Why are minorities more likely to be obese and have diseases?

[ladyumbra]

I know many people have said it before but poverty is really the biggest factor. I'd like to add though that it creates bad habits that are incredibly hard to break as you age.

As a child I was in the " so poor/underweight the government feeds me at school" camp a couple times despite my mother working two jobs. Meals at home were usually some form of rice or pasta dish and sausage was probably the meat I encountered most frequently. I ate pretty fucking poorly overall as a kid but I was skinny because I couldn't get nearly enough food to be fat. I was hungry a lot and it lead to me associating food not as a necessity but as a goal or a reward. If I could achieve x i would be given food as a reward. Read 10 books at school for pizza , check, ace a test for a candy, damn straight, touch a worm ( friends idea) for a cookie, why the fuck not? In high-school this actually lead to me doing other people's homework and projects for food or money. I also hoarded my Halloween candy like you wouldn't believe to make it last and birthday money from relatives was used to get the maximum amount of cheap filling food I could buy.


So yeah when I turned 18 and moved out on my own I took a childhood of poverty, bad food associations and general bad food habits with me. I hoarded cheap unhealthy easy to cook food ( 25 cent mr noodles forever) and yet also bought cheap fast food I didn't necessarily want because for the first time in my life I could. I gained a lot of weight really quickly because I was suddenly free to make my own purchases and those were made based on what I had become accustomed to growing up. It took a lot of time to unlearn my bad habits and I'm still not fully there. Also food prices are still not awesome everywhere and it depends on the food in question. I can get fresh baked bread across the street for less than a dollar but lunch meat is still ridiculous prices and fresh fruit is absurd. I get fresh fruit when it's in season for Ontario Canada because it's cheapest then, other than that if I want fruit it's cheap canned crap coated in HFCS. I am a married adult and still below the poverty line, I eat better than I did as a child but not incredibly well and it's still hard to afford to eat more than marginally healthy while also trying to overcome a lifetime of set in habits.

There are thousands of kids in the US and Canada who have to be sent home with backbacks filled with food every weekend just so the government can be sure they will get the minimum required amount of food. A lot of them are probably going to grow up with unhealthy feelings regarding food. Add to that how many of them will remain in poverty as they become adults, how many will likely not be taught how to cook or what healthy eating really is etc. etc. Poverty leads to obesity and from there a whole other host of factors can lead to people staying obese.