The Lowell Sun has a "Backtalk" section where people comment and gripe in short blurbs. I always read it to get the pulse of the community. Often, I am disgusted with the lack of knowledge behind backtalker's comments.
This one grabbed my attention yesterday:
This is the only country I know in which poor people are fat. These are the people that want to run the health care. Isn't obesity a health problem? We need to fix the food-stamp program first.
I'm surmising that this person feels that people must be abusing the food stamp program evidenced by the fact that they are "fat". Or maybe that the people on food stamps don't need the food because they are fat and therefore have some extra pounds for reserve.
There are so many things I could say about this, but I'll pick just one. Food that is cheap is almost always bad for you. Good food, on the other hand, is expensive. The more caloried the item, the cheaper it is.
Did you ever compare the price of boxed mac-and-cheese to lettuce? Or a bag of chips to a bag of apples? (And that's not even looking at the organic selections.)
If you have, you know that you can get more food for the money when you buy crap. This opens the whole can of worms about how an overabundance of soy and corn products are in processed food and why they are there (read The Omnivore's Dilemma if you want to learn more).
So the real issue is not that food stamps=obesity. The issue is that we are a country that makes nutritious food out of reach for those who cannot afford it.
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