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Forums - General Discussion - US Congress rules that pizza is a vegetable

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Farmageddon on 22 November 2011
Kasz216 said:
Farmageddon said:


"Throughout this paper, I categorize an individual as poor if their income is less than 130 percent of the poverty line."

Now the poverty line depends on number of people and age on a household and I have no idea about the costs of living in the USA, but for a single, under 65 years old person, 130% of it comes to roughly U$ 14,750 (using 2010 data). So my question is, does this strata take in a lot of people who actually would have money for non-financially-optimum food?

What I mean is, are a good percentage of the people included in "130% of the poverty line" actually capable of forfeiting cheaper alternatives in favour of something more akin to the average american diet, including consumption levels, maybe making use of cheaper versions of similar products?

Cause the results of the paper (although I just skimmed through it, so I might be completely wrong) would make me guess so, which would actually render the paper pretty irrelevant in the discussion of healthy food avaibility for poor people.

If we suppose you can eat healthier and cheaper, than they're making the same kind of decision other americans do, because they're not that poor to actually be forced to eat a cheaper variation. Other factors (as working thigther hours or more physically draining jobs or whatever you can come up) might help steer them in this direction. For similar reasons they might be eating in a similar way to the rest of the people if we suppose healthier to be necessarily more expensive or at the same level of the standard american's way of eating.

Then again, I have no idea about costs of living and people's choice in the USA, that's the reason I'm asking. But I think it makes sense. I mean, the poverty line probably takes into account an expenditure on food that's not optimal, but based on statistics from the country, and the extra income of people in this group would facilitate this hipothesys even more (even though I don't know the distribution of income in the USA, I venture to guess after some point close to the poverty lines further drops in income become less and less likely).

Anyway, I think a much more interesting study for the discussion in this topic would be one taking the lower incomes you can find where people are usually not malnourished and comparing that to the rest, or possibly use continuos data.

Well A, I'd point out again the cheapest food actually IS the healthiest food.

Outside which... I think your question would be best answered by the next sentence.

"I use this income cutoff primarily because it matches the gross-income
eligibility criterion for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the largest of the
Federal food assistance programs"

 

So it's poor enough that the government feels like it needs to give you money to make sure you can afford food.  Additionally, while nonsignificant, it's actually the rich who show a slightly higher amount of "overweight" making it seem likely if the higher income group was causeing a problem that it MIGHT actually be that it's bringing up the percentage of poor fat people.

 

The poor can't afford fast food every day, and Mcdonalds doesn't take Food Stamps.

A, I'd agree, as I've stated before. Well, maybe not THE cheapest food, but healthy (or healthier) food is definitely cheaper than pre-processed food, fast food or junk food in general.

About the government using that cutoff to decide who gets food stamps, that doesn't necessarily mean these people are actually in a state where they go hungry if they had just a little less money, and maybe that's in part because of the food stamps, but the food stamps themselves have (obviously) to be accounted for when discussing people's access to food.

As I stated before, things like the price of feeding being calculated in a statistical way instead of in a "optimun" way, income above the poverty line and who knows what else might affect the decision of who should get the food stamps in a way that most of the people getting them can affor not to feed on the cheaper, potentially healthier ways (I say potentially because there definitely are cheap yet unhealthy wasy of eating). I might also argue a good deal of the poorest people might have extra income that's not exactly "traceable", but that's just speculation.

mrstickball for one said earlier:

"When you go to the store, you can observe people on food stamps ... 90% of the time, I can identify the people on these cards, because they buy soda pop, premade ready-to-microwave meals or meals that can be thrown on the stove and heated up, or bread and lots of lunchmeats (which are essentially 2X the price of any other cut of meat)."

Which would mean these people are actually capable of skiping the cheaper alternatives for something more akin to the "american standard" even if they substitute fast food pizza for cheaper frozen pizza for exemple. So they might not be munching on McDonalds every day but they're geting something close to a nutritional equivalent, instead of one of the even cheaper options, many of which would be healthier.

And this would seem  to agree of the results of the experiement, ie, they're not really eating healthier because of their lower income since it's not low enought that they'd need to, tus explaining the similar levels of overweightness. I'm sure though there would be lots of things you'd have to control for to make a proper statement, ethnics and exercise being the first two to come to mind.

Also, I don't really see your point in saying that "As it turns out... the "Poor don't have access to healthy food" argument is even more debunked by this study." Unless you believe the average american diet to be healthy, how could having similar levels of overweight and obese people as the average american mean poor people have access to a healthy diet? All it would show - and that's if you control for a lot of things - is that poor people are not forced by their income to eat something even less healthy than the other americans, unless you could show poor people to have other factors that tend to make them fatter then non-poor people. Does the paper do that and I've missed it?



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Kasz216 on 27 November 2011
Farmageddon said:
Kasz216 said:
Farmageddon said:


"Throughout this paper, I categorize an individual as poor if their income is less than 130 percent of the poverty line."

Now the poverty line depends on number of people and age on a household and I have no idea about the costs of living in the USA, but for a single, under 65 years old person, 130% of it comes to roughly U$ 14,750 (using 2010 data). So my question is, does this strata take in a lot of people who actually would have money for non-financially-optimum food?

What I mean is, are a good percentage of the people included in "130% of the poverty line" actually capable of forfeiting cheaper alternatives in favour of something more akin to the average american diet, including consumption levels, maybe making use of cheaper versions of similar products?

Cause the results of the paper (although I just skimmed through it, so I might be completely wrong) would make me guess so, which would actually render the paper pretty irrelevant in the discussion of healthy food avaibility for poor people.

If we suppose you can eat healthier and cheaper, than they're making the same kind of decision other americans do, because they're not that poor to actually be forced to eat a cheaper variation. Other factors (as working thigther hours or more physically draining jobs or whatever you can come up) might help steer them in this direction. For similar reasons they might be eating in a similar way to the rest of the people if we suppose healthier to be necessarily more expensive or at the same level of the standard american's way of eating.

Then again, I have no idea about costs of living and people's choice in the USA, that's the reason I'm asking. But I think it makes sense. I mean, the poverty line probably takes into account an expenditure on food that's not optimal, but based on statistics from the country, and the extra income of people in this group would facilitate this hipothesys even more (even though I don't know the distribution of income in the USA, I venture to guess after some point close to the poverty lines further drops in income become less and less likely).

Anyway, I think a much more interesting study for the discussion in this topic would be one taking the lower incomes you can find where people are usually not malnourished and comparing that to the rest, or possibly use continuos data.

Well A, I'd point out again the cheapest food actually IS the healthiest food.

Outside which... I think your question would be best answered by the next sentence.

"I use this income cutoff primarily because it matches the gross-income
eligibility criterion for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the largest of the
Federal food assistance programs"

 

So it's poor enough that the government feels like it needs to give you money to make sure you can afford food.  Additionally, while nonsignificant, it's actually the rich who show a slightly higher amount of "overweight" making it seem likely if the higher income group was causeing a problem that it MIGHT actually be that it's bringing up the percentage of poor fat people.

 

The poor can't afford fast food every day, and Mcdonalds doesn't take Food Stamps.

A, I'd agree, as I've stated before. Well, maybe not THE cheapest food, but healthy (or healthier) food is definitely cheaper than pre-processed food, fast food or junk food in general.

About the government using that cutoff to decide who gets food stamps, that doesn't necessarily mean these people are actually in a state where they go hungry if they had just a little less money, and maybe that's in part because of the food stamps, but the food stamps themselves have (obviously) to be accounted for when discussing people's access to food.

As I stated before, things like the price of feeding being calculated in a statistical way instead of in a "optimun" way, income above the poverty line and who knows what else might affect the decision of who should get the food stamps in a way that most of the people getting them can affor not to feed on the cheaper, potentially healthier ways (I say potentially because there definitely are cheap yet unhealthy wasy of eating). I might also argue a good deal of the poorest people might have extra income that's not exactly "traceable", but that's just speculation.

mrstickball for one said earlier:

"When you go to the store, you can observe people on food stamps ... 90% of the time, I can identify the people on these cards, because they buy soda pop, premade ready-to-microwave meals or meals that can be thrown on the stove and heated up, or bread and lots of lunchmeats (which are essentially 2X the price of any other cut of meat)."

Which would mean these people are actually capable of skiping the cheaper alternatives for something more akin to the "american standard" even if they substitute fast food pizza for cheaper frozen pizza for exemple. So they might not be munching on McDonalds every day but they're geting something close to a nutritional equivalent, instead of one of the even cheaper options, many of which would be healthier.

And this would seem  to agree of the results of the experiement, ie, they're not really eating healthier because of their lower income since it's not low enought that they'd need to, tus explaining the similar levels of overweightness. I'm sure though there would be lots of things you'd have to control for to make a proper statement, ethnics and exercise being the first two to come to mind.

Also, I don't really see your point in saying that "As it turns out... the "Poor don't have access to healthy food" argument is even more debunked by this study." Unless you believe the average american diet to be healthy, how could having similar levels of overweight and obese people as the average american mean poor people have access to a healthy diet? All it would show - and that's if you control for a lot of things - is that poor people are not forced by their income to eat something even less healthy than the other americans, unless you could show poor people to have other factors that tend to make them fatter then non-poor people. Does the paper do that and I've missed it?

It's basic statistical reasoning...

If the poor and rich have the same level of obesity, then money is obviously not a correlating factor... suggesting something else.

Thereby debunking the arguement that is why people are fat.



Farmageddon on 04 December 2011
Kasz216 said:
Farmageddon said:

Also, I don't really see your point in saying that "As it turns out... the "Poor don't have access to healthy food" argument is even more debunked by this study." Unless you believe the average american diet to be healthy, how could having similar levels of overweight and obese people as the average american mean poor people have access to a healthy diet? All it would show - and that's if you control for a lot of things - is that poor people are not forced by their income to eat something even less healthy than the other americans, unless you could show poor people to have other factors that tend to make them fatter then non-poor people. Does the paper do that and I've missed it?

It's basic statistical reasoning...

If the poor and rich have the same level of obesity, then money is obviously not a correlating factor... suggesting something else.

Thereby debunking the arguement that is why people are fat.

It's not that simple. Poor people being no fatter but also no leaner than the average american doesn't really say anything about healthy food at all. What it does imply is that whatever the "quality" of the diet the the non-poor american consumes (fattening-wise), the poorer people can afford (and do eat) a diet of similar "quality".

And that's the reason I said "Unless you believe the average american diet to be healthy" before asking "how could having similar levels of overweight and obese people as the average american mean poor people have access to a healthy diet?"

And, again, all that is provided you control very well for a hell of a lot of factors (genetics, lifestyle, those things).

I can see that if the non-poor are none slimmer than the poor then money above the amount the poor have to afford food isn't the only necessary factor for a healthier diet, but that doesn't mean it's not one of them. Again, I think it's pretty obvious it isn't one of them, I just don't see this paper showing it.

But yeah, it does suggest there has to be something else.