The numbers speak for themselves, that the poor are disproportionately suffering infection and death. The poor are disproportionately black and Hispanic. But within the litany of reasons why this is happening is a not insignificant lie:
Leaving Detroit, I thought about the disproportionate number of black folks dying from the coronavirus because they had asthma, diabetes or hypertension. Because they had limited access to affordable, healthy food.
I’ve spent more time uptown than most, and there are stores and bodegas replete with glorious fresh vegetables. There is no problem with “limited access to affordable, healthy food,” but a problem with Whoppers. They’re cheap, effortless and taste delicious.
We eat too much, drink too much, snack too much, sit too much — then rely on the marvels of modern medicine to repair our battered bodies. And that makes us easy prey for a brand-new infection like the novel coronavirus.
The delightfully named co-morbidities leave us open to worse outcomes from COVID-19, but we didn’t get there by accident. We supersized.
Take cardiovascular disease and stroke. In 2018 the United States shelled out $329 billion to treat them, the American Heart Association calculated. About 80 percent of those cases — $263 billion worth — were caused by poor diet, lack of exercise, alcohol use and obesity. And in any given year, those conditions alone cause upwards of 300,000 premature deaths in the United States.
“Obesity is linked to diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke,” said Saphier, a radiologist at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and author of “Make America Healthy Again” (HarperCollins), a new book that examines our floundering health-care system.
“All of those conditions render us susceptible to infectious illnesses — just what we are seeing with COVID-19,” Saphier says.
People who lived on Big Macs weren’t doing all that well before, and are doing even worse now. There’s no guy with a gun forcing you to add fries to your order. As unpleasant as it may be to say aloud, poor people eat poorly, not for lack of the availability of decent food but because that’s a choice they make. And their bodies suffer for it.
Yet, our woke sensitivities have made it a problem to call out obesity.
“It’s very easy to sound like the bad guy,” she admitted. “Doctors are often afraid to call out problems like obesity because we don’t want to be considered prejudiced or mean, or to be accused of ‘fat shaming.’ ”
It’s not shameful to be fat. But then, it’s no fun to die, either.
“We have made it so convenient to eat unhealthily,” Saphier said. “And it’s not that we’re lazy — it’s that we’re working so much and are so busy, even our kids have packed schedules. With home-cooked meals declining, that is when you see more takeout, more fast food.”
Even here, fear of being hurtful is used to Gertrude the truth. Of course people are lazy, except when it comes to making up excuses about why they do self-destructive things like eat fast food rather than make healthy meals (and, I might add, eat them as a family).
“America is sick, and we are all to blame,” Saphier said. “But I think we have proven two things these last few weeks: that our great medical innovations save lives, and that Americans are capable of taking great personal responsibility, in the form of social distancing, to protect each other,” she added.
While it may well be true that too many people of all socioeconomic groups are lazy, take poor care of themselves and put as much garbage in their bodies as excuses allow, the denial that this problem is pervasive in poorer communities doesn’t save anyone. It’s not that all black and Hispanic people eat poorly, live on burgers, fries and shakes, as somebody is buying all those ripe red tomatoes in front of the bodegas, but these co-morbidities aren’t epidemic on Park Avenue for a reason.
For those of us who want people to live, to survive, regardless of their socioeconomic status, their race or national origin, pretending this isn’t happening and turning a blind eye to the lie that “communities of color” lack access to healthy food and thus can’t do better than an Egg McMuffin doesn’t help them any.
When even the docs feel compelled to lie to their patients rather than tell them to drop the Whopper and eat a salad, they stand no chance. No matter how far medicine advances, it’s not going to save us from what we put into our mouths. If you care about what happens to the poor, to black and Hispanic people in America, then start trying to help by not lying to yourself and them.
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The funny/unfunny thing about this post is that all the white SJWs are gonna scream, “OMG, he’s so racist,” and all the black and Hispanic readers are gonna say, “yeah, he’s right.” The SJW’s want to be woke. You want to save lives.
It’s kind of a theme with me, helping people rather than making excuses. It’s not greatly appreciated these days.
“It’s not shameful to be fat. But then, it’s no fun to die, either.”
If I were a thin man,
with a narrow waist and chiseled six-pack abs.
All day long I’d monitor my carbs,
if I were a healthy man.
I’d stay away from trans-fats,
eat organic/free range/kosher/gluten free!
If I were a little trim and slim,
yoga bending, cardio mending man.
Temping super sizing on demand,
triple cheese and chili fries in hand,
would it spoil some corporate franchise plan?
If, I were a healthy, Maaaaaaaan!
Well played.
Jef Rouner. (Article from the Houston Press.)
“Please Stop Telling Poor People to “Just Cook” to Save Money“
“Cooking is not just a trip to a grocery store. You need a basic set of cookware for starters. I’ve been on a $70 Tools of the Trade set for more than a decade, and trust me, it really wants to retire. You’re going to need some knives for chopping, butterflying, mincing, etc. The low-end of those starts at $20, but they are absolutely essential. Of course, you’ll require a cutting board as well.
These things add up quickly. The dish in the headline picture is my take on the basic the McCormick Rosemary Chicken and Red Potatoes recipe. It’s cheap enough and easy as pie, but do you have a 5 quart mixing bowl? You need one if you don’t want to be chasing escaped potatoes all over the kitchen. Another question, do you have a 15x10x1-inch baking pan, heavy duty foil, and cooking spray? All this just added another $20 onto the price of a meal if you don’t have them. The McCormick’s recipe is at least kind enough to recommend garlic powder rather than fresh garlic. Most recipes not put out by spice companies don’t. Better learn the fresh-to-powder ratio or buy a press. That’s another $8. Over time, this even outs, but setting up a working kitchen can easily cost as much as a used car depending on where you start from.”
He had me at “butterflying.”
Hunting Guy. That’s what hope chests are for. High school graduation party presents, garage sales, the Goodwill store and Salvation Army store, too. To start from scratch would be daunting, especially since their high school had coding classes, but none on cooking.
The author: “Jef Rouner is a contributing writer who covers politics, pop culture, social justice, video games, and online behavior. He is often a professional annoyance to the ignorant and hurtful.”
If there’s one thing our digital age needs, it’s more Renaissance Prophets.
On another site I saw a review for a book: “How Poverty Won the War on Poverty”. Before 1965 Blacks had higher marriage rate and lower divorce rate than Whites. Now around 70 percent of Black children are brought up in single mom households. Let’s not forget women’s liberation: 60 years ago a White man, with high school diploma, could support a stay-at-home wife and children. All those women in the work force aren’t home cooking nutritious meals. Heck, with the societal rush for women to go to college and have a career, many high schools aren’t teaching home economics. A few years ago I was in a nursing program, mostly women. I ate home made lunches. They brought prepackaged food, either premade salads or microwave meals. Not too healthy. The problems are far upstream.
Focus. Fucking focus.
Please excuse my round about style. The general health of individual people is the result of years of social change. If a person grew up in a house hold where “fixing dinner” meant deciding which take out place to go, putting down the Big Mac is much harder than the person who actually knows about nutrition, shopping, budget, and cooking. Too many are ill-prepared to successfully make those changes. These are not trivial course corrections.
A while back, a Penn lawprof, Amy Wax, proposed the one of the problems dealing was the death of “bourgeois” values. It was widely assailed for being racist, criticizing existing minority culture where it should be celebrated. Unfortunately, Wax later went on to say some incredibly dumb crap, undermining her cred and her point about bougie culture, like respecting education, the merit of hard work, and family normalcy, like eating home cooked meals as a family nightly.
This is a lost cause. The media is largely ignoring it in favor of the “progressive” push for “fat is beautiful.”
If they want to believe fat is beautiful, I can’t stop them, but I can call bullshit when the complaint is that there’s no alternative because racism.
Scott
Is it really so much of a choice for poor folk, when the options available are mostly bad ones? I do not question the lack of personal responsibility you point out, but … I grew up in suburban America, and had a basic understanding of diet and its deficits when I left town for college. So it’s unsurprising that when I got my first apartment (i.e., not dorm or frat, with a meal plan), my first purchase was a copy of Joy of Cooking. Gotta start your learning somewhere, right? But that’s me, plainly set up for some measure of success.
I’ve now been a criminal defense attorney in urban America for over three decades. I’ve been around, a lot, and I know (and if you do it’s not clear from your post, hence my comments) that few if any fresh groceries are available in the gee-toe, because the packaged and preserved both sell faster and keep longer. Major grocery chains don’t want to set up shop there, just to get stolen blind. In my town, many/most of the bodegas (regardless of nationality) have thick and ostensibly bullet-resistant clear plex partitions separating customer from product, which is purchased by pointing and transfer through a little pass-through turntable set into the barrier. Not exactly what you see in beautiful downtown Suburbia, and trust me, it was solidly middle to lower-middle class, not the country club prepster part of the world.
So yes, I am entirely down with your observations on personal responsibility and societal disinclination to point out the obvious failures in that realm. Don’t even think about getting me started on the problems in black America being linked to and unaddressed by black political leaders. I’ll see your John Lewis and Elijah Cummings, and raise you an Alcee Hastings, a John Conyers, and a couple of Charlie Rangels. And this is only urban America, for I suggest things are as bad if not worse in rural and white America, West Virginia and all that. Meth = crack plus cowshit. But, acknowledging all of that, as I do and I suspect you do as well, how fair is it to point to the failings in poor America as set forth above, without at the same time acknowledging that poor folks start more than a few rungs down on the ladder from where I (and you?) did. I’m happy to take some measure of credit for what I made of myself, but I remember every day that got the tools and training to go along with the (marvelous) materiel. If I forget that it diminishes me.
“…when the options available are mostly bad ones?”
There are good options available, but neither you nor I can force anyone to make the wise choice. What we can do is not make excuses for people who chose poorly.
You murdered a lot of words to not very effectively make some good points.
First, it can be more expensive when grocery shopping to buy healthy food (if you look at calories per dollar, you’ll realize how expensive fruits and vegetables are compared to a burger, fries, and soda). Second, cooking your own food takes time, and getting exercise takes time, and if you’re a poor working parent with limited childcare options, time can be in very short supply.
McD’s is certainly cheap calories per dollar, and doing better takes effort. Too bad you think so little of black people. Too bad you care nothing for their children, who can’t survive on excuses.
For the last two weeks, PBS’s NOVA show has had documentaries regarding this issue (one specifically for obesity and one for diabetes). The wife (an MD) and i watched both, and the only thing more worrying then the “its not your fault” attitude that pervaded the shows was the “the only way we win is if we start a WAR on ______”. Seriously now? A “War on Diabetes” would look like exactly what? While its sad hearing about some of the patients my wife has to deal with, it would be sadder to read a NY Times piece about another dead person outside a bodega when some snitch calls the cops over a pack of twinkies.
Sometimes the options are hurt someone’s feelz so they live or rub their dying tummy, whether because of obesity and diabetes or the cop who just came to arrest him for twinkies put him in a choke hold.