An Asahi Shimbun report featured a doctor’s observation that child obesity is deeply tied to “poverty.” The article’s claim that some kids get by on snacks and sweet buns instead of proper meals sparked a 5ch debate that started with a basic question: is candy really cheaper than rice and vegetables? Some pushed back, arguing vegetables are the better deal once you compare them gram-for-gram or calorie-for-calorie, while others shared their own experience of being forced to rely on pasta and sweet buns as fresh food like rice and napa cabbage kept getting pricier. The thread ended up highlighting just how hard it is to draw a simple line between poverty and poor eating habits.
Published 9/6 (Sun) 8:00 AM
Asahi Shimbun
An essential perspective when thinking about child obesity, it’s said, is its connection to “poverty.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
if poverty increases, does that mean less work for small and mid-size sash (window frame) manufacturers out in the countryside? Do they go under?
Your own company's going under.
Modified starch, glycine by the truckload, drowning in additives.
I lived on bread and pasta
and put on a ridiculous amount of weight.
Live on noodles and snacks and you'll pack on the pounds instantly.
Rice is too expensive so they can't buy it,
so they eat pasta instead.
Every single person who does that ends up fat, without fail.
No way that's true, lol.
These days a single cucumber runs you 100 yen.
Some of them are out there living tough and strong, and some ended up taking their own lives.
https://image-tm.s2mr.jp/i/original/1788661350295.jpeg
This shop's cheap. If this were a department store basement food floor in Tokyo, everything lined up here would run about 1000 yen a piece.
Honestly, I think you could just toss out all the snacks and only feed them real food once they're actually hungry — problem solved.
Whether vegetables got pricier or whatever, people are just eating differently than they used to.
Horiemon (entrepreneur Takafumi Horie) was talking about vegetables too.
so some places now restrict food stamps from being used to buy that stuff.
Can they actually switch to healthy vegetables and beat obesity?
Once you fall into real poverty, the idea of cooking your own meals doesn't even occur to you.
It's normal for a household not to even own a pot, kettle, or kitchen knife.
Once you've fallen that far, it takes more than two generations to change that mindset.
I wish they'd hurry up and bring rice prices back down to 2000 yen for 5kg.
If you want to raise your kids right, you should cut back on white rice as much as possible.
White rice is a risky staple, nutritionally skewed almost entirely toward carbs.
My family can't get decent vegetables like we used to either.
Weed-looking stuff shows up on the table sometimes, but meat has clearly gone up compared to vegetables and fish.
Well yeah, napa cabbage is expensive right now.
Unrelated, but I was surprised to learn recently that households who don't put napa cabbage in their sukiyaki are actually the minority.
Now that I think about it, Wadakin didn't put it in, but Imahan did (both are famous old-school Tokyo sukiyaki restaurants).
If they don't raise kids they get hit with the "singles tax" (a proposed tax on the unmarried), so what choice do they have.
Even though they've gotten pricier, they're still cheaper than snacks, I'd think.
Sliced bread is the real winner for cost-performance and time-performance.
Even at the 100-yen store, snacks feel like the best value for the amount you get.
By weight or by energy it's actually overpriced.
100 yen worth of gummies disappears in seconds.
Anpanman gummies are only 62 kcal —
how many kcal worth of meat and veggies can you get for the same price?
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Relative child poverty has long been recognized as an issue in Japan too, and disordered eating habits are known to show up as both weight gain and weight loss. The Asahi Shimbun report behind this article cites a doctor’s observation that kids from low-income households tend to lean on cheap snacks and processed food rather than vegetables or rice. The thread split over how to read the pricing: is candy really cheaper than rice and vegetables? Some pushed back, noting vegetables are more efficient gram-for-gram or calorie-for-calorie, while others pointed out that once you factor in actual shelf prices and the hassle of cooking, sweet buns can feel like the “quick and cheap” option for some households — both views hold a grain of truth. One reply also brought up the U.S. food stamp (SNAP) program’s restrictions on certain purchases; worth noting as extra context not covered in the original article, since the link between poverty and diet quality is a policy issue overseas as well.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Child Obesity Deeply Linked to Poverty — Some Kids “Really Do” Eat Snacks Instead of Meals.”
