blacks. And the Mestizo-Mexican diet, with its emphasis on lots of beans, is probably healthier and better for IQ than is the more starch & sucrose-based diet of poor whites & blacks (poor Mestizos in Latin America might not get enough meat in their diet, I doubt that's ever a problem in the USA). The big challenge there is to stop Mestizo IQ from being *harmed* by adoption of the lower-class American diet!
A lotta these urban kids aren't on good food schedules, and don't eat much breakfast or lunch. I could see that being a nutritional problem, although the issue isn't about money.
How silly Krugman is! Other commenters have already pointed this out, but it is obvious from a simple trip to a supermarket that fruit and vegetables are the cheapest food items around. The reality is that the low-IQ poor are simply too lazy to prepare them, which is why they prefer the unhealthy ready-to-eat foods. But no one can print that in the NYT.
"And the Mestizo-Mexican diet, with its emphasis on lots of beans, is probably healthier and better for IQ than is the more starch & sucrose-based diet of poor whites & blacks"
Most of the Mexicans I know already consume either a lower-class white or lower-class negro type diet. They raise their children on coke (the drink, not the drug), and graduate to cheap beer sometime around adolescence. Mexican adults in the US tend to be very fat. Whatever they're eating, it's not a mostly bean diet.
"My objection is his.I've argued the toss many times before, but surely fresh fruit and veg plucked out of the ground with no further processing has little mark up or added value and is thus pound per pound is the cheapest food you can get - and nutrionists tell us it is the most healthy."
I don't know what to make of this and the other comment in this vein. I actually live and shop in the center of the city and "fruits and vegetables grown out of the ground" are definitely not the cheapest foods available. And the ones on display in the supermarkets are in no sense just grown out of the ground and shown there, except maybe for the fancier leftist SWPL supermarkets everyone here hates. Haven't people at least heard of Mendel? Plants haven't been just "grown out of the ground" for centuries.
While I have nothing but contempt for the racial guilt hustlers, the counter argument made here is ludicrous, especially coming from someone with your grounding in common sense and skill at parsing statistics. The vigor of professional athletes says nothing about the validity of this (not really) new potential cause of the gap. I know this was a throwaway post, but it hurts your credibility when you say dumb things.
they f'ing get free money now for food. 45 million people using SNAP today (food stamps), and rising.
and the europeans have created the largest food production and distribution system in the world. so there's NO excuse left on this topic. either they eat nutritious food or they don't. it's their choice. europeans are finally just straight up giving them free money for this stuff, and combined with the food infrastructure they've created, the "unequal" people can eat as much of the nutritious, or less than nutritious, food as they see fit.
i'm so tired of the BS about them not getting the same opportunity or options. they would get so much less if europeans did not bring them a chance to have basically everything. europeans are literally feeding the world at this point. they disappear, world agricultural output drops like a rock and a billion of the "unequal" go away in rather unpleasant fashion.
i used to work with a lot of indians, and occassionally, they would have their old world indian parents visit them in the united states - their first visit ever to america. i've been told a dozen times that they will take their old indian parents to a supermarket, and their heads will basically explode. they just can't comprehend that much high quality, edible, safe food all in one place. it blows their minds.
the US makes SO much nutritious food that it can't even begin to put a dent in it, and must export most of it's agricultural output. tons of it goes to the third world.
It's a strawman argument. Confront a liberal about the need to make cuts to Leviathan and they start blubbering about safety nets and (now) infant nutrition. See Elizabeth Warren's nonsensical comment about the centrality of roads and fire trucks to capitalism's success. Which party is advocating eliminating WIC or public fire depts? I can't recall.
We've got the fattest so-called poor people in the world. Check out the girth of most welfare recipients. The thin ones are usually the mental cases, crackheads, immigrants and the elderly. Yet people keep droning on about about supposed nutrition gaps.
Yet another gap has been discovered that needs to be closed. How many more gaps are out there waiting to be discovered?
Oh, they're overweight because they have poor diets, too many chips and stuff, people often say when you point this out. I guess we're supposed to hire people to come out and shop and cook for them also.
Anyway, ultimately, who cares? If people want to subsist on junk food then so be it; it's their life. Only so much can be done. Giving people cash, Food Stamps, school lunches, food giveaways, brochures and lectures on nutrition is already more than enough. There's too many people out there trying to shackle us to the bozos of society; what they do or don't do is something everyone else is to be captivated by; they sneeze and our job is to come running with a hanky.
Krugman and the like can't just say "It's the will of God" so they must invent explanations that are more and more far-fetched. For these to take hold, it's best that they have just a chance of being true. Next they'll complain that pregnant black women don't drink enough Chablis or eat enough Brie.
Too many poorly educated parents feed their kids junk food by choice. Egg yolks are very high with choline which is needed for brain development and eggs are in many cases cheaper than junk food. The omega 3 fatty acid DHA works with choline for better brain development.
"Poor nutrition" is the euphemism and cause -- according to liberals -- of NAMs low IQs.
If we didn't have Paul Krugman, someone would have to invent him. We have over 43 million Americans on food stamps, plus there's WIC, agricultural subsidies, free school breakfasts and lunches, etc. But it's never enough! And the wicked Congressional Republicans are trying to starve the already undernourished poor. This is pure evil!
As we all know, the principal nutritional problem among the poor is obesity. And that's because they prefer to eat food that makes them obese, because they like it and because it's cheap (or even free). Next time you're in a poor neighborhood, look around and see how many Whole Foods or Starbucks you see. Hmmm - not too many, but there are lots of junk food outlets. Maybe Paul should take some of his Nobel Prize money and open a store selling alfalfa sprouts and organic juices in a ghetto neighborhood. Then he'd discover how the world really works.
If you're poor enough, you live mainly on starch. The shopping cart can be misleading. The bulk in the cart can be different than the bulk after cooking.
On advice of a nutritionist, I tried a very high-protein diet. My grocery bill skyrocketed.
The best, most economical protein is dairy. Lots of blacks, and many whites, cannot digest dairy. Meat is expensive. Soy tastes funny and is harder to prepare.
There are only 4 macro-constituents: starch, protein, fat, and fiber. And fiber is hardly a nutrient.
None of this excuses the messed-up dietary habits of the sugar addicts, though.
Adult smoking also is harmful to the young, yet we hardly blame the rich white tobacco addicts for the harm they've done. We do push them to change.
The only poor nutrition the "poor" have these days is caloric overconsumption i.e. "eating too much"
And all the low-carb morons: shut the hell up, no one wants to hear it.
Simon in London, Mexicans have actually moved away from a bean-based diet and embraced a Ramen-based one instead. Seriously.
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/oct/21/business/fi-ramennation21
How do IQ scores and general health measures (days ut sick, athleticism, etc.) track with the introduction of free school lunches and breakfast programs? I know there are schools that provide breakfast and lunch, meaning the poor kids are guaranteed to get two meals a day on school days. If nutrition is a limiting factor in IQ or health, introducing those programs should have a big, easily measured effect.
As an aside, feeding hungry kids is worth doing even if it doesn't make them smarter or healthier. Even doing so when most kids don't need it is worthwhile, given the occasional kid whose nonfunctional or indifferent dirtbag mother can't be troubled to feed him regularly.
Krugman's also not dealing with the fact that the last time the govt got majorly involved in dietary recommendations, ie., the McGovern Food Pyramid, the result was a disaster for the country's health and waistline. Bad science, over-ambitious politics, and well-recounted by Gary Taubes and others.
All that said, if the govt SHOULD be taking steps to protect our dumber and least-educated -- ending free trade, minimum wage laws, etc -- then why shouldn't it take some positive action where food and nutrition go? Many of our poor do subsist on the most grotesque crap. And if a country (cough cough France) CAN regulate the food biz in ways that result in good school meals and excellent eating overall, why can't we?
I second Anon's rec that Steve look into the Paleo movement. It's a fascinating development, and for many Steve-esque reasons. Many iSteve fans would probably enjoy exploring the phenom too.
My impression has always been that at least in the USA, the poor tend to eat very high calorie foods. They're very likely to be eating at an all-you-can eat Chinese buffet or at KFC.
The nutritional habits of the poor are going to hurt them in their late adulthood more than their early development.
And this is why food stamps should be replaced by ration coupons.
Food stamp recipients can and do use them to buy everything under the sun. Much better would be to hand them ration coupons: "This is for your bag of rice. This is for your bag of beans. This is for your bag of spinach. Now go eat."
If they wanted Hot Pockets or Coke or chicken wings they would have to get it the old fashioned way, with money.
The incentives to then get off food stamps would increase enormously.
What about Charles Blow's ridiculous "Its GOP racism" article. The comments were far worse. Nutrition, my foot.
Oh, imagine that better nutrition and more sunlight exposure would create healthier kids and families. That in turn would produce more productive, happier Americans. I think that would be a positive the nation. But at the same time, don't subscribe to the governments ideas of what quality nutrition is.
Most pundits are utterly clueless about nutrition - and what constitutes "good" food - and it shows. The simple fact is, if you eat enough protein and get enough calories you'll be in pretty good shape. Even "bad" prepackaged foods generally aren't lacking micronutrients. The problem is, poor people tend to eat too much, which makes them fat. You could eat a steady diet of McDonald's hamburgers and maintain reasonably good health as long as you don't overeat, but eating a Big Mac and a large fries for every meal will make you fat. It's not rocket science, yet we're told it's a horrible inequality that only more government intervention can fix. Don't believe it.
Well, you had some Republicans like Rick Perrry that were cutting the welfare state more for whites and statments about SS but voted for in-state tuition for illegal immirgants. In Perry's state where about 53 percent of the poor is hispanic and only 18 percent white, the best way to keep the welfare state down is slow the growth of hispanics.
For over a decade I was a big city paramedic, going in and out of the homes of poor black people, day and night (which is what big city paramedics do).
In terms of "nutrition" in those communities you see either vital, glowing physical health (the young people) or obesity.
You NEVER see third world style malnutrition. Once in a while you'd see a malnourished crackhead or crackhead's offspring, but that's not about not having access to food.
When my liberal friends start talking about malnourished people in the ghetto I say, "Take me to see some malnourished people in [our city]. I'll bet you a thousand dollars you can't show me any." And of course, they never do.
Mallnutrition as such does not exist in modern America.
"Seriously, is there something substantive I'm missing in the growing handwaving about 'poor nutrition' causing inequality?"
You mean besides the fact that any poor nutrition found in cities and suburbs is likely to be the fault of people who are given enough money to feed themselves and their children inexpensively, nutritiously and palatably but choose to spend it on junk food?
When I was poor (working poor), I spent about $7 a week on groceries. I ate lunch and dinner every day, (loathe breakfast), never went hungry and had an active hard-working lifestyle (no car so walked everywhere and did heavy lifting and moving at my job). I felt good and was hardly ever ill. Nor did I spend much money on cooking utensils or time on food preparation.
I ate a diet very similar to the Chinese grad students I knew (except for the shrimp, too pricey for me), who were also thin, active and healthy.
This is just another leftist two-fer. The elites get to blame NAMs' crappy diets on inequality (racism) and demand more money to solve a problem that's insoluble.
When faced with obvious differences in ability between people, they cannot politically explain it as innate differences determined by nature, so they have to explain it as nurture.
Since they are also materialists, the most important part of nurture must be...nutrition!
That said, proper nourishment does affect intelligence, and your brain needs different nutrients than those that make a big strong football players, especially if he is juicing.
Also, I though kool-aid was for suicidal cult people. Why is everyone here drinking it and eating it dry?
Even better, I regularly see the NAM shoppers in my grocery store buying PRE-MADE kool-aid in gallon jugs.
The taboo is on any examination of heritability of intelligence, and any notion that there are differences in intellectual ability between ethnic groups not due to environmental factors.
Actually, most of the differences *are* due to environmental factors, but the environmental factors are not limited to the environment to which the child is exposed after conception/birth.
Instead the effect of the environment comes from the entire EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptation) stretching back for countless generations.
This is why Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel is so ridiculous. He states the following thesis:
Authors are regularly asked by journalists to summarize a long book in one sentence. For this book, here is such a sentence: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves."
He then recounts the fact that different races lived in different environments for a long time. The rather obvious hole in Diamond's thesis: environmental differences produce biological differences.
Poor nutrition doesn't imply underfeeding. That's the beauty of claiming that however many tens of millions of people in this country are "starving": the definition of "malnutrition" includes people who are gorging themselves on snacks and not getting decent food into their mouths. Having worked at a grocery store, I can tell you that EBT pays for a looooot of junk food.
So, sure, lots of kids aren't getting proper nutrition. They're not getting too few calories per day, though.
The Food Network show Chopped recently had an episode that was playing to this idea. It had Obama's school lunch Czar on as a guest judge. The competitors were all "lunch ladies". It seemed that every few minutes the viewer was being bashed over the head about how "25% of American kids don't have enough food." A stat they never bothered to provide any citation for. The LL's were just as bad, repeating sob stories about how "Our kids don't get to eat except at school."
There seems to be a definite push on to expand the numbers of families dependent on the government for basic needs.
All of you saying how cheap fruits and vegetables are - not if you take calories into account. You're paying a lot for water weight. Apples cost 1.49/lb; green beans 1.99/lb at my supermarket; pasta 0.69. Cook that pasta and it doubles or triples in weight. You'll have seasonal specials but very little produce is reliably inexpensive. Bananas, kale, zucchini, carrots and sweet potatoes are good bets.
Fatty hamburger, chicken legs, I might get for 2.49/lb, 1.99 on special. 20 ounces squishy white bread, 0.99, 20 ounces whole wheat with some texture and bite to it, 2.99.
When I worked out a 3 dollar a day food stamp challenge meal plan at the supermarket I can walk to, it didn't allow for much fresh produce, 2-3 servings a day.
(Breakfast is mostly oatmeal with nuts, raisins and milk, and tea to drink, 50 cents. Or a couple of eggs. You get a dollar for lunch and 1.50 for dinner.)
So, yeah, anyone putting a bottle of soda or a carton of juice in their cart is doing it wrong. Go tour the produce aisle again. If you're fat, put down those potato chips and look at the kale. If you're skinny and hungry, those potato chips might work for you.
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No one said anything about breast-feeding for early nutrition. In addition to any innate differences, the babies of the underclass (any race) run a greater chance of being hit with a series of cumulative prenatal and early childhood insults - greater prenatal exposure to toxins including drugs, alcohol and tobacco, prematurity, less likelihood of being breastfed, greater likelihood of lead exposure, less language exposure, greater emotional stress (neglect, moving, family disruption, sleep deprivation), physical abuse, head injury. And poor nutrition on the micronutrient level if not calories. The starved babies and children do come almost exclusively from the underclass.
Many potential fixes, all hard to deliver.
In December the LA Times ran a story on how the new healthy school lunches in the LAUSD were not being eaten by the kids.
After changing the old standby's of years past to new hip vegetarian and organic fare, the kids are skipping the meals.
The money quote from the story.
"It's nasty, nasty," said Andre, a member of InnerCity Struggle, an East L.A. nonprofit working to improve school lunch access and quality. "No matter how healthy it is, if it's not appetizing, people won't eat it."
The NYTimes comments are hilarious yet pitiful (IOW they match the article): hearts on sleeves for all those feeble "poor people" who can't run their lives without help from their betters.
The availability of good nutrition isn't the heart of the issue. Years ago I read about (or watched) how women in the hood were sending their kids to McDonalds for dinner at least; they simply weren't cooking. I believe there was some comparison between this and wasting money buying grocery items at convenience stores as well. And they perhaps blamed single-parenthood along with the mother's work schedule for the lifestyle choice of eating most of your meals at fast food restaurants.
A new government program is needed to provide "low-income mothers" personal chefs.
"someone who really wanted equal opportunity would be very concerned"
Liberals put a lot of effort into being concerned: Look at this aspect of reality that does not accord with our world view - it is concerning. Let's discuss our concerns while making concerned faces at each other.
Slaves were well fed.
"The big challenge there is to stop Mestizo IQ from being *harmed* by adoption of the lower-class American diet!"
I disagree, Simon, there are plenty of long-standing Mexican brands of junk food, some sweets are even unique to Mexico. What you're observing is the disconnect between our evolved metabolisms and our modern way of life. Lower class Mexicans do hard physical labor which mostly burns off extra calories and staves off diabetes. Once the population starts transferring to less physically demanding jobs along with having more free time to sit in front of the tv or computer, the snacking starts catching up. A huge number of people of all backgrounds are failing to recognize they have to adjust to a lower calorie diet, eat very little throughout the day or force themselves to be much more physically active. We are actually witnessing various human populations as they adapt (or not) to a new environment.
People who are genuinely malnourished are small. Apart from immigrant Guatemaltecos and so-forth, how many low-class people in America are small?
Nutrition nonsense refuted!
Why didn't Krugman's article mention "food deserts"? That phrase is the new left wing talking point in concern to poor nutritional choices made by a certain demographic.
Recently, Wal-Mart has been trying to open a few stores in DC and has had a hell of a time due to black leaders threatening boycotts and riots unless they get their piece of the pie (or boiled broccoli) before the stores are opened.
You'd think a Super Wal-Mart that stocks all groceries including fresh meats and produce would alleviate these desert problems but prominent black people seem to hate the idea of a grocery store in a black neighborhood.
Dalrymple noted how SWPL and Indian immigrants would drive for miles to shop at ethnic grocery stores for cheap bulk rice and such. At Marukan Markets in OC, I find a few White guys like myself shopping for rice and other items that are higher quality and cheaper than supermarkets. Same thing.
That's a function of IQ -- the ability to get and make higher quality food for less money. Period.
Agnostic is correct, more of the ugly marriage between Puritans (all within the community must be controlled) and the Quakers (everyone is the community). Aristocrats care less about the peasants, as long as they grovel and give their money. Hillbillies don't care about anyone (often including themselves). Only the Puritan-Quaker marriage gets jollies out micro-managing every detail of people's lives.
[The most effective social control would be non-stop ridicule of fat Blacks, Mexicans, and poor Whites. BUT that conflicts with their totem-istic view of non-Whites as status objects in the eternal war against "unbelievers."]
The brain is greedy. it's first in line for nutrition. is there really any evidence that even the worst american diet based on corn carbs causes iq damaging malnutrition? an EBT card can buy anything but alcohol and tobacco. if the gov't was really concerned they would create rations that were age weight and gender appropriate. i think halliburton makes rations for the military. how hard would it be to make them for the poor? but then the liberals would be up in arms that 'choice' is being taken away.
It's a dogwhistle for food deserts.
Everybody in the ghetto eats McD's. Therefore, they're not performing well because they don't get their vitamins.
Every grocery store in creation sells frozen vegetables. Quick frozen veggies can be better nutritionally than their supposedly fresh brethren that arrived via container ship from Guatemala. Frozen vegetables are very cheap.
That said, nutrition/equality metrics work as well to gauge parental involvement, a much more solid framework to judge success in toddlers. A ghetto mom who manages to serve a meat and two veg to her kids is probably going to have more successful kids. Why? Because she's taking care of her kids rather than huffing paint.
I teach a stats class at an open-enrollment college. When I covered correlation, I used the example of poverty rates and obesity rates by state level (2008 and 2009 data). The correlation score was 0.57 (pretty good correlation).
The fact is, our poor people are not wanting for calories, but this isn't the same as nutrition. But short of directly preparing their meals, I don't know what to suggest.
You think this is ridiculous?
How about A Poverty Solution That Starts With a Hug
Hey, go hug a thug, and he'll be Einstein. Give them more milk and cookies and vitamin tablets and don't forget the huggies and kisses.
Waiting for Superhugger.
If you're mugged by the truth, go hug a lie.
Agnostic is correct, more of the ugly marriage between Puritans (all within the community must be controlled) and the Quakers (everyone is the community).
That's funny, I didn't know that Krugman traced his roots to East Anglia!
The lack of nutritious food choices among the poor contributes to overall bad health, ergo better-health means the avoidance of medical bills which can be crushing even to the middle-class. That is how nutrition is linked to inequality you mentally challenged hillbillies.
The lack of nutritious food choices among the poor contributes to overall bad health, ergo better-health means the avoidance of medical bills which can be crushing even to the middle-class.
Ummmm... the poor don't pay for medical care.
#argumentfail
That is how nutrition is linked to inequality you mentally challenged hillbillies.
And you are how nincom is related to poop.
"an EBT card can buy anything but alcohol and tobacco"
Says who?
"The lack of nutritious food choices among the poor contributes to overall bad health, ergo better-health means the avoidance of medical bills which can be crushing even to the middle-class."
I was one of the working poor and even though I had no car and worked long hours, I managed to buy, fix and eat inexpensive decent food. I've seen how the poor shop, cook and eat. Their poor nutrition is the result of a lack of self-discipline, not a lack of nutritious food choices.
"That is how nutrition is linked to inequality you mentally challenged hillbillies."
No, that is how you choose to link the two, you disingenuous, morally bankrupt leftist.
The situation is confounded because if you talk to a nutritionist today, "poor nutrition" could mean a lot of things other than kids with kwashiorkor running around in the streets of Harlem. It might mean anything from choosing poor starchy foods to not having access to Whole Foods Supermarket to simple overnutrition (i.e., obesity).
My guess is that poor nutrition is going to be an up-and-coming meme. Krugman's class distinguishes itself partly by its food choices. And with our country on its way to a single-payer system now, focus on fatties is going to become a new favorite form of nudging. So you get social signaling and plus new rationales for bureaucracy and regulation. What's not to love?
"an EBT card can buy anything but alcohol and tobacco"
Says who?
Sez who? Why, your friendly government web site! Note the following, direct from the USDA.
The Act precludes the following items from being purchased with SNAP benefits: alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, hot food and any food sold for on-premises consumption. Nonfood items such as pet foods, soaps, paper products, medicines and vitamins, household supplies, grooming items, and cosmetics, also are ineligible for purchase with SNAP benefits.
Soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream are food items and are therefore eligible items. [Woo hoo! Load up them twinkies LaShonda!]
Seafood, steak, and bakery cakes are also food items and are therefore eligible items. [Woo hoo! Steak and cake!]
It then goes on to make the following quaint comments.
Energy drinks that have a nutrition facts label are eligible foods
Energy drinks that have a supplement facts label are classified by the FDA as supplements, and are therefore not eligible
Gonna get on my Red Bull and ripple.
Then follows this creepy condition, no doubt intended for illegal Asian immigrants (yes, illegal immigrants are eligible).
Live animals may not be purchased with SNAP benefits.
Well thank goodness.
And finally, this bit of food stamp wisdom worthy of Solomon his-self!
Items such as birthday and other special occasion cakes are eligible for purchase with SNAP benefits as long as the value of non-edible decorations does not exceed 50 percent of the purchase price of the cake.
I bet the bureaucrat that came up with that one wet herself right afterwards in a tizzy of girlish delight.
What I love even more than food stamps is the exitence of Liberal advocacy groups designed especially to make gettin' 'em easier! Like these good, honest folk.
http://www.gettingfoodstamps.org/homepage.html
What a world.
PS - Doubters who want to validate what's posted above:
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/retailers/eligible.htm
What, you think I could make up something so absurd?
"ost pundits are utterly clueless about nutrition - and what constitutes "good" food - and it shows. The simple fact is, if you eat enough protein and get enough calories you'll be in pretty good shape. Even "bad" prepackaged foods generally aren't lacking micronutrients. "
I had a friend ask his doctor if he should take vitamins. He said only if you want expensive piss. The doctor said people eating out of a dumpster get plenty of nutrients.
Come to think of it, some very smart kids I knew in high school ate like shit. Lots of junk food and not much exercise. But they read a lot and were computer geeks.
So maybe what blacks should devour more of is not food but books.
"Oh, they're overweight because they have poor diets, too many chips and stuff, people often say when you point this out. I guess we're supposed to hire people to come out and shop and cook for them also."
They don't exercise at all, even the quite young ones.
Re second sibling syndrome, Judith Harris pulverized birth-orther theories in "The Nurture Assumption". But her focus was on personality.
Soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream are food items and are therefore eligible items...
Items such as birthday and other special occasion cakes are eligible for purchase with SNAP benefits as long as the value of non-edible decorations does not exceed 50 percent of the purchase price of the cake. --USDA, via Peterike
We went to a local supermercado, on César Chávez Blvd., to get Mexican food for a picnic last summer. There I saw a cute, cheap, not-so-little plastic helicopter which I bought for our boy. It was in a clear plastic bag, with a piece of candy thrown in. I joked to my wife that this allows the locals to put the toy on their EBT card.
Then our faces went blank, except for the news tickers on our foreheads: "OMG, that's exactly what they're doing!"
I mean, really, that non-edible helicopter made in Shenzhen can't exceed in cost the piece of candy made in Juárez, now, can it?
It's mostly food industry propaganda. The stuff about n-3 fatty acids boosting IQ is a recent example; the fish oil industry is quite large now.
However, I think nutrition might influence IQ through maternal nutrition and its effect on the prenatal environment. For example, estrogen can retard brain growth, and certain foods (e.g. n-6 fatty acids) directly increase estrogen production.
Many toxic and estrogenic foods, such as soy, are widely touted as "health foods" despite evidence to the contrary. I've known vegetarian mothers who ate lots of soy and so on, who were gestationally diabetic and bore very underweight babies. Meanwhile, soybeans and vegetable oils are increasingly incorporated into junk food and packaged foods of all kinds.
Accordingly, the damage falls at the high and low ends of the IQ distribution - vegans at the high end, welfare moms at the other - while regular Joes, eating meat and potatoes, remain fairly inoculated.
The world best mental calculator Dr. Gerd Mittring is a self-described sugar addict. He even claims that the enormous amount of candy bars and chocolate he eats enhances his cognitive performance .
Michelle Obama in an interview justified her lavish spending and high life as compensation for all the sacrifices she made through her life.
Sacrifices such as...
1. Being admitted to Princeton thanks to affirmative action.
2. Being admitted to Harvard Law School thanks to affirmative action.
3. A cushy job at some hospital where her 'diversity manager' role was to favor less qualified blacks over whites. She made over $300,000 a yr on that job.
4. Purchase of a mansion in Hyde Park at preferential price thanks to Rezko.
Oh poor baby, she's been suffering all these yrs and never had a single day of freedom. She was a slave!! Now, she's finally free, and it means spending all our money. Ah, the rebirth of a nation.
Could be an admission that blacks score lower on IQ tests on average and an excuse that it must be due to starvation. It almost certaionly is a major factor in very low IQ in parts of sub-saharan Africa.
"So maybe what blacks should devour more of is not food but books."
They won't do that unless the books are heavily salted and fried in Crisco.
Like Chris Mallory, I saw that "Chopped" episode with "lunch ladies" cooking and Obama's pet White chef judging. I changed the channel at the first comment on "hunger in the U.S." FWIW, the Food Network is a big backer of D'Won and the diversity police. I enjoy watching a competition show, which is why I like Chopped, but be aware of the channel's agenda.
Re anonymous and poor nutrition resulting in lack of height: The US population is getting shorter - http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-americans-shorter-wider.html and http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video?id=3293150
The PTB seem quite perplexed and have tentatively attributed it to a diet of junk food. No mention, of course, of countless Mestizos as tall as they are wide, or shuffling little Asians.
I caught an episode of "No Reservations" (Travel Channel) which noted that the Netherlands has the tallest population in the world, with the average male being over 6 feet. (Those I've known personally have, indeed, been quite tall.) I seem to recall reading somewhere that the average White American male teen (about 15 years ago) was approaching that. Undoubtedly, the Ellis Islanders and offspring also shortened the overall population. Anyone have any figures on American height pre and post 1965 immigration act?
The mind/body connection is real. If you are in shape with proper nutrients in your blood, your brain is going to work better.
If any politician was serious about ending poor nutrition, they would start dismantling the farm bill immediately and let the markets control. Farmers are smart people and would respond to demand. The reason coke is cheaper than carrot juice is because of corn subsidies. Our government wants us fat, stupid and lazy on high fructose corn and television. Otherwise, a large portion of the country might realize how they are screwing us.
Then again, the government isn't totally to blame. These obese slags of humanity do have free will but still choose playstation and monster energies.
Bingo, Ben. Jared Diamond's gaping hole in logic — "Environment can change a population's behavior, but can never, never, change its heredity" — struck me when I heard him say on some TV thing that he'd been all over the world, and found that every group was equally intelligent. Point is that he can't possibly be stupid enough to believe what he says. Anyhow, this post and comments are linked and riffed on over at "Ex-Army" HERE.
http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2012/01/poor-poor-people.html
US IQ data over time does show big gains at the low end of the bell curve, such as would be expected from improvements in nutrition. But that particular Flynn effect tailed off a good while ago.
Other studies show the Flynn effect is uniform across all IQ levels. And there's no reason to think nutrition benefits disproportionately the poor because height increases over the 20th century also appear to be uniform across the whole bell curve with some studies even showing height increasing most among the tallest people.
Even the richest Americans like the children of bill gates suffer from sub optimum nutrition and we will see even more increases in height and IQ in the next generations at all socioeconomic levels. North America still lags behind the Dutch in height.
Nutrition is last bastion of our liberal elite to explain by some lag, some achieve. They can't debate the issue openly. They can't point out that our media helps lionize a loser street culture that keeps many poor in their own heads. Better to putter around the periphery. Yeah - nutrition. Next year: clean socks!
It is also hard to argue that College and pro football and basketball players were not given better than average educational opportunities. Many are tutored in high school and some earlier to keep them eligible. Also college scholarships are educational opportunities that are not available to everyone.
BTW everything is fortified these days. Even the poor get the vitamins minerals and amino acids that they need. Vegan yuppies are more likely to be lacking in nutrition than the poor.
Oops. Here's that Ex-Army link HERE.
Apparently you don't get the joke. There is inequality in attainment in the children of “low-income mothers” (code for NAMs), even at earliest measurable age. Organic biological differences are eliminated as a likely cause of these differences because it conflicts with the ideology of lies of Krugman et al. All other explanations exhausted for these average group differences. The remaining solution du jour is differences in nutritional alimentation pre, during, and post gestation for the mother, lower rates of breastfeeding, and poor nutrition for the child. All caused by the intractable legacy of slavery, racism, sexism, flawed immigration system, bad teachers, etc; and never due to poor upbringing, deficient morals, and poor decisions and ability to plan.
This can only be remedied with more of the hard working public’s money, because after all the sperm donor of these “low-income mothers-to-be and young children” cannot possibly expect the sperm donor to provide for them. The sperm donor is not irresponsible for not being able or willing to provide as men should, he is merely another victim of the intractable legacy of slavery, racism, sexism, flawed immigration system, bad teachers, ect; and never due to poor upbringing, deficient morals, and poor decisions and ability to plan.
All krugman et al need now to complete the hypothesis for the discrepancy in attainment is to incorporate a system of epicycles. Epicycles are the missing key in their explanation of how things work. Really Senor Estevan, I’d think a smart half Mexican/castizo like you had the savvy to figure it out.
So maybe what blacks should devour more of is not food but books. --Zhivago of All Trades
They won't do that unless the books are heavily salted and fried in Crisco. --Kylie
...and the Crisco doesn't come in already-opened cans from the Castro District.
Steve: The anti-poverty lobby has run out of excuses. Expensive Federal programs haven't worked in the 50 years since LBJ declared War on Poverty. So let's blame something else other than identify the real problem.
"San Fernando Curt said...
Better to putter around the periphery. Yeah - nutrition. Next year: clean socks!"
That was funny. Clean socks! That's the ticket. How can we expect "our" children to learn without clean socks. We must remediate the shameful clean-sock gap in this country. Please donate generously to the United Negro Hosiery Fund.
"Apparently you don't get the joke."
We get that it's a joke. We just don't think it's funny.
"Really Senor[sic] Estevan, I’d think a smart half Mexican/castizo like you had the savvy to figure it out."
You're projecting because you don't have the savvy to figure out how to put a tilda over "Señor".
Krugman is just trying to stay ahead of the race/IQ/achievement argument. There are several facts of life liberals do their best to shout down: IQ greatly affects achievement (in groups of people if not in every single individual); IQ is partly (but not completely) inherited; study after study shows that some racial groups have higher mean IQs than others; these groups tend to differ in various types of ability and life achievement in proportions eerily similar to their mean IQ differences. The more we learn about genetics and find the gene patterns for various attributes, the harder it's going to be for liberals to keep people convinced that brain power is the *only* thing on which genes (and thus racial inheritance) have no effect whatsoever.
So the liberal with a brain, if he risks looking at the reality for a moment, realizes he'd better start coming up with an alternative answer. Since IQ isn't *entirely* genetic, there's his loophole: find something else that affects it, and blame that for the entire thing. We know that nutrition, especially in the womb and the early years, has some effect on it, so it's a prime candidate. That he gets to blame Republicans for it -- as if cutting some welfare program a couple decades ago is the *only* reason that all races aren't scoring exactly the same on the SAT today -- is just a huge bonus.
I can appreciate not wanting to pretend you can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear; however, you IQ absolutists eternally go too far with your hierarchical assessment of the various population groups. It's typical on this particular HBD forum to attribute great losses due to being surprised by the technology/imperialism of another group solely to low IQ while failing to recognize that some high IQ groups aren't necessarily achieving scores/grades in a comparable manner to the population used as the standard of achievement. Most ISteve-ers follow a heuristic that makes government enabling of equal outcomes unacceptable while private sector tricksters get credit for figuring out how to use indirect means that get the same results as raw brainpower. I, on the other hand, tend to favor the underdog at least when they are honestly not excelling at something important in a Euro-centric worldview.
North America still lags behind the Dutch in height.
No shit!
We aren't all Dutch!
Compare Dutch folks in the US to the Dutch in their homeland. You know, apples to apples instead of apples to oranges.
Kylie,
Projecting in which way? For the reason I don't know how to use an enye? Everyone with access to Google can figure it out. I have access to Google. You're ASSuming I don't know how, when I don't care to use one. Retake that intro to psych class you took while at community college, if in fact you did, and figure out what it means to project. While you're at it take a critical thinking class, if you haven’t, it may just help eliminate your fallacious reasoning and your weak attempts at ad hominems.
BTW, calling Steve a half Mexican is no more an insult than calling Barack O half white or half black. If Steve or you take being called a half Mexican insulting that's your problem.
The joke is the absurd contortions people are disposed to in order to salvage their ideology, ego, or whatever is esteemed by them. This absurdity can be either pitiful in a sympathetic character or risible when the individual is not worthy of pity. Is that clear enough? In your case I won’t ASSume to know you but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and think you pathetic *.
*causing or evoking pity, sympathetic sadness, sorrow, etc.; pitiful; pitiable
It's mostly food industry propaganda. The stuff about n-3 fatty acids boosting IQ is a recent example; the fish oil industry is quite large now.
Eating omega-3 fatty acids works. In fact, it works so well that really smart people can figure it out on their own without reading anything about omega-3's or nutrition in general. In law school, at exam time, I was impelled to buy and consume lots and lots of fish sticks.
It's typical on this particular HBD forum to attribute great losses due to being surprised by the technology/imperialism of another group solely to low IQ while failing to recognize that some high IQ groups aren't necessarily achieving scores/grades in a comparable manner to the population used as the standard of achievement.
Auf Englisch, bitte.
"Auf Englisch, bitte."
Mmmmm. Der fishschticks und der tater tots wit der catsup.
"Projecting in which way? For the reason I don't know how to use an enye? "
Me thinks thou doth protest too much. Kylie inhibits her snipe pretty well. You don't. Leave her alone.
"You're ASSuming I don't know how, when I don't care to use one."
No, you're ASSuming that I ASSumed that. You really didn't get that I was deliberately throwing your crap back in your face.
You also ASSumed we didn't "get the joke", ASSumed we would benefit from your patronizing lecture and ASSumed that I found your reference to Steve insulting.
Apparently what passes* for your mind is, like your family tree, full of ASSes.
*Or pASSes
"Me thinks thou doth protest too much. Kylie inhibits her snipe pretty well. You don't. Leave her alone."
Thanks. Much appreciated, though not necessary.
It was just another punk with too much college in him.
Carbohydrates consumed out of season and beyond seasonally needed moderation are poison.
The ancient Near Eastern food pyramid resting on plant sugars causes people to get fat, crazy, and stupid. Read Gary Taubes for the science and Mark Sisson for the praxis.
A diet rich in protein and fat, with very low carbs, is all that's needed to fight back the tides of juvenile obesity and diabetes caused by insulin resistance, which itself is caused by the grotesque increases in sugars in the industrial food system's products.
We have a global surplus of poor people for only two reasons. 1) The global food system revolves around creating cheap carbohydrates that sustain survival at very low functionality. 2) Contraception, abortion, and sterilization were restricted for too long in Europe and the Americas, mostly, I believe, under the influence of Mediterranean and tropical/equatorial cultures.
Importing that ridiculous "go forth and multiply uber alles" natalism religion from the Near East will cause the same kinds of downfall that Sumeria, Babylon, and Egypt went through: gorging on carbohydrates, carb-related health problems, increase in population, lack of gumption, eventual exhaustion of the soil, destruction of environments that can sustain hunting or very limited and well adapted animal agriculture.
My view is still that of all the environmental causes that can support or degrade the expression of IQ, food is probably pretty low on the list: Palaeolithic humans survived extremes of hunger and gorging (our insulin system evolved as an adaptation to that), and still were selected for survival. This likely was in part due to sheer cussedness, but surely also intelligence. If IQ were so fragile in the face of hunger, I doubt our species would ever have figured out how to bang rocks together to make them sharper.
I forgot to mention that carbohydrates were originally consumed by our species only in season. One of their effects is to make a person feel hungry, precisely because they tell the pancreas to produce more insulin. The result is the carbs turn to fat, and the fat will not burn so long as the carbs keep coming in.
This is why you see the reviled and scapegoatastic figure of the 300-pound welfare mother gorging on sugared crap. She's eating stuff that is telling her body that winter is coming. It's why you see morbidly obese people who will stuff themselves...and also who will starve themselves and exercise, and never lose a pound. So long as they eat carbs, their bodies will not burn fat. Start feeding the poor the old 1960s and 1970s surplus foods of eggs, cheese, lard, and tinned meat, and a lot of these problems would just go away.
Remember, food stamps/WIC/etc. are not welfare for poor people. They are welfare for the large agricultural concerns that have used Americans as guinea pigs for since 1980, making vast profits while basically poisoning everyone with high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated fats that pass through the body without being digested, and so on. And that profit regime didn't come from liberals. It came from Land Grant colleges of agriculture, and from the "green revolution" that caused the global population explosion.
Kylie,
You said:
"You're projecting because you don't have the savvy to figure out how to put a tilda over "Señor"."
Savvy means to know, understand, or to have the practical know how. So you're saying I don't know how/have the savvy to... No assumption on my part to state you said I didn't know how.
Kudos to Steve for posting my comments; didn't think he would.
BTW, sorry if I came off as patronizing, I am an utter failure in all facets in life, and things are only going downhill from here, so I have a tendency to overcompensate.
Calling my family tree full of asses is uncalled for and a textbook example of using cheap ad hominems when lacking valid arguments. I am fairly well versed in my family tree and none stood out as asses, mostly noble people, perhaps I am the first.
Anonymous at 1/12/12 8:13 PM,
Yawn. Look, I'm sure that there are some things that the government told us were healthy and they weren't and vice versa. However, clean meats, fruit and veggies, beans and complex carbs = good has been known for the past 60 years, all over the developed and semi-developed world. Ditto for fried, sugary, over-processed= bad. Even if the above model isn't 100% correct, it's not the cause of the obesity epidemic. When did the government ever tell the public to drink soda and eat chips/sugary snacks? The welfare whale is stuffing herself because it feels good at the moment and she never plans for her (even immediate) future. Also, I was never able to find any evidence that corn syrup is worse for the body than any other type of natural sweetener. The countries that use good old sugar from the cane are behind us in the fat stats because they started to gorge themselves a decade or two later, but they are catching up. Obesity is becoming a huge problem in France and Germany and its rates are skyrocketing among children in South Korea, just to name a few. Truth is that in the areas of the world where food is readily available, the people who have no discipline or the people who are overstressed eat a lot more than their fair share. That's all. Still, from what I observe, among the normal people, both the overstressed and the under-disciplined make sure to get enough nutrients in themselves before they succumb to ice cream and Taco Bell late at night. It's like they have good intentions and then fall off the wagon. The idiots, on the other hand, eat nothing but crap.
Now, I don't think most people could eat healthy, or survive at all on Kylie's old budget. That's frigging impressive. However, eggs, bananas, red onions, sweet potatoes, young red potatoes, collard greens, mustard greens, apples, brown rice, oatmeal, skim milk, black beans, kidney beans, whole grain pasta, cottage cheese, tinned tomatoes, frozen chicken breasts, canned tuna, olive oil, carrots, yellow squash and garlic don't cost a lot. I like to splurge on broccoli, coconut milk, extra fruit and various spices and sweeteners, and I still make it under 180-200 each month, and i constantly feed other people. If i didn't buy berries and mangoes out of season along with the organic coconut milk/blue agave syrup/cumin/tumeric/ect. crap, the bill would be a lot closer to 120 or, probably, much lower than that. Eating only at McDonald's for a month costs more for one person.
Isn't another problem one size fits all?
Watching The Biggest Loser and you see one guy lose weight first week and nothing the second. Why? The body is storing its precious fat rserves whereas other contestants were not reacting that way.
"Truth is that in the areas of the world where food is readily available, the people who have no discipline or the people who are overstressed eat a lot more than their fair share. That's all."
No. That's not all. If you overeat for whatever reason, grazing on low calorie vegetables or snacks like popcorn will not pack on the pounds the way higher density foods will. Although I must say Taco Bells food portions are small so a reasonable midnight snack there without the sugary cola isn't going to hurt much either. It may well be that our problem is imbibing sweetened drinks that typically accompany fast food meals. They don't offer much nutritional value and can quickly add extreme overages in useless caloric intake.
P.S. There have been several studies indicating that high fructose corn syrup is more harmful than sugar cane just as there have been many refuting such claims. Periodically you'll see an article on the topic appear on Google.
"No. That's not all. If you overeat for whatever reason, grazing on low calorie vegetables or snacks like popcorn will not pack on the pounds the way higher density foods will..."
People who eat more calories than they need are overeating. People who consume, roughly, the number of calories that their body requires are not overeating. Quit making it sound more complicated than it is. Though soda is poisonous crap, it's not the magic cause of obesity. If you ration 1200 calories per day with 800 of those coming from coca-cola to any given person who requires 1950 calories a day, that person will lose 1.5 lbs/week. Period. His hair might fall out, and he might succumb to infection, but he won't be able to defy the laws of physics.
"If you ration 1200 calories per day with 800 of those coming from coca-cola to any given person who requires 1950 calories a day, that person will lose 1.5 lbs/week. Period. "
No. This isn't true. And no one has done the study to prove it or disprove it. What you eat matters. Your body doesn't use all food in the same way. Some calories will cause hyperinsulemia which will cause the person to store fat, others will not trigger such a response so would cause weight gain at a slower rate if at all. Even whether or not a person experiences the low blood sugar which signals the body to eat something to feed the brain is determined by what a person eats. Eating 200 calories worth of carbohydrates will entail being hungry sooner in many people whose insulin production will lower their blood sugar while a similar or even lower calorie amount of protein will not. Your body doesn't process all foods in the same way. Calories are not the sole indicators of whether or not a person will gain or lose weight.
You're obviously a person with a metabolism that, as of yet, has burned calories inefficiently giving you a false impression of what's going wrong (actually right from some perspectives) with those who store fat more efficiently. The body doesn't respond to all foods in the same way. Extremists will suggest that those who can imbibe just about any type of food are genetically superior to those who can't but this position also supports my theory.
" Even whether or not a person experiences the low blood sugar which signals the body to eat something to feed the brain is determined by what a person eats."
Obviously. Of course different foods make us feel differently, and simple carbs make us hungrier. But you seem to be confusing the concept of feeling constantly hungry due to a poor diet causing a higher caloric intake resulting in fat gain for getting heavier at similar caloric intake due to different sources of calories. Of course, it's harder to stick to a sugary calorie budget than it is to a calorie budget low in simple carbs, but if you feed someone 3 candy bars a day, this person will resemble a cancer patient fairly soon. Most importantly, though, is that no modern government had ever told its citizens to live on desserts and fried foods. Even if you are right, and the food pyramid is slightly off, that's not what caused the obesity epidemic. Corn syrup, cane sugar, maple syrup and rice syrup all cause a sharp rise of insulin followed by a sharp fall. Doctors have told us to eat that crap in moderation for 10 decades. It's not some revelation of a government conspiracy.
"You're obviously a person with a metabolism that, as of yet, has burned calories inefficiently giving you a false impression of what's going wrong (actually right from some perspectives) with those who store fat more efficiently."
Wrong. My body is extremely efficient. I was a chunky kid, and everyone in my family who doesn't pay attention to his/her body's needs is obese. I was also a typical pre-teen/teen in the late 90s and early 2000s, so I've done most of the fad diets out there like low fat- high carb of the 90s and the low carb of the 2000 with a sprinkle of starvation pacts with emo friends. I also ran cross-country for 5 years, danced for about as long and still cross train actively, so I'm very aware of nutrition's role in performance. Here's the truth- every one of those weight loss methods that involves calorie deficit works as long as you work it. How you feel while on them is another matter. Everyone is different, but every running buddy, fellow dancer and military family member feels and performs his best on some variation of the good old doctor recommended way of eating: complex carbs, clean proteins, enough fats, fruit&veggies. It's just that some people need a bit more bananas and brown rice in their lives (like runners) while other need a bit more eggs and tuna to be their best. Not complicated at all.
I guess all of you "minoritiy" haters would have a point but since there are more white people ond food stamps then any othere race and all races combined I guess you all just sound stupid. Oh yeah more of you are fat too. Funny
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