Fast-Food "Recovery" into Poverty

Since the end of the last recession, unemployment has fallen from over 10% to around 7.4%. While this is generally good news, many of the newly created jobs since 2010 have come in low-wealth industries such as fast food. In fact, growth in the fast-food industry has been faster than that of any other industry; employment has expanded by over 10% in the past three years. More than 100 cities now see these workers striking for higher wages. The average wage for a fast food employee in the United States is around $8.50 per hour, not nearly enough to live on. The central theme of this strike is to request a wage of $15 per hour.

Given the fact that last year McDonalds reaped after-tax profits of around 6.5 billion dollars, they could probably afford to pay their employees a bit more. 

But I'm more concerned with the bigger picture here. The healthiest portion of our economy happens to be the sector that arguably contributes most to making us unhealthy. Obesity rates continue to rise and yet more and more fast food jobs are created. We know that American need to lose weight, but our new jobs simply expand unhealthy options for Americans. This seems like a huge paradox.

Furthermore, the jobs are not good for the employees either! (Even those who choose not to eat the food) Working for a fast food restaurant where you make close to minimum wage will not allow you to improve your life, it will keep you in poverty. As far as I see it, McDonalds and other unhealthy fast-food chains are almost like a collective black hole. 

These jobs are actually making the country much worse. Employees have almost no opportunity for upward mobility and end up trapped in poverty, patrons use these businesses as a way to become fat and unhealthy and yet the economy grows. Something has to change here. We as a country need to learn to look more into economic numbers and realize what they really mean. A country that grows fatter by the day while expanding low wage job options is not a country heading in a positive direction.

Sprawl Makes Children Fatter

Sprawl and Obesity

Many decades ago, children could walk almost anywhere they wanted to go on a day to day basis. It was a short walk to school, to a friends house and maybe even to the park. Kids spent lots of time outside socializing and wandering from place to place with friends. Today this is no longer the case. Kids can hardly get anywhere without the help of a car. It's making kids gain weight.

The first study on sprawl and obesity was published in 2008 and it confirmed that residents who live in car dependent communities tend to weight more. One way to show this trend is the increase in school bus ridership. As school have become further and further from residences, children have needed to travel further and now about half of school-aged children ride the bus every day to get to school.

What do we do?

There is no simple way of solving this problem because really there are two problems, obesity and sprawl. The relationship between the two is not perfect; there are other factors which influence both sprawl and obesity. But one clear step that can be taken is moving people back into cities. Reducing dependency on cars increases walkability and decreases sprawl at once. However, even urban living does not really solve the problem. Some cities like New York and Boston are well suited for walking while others require you to use a car for almost everything even if you live downtown. 

Sometimes it is better to recognize that you have a problem before trying to search for a solution. These issues are complex and need to be fully understood before halfheartedly attempting to resolve them. 

Race and Access to Food Video

This video examines the relationship between race, income and food access. I hope you enjoy.

Obesity: The Last Form of Discrimination

Obesity Based Discrimination

I started thinking about this topic when I read a news article about Atlantic City, NJ last night. There is a casino that hires women (and some men) as models and calls them "Borgata Babes." In order to work as a Borgata Babe, the employee must participate in weekly weigh-ins and never gain more than 7% of their hire-date weight. When some employees were fired for gaining too much weight, they were dismissed from their jobs. They then took the challenge to court and lost!

In the United States, we have over they years learned that it is bad to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, income and just about everything else, but not obesity yet. In fact, only one state, Michigan, has laws that protect obese Americans from discrimination. For those who believe that it is acceptable to discriminate against those who are obese, a common argument is that you choose to become obese. In some ways this is true, but there are so many conditional circumstances such as income and metabolism that tip the scales strongly against some people.

Right now over 33% of Americans are obese and around 70% are overweight. These numbers are certainly not good, but let's look at some of the ways that obese Americans are discriminated against.

More likely to be perceived as incompetent: Many people look at those who are obese and think that they are in some way out of control. They are less likely to trust obese Americans than healthier weight Americans and when asked about intelligence, are likely to give obese people lower marks.

Skipped at Work: Whether for hiring, performance evaluations or promotions, obesity makes someone more likely to be ignored in the workplace. This is unfortunate because there is no evidence that obesity makes someone less competent. Some offices will even refuse to hire someone who is obese because they fear that they will have to pay more for health insurance.

Charged Extra: In case you have never noticed, seats in public places tend to be designed for skinny people. Seats are found in lots of places from movie theatres, to parks to subways to airplanes. Many people do not fit well in the "average" seat. As a result, many companies, most notably airlines, charge extra for obese customers. Rather than adjusting seat sizes, obese people are often charged for the price of two seats. An obese person is still one person, not two.

Hopefully in the coming years some of these forms of discrimination will change. A new study was just published that states that shaming obese people by calling them fat and things like that actually increases their chances of remaining obese.

Obesity and Access to Food

Yesterday I spent some time talking about the fact that many Americans live in areas that are designated as food deserts where they struggle to find access to grocery stores. Today I wanted to look into this a bit more by bringing in obesity and seeing if there truly is a relationship between living in a food desert and likelihood of being obese. Here is what I found.

I will start again with a map of the food deserts in order to provide a solid reference point.

And here is a map of obesity trends across the country.

These maps do not show a perfect overlap, but it definitely suggests a relationship between struggling to find food and being obese. This map seem counter-intuitive. Wouldn't being further from food sources indicate people would be less obese? 

No. Regardless of location everybody has to eat, but being further from grocery stores simply affects what gets eaten. When it is really challenging to purchase healthy foods, people sometimes choose the ease of shopping at closer convenience stores which are full of options that have less nutritional value. When actually making it to a grocery store, people living in food deserts may purchase items that last longer and many of these items are typically less healthy than items that go bad more quickly.

This is an unfortunate problem in the country because it is extremely complex. For decades American obesity rates have been rising, but in some areas it simply is not economically feasible to build supermarkets. This may be one of the more subtle contributing factors to the trend of urbanization in the United States; people move to cities as they become frustrated with their nutritional struggles.