You know what else triggers overeating? Hunger. I really wish the non-scientist legislators would find a way to get rid of that 
You know what? Hunger triggers… eating to the point of satiety. Not overconsumption of junk when the person’s receptors signal “stop.”
I do hope there will be a way for all of us to get adequate and healthy nutrition.
I have always wondered why WIC is subject to nutritional guidelines, but food stamps are not. I’d welcome input if some of you know the background for this.
H does most of the grocery shopping, but I’m always taken aback when I buy an item how expensive food is, junk or otherwise. We’re talking Krogers here, not Whole Foods or specialty places.
Someone upthread posted they didn’t know anyone who generally ate healthy and also drank pop. I would be the anecdote of one. Diet pop, but still pop.
I wish I had your receptors–mine seem to have a chronic punctuality problem, esp. when I’m hungry
WIC is for pregnant women and children. It was meant to provide dairy (calcium)? You could get X gallons milk, X pounds cheese, X dozen eggs…
I used to work in a grocery store…
Dairy may have been the original intent, but WIC covers a lot more than that now, or at least it does in my state. The groceries have little “WIC approved” tags on all the appropriate foods. Here’s a link to guidelines for Mass., which is not my state, but the first one I found.
Some who grew up in near-starvation-like conditions during the Great Depression or during the wars in the '30s and 40’s, many who went days without having anything to eat and never knew when the next opportunity for food tend to overeat later in life partially due to internalized fears there may not be another meal for a while even if they know intellectually that’s no longer the case.
Some older relatives in my parents’ generation who grew up in the midst of the Japanese invasion and Chinese Civil Wars and some older neighbors who grew up experiencing the worst of the Great Depression tended to overeat later in life for this very reason.
@TatinG , thank goodness you are not the food police. And until you have ever been poor enough to need food stamps, your opinion doesn’t count, IMO.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
Deaths in 2015 (* = related to excessive sugar consumption):
614,318 heart disease*
591,699 cancer*
147,101 chronic lower respiratory diseases
136,053 accidents
133,103 stroke*
93,541 Alzheimer disease
76,488 diabetes*
55,227 influenza and pneumonia
48,146 nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis
42,773 suicide
15,696 murder
- *sometimes*, *possibly* related.
cobrat, it is obvious I was not talking about the extreme cases of human abuse and deprivation but the normal physiology of hunger. Sadly, psychological damage caused by hunger can lead to abnormal behaviors such as food hoarding, overeating, etc. - it happens in animals, too (I have a rescue cat that needs to be fed a strictly controlled diet; she has no breaks when it comes to eating… can eat until she bursts.) But we digress.
I guess we’re wandering pretty far afield here. I’m not a soda drinker, nor do I live somewhere that taxes soda, but it’s hard for me not to see this as a regressive tax targeting the poor. Am I wrong? What am I missing?
If the majority of soft drinks in the US is not consumed by the poor, and sodas are not the major part of the poor’s diet, how is that a regressive tax on the poor?
Drink if you are thirsty. Water is the best thirst quencher (unless you are running a marathon and need to replace electrolytes). Eat if you are hungry. Hunger does not equal thirst: thirst does not equal hunger. Figure out the difference.
Why anyone drinks soft drinks is a mystery…if you crave sweets EAT something. Have a meal while sitting down. Chew…enjoy…do it in the company of friends and family. If your stomach is growling grab an apple or almond (much cheaper that soda in the long run). Poverty has nothing to do with thirst.
Geez…how did we get to this point.
Mexico taxes soft drinks… The US is not unique in that:
I’d post on this thread but it would be pointless.
Seen any good puppy twitter accounts lately?
WIC also included peanut butter and dried beans… good cheap sources of protein. It was a godsend when H was in grad school and doing his post-doc when we lived well below the poverty level. The things on WIC then that I would remove now are dried cereals (too many of the ones they allowed had lots of sugar in them) and fruit juice. I’d also suggest the peanut butter be of the type that only has a very small amount of sugar, or none at all. That’s the only kind of peanut butter we keep in the house now.
I suspect over the next 5-10 years, lectins are going to be the new ‘gluten’ alarm. There are good lectins, and some that have been suspected as not so good, and some of those are in beans, most nuts and tomatoes. If you start eliminating lectin-containing foods, as well as dairy and grains, you’ve basically got the Whole30 program, which can be very healthy. I don’t know a person that has done Whole30 that hasn’t felt tons better while on it. But it is very labor intensive, requires lots of meal planning, and requires adequate access to good, fresh produce and lean proteins.
Check this out:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/06/soda-tax-kenney-philadelphia-bloomberg-big-gulp-sugar-taxes-regressive-prek/
The links in the article to evidence of that disproportion:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/163997/regular-soda-popular-young-nonwhite-low-income.aspx
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662243/
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db71.htm
Speaking of obesity and the poor (as well as all of us) I am convinced that a lot of the flavors and additives in junk foods (including the notorious msg) are addictive and cause a lot of the overeating these days. Legal loopholes have allowed MSG to be hidden in package labeling in a plethora of different guises ( i.e., natural flavors, hydrolyzed vegetable protein.) MSG may be a neurotoxin affecting developing brains. (personally, I’m convinced.) I am very close to this subject because my reactions to MSG are so strong as to be disabling and I have to avoid it at all cost. It is sad to me that the very foods that are most available and popular (for all the many reasons cited here) among the poor in the U.S. seem to be the most chock-full of these additives. Not that Whole Foods et.al are truly as “organic” as they pitch themselves to be; I still can’t eat half the stuff in that store (and believe me, it’s not from being a picky eater, but from my idiosyncratic, near-life-threatening reactions to some additives.)
I don’t know what the answer is, but if sugary and otherwise unhealthy food really are long-term detiriments to the all of us, including the poor, and if it’s true (as I believe @Hamlon said, that you eat what you are used to, and kids learn to love what they are fed) how do you stop that cycle? Is it really so ethically bad…so condescending and intrusive to try to manipulate food choices of the poor ever so slightly toward healthier food by taxing sugars and prepared junk food, if that means the next generation will have a better chance in life and develop new favorite habits that work FOR health instead of against? I mean, the food industry already is manipulating choices of all of us, all of the time, in the name of profits. What is so bad about pushing back a bit? I’m not saying we have to make these food illegal, but, like wine and cigarettes, make it a choice you pay out-of-pocket for. Yes, I know, the rich have more access to that choice. But, like so many of my more conservative counterparts are forever telling me…life isn’t fair. I think what I am proposing might make life more fair in the long run. I don’t think that food stamps are supposed to solve every issue of inequality and poverty, or to provide the entertainment of certain flavor experiences, but to provide good nourishment.
I know I’m going to get backlash here, but if food stamps are supposed to be a safety net so that people don’t go hungry…why does sugar and highly processed junk food even have to be included in available foods for purchase with them? I don’t see it as punishing the poor, to exclude the worst pre-prepared, processed food; I see it as a boost to health. I would rather see food stamp allocations and other programs increase (even if my taxes go up) to provide MORE food and better quality food and access to food so that the issue of choosing junk because it is the most filling doesn’t even have to come up. Also (I know because my diet is so limited …I have to cook everything for myself from scratch) that basic carbs/proteins in basic non-processed forms… rice, potatoes, legumes, whole-grain flour, etc are really not so expensive and not hard to cook, and with them, a little chicken, almonds, meat and green-leafy stuff can go a long way. It may seem harsh (and I am a die-hard liberal in many ways) but I don’t see why the government should subsidize sodas and junk that is not nourishment.
As for the tap-water issue,why not issue Britta-type water-pitcher filters with the food stamps?
I lived in Sierra Leone for three years, a place of the poorest of the poor. Other African countries seemed affluent by comparison. Extremely high death rate from parasites, etc was the norm. However, the average village adult there appeared healthier to me (blindingly white teeth, beautiful posture/ skeletal strength/,muscle development, glowing skin, etc. than the average adult you see in poor neighborhoods in the U.S. Most people were neither over-or underweight. I know there are other factors, but…the diet? Rice, dried fish, occasional meat, peanuts, enormous quantities of leafy greens, palm oil, hot pepper. No sugar. I don’t think anyone suffered from the lack of Cokes and Donuts. Suffered for plenty of other reasons, but not that.
I’ve finished my rant. It has been on my mind for years, actually.
“As for the tap-water issue,why not issue Britta water-pitcher filters with the food stamps?”
These pitchers would be absolutely useless for lead removal.