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Report: Nearly a quarter of all Americans struggle to afford food

justabubba said:
can one truly be Christian and then oppose helping the least among us?
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Im SURE you can find anywhere I have said we shouldnt help those TRULY in need. Right?

Some of us give of our time and resources freely, but we choose to give in ways that dont perpetuate the problems. But I ALWAYS love that you turn to religion Bubba....especially when it suits you. And yes...I DO believe that perpetual welfare systems that create generation after generation of crippled needy and dependent pets are not what you call 'helping' organizations...except where your intent is to 'help' parties get reelected.
 
Northern Light said:
Spending increased as unemployment increased, and unemployment increased because our manufacturing sector got gutted along with unions as we sold our jobs and worker rights to China.

It all goes back to what the financial elites are doing to this country. More people on the tit of government because the government turned its back on responsible monetary policy, something which Bush exacerbated and Obama followed through on when we gave trillions to Wallstreet.
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That's a different topic altogether. Lets stick with your original claim that the Bush tax cuts for the middle class is keeping us from being able to support social systems. Given spending has doubled, how do you come to that conclusion? Heck, tax receipts are up nearly a trillion. So Im failing to see how the tax cuts affected social support at all.
 
justabubba said:
operated entirely by volunteers using food that can no longer be sold by the grocers
and the folks line up to enjoy it - because they are hungry
these are the folks some of you insist do not exist
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Then you and the other volunteers are really followers of Christ, regardless of what religion you may profess.

But do you believe that there really is a quarter of Americans who would come to your soup kitchen, despite the billions spent on welfare by government and private organizations? That figure just seems implausible to me.
 
Wiseone said:
The cheapest food is often the most unheathy, which is why the poor suffer from obesity as well. It costs more money to eat healthy, not to mention more education, things the poor often don't have, than it does to eat healthy and know what eating healthy is.

Not saying I agree with the 25% statistics that seems to incredible
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That's a common argument but it's also bull****. It doesn't matter if you ate nothing but bacon and cheese, if you have a calorie deficiency you will lose weight, if you eat too much you will gain weight. There are very, very few exceptions to this rule (medical anomalies) to make them statistically insignificant.

Americans are fat because they eat too much. Poor people are fat. Poor people eat too much. Therefore, poor people do not have a problem finding food, as the evidence indicates.
 
Quik said:
That's a common argument but it's also bull****. It doesn't matter if you ate nothing but bacon and cheese, if you have a calorie deficiency you will lose weight, if you eat too much you will gain weight. There are very, very few exceptions to this rule (medical anomalies) to make them statistically insignificant.

Americans are fat because they eat too much. Poor people are fat. Poor people eat too much. Therefore, poor people do not have a problem finding food, as the evidence indicates.
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I didn't say they had a problem finding food I said the cheapest food is often the least healthy and that to eat healthy requires both education on what is healthy and money, both of which the poor are often lacking.

Next time respond to what I say, not the strawman you've invented in your head.
 
Wiseone said:
I didn't say they had a problem finding food I said the cheapest food is often the least healthy and that to eat healthy requires both education on what is healthy and money, both of which the poor are often lacking.

Next time respond to what I say, not the strawman you've invented in your head.
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Is the cheapest food the highest in calories, really?

I used to like prime rib until the restaurants started posting calorie counts. Did you know that even a small one has an entire day's worth of calories, and that's without the wine and dessert? Holy crap! I had no idea!

And potatoes, not fried ones that is, are pretty low in calories, as are beans, eggs, oatmeal, and a whole host of inexpensive foods.

I think perhaps the problem is the one that led me to order that prime rib too often: We don't know how many calories are in the food we eat.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Is the cheapest food the highest in calories, really?

I used to like prime rib until the restaurants started posting calorie counts. Did you know that even a small one has an entire day's worth of calories, and that's without the wine and dessert? Holy crap! I had no idea!

And potatoes, not fried ones that is, are pretty low in calories, as are beans, eggs, oatmeal, and a whole host of inexpensive foods.

I think perhaps the problem is the one that led me to order that prime rib too often: We don't know how many calories are in the food we eat.
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I said the cheapest food is often the unhealthiest not the lowest in calories. Again, read what I say not what you want me to have said.

Why Low-Income and Food Insecure People are Vulnerable to Overweight and Obesity « Food Research & Action Center

This is my source for my information, I think it explains it well in a short article.
 
Wiseone said:
I said the cheapest food is often the unhealthiest not the lowest in calories. Again, read what I say not what you want me to have said.

Why Low-Income and Food Insecure People are Vulnerable to Overweight and Obesity « Food Research & Action Center

This is my source for my information, I think it explains it well in a short article.
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Lowest in calories, or highest? Highest in calories is what contributes to obesity.

As for the availability of nutritious foods, the market will go where the demand is. If the poor use their government provided food stamps to purchase fresh produce, then fresh produce is what retailers will stock. If they use them to purchase cheeseburgers, that's what will be available.

What we should do instead of providing food stamps is have food distribution centers in poor neighborhoods providing healthy fare at a subsidized rate. But, of course, that would require common sense, which is even in shorter supply than healthful foods in convenience stores.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Lowest in calories, or highest? Highest in calories is what contributes to obesity.

As for the availability of nutritious foods, the market will go where the demand is. If the poor use their government provided food stamps to purchase fresh produce, then fresh produce is what retailers will stock. If they use them to purchase cheeseburgers, that's what will be available.

What we should do instead of providing food stamps is have food distribution centers in poor neighborhoods providing healthy fare at a subsidized rate. But, of course, that would require common sense, which is even in shorter supply than healthful foods in convenience stores.
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You asked why the poor were obese and I provided an answer, just because if something were different that wouldn't be the case doesn't mean anything since that's obviously just a damn "what if." All these what ifs don't change the fact of what is going on.

Also calories are not the only thing that contribute to obesity. And I never said that the food the poor often buy are not high in calories, and I never said it was the lowest in calories, in fact I never mentioned calories. I said unhealthiest.

And lastly as the article states, its about more than their personal choices there are other compelling factors
 
Wiseone said:
You asked why the poor were obese and I provided an answer, just because if something were different that wouldn't be the case doesn't mean anything since that's obviously just a damn "what if." All these what ifs don't change the fact of what is going on.

Also calories are not the only thing that contribute to obesity. And I never said that the food the poor often buy are not high in calories, and I never said it was the lowest in calories, in fact I never mentioned calories. I said unhealthiest.

And lastly as the article states, its about more than their personal choices there are other compelling factors
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Your original statement was

The cheapest food is often the most unheathy, which is why the poor suffer from obesity as well. It costs more money to eat healthy, not to mention more education, things the poor often don't have, than it does to eat healthy and know what eating healthy is.
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The cheapest food is not necessarily what the poor are prone to buy. The cheapest includes things like beans and potatoes, chicken and eggs, prepared at home, and not fast food from the quickie mart or McDonalds. The former is pretty nutritious, the latter not.

But you do make a good point that unhealthful food is widely available, and affects the choices that people both rich and poor make.

But the idea that it costs more to eat healthful food than it does to eat junk is simply not so. It's a matter of education and choices.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Your original statement was



The cheapest food is not necessarily what the poor are prone to buy. The cheapest includes things like beans and potatoes, chicken and eggs, prepared at home, and not fast food from the quickie mart or McDonalds. The former is pretty nutritious, the latter not.

But you do make a good point that unhealthful food is widely available, and affects the choices that people both rich and poor make.

But the idea that it costs more to eat healthful food than it does to eat junk is simply not so. It's a matter of education and choices.
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Well I won't argue that poor choice making is not a common thing among many of the poor. That is a good point as well.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Then you and the other volunteers are really followers of Christ, regardless of what religion you may profess.

But do you believe that there really is a quarter of Americans who would come to your soup kitchen, despite the billions spent on welfare by government and private organizations? That figure just seems implausible to me.
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i agree with the view that there cannot be one in four who are doing without food
i suspect a substantial portion of that self identified number are referring to a perceived hardship to buy food when other needs compete for those food dollars
but to insist that everyone should be able to be self sufficient is a woefully ignorant statement to make - and it was made by only one (thankfully) member within this thread
from my interaction with a very small sliver of the needy population, the biggest immediate need is adequate mental health care, followed closely by the need to impart basic life skills. most of us who were raised in a good environment acquired our own life skills by modeling the behavior of the solid citizens who surrounded us. but many of those who did not grow up in a nurturing environment did not have that array of positive examples and/or no one to push them toward emulating their behaviors. without such fundamental social skills how can we expect those folks to survive and thrive as workers in the modern economy
so, i agree with you. on our list of needs for the least among us, food deprivation is way down the list - but it is present
 
Quik said:
Bull**** alert! America has an obesity problem. The biggest problem affect the poor is...obesity. Sorry, can't have it both ways! People who can't find food don't get obese.
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The kind of CHEAP highly processed chemical loaded foods out there that the poor people buy because..well because it's CHEAP...and that is the kind of food that aids in obesity....the food industry wants these people to eat their addictive junk so they make sure it is the most affordable on the market.....yes obesity is a problem in this country but obesity is a symptom of a much bigger picture.
 
25% is not a bad statistic at all when you consider that just 1% of this country owns almost half of the wealth and the next 9% own the rest. A little bit of hunger is needed to motivate them to stop from leeching off the great people who make capital and thus make this country rich. They are hungry because they are not competitive.
 
The concept of 'going hungry' in the US boggles the mind. The number of people now getting food stamps has gone up so fast it's unbelievable. The number (if we could actually count it) of people committing fraud or abusing the food stamp program is most likely very high. What you can buy with food stamps is not always consistent with healthy eating. I am amazed in my local supermarket, the people who use food stamps wearing $400 sneakers and loading up the pretzels into the Lexus. Guess you have to keep up appearances. This subject is as confusing to me as my contribution to it. Maybe I'm not awake yet.
 
sawyerloggingon said:
Sure are a lot of fat poor people in this country. The so called struggle for food is complete horse s***.
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except for those who are still hungry because they are without anything to eat, i agree with you
 
Wonder if this has anything to do with this.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Read more @: [/FONT][/COLOR]
Report: Nearly a quarter of all Americans struggle to afford food - Salon.com

Looks like many of our citizens are struggling to get one of the basic needs in this world; food. One of the richest countries in the world, no wait THE richest country in the world, and nearly 25% of our citizens are struggling to get food. [/INDENT]
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Sorry, I just have a hard time believing it. America's food problem is too many of us struggle with obesity.
 
Smeagol said:
Sorry, I just have a hard time believing it. America's food problem is too many of us struggle with obesity.
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And then with ObamaCare we will have to also pay for their liposuction. I've had it. It's time to let the uncompetitive and useless die.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Read more @: [/FONT][/COLOR]
Report: Nearly a quarter of all Americans struggle to afford food - Salon.com

Looks like many of our citizens are struggling to get one of the basic needs in this world; food. One of the richest countries in the world, no wait THE richest country in the world, and nearly 25% of our citizens are struggling to get food. [/INDENT]
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Yes, it is well known that a great percentage of American citizens are living in starvation-creating poverty.

Typically, the right blames them for their poverty and references excuses, all in protection of capitalism.

And also typically, the left blames .. wait for it .. .. capitalism.

Truthfully, it doesn't serve us well to focus on either attacking or defending capitalism, as not only is capitalism here to stay as long as we have the over-population problem that we do, but making capitalism the problem-focus for solution only creates a dualistic polarized stalemate a la the global warming and pro-choice v. pro-life conflicts, where nothing is changed and no efforts result to solve the applicable problem.

If Americans could unite under a theme of liberty and justice for all U.S. citizens, where individual citizen prosperity is the foundational tenet, we could achieve great reductions in poverty and great increases in prosperity, still under capitalism, by ending in-sourcing and off-shoring of American production and jobs and focusing on returning America to citizen-based self-sufficiency to as great a degree as possible.

The problem isn't capitalism so much as it is in the extremist anti-American-individual-citizen ideologies of both the left-wing Multi-Cultural Internationalists and the right-wing Corporate Global Expansionists, the two strange-bedfellow ruling power factions in America today.

If we could remove the MCIs and the CGEs from power, we'd still be able to provide prosperity for most every American citizen in America without needing to execute the huge project of replacing capitalism with the next step in socioeconomic progress, whatever that next step will turn out to be.
 
kenc said:
And then with ObamaCare we will have to also pay for their liposuction. I've had it. It's time to let the uncompetitive and useless die.
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Geeez, I wouldn't go THAT far. :shock:

I do think its high time to apply Bloomberg restrictions on what may be purchased with food stamps though. No sugar or sugary food; no cooking oil; nothing processed like white flour, white rice, white bread, white pasta or things made with them; nothing that contains a certain level of fat content recommended by nutritionists. I'd be willing to bet if these types of restrictions were placed on food stamps, grocery stores and the food industry would begin to stock and market more of the healthier stuff and the whole country would start eating and drinking healthier.
 
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