Wasn't Taft a great big fat person?

I agree with the premise, but I saw a fat (not grotesquely, but definitely noticeably obese) younger couple holding hands walking through the outdoor downtown mall last weekend, and it was a really nice thing. I know that sounds condescending, or overly liberal in a Harold & Maude type of way, and it probably is. Still it made me happy.

Taft was but that was pre-TV and it was more about smoky room powerbrokers back then imo.

I think Christie is kinda cool myself, he's got an edge to him that most modern bland politicians have shined off.

according to BMI I am only barely overweight

Score!

I think he is genuine in his press conferences, which is refreshing, but I also think he couldn't care less about actually doing his job and helping people.

In middle school we learned that back when Teddy Roosevelt was president, being a large hefty man was a sign of power and wealth - perhaps even a desirous look. No idea if true but it could be.

Yeah that's what I thought. I remember you're a lefto like filthy and my parents, that's ok. I'll always have a strange affinity for the leftos, like I still love and listen to Phil Ochs and Woody Guthrie, love their populism.

Hobby, you say.

Define "crap food". This is what people going hungry in the UK are advised to get involved with:

http://www.trusselltrust.org/foodbank-projects

It's not going to McDonalds.

Your inner sociopath will show you the way to fitness. Listen to it.

I like Christie too, he's kind of an a-hole but that's ok in a politician.

I think people saying Christie could never be President because he's too fat are vastly overestimating how much that matters to people. He won a 2nd term by a landslide in a democratic state. Unless you assume NJ people are somehow more accepting of obesity than the other 49 states. I guarantee not a single person who voted for him gave a single thought to his weight when they pulled the lever for him.

Of course it's not going to cure their poverty, no one said it would.

It would help their obesity while saving them a few bucks a week, though.

The whole "food desert" thing just smacks of something dreamed up by some academic to try and remove 100% of personal responsibility from the obesity equation.

Food deserts always seemed like a feel good excuse to me, and have in fact been proven to be a myth:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/he...dies.html?_r=0

And have any of you been to a poor ethnic neighborhood in the US? Mexican, Asian, Caribbean markets have to have some of the cheapest produce and meat anywhere in the developed world.

The US is the fattest country in the world but I do think the obesity epidemic is turning a corner. Soda sales have collapsed (now at 1995 levels) and there has been a noticeable shift of population moving into more walkable cities vs suburbs over the last 20 years.

Define what you mean by "involved with" -- you mean they're advised to use foodbanks? The cost per calorie of gifted or donated food is obviously different for the same item if purchased. They seem to emphasize emergency food supplies rather than an ongoing everyday relationship, though.

I also notice this one has one location and is open from 11:00 to 2:00 Monday to Friday. (Ours is 8:00 to 4:00 and is an hour's walk from the nearest bus stop and thus can be said to be only accessible by car. It's in an industrial area, and I found it accidentally on a sales call; at first I assumed it must be just a head office and there are field offices where people can reach them more easily, but nope, our food bank has located itself as far from poor people-- from everyone-- as possible and restricted its hours to business hours. While laid-off people who still have gas in their car can reach it, working poors are SOL and still have to use grocery stores.)

I think the thinking surrounding this issue inclines toward, "don't eat that, you stupid* poor person, just get something from the foodbank! I have to BUY my tinned meat/fish you lucky duck" without being realistic about foodbanks' own position (both ideological and geographic). They are not so common or accessible that the only thing to conclude from a poor not using one is that he is so dumb and innumerate that he'd rather pay for something he can get for free.


* Stupid and dirty: This foodbank is rolling out classes called "Eat Well, Spend Less!" that "teach people how to cook when on a low budget. The course includes basic cookery lessons as well as providing advice on food budgeting, hygiene and nutrition."

Illuminating.

Anyway. Yes I am aware of the existence of foodbanks; their list is about as carb and sugar-heavy as you can get, and with their limited hours and single location my position is that for a number of reasons their clients get most of their food, even if it's the same food, from the same places as everyone else. To get 2000 calories you can spend $30 on chicken breast, vegetables and a baguette, or you can make $3.00 worth of pasta and sauce. The pasta is the better choice by a very wide margin, and you still have change for a soda.

I didn't make my point clearly enough. It is that if you eat as they propose, having purchased the items yourself, that would be cheaper and healthier than eating McDonalds.

I guarantee you can't guarantee this.

a lot of posters in this thread seem to have the oppinion that fat people must be weak willed and lack selfcontroll to have become fat if its not a genetical thing, because just put the god damn fork down its not that hard.
but the thing is ( and yes i am a fatty) its a bit more complicated. there are a multitude of eating disorders some lead to obesity some lead to Emaciation. all of them have psychological reasons and cat just be turned off.

in my case for example its just a thing i cant controll well.
most if not all people have this certain somehting they cant controll well.
for some people its cocain they just cant help themselfs around it for some its alcohol for some its food.

Well maybe one day society will start looking down on cokeheads and raging alcoholics.

If I'm understanding you right, you're weak willed and lack self-control.

Cmonson. Doctors used to recommend cocaine for our health. No medical professional of sound mind is going to recommend food.

And not eating at all is cheaper still.

I'm really not getting what you're driving at. Revolts was saying poors and fatties eat like **** because they don't know any better or something. I said the calculus involved (calories per dollar) makes crap food the better purchase compared to eating, I don't know, an entire bag of apples every day?

To which you said, poors should get involved with food banks.

So I said using a foodbank is not that simple and in any event their list is the same carby, sugary stuff poors live on anyway (with, I submit, full awareness that it's not seasonal vegetables and a jog through the park). When the same list of items is published by a foodbank it assumes something approaching respectability (cheap and filling --> smart, practical options to fill the gaps).

Now you're saying that by "involved with foodbanks" you meant not eating at McDonald's all the time. People on budgets buy most of their food from stores. No one takes every meal at McDonald's, reinforcing stereotypes. If they did they're still getting lots of calories for very little money, which was my original point: people aren't poor because they eat that way, they eat that way because they're poor, and it's the right decision. They will, and do, spend $3.00 instead of $5.00 for a meal on the reg, but in the end it's still a two-dollar difference which doesn't buy anything but more crap so what's the point -- it is not economic self-sabotage to get fries and a drink, you'll still be poor if you deprived yourself of it. You are basically arguing for a different distribution of dollars for calories; I agree they can be combined in a few ways but you can't distribute them in a way that will somehow end with poor people making a living wage and graduating from peanut butter to turkey breast.

It is a testament to the agrifood business that this conversation is even possible.

I'm pretty sure all medical professionals recommend food.

But not healthier.

No, I said that they are advised to. (I haven't advised them to; I should probably have phrased it as "are being advised to".)

The point I attempted to clarify is quite a simple one, and is factually either true or false.

Ok true... let me rephrase and say I personally doubt Christie's weight factored very much into NJ voters' decision.

The results of the election would seem to bear that out, although I guess you could always make the argument that his margin of victory would have been even greater if he wasn't obese.

Sure, if someone is so poor that they have trouble affording enough food to even achieve maintenance-level caloric consumption on an already-thin body, then vegetables are a pretty poor choice. Such a person would want to be eating mostly rice, beans, and just enough fruits or vegetables to ward of scurvy and maybe some inexpensive cuts of meat (pork shoulder, chicken thighs, and maybe they can get a good deal on offal) occasionally. These people need to need to maximize the calories/dollar in order to survive.

The thing is, if a person is fat, they are already not this sort of person, except in unusual cases where they got fat when rich and now are suddenly destitute. For most people who are fat, the issue is not maximizing calories per dollar, as they are already getting too many calories for the dollars they are willing to spend on food. They could just choose to eat a slightly lesser percentage of whatever they are currently eating and be both skinnier and richer, but they choose not to. They like eating more. For these people, the more important thing to maximize is satisfaction or satiation per calorie, not calories/dollar. We could probably keep these people alive for very little money on 2k calories/day of vegetable oil plus a multivitamin, but they're not going to be too happy about it. Instead, if we can come up with a diet that gives people "only" 2k calories but they feel as full and as satisfied as they did when eating so much they gained weight (or at least nearly so), then that's the goal. That's where vegetables come in. Vegetables are cheap in comparison to the cost of the excess calories the fat people were consuming, and they can bring similar satisfaction at a much lower caloric cost.

Reading non-poor people talking about what it's like to be on a poor person budget is part funny and part sad.

You realize food banks are only opened during working hours, right?