A study raises some eyebrows when it suggests that the main consumers of fast-food are middle class families. This is a small contrast to many reports that claim that fast-food abuse is poor and uneducated problem. But let’s step back though, the main reason for this new claim may have a little to do class and everything to do with climate change, which may be deepening the global and American recession.
According to the results of an University of California, Davis study, middle income families are choosing to feed their families with fast-food mainly because it’s affordable and convenient. Not really any news here. Fast-food restaurants are always visible, marketable, and favorable, but, like everything in this world, the prices are rising.
What underlies this story is the impact global warming (or climate change for all you people who don’t believe in that cooky-science stuff) continues to have on our American lifestyle. In a recent report on the Huffington Post, climate change, if properly tagged, is affecting every aspect of life, including the health of people, this according to new research published Monday in the journal, Health Affairs.
As natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes combine with man-made disasters like droughts, topsoil erosion, and over consumption of energy, the price tag goes up in this sense:
The more people cannot find living wage jobs, consequently, the economy, which is now based on the financialization of products that have little to do with natural resources, will force people to depend on the relative cheapness of fast-food restaurants, which in turn will keep them in the hospital with lifestyle-related illnesses, stressing out our are dysfunctional health care system even further.
Plain and simple — we are losing when reports like this come out. The saddest part of this story is that many more people are now applying for federal assistance, and most fast-food restaurants do not accept food stamps. President Obama and his beautiful, intelligent First Lady Michelle are still advocating for more Wal-Marts in “food deserts.” We can only hope that Wal-Mart and the other large supermarket chains, which will receive federal subsidies to build more stores, will depress the prices of fruits and vegetables with their huge reserves of cash and not through exclusively buying genetically modified organisms (GMO).
The lead researcher of this report at UC Davis released a statement that read:
“Fast-food dining is most popular among the middle class, who are less likely to be obese.”
Basically, it’s time to stop blaming fast-food restaurants for everything when it comes to obesity — not to say you do … But, there are so many factors that go into our rise in obesity, from stress to sedentariness, it is impossible to pinpoint one reason.
FrugiVoice: Are you a middle income earner that is forced to eat fast-food because its connivence and cheapness? Sound-off
Hehe, why is this ad in Japanese?
Poor people cannot afford fast food for their everyday meals. That statistic about the poor being the one’s who eat fast food the most always baffled me. The cheapest “meal” at restaurants like McDonalds, Wendy’s. etc is $4.00 (That’s 3 items from the dollar menu-burger, fries & a coke, plus tax.) Maybe if you’re only feeding 1 person that would be acceptable. But if you are feeding an “average” family of 4 that’s $16 per meal. And those items on the dollar menu are really tiny. Most people I know consider that type of meal a snack. I can take $16 to the grocery store (even the pricier ones) and make an entire balanced, healthy meal, plus leftovers for lunch the next day. Of course, I won’t be buying steak (unless its on sale), but it can be done. People just need to do better, and accept responsibility for what they do to themselves, and stop blaming everything on poor people.