Ive stated this since I first moved out and started buying my own groceries 25 yrs ago, and add to this fact that you have to buy unhealthy quantites of bad food,(price of soda pop/can vs bottled water) unlike healthy food which you need to buy twice as much of just to get a days nutrition.

At QFC the other day i bought 2 Sirloin Tip Roasts on 2 for 1 sale. i remarked to the checker what a good deal it was, and she said that she was a vegetarian. I looked a her and though WTF. She was maybe 5'-4", and had to weigh 230.

We already know how American society will be transformed to deal with this. The government will simply continue to make rules that force behavior and the Mudede's of society will champion the movement. Fast food restaurants will become further restricted, junk food will continue to be taxed or banned, and obese people will continue to be ostracized. Problem solved.

you FUCKING COMMUNIST go back to Kenya with your socialist obama crap, AMERICA NUMBER ONE, etc.

WTF is this guy talking about? He says it costs less for an fast-food sugar, salt, and fat orgy as it does to buy a healthy meal. ON THE ASSUMPTION that people who eat at Mickey D's regularly take in the same number of calories as Mr. Vegan Hipster on cap hill.

Think about it. A croissan'wich meal with has browns costs something like $3. A bowl of cereal with strawberries on top and a cup of coffee and a grapefruit half costs probably about the same. Croissanwich meal: ~1000 calories!!! (from burgerking.com Bowl of cereal breakfast: ~300 calories (from caloriecount.about.com).

So what he's really trying to say is if we want to help ourselves out, we'll spend our precious cash on healthy food and just deal with the fact that we're not taking in 6000 calories a day.

Buck up Charles, things are gonna work out.

The Government subsidy programs that created this situation are proof positive that the "irrational fear of government programs" decried in the commentary on "Sentence Of The Day" is not so irrational.

If the Government's meddling with the food supply makes only the worst kind of food affordable, it hardly seems irrational to believe that the Government's meddling with the health care supply would have similar results. In fact, it would be irrational to assume otherwise.

@7: Yeah, but without the initial government help, we'd see (or have seen) price fluctuations up the ass, to the point of bankrupting most all farmers. I do think that corn subsisdy has run its course though.

The big problem with our government (or any government) is to know when the usefulness of a program has run its course. Not that the need for the program wasn't there in the first place.

Billions for our pet food but not enough for a sane diet for ourselves? Sounds more like we need fewer calories and better judgement.

Thanks USDA for making that great pyramid long ago that emphasized grains and starches, thus leading to the wheat and corn subsidies, thus leading to HFCS and other sugar substitutes that created the vast majority of today's obesity problems. The utility of large cattle farms didn't help either.

The only junk food I keep around anymore is delicious delicious store brand peanut butter. It's probably one of the worst things you can possibly eat, but it's soooooooooooo good.

@5 I think that's a great way to look at it. But even if you're eating equivalent food items (obvs, croissanwich and bowl of cereal are completely different things), the healthiest options are always more expensive, sometimes much more so.

For example, you can get a cheeseburger and french fries at a fast food restaurant for what, 3 dollars total? But if you wanted to, say, make a cheeseburger and a side of potatoes using healthy ingredients, you're going to pay a lot more than that. The burger patty itself would cost over $2 if you got it from a farmer's market. The tradeoff is that you're eating grass-fed beef, everything is organic and more nutrient rich, and you aren't supporting environmentally devastating industrial farming practices.

Unhealthy food is being produced in incredible quantities compared to healthy food, so the unhealthy stuff will always cost less.

@11: i lost 25 lbs. on the "peanut butter diet". it's actaully one of the best things you can eat, in moderation - monosaturated fats.

FUK-U-YAMAMS IZ LAMESAUCE. WHEN I WYUZ FNARF AND VISITED DC ON MY GLOBESPANNING HITCHHIKE/BACKPACKING TOUR I SAW HIZ SPEAK. LITTLE 16 YR OLD AKS Q ABOOT WAR ON TERROR, FUK-U COULDN'T HARDLY ANSWER. NEEDED GOV BOT TO BACK HIM UP. THEN FNARF AND I RETREATED TO A COZY LIL' GREEN HOSTEL ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF TOWN TO PRACTICE THE I CHING UNTIL THE DULCET TONES OF DAWN STRUCK OUR GURU'S BALD HEAD AND SHONE STRAIGHT THRU OUR SOULS AND SHOWDED US HOW TO TEACH AND LEARN STR8 FROM THE WORDS AROUND US. THEN WE VISITED A 'FRENCH' BISTRO. THE DUCK CONFIT WAS SUB-PAR. THEN I THOUGHT ABOUT TS ELIOT. SATISFYING DAY. THEN I SHOT A TRESPASSER.

@13: I'm talking about the ultra-processed high-sugar and narm narm delicious stuff you get for $1.50 at Grocery Outlet or Safeway, not the realistic "real peanut butter" stuff that is ostensibly better for you than most processed foods, but tastes like stucco.

@2: Eh, I wouldn't be too puzzled. Maybe she only started recently. You know people who start a new regime -- it's like dieters who seem to always be on their "day off."

@16: There are a lot of heavy vegetarians. Some vegetarians eat worse than meat eaters I know. They eat tons of cheese and fried food, and Indian/Thai food. That will easily up your weight, meat or no meat.

A dollar can also buy you six eggs, or a bag of potatoes. An egg and a potato make a fine breakfast, for pennies. It's still very possible to eat both healthily and inexpensively. A 30-pound bag of rice costs maybe $7. There are cheap vegetables and fruits - buy in season and buy locally. Right now, the farmer's markets are practically giving away zucchinis, yellow squash, and blueberries. I picked up a bulging bag of veggies on Sunday for about $6 total.

Hmm, I wonder where this obese child is getting his potato chips and cheese burgers and all the other stuff that you like to assume anyone who is obese eats all day every day?

http://www.who.int/features/galleries/ch…

I doubt there are a lot of Burger Kings in *Tanzania*.

The fact is there are fat people, a LOT of fat people, who don't eat any differently from anyone around them. And yet, we're still fat. For that matter, the past month I've probably eaten less per day than most of you "my god you're all pigs, PIGS I SAY!" fat haters. I say this because we have NO income due to a job loss, we're about to lose our house and car. And since we don't have children, we don't qualify even for food stamps. You try finding more than a couple loaves of stale bread from a food bank in this situation, it's not easy.

And I've actually gained weight. Up 10lbs from 280 to 290. So yeah, it's TOTALLY that I'm killing myself with a fork, those four slices of bread I allot myself each day must be 2,000 calories each!

So... your suggestion is theft. Seriously? Wow. That ranks right up there with the person who, with complete seriousness, told me that I should lie to the food bank about how many people are in my household, since they can't check anyway. Well, theft and digging in the garbage... yeah, salmonella has the word 'salmon' in it, that makes it nutritious right?

Even before my husband lost his job... I was not thin. I also was not eating all this crap everyone on every post that so much as mentions food assumes anyone over a BMI of 25 spends literally 26 hours a day eating. Yes I am aware that that is two more hours that exist in a day, but it seems as if everywhere you turn they're telling you that OF COURSE you are eating more food than you physically have time to chew. It is OBVIOUS thats whats going on, or you wouldn't have a BMI of 30 or 40 or however high. And don't even get me started on the load of bullshit that is judging ALL people in this day and age based on a standard created by a mathematician from 1830's Belgium's observation of the average size of his drinking buddies...

Anyway, even before my husband lost his job I probably ate "better" (more politically correctly? it can't have shit to do with nutrition, because every single person you talk to has a different idea of what "nutritious" is) than 90% of the jackasses with fast metabolisms who are convinced it's all just a matter of living right. They know that THEY are not bad, evil people. And as proof of their virtue, they are skinny and perfect! So obviously, anyone who is NOT like them *must* be sinful and gluttonous, because obviously if they were good and virtuous just like them, they'd be skinny and perfect too!

My husband, at the time. Ate lunch at Burger King every single day, because it was across the street from his office. I've been married to the man for 15 years, I can tell you exactly what he ordered -- double bacon cheeseburger, extra bacon. Two orders of onion rings, large. 48oz coke.

He weighs in at a whoppingly HUGE 170lbs (at just barely under 6' tall). Maybe you can get him to 175 if you weigh him fully clothed and soaking wet. And you can't claim he's exercising it off, since he is (or rather, was) a freaking desk jockey. Hasn't pulled his bike up out of the basement (now closet) in 3 years, the only time he goes walking or hiking is when I drag him along. Spends most of his days off snacking on chips, soda, and candy. Ye gods can that man put away candy.

Perfectly normal blood pressure, perfectly normal cholesterol count, perfectly bloody normal everything across the board except for a slight congenital heart murmur. Which as the word congenital indicates he has had since birth.

So yeah, I do get defensive every time some jackass who, like my husband, is skinny not BECAUSE of his lifestyle but IN SPITE OF it is telling me and everyone like me that if we just practiced a little restraint and got off the couch, we'd be ever so much happier.

Baconcat,

normal American PB, yeah, it's got narsty trans fats, otherwise, the basic food, good fats, yadda yadda.

Whole Foods has an organic creamy, with salt PB that has a bit of palm oil mixed in, and it's creaaaamy and smooth and the oil doesn't separate, just like the narm narm mainstream stuff.

Alas, palm oil plantations are one of the big reasons for organutan habitat being destroyed and orangs being shot, so, er, yeah.

The lack of sugar in it I notice not one bit, and I've got a turrible sweet tooth.

They even sell unsalted PB at WF, and I can't even imagine what a horror that would be.

Lots of Fred Meyer and Top Foods and Central Market grocery stores have fresh-ground peanut butter. The one at Central Market with a little salt in it is just heavenly.

Little oil separation, but it's not nearly as much as the natural jar PB.