Fat, Poor, and Blameless

Bad Water, Death Valley - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman
fliesinyoureyes.com

'If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.' -Mark Twain

Barbara Anderson's article in this week's Fresno Bee was like manna from heaven to every overweight person below the poverty line. Alas, to be obese and on public assistance is to be blameless! According to her, if one is poor then individual responsibility has little to do about being overweight. There are too many fast food restaurants. Parents are too busy to prepare meals at home and when they do cook, it is unhealthy fare. Nutritious food is beyond their means, and the real eye opener from the University of Washington's Dr. Adam Drewnowski,“the obesity epidemic among the poor has very little to do with individual motivation or even genetics or metabolism.”

Could this possibly be true? No, the contention is absolutely preposterous and contradicts the most basic elements of common sense. This front page news item has “enabling”stamped all over it. It is far easier to cast someone as a victim of circumstances beyond personal control than to identify the actual source of the problem. Today's journalists are in the business of assuaging egos and sparing feelings rather than developing conclusions that may involve sacrifice, introspection, and a solution. The fact remains the obesity epidemic has to do with personal excess, changing demographics, and a food stamp program which literally is killing the people it is meant to help.

If the government is concerned about the health of the indigent and the costs of dealing with the secondary effects of obesity, what is the rational of supporting a food stamp program which allows the recipient to receive any food commodity with the exception of tobacco products and alcoholic beverages? Would it not make sense to remove the temptation and restrict food stamps to the acquisition of only healthy food? It is immoral to provide soft drinks, cookies, and potato chips to the poor if it undermines their health, but their liberal supporters insist they have the same access to lousy food as anyone else, while the food industry is delighted to sell as much of it as possible.

My parents went through hard financial times, but despite my brother's and my pleading our mother never took us to McDonald's. She grew up in the depression in a large family mired in poverty where obesity was not an issue. In her opinion despite the modest price, fast food was not healthy to eat and more expensive than eating at home. Like many other compulsive mothers, she was never too busy to do the right thing for her children.

After being involved in the medical field for nearly thirty-five years, it continues to amaze me how many MediCal patients have only a rudimentary knowledge of nutrition and do not understand the comparative values of food. Mothers of children in this cohort are more likely to be single, young, distracted, and have developed bad eating habits that will be imparted to their offspring. It is hard to get it right if one does not know what food is good and what is not, if you are a single mother with several children but without a high school diploma, and the State of California wants to buy all the junk food you can devour.

Just once I would like to open the Fresno Bee and find a compelling answer to an important social problem and not the same tiresome list of excuses intended to make people feel good about themselves. We live in the most productive agricultural area in the world where produce is abundant year round. A person does not become 100 pounds overweight by osmosis. For those living on heavy carbohydrate diets, try eating 2000 calories per day rather than 6000, use the difference in cost to buy fruits and vegetables, walk around the block instead of viewing television, and watch the pounds melt away.