Huntington vs. Burlington: How to Grow a Healthy City

Maybe poorer people chow down on fattening fast food because being poor implies that one will assign a lower value to themselves leading to a less healthy lifestyle. Furthermore, fast food is comfort food. Being poor sucks ass, and a reprieve is a reprieve, even if its from a Big Mac. Its why most of the world's smokers live in the third world.

I live in West Virginia, and have my entire life. As a former nurse, and advocate of a healthy lifestyle, I can tell you that being poor does indeed suck(Jay) and WV has a high poverty per capita rate. However, there is also the problem of availability of fresh, healthy foods. WV, being a northern state, has a short growing season, making local produce available only during the warm weather months. The Wal Marts and Giant Eagles have come in and put out the Mom n' Pop vegetable stands that I knew growing up. Poor people can't afford fresh, organic produce and often, only the larger cities offer this as a choice-- and WV has only a handful of large metropolitan areas. While WV is attempting to poise itself to attract commerce and import the commodities needed, for far too long, this was not possible for our residents. The food tax until very recently was 6%. Six percent!! On items necessary to sustain life. So, while some sit and condemn West Virginians as lazy and needing to overeat or eat inappropriately as "comforting", there is much more to the picture. Education is necessary, yes, so is better jobs, better incomes, stipulations on foods that can be purchased with government food stamps- just as a starting point.

I'm poor. The only way that I can afford to eat health nutritious foods is to grow it myself. Right now, a gallon of gas costs less than a gallon of milk. Here's what doesn't make sense: I visit the Farmers Market regularly when it is in season. But, the prices on the home grown produce are nearly double the price of store bought produce. When people make assumptions that even poor people can have a healthy diet, perhaps those people have never been poor. I don't know for sure. But groceries take a big chunk of my combined family income. Rent, utilities, and car expenses take up the rest. A family of 4 with a combined monthly income of less than $2,000. I don't get food stamps, I visit the food bank, I buy things on sale, and I simply will go without because I can't afford to buy. My kids and I don't eat out and haven't eaten at any fast food restaurants in nearly 10 years.

Not all poor people assign a lower value to themselves. I certainly don't. If you don't know any poor people, I strongly suggest you get to know them. Find out what it's really like to live on a limited income.

The following quotes, facts, figures and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

---Albert Einstein

"Each year, the meat industrial complex abuses and butchers nearly 9 billion cows, pigs, sheep, turkeys, chickens, and other innocent, feeling animals just for the enjoyment of consumers. Each year, nearly 1.5 million of these consumers are crippled and killed prematurely by heart failure, cancer, stroke, and other chronic diseases that have been linked conclusively with the consumption of these animals. Each year, millions of other animals are abused and sacrificed in a vain search for a 'magic pill' that would vanquish these largely self-inflicted diseases."

---Alex Hershaft, PhD, president, Farm Animal Reform Movement

When analyzing 8,300 deaths in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany among 76,000 men and women in five different, large studies, researchers concluded that vegetarians have a 24 percent reduction in death from heart disease.

Similarly, in the famous Oxford Vegetarian Study, where 6,000 vegetarians were compared with 5,000 meat-eaters over nearly two decades, scientists found that the rate of death from heart disease was 28 percent lower in vegetarians than in meat-eaters.

One study analyzed eighty scientific studies in leading medical journals. The analysis found that vegetarians had lower blood pressure, and were less likely to suffer from stroke, heart attack, and kidney failure.

A large German study of nearly 2,000 vegetarians found that deaths from heart disease were reduced by over one-third, and that heart disease itself was far less than that of the general population.

Another large study examined the coronary artery disease risk of young adults ages 18 to 30 and vegetarians were found to have much higher levels of cardiovascular fitness and a greatly reduced risk of heart disease.

"The process of gradual blocking of the coronary arteries begins not in adulthood but in childhood...and the main cause of this arteriosclerosis is the steadily increasing amount of fat in the American diet, particularly saturated animal fats such as those found in meat, chicken, milk and cheeses. If there was another disease that caused half a million deaths a year, you can be sure that the public would be acutely aware of the danger, and that the cure or prevention would be universally practiced."

---Dr. Benjamin Spock, author, child expert

"I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives."

---Dr. Dean Ornish, author, Reversing Heart Disease

Stroke is the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer. Vegetarians have a 20 to 30 percent reduced risk of having a stroke. Stroke, like heart disease, is associated with diets high in saturated fats, and the vegetarian diet is naturally low in these fats.

The Oxford Vegetarian Study found cancer mortality to be 39 percent lower among vegetarians when compared with meat-eaters. The European Prospective Investigation of Cancer found vegetarians suffer 40 percent fewer cancers than the general population.

Studies have shown that decreasing a woman's animal fat intake can reduce the chances that she will die from breast cancer. A large-scale, long-term study in the Netherlands found a powerful connection between the amount of animal fat consumed and the rate of prostate cancer. A review of a dozen studies found dietary fat strongly correlated with prostate cancer.

Ovarian, uterine, and endometrial cancers have all been shown to be strongly correlated to the amount of animal fat in one's diet, and vegetarian women have significantly lower rates of these cancers.

"The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wrs of this century, all the natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined."

---Dr. Neal Barnard, Executive Director, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

"Vegetarians have the best diet. They have the lowest rate of coronary disease of any group in the country. They have a fraction of our heart attack rate and they have only 40 percent of our cancer rate."

---William Castelli, MD, Director, Framingham Heart Study

"Human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores."

---Dr. William Roberts, editor-in-chief, American Journal of Cardiology

There is a big focus on poverty here, which may be a part of the issue;
but if 35% of the residents are disabled, 45% are obese, etc - and only 20% are below the poverty line, obviously there are a lot of unhealthy people above the poverty line as well.

Over the past 10 years, half of those years I have made less than 10,000.
But I consider health to be priority one, so I have always found other areas to cut back.
Money doesn't always correlate to health.

Organics aside, vegetables are cheaper per pound than meat, and also healthier.

Bike riding is much much cheaper than driving, and also healthier.
I think perception is indeed far more important in this equation than money.

Consider that as a country we fair worse on many health measures than some 3rd world countries (Cuba, for example).
Consider that the person who commented here saying that the sometimes go without food because they can't afford it owns a car (average of $8000 a year assuming its paid for)

Buy a pack of dried beans, buy a butternut squash, a 50 cent pack of spaghetti (you'll use 1/3), some basil, salt, pepper, red bell peppers (This is cheap cheap food) and you've got a pot of some awesome chilean beans for the whole WEEK!

Some valid arguments presented. Thanks. I would like to see age and income demographics for both cities. Anyone have these figures handy?

I appreciate Cindi's comment. But, it surprises me. I live in Ukraine and I have lived in East Africa for over a year. In both places people eat fruits and vegetables without problem, and, if they're not wealthy, they do a lot of walking, just out of necessity, which means they're getting a lot of exercise. Why is it in a wealthy country like the U.S., there is such a problem of getting fruits and vegetables?

I can understand the problem with exercise in the States, I mean: you gotta have an auto to get around. Even small towns are so spread out. And, there's nothing like sitting back and watching television, but still. . . .

Donna even says, she must grow healthy food. I ask, why is this occurring in the U.S.?

oh boo hoo. i am so tired of hearing these stupid arguments. people are LAAAAAZZZZZZYYYYY. any idiot can go to a grocery store and learn how to shop smartly and cook frugally. i'm not talking gourmet, i'm talking a can of beans, a can of tomatoes, a can of tomato paste, dry pasta. cook once and you have food for three days. this takes no special skills or much time. it won't taste fantastic, but who cares. if you are poor and have no time, you certainly won't care. snack on some raw carrots. carrots and potatoes are still cheap.

want to save even more money? buy dried. dried beans, grains. oats stretch out meats, vegetables, etc and also make about the easiest breakfast possible.

want to save even more money? drink only water. you'd be amazed at how much we spend on beverages.

the idea that healthy food is more expensive or takes more time is absolutely crap. it just takes a little effort. unless there is a genuine health issue, fat people are fat because they do not put enough effort into taking care of themselves. obesity begets disease. eating lazy food begets greater obesity, begets emotional problems, begets low self-esteem, begets being lazy and not giving a damn about anything.

" but it takes time, effort, and motivation, a luxury many families simply don't have in today's world."
right. take away the TV and every other time waster we fill up our lives with to keep ourselves from seeing how empty we are, and then see how much free time we have.

stop with the excuses. make the time. make the effort. stop expecting someone else to do it for you.