I seriously doubt that in Alabama there are many people who don’t have a grocery store within an hour drive. Almost certainly less than 10% of population. Even if you said 20 minutes instead of an hour, it wouldn’t be a lot of people either. The thing with areas this remote is that few people live there.
I did exaggerate a little, I apologize. It's not just rural areas though, there are plenty of small towns without any grocery stores, and urban areas where the nearest grocery store is very far away, especially if you don't have regular access to a car. Here's one source that says 1.8 million Alabama residents don't have a grocery store within 45 minutes: http://humsci.auburn.edu/news/hunger_solutions_institute_awa...
Are these people more or less obese than the ones who have easy access to grocery store? You are suggesting that this is a major driver of obesity, so you must be basing this on some data, no?
Also, that link doesn’t say whether this is 45 minutes drive, and since it does not reference any source, it’s hard to look that up.
Well the driving part doesn't matter, the thing we care about is how hard it is for someone to get to a place with affordable healthy food, however they get there. If it's an urban area where a significant portion of people don't have easy access to a car, then you wouldn't look at driving times.
These are called food deserts, and there is a ton of research on them. From what I've read there is not a direct line between food deserts and higher obesity rates, but it is a relevant factor, especially when abundant dollar stores and fast food places are offering cheaper and more accessible food than the nearest grocery stores (if there are any). I've also seen this described as a "food swamp".
I've never seen any research or data showing disparities in American obesity rates are influenced by cultural attitudes toward food.
> Well the driving part doesn't matter, the thing we care about is how hard it is for someone to get to a place with affordable healthy food, however they get there.
Can’t be much harder than it was 100 years ago, when everyone was extremely poor by today standards, and visiting a grocery store was often a whole day trip, no? Obesity didn’t seem to have been a problem at that time. Seems like it really is not about lack of access to affordable healthy food, which today, by any historical standard, is very easy even in most deprived places in US.
> If it's an urban area where a significant portion of people don't have easy access to a car, then you wouldn't look at driving times.
Most poor people in urban areas do have easy access to a car. Cars are extremely cheap in US, poor Americans enjoy high consumption levels by global standards, which typically entails access to cars.
In any case, for this to support your argument, which that lack of access to affordable healthy food drives obesity, we’d need to have that in urban areas, carless people are significantly more obese than people with cars. To reiterate, your argument is that drivers are less obese than people who are too poor to drive. Is it actually the case? I seriously doubt it, but you’re welcome to show data supporting your theory.
> These are called food deserts, and there is a ton of research on them. From what I've read there is not a direct line between food deserts and higher obesity rates, but it is a relevant factor, especially when abundant dollar stores and fast food places are offering cheaper and more accessible food than the nearest grocery stores (if there are any).
Yes, I’ve heard about this stuff, and most of this stuff is highly motivated logic with extremely meager support in facts. Even you admit that the whole food desert thing has little actual observed causal impact on obesity rates. Instead, the poor just go to convenience stores and buy crap, and they do this even if they have healthy options easily available (this is true, because otherwise you’d see clear correlation that people close to grocery stores with cheap and healthy food are not obese, which you don’t).
Here, let me propose an alternative theory, which matches facts on the ground much better: many poor people in US are low in conscientiousness and long term thinking, and so instead of engaging in relatively complex activity of buying bulk staples and cooking simple and healthy meals, prefer to spend extra for convenience of unhealthy foods from dollar stores and fast food. This is possible, because their “poverty” is not an absolute level, but rather relative measure. By this I mean the fact that by global standard, American poor enjoy quite high consumption levels, so they can easily afford these unhealthy habits. Making healthy food easier to obtain for them will, as you admit, not change much, because people will just not take advantage of it, instead preferring easy and unhealthy food instead. Instead, what you’d need to do is to immiserate them even more by either taking away convenient and unhealthy options nearby, or reduce their purchasing power to make them unaffordable. This is, of course, seen as immoral, so it will not happen.
> visiting a grocery store was often a whole day trip, no?
I mean, no. 100 years ago was the 1920s. Not really sure what you're referring to and this is not a useful comparison anyway, obviously many many aspects of the US food system and economy have changed in 100 years. I don't really know how to respond to this.
> To reiterate, your argument is that drivers are less obese than people who are too poor to drive. Is it actually the case?
> Not really sure what you're referring to and this is not a useful comparison anyway, obviously many many aspects of the US food system and economy have changed in 100 years. I don't really know how to respond to this.
It is extremely useful comparison, and this is why you don’t really know how to respond to it. Your theory hinges on the fact that worse access to fresh food makes people more obese, but 100 years ago (and 150 years ago, even more so) most people had even worse access to fresh, healthy foods, but nevertheless obesity was not a problem at all. This is a problem to your argument, which is why you are lost for words.
> Rich people tend to have more cars and eat healthier food because it's more accessible. Here's a study:
The graph you linked shows that men with a car have higher BMI than men with no cars. Thanks for supporting my argument with evidence, I guess? In any case, this is just purely correlational study, which does not even attempt to answer whether access to car causes lower obesity. You might as well show me a graph of square footage per person against BMI and argue that small houses make people fat. On the other hand, it is perfectly consistent with the theory I elucidated above, which is that conscientiousness causes people to both be wealthier, and less fat.
What makes things so bleak? My small county is somewhat below the national median income (so doing fine but not wildly wealthy) and like half of the people that live here live within 10 miles of 3 large grocers and multiple other grocers. The most concentrated population is within a couple miles, and the people that live further away are doing so because they want to live outside of town, they mostly aren't stuck there or whatever.
Small stores out in the county mostly don't have much fresh stuff, but probably a few things.
