The Obesity-Hunger Paradox

[undeterred]

By SAM DOLNICK
Published: March 12, 2010



WHEN most people think of hunger in America, the images that leap to mind are of ragged toddlers in Appalachia or rail-thin children in dingy apartments reaching for empty bottles of milk. Once, maybe. But a recent survey found that the most severe hunger-related problems in the nation are in the South Bronx, long one of the country’s capitals of obesity. Experts say these are not parallel problems persisting in side-by-side neighborhoods, but plagues often seen in the same households, even the same person: the hungriest people in America today, statistically speaking, may well be not sickly skinny, but excessively fat.

Call it the Bronx Paradox. “Hunger and obesity are often flip sides to the same malnutrition coin,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. “Hunger is certainly almost an exclusive symptom of poverty. And extra obesity is one of the symptoms of poverty.” The Bronx has the city’s highest rate of obesity, with residents facing an estimated 85 percent higher risk of being obese than people in Manhattan, according to Andrew G. Rundle, an epidemiologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

But the Bronx also faces stubborn hunger problems. According to a survey released in January by the Food Research and Action Center, an antihunger group, nearly 37 percent of residents in the 16th Congressional District, which encompasses the South Bronx, said they lacked money to buy food at some point in the past 12 months. That is more than any other Congressional district in the country and twice the national average, 18.5 percent, in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Such studies present a different way to look at hunger: not starving, but “food insecure,” as the researchers call it (the Department of Agriculture in 2006 stopped using the word “hunger” in its reports). This might mean simply being unable to afford the basics, unable to get to the grocery or unable to find fresh produce among the pizza shops, doughnut stores and fried-everything restaurants of East Fordham Road.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/nyregion/14hunger.html?src=me

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. I wonder how long until some of this changes

some of this is corporate policy.

[Better Today]

2. I don't see how this is a paradox. It makes perfect sense that people

who consume too much, stretch out the stomachs and therefore have a harder time feeling satiated. I think this is the whole concept behind stomach stapling and lapbands, is it not?

[Zoeisright]

3. A lot of it is WHAT you consume.

Much cheap food is loaded with chemicals, fat, fake sugar, and salt. That literally changes your brain so you crave more of it.

I'm so sick of the 'it's all part of will power' and 'just eat less' shit. LIFE is more complicated than that. And the naturally skinny tend to be naturally judgmental and smug.

[Better Today]

5. I always say, it's all a part of will power, to learn to and to cook for yourself.

To choose to set the TV aside long enough to care for yourself. If you're cooking for yourself, which I do very cheaply, your weight tends to resolve itself.

I also thinks it's all part of will power, to turn off the TV and go do something, not in a car. Walk, throw a ball, do a little yardwork, I know some neighborhoods aren't user friendly, but something besides sitting on one's tush.

[Skittles]

9. why do you assume poor overweight people do nothing but "sit on their tush"?

I see plenty of them working very hard, sometimes at two or more jobs

[Better Today]

11. Because they do sit on their tushes. And even if they have three

jobs, apparently they aren't one's that require calorie burning activity. There may be exceptions to this, but it could certainly be considered the rule that obese individuals don't cook for themselves, and sit or are sedentary most of the time.

I think that's why the related diabetes is often referred to as overweight and sedentary diabetes, otherwise known as fat and lazy diabetes.

[Scout]

12. if you "always" say that, then you are quite often wrong. n/t

[Skittles]

14. that op is a smug fuck

fucking disgusting

[sense]

16. Showing your arrogance and ignorance

Look at the research. Your judgemental attitude is outdated and wrong. There is no truth to the theory that our bodies are like empty boxes and calories and calories expended is all there is to it. We're a lot more complicated than that and we've been lulled into not paying attention to all the additives that have chemically changed us and the way our bodies process what we eat. Read Good Calories, Bad Calories, for a start. The author looks at the last 200 or so years of research and finds out that we've been mislead in so many ways about nutrition, due to silly things like researcher's egos. If we don't know the truth, and you don't...... it's almost impossible for most people to take care of themselves in a healthful way. There are other books out there that explain many of the ways we've been poisoned by the giant food companies with foods that are over processed and filled with cheap crap like msg and hfcs. It's taken 30-50 years or so, but we've really managed to screw things up.

[cutlassmama]

6. [phone]

[Scout]

13. +1,000,000

"the naturally skinny tend to be naturally judgmental and smug"
plus freakin' infinity to that....

[smalll]

4. The "Bronx Paradox" is no "paradox" at all --

sure, we all know that it's cheaper to buy shit "food" these days, so the Bronx is poorer than Manhattan (or than Hipsterfied Brooklyn) -- but the Bronx is fatter just because Manhattan is now overrun with rich white kids from middle America (the girls all have that squauky, sandpaper-like voice that makes me hear them all as the daughters of the Penguin) while the Bronx is still dominated by African Americans and even more so by various Latino groups (Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, etc. etc.) who, not to put too fine a point on it, don't feel driven to hit the treadmills once they start putting on a few extra pounds. Far from it.

[Stuart G]

15. Some very healthy food, is cheap (not shit food)....let's see.

1. peanut butter
2. soybeans
3. skim milk
4. sunflower seeds.
5. tap water
6. chicken..
7. carrots.

You gotta want to eat them, but you can still eat good foods cheap.

[Better Today]

18. Uhm, if that's all you think is inexpensive, you're not paying attention.

There are eggs, rice, beans, bagged pasta, most pasta sauces are pretty inexpensive if you buy the cans and not the jars, fresh veggies like cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes, squash, ... canned veggies are pretty reasonable too. BUT, one has to know how to cook and be willing to get up from the tube to do it.

I can cook an entire stir fry to rival any mongolian grill or chinese restaurant for four people, with rice or noodles, for under $6 with eggs and chicken for protein, cabbage, onions, carrots, bamboo shoots, homemade teriyaki sauce (soy, brown sugar or maple syrup, lemon juice, red hot sauce, and vinegar). Meatloaf and baked potatoes with sauted carrots, $8. Pork chops with sliced apples and onions over steamed rice, $7.50. BTW the dollars given are the total $s not per person. Yes you have to be willing to try putting together the less expensive stuff in palatable ways, but it is very possible.

This idea that only crap or tasteless food is available at a reasonable price is just bull, propogated imo by those that don't want to be bothered to effect their health or weight.

[Scout]

20. if i eat like you do, will i be a smug prick too? n/t

[alp227]

7. Yep, an endless cycle of disadvantage for the poor.

No car = need to use public transit
Nearest grocery store = far away, because the business owners are afraid of shoplifting or have other issues with poor people
Too little money = can't afford public transit OR a healthy diet
Only food available in the 'hood = cheap HFCS/oil/fried stuff
Obviously, that kind of food is lacking in nutritional value and doesn't really satisfy hunger, but at least it's better than nothing.

Sigh. I hope that Michelle Obama helps inner city Americans gain access to healthier food, now that she's announced an incentive to curb childhood obesity.

[RationalAltruism]

8. I've never understood this sort of thing

If people care anything about their health, they'd know that hamburgers and fast food and processed food every day isn't the best thing for their health. It's not as if cheap food isn't available; buying the very basics costs only a couple dollars a day, if you buy economically and in bulk, and more can be added as desired.

Perhaps it's a problem of balance between cheap but very bland and boring food and slightly more expensive but tastier food.

[elleng]

10. Sounds like a big assumption to me:

'If people care anything about their health, they'd know that hamburgers and fast food and processed food every day isn't the best thing for their health.'

[sense]

17. When would you like people to take the

time to buy the right things, cook from scratch and also make their way around the city all day every day working three jobs, taking the bus everywhere because our economic and job situation is so screwed up. When people are just trying to get through each day w/o becoming homeless.....it's a bit much to expect that they'll have time to do the research (since we're not being told the truth) and only do the best nutritionally.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. You oviously have no idea how poor people live

or you wouldn't say things like that.

Many poor neighborhoods have only convenience stores and fast food.