footnote on food

[Greg Nowell]

Curiously today on the local NPR there was a show on
obesity as a function of income.  The lower the income
the higher the propensity to consume.   Although I have
stressed the carless function as a big factor in all of
this (based on stricltly personal and unscientific
observations while traveling to the Oakland welfare
office twenty years ago, and occasional bus rides in
various areas since), the doctor insisted that income
and marketing were major factors.  But the general
trend of the argument  was consistent with what I've
been posting.   I don't know if it was broadcast
nationally.  The show was produced by our local upstate
NY-Vermont-Mass WAMC public radio empire, which
maintains a site at www.wamc.org.

The doctor suggested that there is a kind of
acculturation and that if tomorrow a pill would make
obesity would go away, many low income people would not
take it, just as they ignore anti-baldness cures.   I
have my doubts about that line of argument, but there
is a strong "culture of poverty" crowd (anyone read
Banfield?), that makes usually reactionary/racist
generalizations but in spite of that occasionally makes
a point.  For, as I have said, there is a difference
between being poor and having no money.

--
Gregory P. Nowell
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science, Milne 100
State University of New York
135 Western Ave.
Albany, New York 12222

Fax 518-442-5298