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Comment by tuna-piano | Hacker News Reader

I don't necessarily disagree, but I have a hard time squaring your point with the fact that the poorest children in the US are the most obese. How can they be calorie deficient and obese at the same time?

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/images/databriefs/51-100/db51_fig4....

[the lower the PIR (poverty income ratio) the poorer]

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Food security is a spectrum of need. Only having access to low-quality, high calorie foods would traditionally fall under this spectrum (they used to call it "food insecurity without hunger").

> [...] I have a hard time squaring your point with the fact that the poorest children in the US are the most obese. How can they be calorie deficient and obese at the same time?

There's much more to weight than calories.

"Vegetable oils" are extracted from seeds, usually with the assistance of the petroleum distillate hexane. The polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) portion of these oils is very unstable, so the producers use steam to remove the rancid odor from their "food-grade" product.

The PUFA's in vegetable oil are cluster bomblets that destroy people's health. IMHO, vegetable oil should only be used as biodiesel.

http://swindledandpimped.org/obesity-epidemic/

Because the cheapest food is also the unhealthiest.

That's not strictly true. Beans, rice, stewing meat, and cabbages are among the cheapest foods to buy and prepare, and they are definitely cheaper than excessively-saline prepared foods. I believe about half of Oklahoma's agricultural product is cattle, I'm sure prices are somewhat competitive.

These children are mostly not malnourished, and in most cases their obesity could be solved (in the direct sense, ignoring why they overeat) by eating the same things in lesser quantities, at no cost to their health.

Probably, if time to shop for & prepare food and cost of having access to a kitchen are included. Or if comparing something like McDonalds value menu with other dining out options.

But cooking food at home is cheap as hell compared to paying for prepared food if only looking at the cost of the food or ingredients.

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