[lbo-talk] Calories for the poor....

[joanna]

A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington 
named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. 
He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of 
obesity in America today is a person's wealth. For most of history, 
after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, 
not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount 
of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?

Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to 
purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he 
could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the 
supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft 
drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods--dairy, 
meat, fish and produce--line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable 
packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar 
could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 
calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he 
discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 
calories of orange juice.

For the rest, see

http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=88