How the hell do 'poor' people get so fat?

This issue comes up in the fora/forums all the time and what I love about it is how people love putting the blame on others: blame the McDonalds, blame the supermarkets, blame God for a slow metabolism. Even poor people can afford good food (not organic of course). The problem is that they:
- don't cook (cooking food from scratch is usually cheaper than buying easy plates)
- don't know anything about healthy food. Libraries are available around the nation, they can borrow a book or two. My mother taught me about carbs, protein, vitamins etc when I was a young kid. And she has only finished elementary school.
- think being fat is totally acceptable. More and more dumbass*s on TV keep saying that most of America is fat so fat is normal. Fatness has become a cultural phenomenon.
McDonalds don't shove food down your throat. And by the way, when I was a kid, snacks were forbidden at my place. If you can't raise your kids correctly, don't blame the others.
I admit that being poor doesn't reduce your alternatives but there are still solutions to be found.

OP I agree with you, personally I don't buy into the excuse that the cheap food is all to blame. I don't have money and all I eat is cheap food. I was really fat, weighed 278lbs but in the last 2 years I've dropped to 195lbs without even doing any exercise (6' tall 21 year old male). I eat the same cheap stuff I used to, no money difference, in fact I spend LESS, because I just eat a lot LESS of it, even though it's the same stuff. You just have to use a little common sense. Like eat soup, not chips. The only other thing I really changed was I stopped drinking soda (again, SAVING MONEY THIS WAY), and only really drink water now, dropping soda in favor of regular water will do wonders for your health.

Also, don't buy into that bottled water crap, all you need is a cheap filter and you can run it through the tap, it's great stuff. In fact I'm STILL losing weight and I still haven't exercised, and I'm still eating the same stuff I did when I was huge, I'm just not dumping it in by the truckload. It's all about moderation, don't be a glutton, yes expensive healthy food is better but it's not a requirement (you also don't need a perfect beach body to be relatively healthy, but seriously people don't let yourselves turn into whales like I was starting to do, that's just sick). You can see in the movie how they pig out all day and feel the need to fry everything up before sticking it in their mouths and eat chips and drink soda all day. It has nothing to do with money and everything to do with self control.

Anyway, eating less food is hard for the first month or so (you will feel hungry if you suddenly cut your portions in half), but after that you'll be fine, I know from experience. Just stick with it for awhile and you'll get over that feeling as your stomach adjusts to the reduced intake, then it will take MUCH less food to feel full, and you'll start losing weight, no need for a special expensive diet (drink water too!). I probably eat less than half as much food I did 2 years ago when I was at my biggest and I never feel hungry anymore, your stomach WILL adjust if you control yourself for awhile. Best wishes. If you already have some sort of existing medical condition that is related to weight then you should probably talk to a doctor or something about that also, but for people who are just fat because they eat too much (like I was) then that's all you need. Exercise would be ideal but it's not completely necessary (it is for a great beach body or something, but just to get to a nice average size it is not necessary), so I get sick of hearing that excuse from people when it's their eating that is really the problem.

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Think about how much cheaper and more convenient it is to go to McDonald's and get a buy one get one free big mac deal with fries for a dollar than it is to get nice organic locally grown fruits from Whole Foods. Fast food and unhealthy food in general is a lot cheaper than healthy foods. In inner-city neighborhoods like this fast food chains are plentiful. Plus even at fast food chains where you can get healthy stuff, the healthy stuff is much more expensive than cheeseburgers and fries.

Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz between what's flesh and what's fantasy

Obesity today in America is a mixture of culture, poor education and laziness. It has nothing to do with income in the strictest term. Healthy food is really not that expensive if you know what you're looking for. I was raised in a family of immigrants who barely spoke the language and worked menial jobs. Needless to say we were far from affluent. My parents could not afford organic foods or anything of the sort. They bought whatever food they could afford on bulk, and insisted on cooking their own meals. Turns out it's a lot cheaper to buy in bulk and cook yourself, than to frequent fast food joints. Although sending your kids over to McDonalds is a lot more convenient than spending all evening preparing dinner and tomorrow's lunch. Some parents are guilty of this, others don't know any better.

The saddest part is that this culture of misinformation will continue on and on. The children of these parents don't know anything else, and they will repeat the same mistakes when they have families of their own. It's a vicious cycle that won't stop unless individuals start taking some responsibility instead of looking for the next scapegoat.

People who live in the poverty level cannot afford wholesome food selections. They must resort to calorie dense processed foods which are often heavily laden with carbs, sugars, starch, etc.

Their portions could be similar in ounces to a healthy meal containing vegetables and lean meat but the caloric content could be anywhere from 2 to 4 times that of the healthier meal option.

That is not to say overeating is not a factor - people who live in poverty often have outlets to cope and overeating is sometimes one of them but certainly only being able to afford unhealthy food selections plays a major role.

Your post made you sound very ignorant on the subject so hopefully you have now become more educated on the matter.

Very simple: In the U.S., cheap food is high in fat and low in nutritional value. Remember when Precious said she "loves McDonalds"? Places like McDonalds are quick and relatively cheap.

Sitting around watching TV, drinking booze and eating junk food all day will do that to you. That's what Precious' mom did.