Do you all eat as healthful as your dog does?

Another success story - when my aunt was in her 20s and had a child with her then-boyfriend (now husband) she was on welfare for a while. A rich investor saw potential in her and loaned her money which she turned into a successful business and she now does better than anyone else in my family. Too bad not everyone gets that lucky break.
 
It's too easy to judge other people. Maybe they buy beer with the little cash they have... well, maybe their lives are pretty hard and they don't get to take prescription antidepressants, they get to buy a 30 pack of Busch. We none of us know what another person goes through. If you think being poor is a lifestyle choice, try reading Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, it might change your mind.

In Rosenberg, Tx., northwest of Houston, there is a restaraunt called the Texan Bar & Grill. Full service bar. Ashtrays at every table. In the bathroom, ashtrays at every urinal and commode stall. You can have anything on the menu that you want, as long as you want it fried. I think of it as the Cholesterol Cafe. You may die, but you've had a big meal, a drink, and a smoke.

And a good experience in the bathroom as a smoker[]

I shudder at the description of this restaurant[:'(]
 
Here is what I go by: "Eat To Live, Not Live To Eat"

I got both food stamps, WIC and medical for my kids for a time....oh, and free day care.  I wasn't a deadbeat, sit on my butt and do nothing person.  I was a single mom who's sperm donor refused to pay child support or to provide health insurance for the children.  I worked all day every day, came home and spent time with my children, fed them a homecooked meal and when they went to bed, I'd stay up doing designer cakes.  In those days I could get $20 for a b'day cake, and that $20 would buy new shoes for BOTH my sons.  Or a whole lot of clothing.  As far as MY vices, well, lets just say that I rinsed out and reused my coffee filters until they literally fell apart.  Yep, I was sure pissing away taxpayer money........
 
It is NOT fair to judge folks who need a helping hand and under the new limits, no one should be able to find a way to suck on the welfare teat for very long......

just wanted to clarify, i did not mean to imply that all impoverished people are lazy, just that all obese people (with the exception of those with a medical reason) are lazy. i dont think low income families are any more overweight than any other income level. i dont think obesity should allow poverty as an excuse, there is no excuse for not taking care of oneself, but that is just my opinion. i made homemade ravioli for supper last night, fed myself my husband who eats enough for 3 and my daughter, and had left overs, cost me about 4 dollars. it took me less than 20 minutes to prepare and cook. now no one can tell me it's that big of a hassle to take those 20 minutes and prepare a healthy meal than it is to take 10 minutes to use a can of ravioli. if a person lives in the city they can use public transportation to get to a store with reasonably priced healthy foods. if they live in the country they have to travel to get to a store anyway so it wouldnt be a big deal to go the extra mile to find healthy food. around here you cant go 10 miles without running into a farmers market, and they always have the cheapest and freshest produce.

while statistics may show poverty as a risk factor for obesity, i think its being used as an excuse. it wouldn't matter how broke i was, i still wouldnt replace my home cooking with garbage, there is always a way to make do, people just have to do it.
 
also, anyone can be poor. we have never been rich but we always had enough to get by. 2 years ago we lost everything, just like that. a new law passed here so that if you had so many points on your license you had to pay a fee, if you didnt pay the fee you lost your license. well we couldnt pay the fee in time, so my husband lost his license, which in turn made him lose his job, which made it impossible to pay the fee, and even further once the fee was paid there was a huge reinstatement fee to get your license back. pull yourself out of that one, lucky for us my parents are awesome, but for awhile we were in the major dumps....but ya know what, with what little we had we still managed to eat healthy enough, if people care enough about themselves and family they can find a way.

just wanted to clarify, i did not mean to imply that all impoverished people are lazy, just that all obese people (with the exception of those with a medical reason) are lazy.

OMG that's MUCH better!

LOL.
Paula

First one of the biggest reasons Americans are fat is simply they eat too much and too much of the wrong things.  For example, instead of a coffee with 3 creams and 3 sugars it could be substitued for green tea with no sugar or milk. 

Another reason why so many Americans are fat, especially some cultures who are not used to the "American" diet...that is why it may seem many poverty type people are fat...many cultures have thrifty genes and cannot tolerate our american diet.  Some cultures had never heard of diabetes, heart disease etc until the American diet hit them.  High fat, fried foods, sugar, candy, processed foods, heavy creams, lard etc....many food items many Americans just take as a normal healthy meal may not be so healthy.

Thrifty genes were a great advantage in populations that often lived near starvation or went through periodic cycles of feast and famine. eople with thrifty genes (many of us have them) are genetically programmed to turn available calories into fat and efficiently as possible.  The problem is that those genes are no longer advantageous, with food and calories now always available to us in abundance adn excess.  There are also people on the reverse side of the genetic make up....people who eat constantely and want to gain weight and can't.  They have a different sort of genetic constitution and metabolism.

Walter Willett, believes the mediterranean diet is the best...staying away from refined carbohydrates like flour and sugar, are the chief culprit in the Western diet responsible for obesity.  To eat healthy we should avoid refined carbohydrates and eat more fruit and whole grains...I personally try to eat mainly low glycemin-index foods like whole grains and firm-cooked pasta...not fluffy pasta[]  Some people can loose weight just by cutting out bread, flour has a very high glycemic index.

So, basically for a family that is having a hard time finacially would be using more high glycemic index foods like breads, high glycemic pasta's like Kraft Dinner and other unhealthy foods...the problem is they are told these foods are healthy and most people don't know any better.[&o] There are many healthy meals that can be made ahead of time and frozen to make healthy quick meals for the family on the go...or a big pot of home made stew or chicken soup.  I make my own chili up ahead of time and freeze individual servings...I add organic green/red/yellow/orange peppers, garlic, red onion, sh ittake & oyster mushrooms with organic tomatoes & kidney beans and I can make 12 meals and freeze them.  I do the same with spagetti, I make my own sauce using canned tomatoes with no added salt & fresh, organic herbs, and the peppers, oyster and Sh ittake mushrooms red onion garlic etc.  I use spinach spagetti noodles or wild rice noodles...both low on the  glycemin-index.  It doesn't cost me that much and is cheaper than buying 12 boxes of kraft dinner...much cheaper!  These are also filling meals and I am not hungry for hours after eating them.  I have many cheap easy meals including Miso soup etc.   

Just to add, if I want of need a treat a good dark chocolate of 78% cocao is very healthy...a small peice can satisfy a craving for sweets.  dark chocolate contains many antioxidants etc.  It's when you start getting into the milk chocolate etc that it becomes unhealthy...and of course even the dark chocolate should only be eaten in small amounts.[]  

If anyone is interested in healthy meals here is a link with some great recipes[]
[linkhttp://www.drweil.com/drw/ecs/common/recipe.html]http://www.drweil.com/drw/ecs/common/recipe.html[/link]

Just to add, I don't have a lot of money either...I would be considered poor in a sense.  But, I find healthy foods are MUCH cheaper than unhealthy foods.  I buy frozen blueberries and frozen mixed fruits and organic yogurt & ground flax seeds I grind myself.  This lasts me for a few days for either breakfast or lunch.  I make many healthy nutritious meals that I freeze in individual servings...I work 3 jobs so this makes it easy for me to take them to work with me & pop in the microwave. 
 
I make tofu smoothies and freeze in single servings for a nice frozen smoothy which I love...I use tofu, soy milk, organic yogurt, mixed berries, banana, ground flax seed, wheat germ...not very expensive and I can make many servings of this and freeze.  It makes a nice quick snack or meal substitute.  I eat oatmeal, wheat germ etc. I also make healthy nutritious cookies with whole wheat flour, walnuts, cranberries, oats, wheat germ, flax seeds, organic butter, organic vanilla, organic baking soda etc.  I make many cookies and freeze, 2 of these cookies are very filling and nutritious with the omega 3's etc in them. 
 
I won't bore everyone with all the things I do...but, I am an example of someone on a very tight budget who buys very healthy foods and can make it very economical. 
 
Before I had the internet I did research on proper diets from the library.  I also joined a book club that cost one one cent for about 10 books and got Dr Weil which was a huge learning experience.
 
So, even those who are having a hard time financially there are ways to eat healthy which are cheap. If you want to learn about healthy eating you will learn...you can also teach people how to cook/prepare healthy meals...but, as the old saying goes...you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.  I've talked to so many of my friends about eating healthy and cooking healthy and they just don't want to know about it....sigh.  Mean while their children are obese, suffering from allergies, ADD etc and the parents just want a doctor to fix it with medicine. 

Cally,

It is possible to live cheap and healthy - homesteaders do it all the time, but homesteading is almost a full time job!  You have to buy basic - dry beans, brown rice, flour, make your own bread, etc. But that is something you have to learn (one poster said it was too bad that people getting assistance don't get help learning to live on the cheap) and you have to have the time - which can be tough - not impossible, but tough. In this fast paced world people don't feel they do have the time.

Paula

I don't want to get to defensive here when I say this but eating healthy on food stamps IS hard. coming from a low-income family I know what it's like until recently when I moved in with my G-Pa. My mom was on food stamps and buying groceries for 4 children with big appetites(no I'm not fat actually very skinny despite all the junk-food I've eaten. which i think it is possible for there to be agene for being overweight)and making it last for a little over month was very hard. I can't remember how much she got per month but we were always low on groceries by the end of the month, there have been plenty of times that we ate top ramen all the time. Plus the rent and the bills; our landlord was very money hungry and was actually arrested once!My mom gets no child support from our dad who I haven't seen in forever! not that I would care to see that A**.(I hope it's ok to say that[]) So I would ask that you take a break from saying that stuff because it kinda got to me[]Also even if my mom could buy healthy food she wouldn't have time to make it she works/and goes to college and still has 2 kids living with her(and a 7 year old really can't cook)Plus the kids are busy with school. No I didn't live in the ghetto, but it was still a pretty poor area. One of the reasons I probably not overweight is because starting in 1st grade I walked to and from school with my brother.

Down here there are some 3rd generation folks on gov assistance.  It gets to be a habit.  As with my daughter-in-law, since her family had free medical, food, rent, etc, all her life, that is a way of life with her.  It is perfectly normal to run to the whatever office when there is a shortage of money.  When our first son was born, my husband's company up and moved to NJ from Ohio after the guys had been on strike for a couple of months.  He worked for Manpower for $1.25 an hour--somedays 4 hours, some days 8 hours, some days no hours.  He did everything from work as a night watchman to digging trenchs as the Firestaone Country Club for a water system (in the winter no less) to cleaning pickle barrels, trimming trees, etc.  I was sick 24/7 and couldn't work.  We lived on tuan sandwiches and canned chili & rice.  We never got any food stamps, etc, didn't even apply.  Hubby got another job, but insuranced would not cover maternity until you had been there 10 months.  We made arrangments to pay off our bill.   I had a great doctor (GP) who let us pay as we could..  I was in a room with 3 other girls--all their bills were paid for by the government.  It took us months to pay off my bill...and they were a drop in a bucket back then compared to what they are now.
 
There certainly are times when folks have to have assistance with food, rent, etc .  i just hate it when it becomes "expected".  A good example--my DIL borrowed $5 from her brother and bought cigarettes and their baby was out of diapers, which i bought.  When my son jumped on her about buying cigarettes with they didn't have diapers for the baby, she said "Oh, I knew your Mom would buy them".  That is 2ed generation "on the dole" thinking.

ORIGINAL: jones
It's too easy to judge other people. Maybe they buy beer with the little cash they have... well, maybe their lives are pretty hard and they don't get to take prescription antidepressants, they get to buy a 30 pack of Busch. We none of us know what another person goes through. If you think being poor is a lifestyle choice, try reading Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, it might change your mind.

 
Is that not feeding there addiction to stay poor?  Use beer as an anti-depressant just so they can stay on welfare, not go to school and not get that higher paying job.  Yes it is easy to judge, but there are also ways out of it and I just think we should concentrate more on helping those people break the habit and educate them on how to live a nice healthy and productive life then on just hading out money and not telling them what to do with it.  Don't you think that if they are shown how to live a healthy life then the need to use unhealthy methods to control stress will no longer be there?
 
I just think that perhaps the government should give bonuses for people who are trying to do something to get up and out of welfare.  Like if they go to a free health class for a few weeks then the get an added bonus of $50/mo.  One thing about cooking healthy is to do it many people simply just need to be taught how.
 
I by no means think all people on food stamps are lazy nor do the wrong thing with what they are given.  I have also heard many success stories about how government assistance helped a person get their life back together and moving.  There are many who need it and use it the way it is meant to be used.  I just get so angry when I see people who lie about how many kids they have to get more money or just take the money and do nothing about it.  It would seem like there are ways to control this so the money does reach the people who truly deserve it

I can't believe that this thread has turned into an indictment on fat people and those on welfare.  Yes, we can probably all tell horror stories of folks on welfare who abuse the system....I sure could, and maybe we all know someone who is overweight and sits around all the time.....but, gosh, hubby is overweight and he is NOT lazy.  By the time he commutes an hour and a half or more a day, works his 8+ hours each day and does all the things he needs to do to earn a living, he doesn't do much moving around at nite.  He needs to, and I have to remind him to at least get on the exercise bike at nite.  Mom is overweight too, but she's likely the most energetic and hardest working person I know.  Until just recently, with all the BP problems, she chaired the funeral committee at Church and she not only got workers, she got the food, she cooked the food, she served the food.  She is involved in soooo many different things with the church and also with the community in a volunteer capacity.  Yep, she's lazy.  So is DH.  I could go hunting for a medical reason, but what's the point?  And absolutely everyone who needs a helping hand is lazy and fat.
 
People....do you see what we are saying here?  Lets add in that all black folks have rythem and can sing like birds in the trees, that all Hispanics are lazy and dirty, that all Jewish people are skinflints who'd sell their mothers for a buck.....
 
To return to the topic, generally yes, we do eat as good as our dogs.....but they are in much better physical condition than any of us PEOPLE!

I agree. How in the world did a thread about whether we eat as healthy as our dogs turn into a debate about poverty and obesity? [8|] I think they're both complicated issues that we can't make cut and dry assumptions about and definitely WAY far off topic!

Lately my dogs have been eating better than DH and I do. However, I've been trying to change that - with an effort to cook more, and order out less. I'm actually a good cook - when I do it. I work a full time job, have five dogs to tend to (four of which are involved in activities such as herding and agility), a house to keep, and a DH. Many days I have to make decisions on feeding DH and I based on convenience - simply because I run out of time. However, a lot of times that involves cooking an extra batch of whatever is for dinner and freezing it.

We frequently eat the same food as the dogs, with different proportions of protien, fat & carbs. It is a lot easier than making two meals. More like cooking for a large family.