December 15, 2018 — We’ve noted it before. The relationship between income and obesity is tricky. And according to a new paper from Alexander Bentley and colleagues, the relationship is very new. As recently as 1990, they say, it simply wasn’t there. Today, it’s quite clear. Less income predicts more obesity. Likewise, the correlation between income and diabetes is […]
August 15, 2018 — It’s an easy mistake to make. “It’s poverty, not individual choice that is driving extraordinary obesity levels,” writes Martin Cohen in The Conversation. That seems like a reasonable sentiment. But it’s not quite true. A Messy Correlation The truth is that poverty can predict a higher risk of obesity – in some cases. But not all. […]
May 3, 2018 — It’s become a bit of a cliché. Poverty and obesity seem to travel together. Though obesity rates are rising among all social and economic groups, populations under the most pressure suffer disproportionately. But that begs a question. How does the relationship between poverty and obesity work? Reversing the Usual Assumption The typical assumption is that […]
May 3, 2014 — Who’s hungry? In America, it’s more people than you might think. In Mississippi — the state most affected by hunger — one in four households (24.5%) report food hardship. In 30 states, at least one in six households report food hardships. And in the least hungry state in America — North Dakota — the number is one […]
September 29, 2013 — How can it be that Mexico has now achieved the dubious distinction of the world’s highest obesity rates for a large country, even as much of the country goes hungry? Competing cults are quick to explain this as a failure of either personal responsibility or social justice. The human response to scarcity might offer a more objective […]
