There was this good article on the Forbes website recently that I’d like to share with you today:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethhoffman/2012/07/17/its-convenience-not-cost-that-makes-us-fat/

It was particularly fascinating because it states that, contrary to common belief, it’s not the price of food that is making the general US population fat, but the convenience of food that is causing it.

If you look at the actual report from the Centre for Disease Control (the report on which the Forbes article was based: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db50.htm), the broad headlines are that there isn’t much prevalence of obesity amongst different socioeconomic groups of men, however higher income women, and higher educated women, were less likely to be obese than low-income, less educated women.  There also was a general rise in obesity amongst all adults over the last 20 years regardless of income and education.

We’ve always assumed that it’s because fresh food is expensive that lower-income families couldn’t afford to buy it in and instead would opt for fast-food, but actually it would seem that, according to UPI, people would actually eat more fast-food as their income rose – hence the article title at Forbes. Continue reading →