Why does obesity impact the poor more than the well off?

AppleMaggot wrote: »

I never understood this. It costs more to eat unhealthily in Ireland and this seems like a very strange phenomenon.

Eating unhealthy isn't more expensive. White bread, frozen chips, crisps snacks. I don't know what unhealthy poor peope eat exactly, but I would bet you it's cheaper and easier than Fresh veg and cooking your own means from scratch. But I'd say here is an economy of scale that comes with cooking food from scratch. As long as you can cook different things to use up whatever you have and don't waste anything.

Then there's the fact that you need to be educated in what's healthy, how to cook it and how to source it. Sourcing a range of fresh food means buying little and often as lots of veg don't freeze like convenience food so a car helps.

Then there's the fact that being fat in middle class is more frowned upon than in the working class and it doesn't seem to be much of a problem at all in benefits class. So there's a social pressure to not be fat in middle class.

For example, if a TV show wants to make quickly show that a character is stupid or uneducated they will usually make them fat and dishevelled because it's an instant marker of a stupid person.