McDouble "cheapest, most nutritious food in human history"

[TeckXKnight]

Breezed through the thread, but didn't see anything about about the original documentary on fast food, "Supersize me." Let's feed those double cheeseburgers to you 3 meals a day for 30 days and see how healthy you are.

Next issue is... since when was buying fast food ever efficient use of money? You could make 3 of those things for the price of what you pay at the restaurant.

Supersize Me was actually very unscientific and, while it was sensational, was not a great source of information.

The thing is, there's more to your health than the number of calories that you eat. Sure, fastfood is calories for cheap but you need loads of other vitamins and nutrients to remain healthy. A hamburger is fine as long as you're getting fiber, fruits, oils, minerals, etc in your diet from other sources. The real issue, as we've seen in this thread, is that we blame the poor for being poor. It is as obscene to tell a hungry man to eat less as it is to tell a poor person to spend less, worse when you do both in the same breath. A huge percentage, with varying numbers depending on which source you use, ranging from between 20-33% of American live at or below the poverty line. Our response to this is to pay them less, give them fewer hours, force them onto food stamps, and then cut food stamps.

We need to either pay people enough to buy food or provide proper government assistance so that they can eat. Otherwise people will continue to scrape by on whatever they can because everyone needs to eat, healthy or not.

That said the article is still dumb as heck yo. Prices on food vary from region to region but if you're buying local produce and meats you can usually get them way cheaper than fast food. I'm not saying you should buy a bundle of raspberries at $5 a pound, but I am saying that the article is as unscientific as Supersize Me. The author ignores localized and region based data and likely didn't actually examine any information on their own. Perhaps the statement is true somewhere but you can't hold fast food against a luxury food market such as a farmer's market and hope for that to hold any validity. You're comparing two different demographic markets as equal. Yuppie food will always be more expensive than poor people food, congrats on figuring that out. A better comparison point would be seasonal crops at supermarkets and grocery stores.

[neored9]

The thing is, there's more to your health than the number of calories that you eat. Sure,

Very true but it is the only thing that determines your weight.

we blame the poor for being poor. It is as obscene to tell a hungry man to eat less as it is to tell a poor person to spend less, worse when you do both in the same breath. A huge percentage, with varying numbers depending on which source you use, ranging from between 20-33% of American live at or below the poverty line. Our response to this is to pay them less, give them fewer hours, force them onto food stamps, and then cut food stamps.

This is essentially the heart of the issue. The uneducated, poor, and over weight are all the same group in American. They're poor because they're uneducated, they're overweight because they're uneducated. They're uneducated because they're poor.

We need to either pay people enough to buy food or provide proper government assistance so that they can eat. Otherwise people will continue to scrape by on whatever they can because everyone needs to eat, healthy or not.

America needs to be a better nanny state or stop being one.

[DarkNacht]

We need to either pay people enough to buy food or provide proper government assistance so that they can eat. Otherwise people will continue to scrape by on whatever they can because everyone needs to eat, healthy or not.

Where I live(in WA state) poor people make/are given plenty of money to eat well but many of them would rather eat junk food and drink sodas, which is far more expensive than buying healthy food. Most of them know its bad for them too they just don't care, my state has had good heath care for the poor who want it for quite a while so they tend to not care about the costs when it causes heath problems.
I'm sure there are areas where its no as easy for the poor, where there are fewer government programs, lower wages and/or higher cost of living, but I doubt there are many places, if any, where the fastfood/preprepared **** that many chronically poor people eat is cheaper than just buying healthy raw ingredients.

[Feone]

We need to either pay people enough to buy food or provide proper government assistance so that they can eat. Otherwise people will continue to scrape by on whatever they can because everyone needs to eat, healthy or not.

Where I live(in WA state) poor people make/are given plenty of money to eat well but many of them would rather eat junk food and drink sodas, which is far more expensive than buying healthy food. Most of them know its bad for them too they just don't care, my state has had good heath care for the poor who want it for quite a while so they tend to not care about the costs when it causes heath problems.
I'm sure there are areas where its no as easy for the poor, where there are fewer government programs, lower wages and/or higher cost of living, but I doubt there are many places, if any, where the fastfood/preprepared **** that many chronically poor people eat is cheaper than just buying healthy raw ingredients.

General ignorance and idiocy is a consequence of poor education and a society structured to root out criticism and promote stupidity.

[MagicManICT]

Supersize Me was actually very unscientific and, while it was sensational, was not a great source of information.

My point was that there was a lot more going on than just his weight after 30 days. He had gone from having healthy interior organs to some very serious health issues from the high fat intake. There was nothing "unscientific" about it, but it wasn't a lab study, either, and the point was about why our nation (the US) has became obese. Overeating, salesmanship, and lack of physical activity. The original article we're discussing here is full of crap, too, just like the documentary.

A nutrition professor from a major US university was on a talk show several years ago (not long after Supersize Me came out) where he lived on nothing but Nutty Bars, Ho-Hos and other junk food for 90 days, yet maintained his weight and short term health through the use of dietary supplements. He wouldn't go on the record, for obvious reasons, about long term health and what long term diets like this can do. Anyone that has followed health and diet in scientific articles can point out several examples of what weird diets can do to long term health.

I realize you guys don't know what I do or don't know and I've always been really bad about trying to communicate it without saying too much or too little (always seem to be on one end or the other). The comments after my post were a little... much.

Where I live(in WA state) poor people make/are given plenty of money to eat well but many of them would rather eat junk food and drink sodas

If you look at the highest levels of food assistance in the US per capita by state (food stamps, USDA surplus commodities, etc), the most obese states tend to have the highest per capita poor with the lowest food costs: midwest and south.