The Obesity –Hunger Paradox

Along the same lines as my recent posts about poverty and obesity, is this recent New York Times article, The Obesity-Hunger Paradox which points to poverty riddled South Bronx (the most overweight and least healthy part of New York City) as one of the areas in America with the biggest hunger problems. Hunger defined not by starving, but by the lack of access to nutritious food, and an inability to afford the basics, being referred to as “food insecure.”

Families with not enough money to get an actual meal, and no grocery stores to buy real food at anyways, so they fill up on calorie-filled food from bodegas (check out this video)

In fact a recent survey by the Food Research and Action Center, found that nearly 37 percent of residents in the South Bronx, said they lacked money to buy food at some point in the past 12 months. The article points to some incentives that sound like really good ideas (encouraging farmers’ market patronage through food stamps incentives and attempts to lure grocery stores to poor areas with tax breaks.

The figures are showing that the programs aren’t working, most likely because they aren’t wide spread enough, and the healthy options still aren’t cheap enough. Even if it’s the difference of a dollar between a filling and tasty healthy meal that you have to prepare and a filling and tasty junk food meal that you don’t have to cook, the choice is obvious when you’re poor, stressed, and busy. These programs are good steps but their clearly not enough, the structure of the neighborhood, the structure of minimum wage, and the structure of the industrial food system all need to be changed.