Do you think there is a correlation between wealth, or lack there of, and obesity?

Question

I know this is probably not the right category for this question but this is definitely the catagory with the best minds on Yahoo Answers.

Can you name one obese rich person who is self made? Not to take their glory but I am not talking about fat rappers or sports figures.

My thoughts on this are, Rich people are not rich because they are thin and they are not thin because they are rich, but the mind necessary to attain wealth has a side effect that results in fitness. A self made rich person has discipline. I think this is why poor people are obese and why they are poor. So I would venture to say, if one hopes to become rich, the first thing to do is lose weight.

Answer 1

I am just an everyday person. middle class I feel wealth gives you the ability to buy any kind of groceries you want. If you live on min. wage you shop were you get the best value for your dollar in our town that is Aldis. At one time they only carried one line of foods they were all full of fat!!

Now they have a new lite line which helps so I do feel with wealth comes the option of eating healthier and actually being able to afford it.

Answer 2

Sorry, this is nonsense.

Poor people are fat becaue they can not afford the buy the same foods as the wealty. They can not eat out in fine food restaurants so they eat fast food. You can get a burger for a buck.

Wealthy people are thin because they can afford to see the dietician, go to the gym, have a personal trainer or a personal chef. They can eat organic, low sugar and low fat food. They can afford shrimp every night.

Now I will shoot your philosophy to heck.

I was born in a poor poor family. We ate lots of pinto beans, rice, cormeal, hot dogs and hamburgers and white bread. I grew up on that junk and got fat. Yes, I have the fat genes and once you get fat you fight it most of your life. The fat cells can be small or large but they are always there unless you use Liposuction. When you eat right they shrink and when you eat bad they get big. Simple as that.

I had a great time in mid-life when I got nice and thin and life was grand. Then I hit 45 and the weight started creaping on. It was hard to stop. As you get heavier it becomes harder to work out and you then get heavier.

I am wealthy, a self-made millionaire and yes, I am heavy. I have owned many businesses my whole life after graduating college. Each one was a wonderful success and I still earn money on all my investments. I am 50 no longer work and visit this site to try to help others. I worked hard to get wealthy and it was lots of dicipline to not spend money like most young people do. I try to accumulate money the old fashioned way.

So there goes that therory. I am wealthy and I am fat. And this computer is not helping me much. Good Luck on your search.

Answer 3

I disagree. Rich people can afford healthy foods, which are usually more expensive. And us poor people like the dollar menu at McDonald's. No, seriously. You have a valid point but, good food is expensive. Look at the cost and nutritional value difference between canned fruits and veggies compared to fresh. That's just one small example but, think about that for a minute or two and see how many you can come up with. That and even a gym membership is too expensive for A LOT of people. Rich people may have personal trainers to keep them motivated.

Answer 4

There isn't a useful sure or no reply for your query. Extreme poverty can result in a loss of enough meals, which might be negatively correlated with weight problems. People who're enormously deficient additionally most of the time have jobs that require heavy bodily hard work. For illustration, street production in India is most of the time played in aspect by means of very deficient ladies. Poor persons in a few rich countries just like the United States most of the time have got to motel to consuming rapid meals and processed meals for a kind of explanations adding loss of schooling, loss of time because of being overworked, now not having assets to rent support for childcare, and now not receiving first rate remedy. So you might see a optimistic correlation. So you might not really get a linear correlation among wealth and weight problems from a knowledge set that integrated a kind of populations. A multivariate evaluation might support get to the bottom of the special elements.

Answer 5

"the mind necessary to attain wealth has a side effect that results in fitness."

You scare me. This is pure fallacy - you're assuming that there is a kind of person who "attains" wealth in a capitalist society, and that luck has naught to do with it. I strongly disagree. It is just as likely a lazy person in good circumstances, who becomes wealthy -- and you see thin people because good circumstances means good nutrition, and good nutrition means good health, including access to healthy food and a health-conscious lifestyle (gym membership? $). As well, the wealthy have leisure time and money to devote to vanity.

If there is a correlation between wealth/poverty and body fat, it's a bias that's part of human nature ... those with VERY few resources instinctively value fat because it suggests plenty of food, and those with many resources instinctively value thinness because it's only the lazy rich person who becomes fat. But this doesn't apply to individuals, only societies.

The poor in the US today are liable to become fat because their diets suffer not lack of calories, but lack of quality. Fresh veggies are EXPENSIVE compared to McDonalds. Go shopping for food sometime between your nightshift and your day shift when you are really hungry...

Answer 6

Yes there is a correlation. Wealthy people are generally not obese because they don't eat McD's & Kraft dinner. They can afford to have gourmet meals, nutritionists, fitness instructors & personal gyms at their disposal. They have more time to have a decent meal and don't have to resort to fast food. They also may make more of an effort to keep up appearances since this may be part of their standing in the community. Wealthy people may be more concerned with appearances (why live in a mansion, drive a fancy car & then go around looking like a slob? Usually they want to dress well & look good.)

People with lower incomes are more likely to eat unhealthy foods because they are cheaper. It's sad but when you're on a budget, you might live on frozen dinners, kraft dinner, ground beef, hotdogs, pop, foods with no nutritional value that are cheap & plentiful. Fresh fruits & vegetables & healthy meats tend to be more expensive. Also, working people are generally pressed for time & often rely on fast food meals because they don't have always have time to cook a full meal while they're running around with jobs, kids etc. So they resort to greasy burgers etc (McD's the leading culprit...just watch "Supersize Me" a very cool & scary documentary on the dangers of fast foods.) Also, stress over finances & other stresses may lead them to binge on snack foods. Overeating can be a way of dealing with the stress & depression of working class life.

This is not to say that wealthy people are all slim or that less affluent people are all heavy but I believe the evidence certainly supports my argument overall...

Answer 7

I don't think one has anything to do with the other. There are many rich fat people and there are many poor fat people. Obesity has nothing to do with how much money you have, it has to do with self image, self worth, heredity, how you ate as a child, what you ate as a child, and most of all...it depends on the individual persons concept of himself. Anyone, rich or poor can walk and excercise...it doesn't cost a thing.

Answer 8

In my mind there are two basic correlates to fat accumulation not including physical exertion. First is the genetic inheritance fact that if an individual has parents and grandparents that store and convert more sugars and other fats to their own fatty tissue composition than others of other families, then you are in the higher probability of having the same greater rate of conversion. Secondly is the relation of food marketing and mass production to natural food consumption regulations of the body. The food market is an extra-genetic development that human genetics in general could not adapt to. We are by nature attracted to fatty foods because in a state of pure nature we are desperate for them, but we are not in a state of pure nature, we are in an advanced stage of industrialized mass food production, and ever since the days of organized food production and urbanization, perhaps starting from ancient Rome, some us were non-labor consumers of organized agricultural labor. In these days, however, wealth is no longer a determiner for who may have access to these fattier foods, they are common place and cheaper, perhaps the cheapest.

Now physical exertion and muscle mass has much to do with fatty conversions to energy, and in our mechanized world and mass produced entertainment systems, physical exertion is almost a sin.

Answer 9

I think there is definitely a correlation between the two. I know myself when I was my ideal body weight I got much better jobs, and opportunities I can't even dream about having now. When I was thin I didn't even have to try to get anyway, now I have to practically kill myself to get even a fraction of the way I used to.

It's difficult to pin point people who are wealthy who are heavy. I know plenty of heavy millionairs but I don't know if they started heavy or just became that way because it didn't matter anymore, they were already where they needed to be. How about John Candy, Rodney Dangerfield, Oprah, and Chris Farley. Of course two of them are dead, perhaps that tells you something in itself.

Answer 10

First of all, thanks for the relative compliment on mindset.

I have some friends that are definitely "comfortable" with respect to earnings/wealth. Most of them are not obese. One is a 4th degree black belt.

But one is definitely not into physical fitness. He is a strange combination of things; a big man that could probably snap us in two like kindling, takes a lot of herbal supplements, a licensed massage therapist, but he also likes his intoxicants, in the broadest sense of the word.

So, you could be onto something.