Quote:
Originally Posted by JR_C
Re: higher rates of obesity in cities. I still believe that this is because the inner-city poor have less access to healthy foods. If there is a store in the neighborhood that sells food, it's often a convenience store. Convenience stores aren't known for their fresh produce, but will always have large varieties of snack foods available.
|
Might be part of it. The other is the stress of being poor gives an interest in "quick fixes". 1930s England, but George Orwell said it best:
And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an
unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we'll all have a nice cup of tea!
and later:
I have heard a Communist speaker on the platform grow very angry about it. In London, he said, parties of Society dames now have the cheek to walk into East End houses and give shopping-lessons to the wives of the unemployed. He gave this as an instance of the mentality of the English governing class. First you condemn a family to live on thirty shillings a week, and then you have the damned impertinence
to tell them how they are to spend their money.
similarly, the poor smoke at higher rates. Though different subcultures will tend to smoke or eat unhealthier at similar income levels. In particular, the rural south:
Porky Populism | The American Conservative