Cost of Food & Obesity Amongst Poorer People

VfM4meplse

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

That's actually a minimum requirement, you really should be eating 9+ a day of mostly vegetables of all colours.

Based on what exactly? No robust trial evidence, it's pure consensus!

Clearly eating fruit and veg is much better for you than processed foods from a scientific perspective, but there is no "should be" about it!

adouglasmhor

breadlinebetty wrote: »

How can you say that advice from the medical council to eat 5 fruits a day etc is confusing???

The medical council do not advetise banded foods.

No such advice from the medical council, the advice is 5 portions of fruit or vegetables a day, http://www.nhs.uk/LiveWell/5ADAY/Pages/5ADAYhome.aspx. Obviously those who are not very bright may get confused by this, I remember all the women in my old office diligently bringing in a bag every day with 5 bits of fruit in it like it was a chore.
A portion may be more or less than a single fruit, i.e. a slice of melon or 14 cherries both count as a portion.

PasturesNew

I stare at a swede and think "OK, that's huge.... and I'd have to peel it and stuff... and then what'll it go with...? And that'll take (peeling/boiling/waiting) about an hour.

I then spot a pizza, "12 minutes in the oven".

Good to go....

aliasojo

breadlinebetty wrote: »

And junk food....that's no cheaper than fresh healthy food.

A quick visit to Tesco this morning proved that's not always the case.

Frosted shreddies were on offer for example as were sugar puffs.

The ordinary shreddies were more than twice the price.

Even a bag of plain oats (the cheapest they had on the shelves) couldn't compare.

I never buy sweet cereals but I can fully understand why someone on a tight budget would opt for the cheapest on offer, even if that meant it wasn't as healthy.

Also, not everyone lives near choice. I do sometimes wonder at these types of threads as often the people replying live near farmer's markets, cheaper supermarkets and the like. Some of us simply don't have those options unless we drive for miles (which kinda defeats the purpose of attempting the get healthier and affordable foods.

OH and I were discussing how our food bill had grown over the years. When we were happy to eat cheaper foods, our food bills were what I would call average. Since we started eating in a more healthy way, our bills have doubled. No longer do we pick up a pack of 24 sausages (like the pack on offer in Tesco this morning for £2) We'd have got 2 lots of a meal like stewed sausage, mash and broccoli for a total cost of approximately £4/£5 - £2.50 per meal for a family of 4.

Health issues have meant sausages are off the menu, as is pork and red meat. Chicken and fish is fine, but is also costly.

OH can't stomach pasta or eggs (the texture makes him boak) so there's another cheap option gone. I would also dispute that pasta is actually healthy anyway, it's just pure carb.

Fresh foods are healthy but again unless you have a cheap outlet in which to buy them, some people wont be able to buy too many items in that category.

mrcow

PasturesNew wrote: »

I stare at a swede and think "OK, that's huge.... and I'd have to peel it and stuff... and then what'll it go with...? And that'll take (peeling/boiling/waiting) about an hour.

I then spot a pizza, "12 minutes in the oven".

Good to go....

Exactly.

It's laziness. Too lazy to be doing what's good for you and too lazy to be making the changes that need to be happening (not you specifically of course!).

Of course it's more expensive to eat poorly. But if you are inherently lazy, sitting around doing nothing and stuffing your face with junk probably seems like a preferable option. It's got nothing to do with conflicting advice. It doesn't take anything other than common sense to realise that eating a nectarine is better for you than a bag of salt and vinegar crisps.

Callie22

PasturesNew wrote: »

I stare at a swede and think "OK, that's huge.... and I'd have to peel it and stuff... and then what'll it go with...? And that'll take (peeling/boiling/waiting) about an hour.

I then spot a pizza, "12 minutes in the oven".

Good to go....

And you could probably buy a frozen value pizza for the same price as a fresh swede ...

Also, people are suckered in by the millions, if not billions of pounds the food companies spend on advertising so-called 'healthy' foods. You just need to look at the absolute crap that's sold under the 'Weightwatchers' brand to see an example of that. People see that and think 'ooo, it's Weightwatchers, it must be healthy' - they don't see the sugar, artificial sweeteners, hydrogenated fats etc. The obesity epidemic began at the same time we started eating highly processed food as standard. There were social reasons for this move (more women in the workplace, less home cooking) but I can't help but feel that a lot of the problems we're now seeing are directly caused by the amount of processed carbohydrates and chemicals (artifical sweeteners etc) that are now in food. Add to that incorrect dietary advice (you're still told to eat low fat, high carb to lose weight) and it's no wonder obesity is such a problem.

Saturnalia

Not only is junk quick, easy, cheap and aggressively marketed, but most of it is refined carbohydrates, i.e. white sugar, white flour etc.

Refined carbs make your blood sugar level rise rapidly almost immediately after eating them, which makes your pancreas put out insulin to lower the sugar level. Insulin is the hormone that causes fat storage and high insulin levels make you hungry... as does the crash in blood sugar levels caused by the sugar surge followed by the insulin surge. (That weak, shaky, sweaty, confused feeling you get when you haven't eaten for too long is low blood sugar - hypoglycaemia.)

Add to that that refined carbs aren't satisfying for long. They are broken down very quickly by the digestive system whereas the brown kinds take longer to pass through. Try it - see how a dish that has brown rice, pasta or bread keeps you feeling fuller for far longer that its white equivalent.

So you have a perfect storm where the more white carbs you eat, the more you want. And if you are hungry between meals you will probably go for high-carb snacky food, people don't tend to snack on meat & veg do they?

I'm diabetic on insulin and if my doses are increased I am hungry all day long until my body acclimatises, and I'll put on weight easily even if I don't eat more than normal. Plus I can test my own blood sugars and see how different foods affect it in different ways.

Generali

Food is cheap so buying more food than you need is easy to do in the UK, even on a restricted budget.

@Saturnalia: good post BTW. My Grandad lost stones when he became diabetic and replaced white food with brown.

A._Badger

VfM4meplse wrote: »

Based on what exactly? No robust trial evidence, it's pure consensus!

Clearly eating fruit and veg is much better for you than processed foods from a scientific perspective, but there is no "should be" about it!

Quite. It's chilling to read the unscientific twaddle pedalled as 'nutrition' these days, though not surprising that its neo-puritanical nostrums are seized on by those who like to think they have grown out of self-flagellatory ideals like original sin.

Obesity is an incredibly complex subject with many missing components in our understanding if it. For example, Americans were eating what the NPs like to call 'junk food' back in the early 1950s, a time when no one but a child rode a bicycle, a gym was for body builders and boxers, food was routinely fried in animal fat, few walked from choice, jogging hadn't been invented.. and yet Americans were thin.

The modern diet is, clearly, implicated. But which parts of it? Atkins might have had a clue and was hounded by the nutritional establishment. But one thing is sure: despite all the tinkering with our diets, all the advice, all the health programmes, we go on getting heavier. And, whatever they like to pretend, no one really knows why.

Sapphire

A._Badger wrote: »

The modern diet is, clearly, implicated. But which parts of it? Atkins might have had a clue and was hounded by the nutritional establishment. But one thing is sure: despite all the tinkering with our diets, all the advice, all the health programmes, we go on getting heavier. And, whatever they like to pretend, no one really knows why.

Perhaps it has a lot to do with the fact that we move around much less than we used to (before TV, computers and the like)? More of us also once used our bodies for work, rather than sitting all day in an office, or on a sofa at home. We mostly burned off what we consumed, even though what we ate did include much 'junk'.