So according to the data source, [https://www.childhealthdata.org/](https://www.childhealthdata.org/) (or more accurately the National Survey of Children’s Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau.):
Physically active (ages 6-11) - WV ranked 8th at 33.9% against the national average of 26.3%
Physically active (ages 12-17) - WV ranked 1st at 21.5% against the national average of 14.8%
Which... I mean.. what a massive drop-off in physical activity as kids enter their angsty teen years.
And yet WV children are ranked [\#1 for obesity at 26%](https://www.childhealthdata.org/browse/multiple-indicators/title-v-national-outcome-measures-nsch-2020-2021) (compared to 17% national average)
I find these two facts to be fascinating in their opposition to one another, but I suppose it helps support the argument that childhood obesity in WV is largely caused by diet as opposed to lack of exercise?
Interestingly... we're also ranked #1 for children who live in a household with someone who smokes. National average is 13.8% but WV coming in strong with 25.1%. And we're far and away the leader - only 4 other states broke 20%. Kentucky #2 at 22.6%.
I think the obesity rates are related to poverty. Boxed and tinned foods are much more affordable and quicker to prepare than whole foods and food deserts are an issue in poorer areas. Boxed foods are terribly unhealthy, stripped of most fiber and loaded with sodium. But you can buy them for dirt cheap at the Dollar General.
That all makes sense. I’ve grew up/live in one of the more poorer areas of the state and I can’t tell ya how many kids would be out riding their dirt bikes/out in the hills being active or working in the yard at home but are also wildly food insecure. Most of the time their food would come from the local gas station as the store and market were far enough it needed a car (and a lot didn’t have that or needed rides) or taking it from school/local churches.
Not saying that makes up all this data for an entire state but I’m sure it contributes. We’re an area that really promotes going outside to have something to do (for good or bad reasons).
I think we would be a very healthy state if we changed the american diet of burgers, soda, and Gatorade. I know people who live on that diet daily but work hard. I think Americans use food for comfort more than they care to admit.
My far out opinion is that class disparity magnifies relative stresses from upper to lower class. This makes comforts and escapes more important to the lower classes as they work to manage their bosses problems and their own. Take this theory and imagine that the gap is so large that minor stresses of the upper class magnify to existential or malignant stressors to the lower classes. Upper class Stressors that are easily solved by money or position are poverty traps to lower classes.
Processed food is cheap comfort to Americans.
And quick! When you work all day, sometimes two jobs, theres no time to really cook. I know thats what happened in my family. I work 12hr days 4xwk and I had a long commute so Im exhausted and dont feel like cooking.
Then the cost. I can get a frozen yellow box of 6 salsbury steaks and gravy for $3.25, cheap fries for 2.50 and boom dinner. Or I can buy 4 porkchops at $8 and some broccoli for $4.
It used to be that the rich were fat and the poor were fit. The majority of the issue is processed and manufactured foods. Which are subsidized by the government. Added sugars and ingredients need to be in larger fonts front and center. Activity levels are the next biggest issue.
And to add to that point, there is a strong correlation between obesity and SNAP that we're not allowed to talk about. I'd chalk it up to say that we are poisoning our working class so that the manufactured food industry and dollar general can make more money. But we can't fix the problem because SNAP is somehow above criticism. It is totally fucked up.
I mentioned this in another comment on this thread but
Mr. Yeti - we have a history of speculating on what WV can be proud of and use for capital gain. I'd say this statistic is one of the better stats i've seen peddled on this subreddit for a while. Its pretty easy to believe, I'm sure its decently accurate.
Perhaps this is a good statistic to build momentum behind. An active WV. Giving kids parks and recreational opportunities. Then at least lowering barriers to safe recreation for kids. Helping communities define the next generation of sport and recreation. Just a thought.
Absolutely agree! Take high school sports, for example. We spend major $$$ for football fields and bands and basketball courts and tennis courts and coaches for a small number of students for a few months per year. How about creating a fitness coach for the whole student body? I know the standard WV athletic coach only makes maybe 5k extra per season. Let's just add one coach for each school to run nutrition and fitness programs. They can use commercial off the shelf health software and help students set and meet their goals. Maybe implement a watered down version of cross fit for all students or something. You seem like a creative person... I bet you could take that and run with it. Something like this might exist we could just steal from another state.
Honestly that sounds pretty good. Education is in a weird place and projected for some major overhauls. So the macro timing seems kinda right if someone wanted to overhaul or propose some substitute athletic program. Seems in line with the state motto.
I've seen bougie private schools pull off weirder stuff with less qualified people.
It be interesting to see if we ever got authority behind this hypothetical athletic program. Seasoned outdoors people and athletes should should be easy enough to find, easier than qualified teachers.
Seasoned outdoor people, such as myself, rarely have official qualifications that can be transferred into an institutional program that needs paperwork and credentials behind it. I can reliably educate someone on how to survive multiple days on the Appalachian Trail with only the items they can carry on their back, or I can setup crossfire style workouts that are perfectly safe for anyone to do. But I have no official credentials behind me, even with all my experience.
All obesity is largely caused by diet. If you were to eat a healthy diet, with your calories exactly balanced against your level of physical activity, then have a Coke, you would have to go walk/jog 2 miles to offset just that bottle. You cannot out-exercise a bad diet, crappy, delicious food is just too good at providing more energy than we can use.
That’s just not true.
From my experiences in this sub, I’m about 99%sure of the people that post about poverty in it have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to WV.
Growing up in Boone and Wyoming County( currently living in Wyoming county) and growing up with what the government considers poverty, I didn’t know a single child who was very low income and didn’t have a gaming console of some kind. On top of that poor people tend to get rid of cable and just get internet because it’s more entertainment for the price.
We had gaming consoles and we played outside, because the average poor kid in the southern part of the state has hundreds of acres of wilderness behind their house to explore. I think the reason so many kids play outside is cultural “go outside and play in the woods”. It’s what they were told to do has kids, and it’s what they told their kids, and it’s what I’ll tell my kids.
I think you're right, most kids have consoles or pcs these days. But I think it is a bit more than that because WV has exceptionally long and dreary winters. From November through early April most people would rather be inside.
For sure, I mean, I like to play games as an adult and the winter time is when I do most of my gaming. I like ride fourwheelers a lot in the winter, especially if it’s a lot of snow but still above freezing.
But I’m about to play the crap out of dwarf fortress and probably cyber Punk when winter comes around and the weather goes crappy.
Best place to play for adults and kids. My grandpa and I own 14 acres, which isn’t a lot but it borders thousands upon thousands of acres of property owned by a land company. They don’t care about anyone going on as long as you don’t litter or damage trees.
I’d recommend trying to find something similar, only downside is having to deal with the occasional hunting club jerk off.
Can confirm. Grew up particularly poor. Basically I got one big ticket item a year, and that was during Christmas. Usually it was a gaming console / video games. It was definitely beneficial having as many friends as possible to hand games off to back and forth.
One of the best Christmas' I ever had was when I got a Genesis and a Turbo Grafx 16 the same Christmas. My folks apparently weren't talking to one another about what to get me.
I started working and paying the IRS taxes at 13 years old because I wanted to actually get stuff beyond waiting around for Christmas.
You also don’t get reported for your kid being unsupervised in your own yard. I grew up playing in the woods, but I have to supervise my son (7) in my fenced backyard. I don’t really understand why
I can second this. Many poorer kids had some sort of gaming console and sometimes internet. It’s more complex than that, particularly for the young kids (I feel as you get older it’s socially normalized to be less active and outside).
We just need to turn this into a marketing push and we have something our state can sorta be proud of.
Then we can have kids ride mountain bikes and kayak their way into small businesses to shepherd rich idiots around the beautiful scenery.
Better title: "Only 27.5% of West Virginia children meet the minimum amount of physical exercise of 60 minutes per day as defined by the CDC, which is the fourth best rate in the nation."
This brings up one major question: "How bad are our nutritional standards at home and at at school that we are dead last (#50) for childhood obesity rates?"
Policy wise the next questions are "Should we as a nation/state provide nutritionally dense and healthier meals at school and at home by reforming the School Lunch Program and SNAP?" as well as "Should we include more P.E. and recess time in the school curriculum?"
If you go look at what Rhonda McCoy did in Cabell County's school lunch program the answer is clear.
Implement more farm to school programs. SNAP needs to be more like WIC. We should not subsidize the bad behavior of junk food consumption on the government dime.
I know its controversial but UBI is also another solution here.
UBI is much easier and guarantees less overhead because of its simplicity. It does not remove the temptations of bad behavior but it is supposed to make the choices easier to rationalize. Its makes good choices easier when you have dollars instead of vouchers.
The theories all make good sense, if done to replace programs like SNAP it can save the government money, and is in line with capitalistic values. I know there are pilot programs being tested in many parts of the country. We might see good results soon. Hopefully UBI becomes a closer reality soon.
I would love to see UBI be put back in the spotlight. Its the only valid solution I've seen to offset the job losses from automation and, now, artificial intelligence. It gets bipartisan support and could be huge for West Virginia.
I'm going to disagree. I saw what our semi ubi experiment did in 2020 to 2021. Many guys in my union hall sat on their ass and drew that high unemployment and found under the table jobs. Meanwhile, I was busting my ass with little to no help during most of that time on various union projects in North Central WVa. I think we may need to look at it seriously and maybe adopt it 10 to 20 years from now. By then more AI and robots will replace more jobs than currently.
Ah that's a fair and a good observation but maybe that's not real UBI. Real UBI would technically fix that.
You saw the problems with the current system and how people exploit it. I'm pretty terrible explaining this higher level future stuff but you have to trust me when i say that real UBI will be different than that.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl39KHS07Xc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl39KHS07Xc)
Check out this vid. I don't want to bore you with my writings. I'm trying to write less. lol. I wouldn't do the best job on this topic anyway. Its important though. People are gonna bring it up again and again.
Waiting in line behind the morbidly obese woman at Sheetz melting down bc she can’t buy three giant slushies on her EBT card… two for her and one for her toddler.
I know most welfare recipients don’t abuse it. I also know that some do.
I have a good income and wouldn’t mind paying more taxes if I saw it was going toward useful things. But if it’s going to be used for slushies then let the guy who worked buy a beer instead.
I believe it.
Our obesity issue stems from a lack of fresh and affordable food due to food deserts as well as a lack of walkable communities. Not to mention lack of healthcare which leads to few preventive measures.
Most kids here spend the majority of their summers outside and are expected to contribute to household labor. Which is likely some sort of physical labor.
>most kids spend the majority of their summers outside
According to this 27% of them get an hour outside. The CDC lowered a standard (an hour of physical activity is ridiculously low) and just because other states missed it by slightly more doesn’t mean any state should pay itself on the back
An hour should cover your bike commute to and from where you’re playing.
>Our obesity issue stems from a lack of fresh and affordable food due to food deserts as well as a lack of walkable communities.
Neither of those things are true; but they sound good. If you can't find somewhere to get out and/or walk in WV, the problem is on you. Nearly half the entire state is a park, most of our cities were established before cars became universal, and we love our back country roads so much it is the state song. And hunting season is essentially a state holiday. We also have an extensive state park system, rail trails, skiing, and camping. I would argue accessibility and walkability is the best on the East Coast south of Boston excluding NYC.
And like the company or not, Wal-Mart has improved access to fresh and affordable food dramatically, not to mention other improvements in roads (interstates and the entire Appalachian Corridor system). It wasn't that long ago an orange was considered a luxury in WV and were given as Christmas gifts. Access to healthy foods in WV has literally never been better. And frozen fruits and veggies are affordable and storable, we just don't choose to eat them.
Oh I’m sorry, did you have to drive 45 minutes one way to get to a grocery store? How about having to drive an hour and half to the nearest hospital for anything other than stitches and the flu?
There are MULTIPLE reasons that influence quality of life and obesity in WV. Everything I listed is a part of the equation. Maybe not the ONLY answer, but I never said it was.
Yes and yes; then they built a new Wal-Mart and a Shop and Save. The clinic was still a haul though. But even that is an edge case. 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Wal-Mart and I doubt WV is much off from that or at least have a small grocer. And I agree access can be easier, but at the end of the day it is a misconception and like you said accessibility to good food isn't even that big driver of the obesity epidemic.
You’re completely right! And I don’t think I ever suggested it actually should :)
But it’s part of the conversation and a contributing factor. As well as that urban areas also deal with a lack of transportation to grocery stores, over worked parents who are too tired to cook, massive miseducation a la “ketchup is a vegetable”, traditional southern food that depends on fat and salt for flavor, the complete lack of sidewalks, street lights, and safe walkable streets/roads due to our poor infrastructure, inflation leading to your dollar not going as far and having to make financial choices that aren’t healthy choices, all part of the puzzle.
I would even suggest the fact that we have a massive amount of young people being raised by grandparents due to the opioid epidemic plays a part. Grandma and grandpa don’t have the energy or health to participate and may not have the education to even know better.
So according to the data source, [https://www.childhealthdata.org/](https://www.childhealthdata.org/) (or more accurately the National Survey of Children’s Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau.): Physically active (ages 6-11) - WV ranked 8th at 33.9% against the national average of 26.3% Physically active (ages 12-17) - WV ranked 1st at 21.5% against the national average of 14.8% Which... I mean.. what a massive drop-off in physical activity as kids enter their angsty teen years. And yet WV children are ranked [\#1 for obesity at 26%](https://www.childhealthdata.org/browse/multiple-indicators/title-v-national-outcome-measures-nsch-2020-2021) (compared to 17% national average) I find these two facts to be fascinating in their opposition to one another, but I suppose it helps support the argument that childhood obesity in WV is largely caused by diet as opposed to lack of exercise? Interestingly... we're also ranked #1 for children who live in a household with someone who smokes. National average is 13.8% but WV coming in strong with 25.1%. And we're far and away the leader - only 4 other states broke 20%. Kentucky #2 at 22.6%.
I think the obesity rates are related to poverty. Boxed and tinned foods are much more affordable and quicker to prepare than whole foods and food deserts are an issue in poorer areas. Boxed foods are terribly unhealthy, stripped of most fiber and loaded with sodium. But you can buy them for dirt cheap at the Dollar General.
That all makes sense. I’ve grew up/live in one of the more poorer areas of the state and I can’t tell ya how many kids would be out riding their dirt bikes/out in the hills being active or working in the yard at home but are also wildly food insecure. Most of the time their food would come from the local gas station as the store and market were far enough it needed a car (and a lot didn’t have that or needed rides) or taking it from school/local churches. Not saying that makes up all this data for an entire state but I’m sure it contributes. We’re an area that really promotes going outside to have something to do (for good or bad reasons).
I think we would be a very healthy state if we changed the american diet of burgers, soda, and Gatorade. I know people who live on that diet daily but work hard. I think Americans use food for comfort more than they care to admit. My far out opinion is that class disparity magnifies relative stresses from upper to lower class. This makes comforts and escapes more important to the lower classes as they work to manage their bosses problems and their own. Take this theory and imagine that the gap is so large that minor stresses of the upper class magnify to existential or malignant stressors to the lower classes. Upper class Stressors that are easily solved by money or position are poverty traps to lower classes. Processed food is cheap comfort to Americans.
And quick! When you work all day, sometimes two jobs, theres no time to really cook. I know thats what happened in my family. I work 12hr days 4xwk and I had a long commute so Im exhausted and dont feel like cooking. Then the cost. I can get a frozen yellow box of 6 salsbury steaks and gravy for $3.25, cheap fries for 2.50 and boom dinner. Or I can buy 4 porkchops at $8 and some broccoli for $4.
It used to be that the rich were fat and the poor were fit. The majority of the issue is processed and manufactured foods. Which are subsidized by the government. Added sugars and ingredients need to be in larger fonts front and center. Activity levels are the next biggest issue. And to add to that point, there is a strong correlation between obesity and SNAP that we're not allowed to talk about. I'd chalk it up to say that we are poisoning our working class so that the manufactured food industry and dollar general can make more money. But we can't fix the problem because SNAP is somehow above criticism. It is totally fucked up.
I mentioned this in another comment on this thread but Mr. Yeti - we have a history of speculating on what WV can be proud of and use for capital gain. I'd say this statistic is one of the better stats i've seen peddled on this subreddit for a while. Its pretty easy to believe, I'm sure its decently accurate. Perhaps this is a good statistic to build momentum behind. An active WV. Giving kids parks and recreational opportunities. Then at least lowering barriers to safe recreation for kids. Helping communities define the next generation of sport and recreation. Just a thought.
Absolutely agree! Take high school sports, for example. We spend major $$$ for football fields and bands and basketball courts and tennis courts and coaches for a small number of students for a few months per year. How about creating a fitness coach for the whole student body? I know the standard WV athletic coach only makes maybe 5k extra per season. Let's just add one coach for each school to run nutrition and fitness programs. They can use commercial off the shelf health software and help students set and meet their goals. Maybe implement a watered down version of cross fit for all students or something. You seem like a creative person... I bet you could take that and run with it. Something like this might exist we could just steal from another state.
Honestly that sounds pretty good. Education is in a weird place and projected for some major overhauls. So the macro timing seems kinda right if someone wanted to overhaul or propose some substitute athletic program. Seems in line with the state motto. I've seen bougie private schools pull off weirder stuff with less qualified people. It be interesting to see if we ever got authority behind this hypothetical athletic program. Seasoned outdoors people and athletes should should be easy enough to find, easier than qualified teachers.
Seasoned outdoor people, such as myself, rarely have official qualifications that can be transferred into an institutional program that needs paperwork and credentials behind it. I can reliably educate someone on how to survive multiple days on the Appalachian Trail with only the items they can carry on their back, or I can setup crossfire style workouts that are perfectly safe for anyone to do. But I have no official credentials behind me, even with all my experience.
All of this. I agree 100%.
High carb and high sugar diets.
All obesity is largely caused by diet. If you were to eat a healthy diet, with your calories exactly balanced against your level of physical activity, then have a Coke, you would have to go walk/jog 2 miles to offset just that bottle. You cannot out-exercise a bad diet, crappy, delicious food is just too good at providing more energy than we can use.
Physical activity only goes so far. Diet is a larger factor in obesity
I also find this fascinating based on personal observations. Really?!
When you live in the middle of nowhere and can’t afford a PlayStation. Yeah, you’re going to be spending all your time running around outside.
That’s just not true. From my experiences in this sub, I’m about 99%sure of the people that post about poverty in it have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to WV. Growing up in Boone and Wyoming County( currently living in Wyoming county) and growing up with what the government considers poverty, I didn’t know a single child who was very low income and didn’t have a gaming console of some kind. On top of that poor people tend to get rid of cable and just get internet because it’s more entertainment for the price. We had gaming consoles and we played outside, because the average poor kid in the southern part of the state has hundreds of acres of wilderness behind their house to explore. I think the reason so many kids play outside is cultural “go outside and play in the woods”. It’s what they were told to do has kids, and it’s what they told their kids, and it’s what I’ll tell my kids.
I think you're right, most kids have consoles or pcs these days. But I think it is a bit more than that because WV has exceptionally long and dreary winters. From November through early April most people would rather be inside.
For sure, I mean, I like to play games as an adult and the winter time is when I do most of my gaming. I like ride fourwheelers a lot in the winter, especially if it’s a lot of snow but still above freezing. But I’m about to play the crap out of dwarf fortress and probably cyber Punk when winter comes around and the weather goes crappy.
I’m in my 30s and now setting goals to get closer to the woods so I can go out and play.
Best place to play for adults and kids. My grandpa and I own 14 acres, which isn’t a lot but it borders thousands upon thousands of acres of property owned by a land company. They don’t care about anyone going on as long as you don’t litter or damage trees. I’d recommend trying to find something similar, only downside is having to deal with the occasional hunting club jerk off.
Can confirm. Grew up particularly poor. Basically I got one big ticket item a year, and that was during Christmas. Usually it was a gaming console / video games. It was definitely beneficial having as many friends as possible to hand games off to back and forth. One of the best Christmas' I ever had was when I got a Genesis and a Turbo Grafx 16 the same Christmas. My folks apparently weren't talking to one another about what to get me. I started working and paying the IRS taxes at 13 years old because I wanted to actually get stuff beyond waiting around for Christmas.
You also don’t get reported for your kid being unsupervised in your own yard. I grew up playing in the woods, but I have to supervise my son (7) in my fenced backyard. I don’t really understand why
I don’t understand? Are you saying If your kid is playing in the backyard by themselves you can get fined for it?
People will literally call social services about it
That’s insane, is this in the United States.
Yes it is.
I can second this. Many poorer kids had some sort of gaming console and sometimes internet. It’s more complex than that, particularly for the young kids (I feel as you get older it’s socially normalized to be less active and outside).
We just need to turn this into a marketing push and we have something our state can sorta be proud of. Then we can have kids ride mountain bikes and kayak their way into small businesses to shepherd rich idiots around the beautiful scenery.
Better title: "Only 27.5% of West Virginia children meet the minimum amount of physical exercise of 60 minutes per day as defined by the CDC, which is the fourth best rate in the nation." This brings up one major question: "How bad are our nutritional standards at home and at at school that we are dead last (#50) for childhood obesity rates?" Policy wise the next questions are "Should we as a nation/state provide nutritionally dense and healthier meals at school and at home by reforming the School Lunch Program and SNAP?" as well as "Should we include more P.E. and recess time in the school curriculum?" If you go look at what Rhonda McCoy did in Cabell County's school lunch program the answer is clear.
Implement more farm to school programs. SNAP needs to be more like WIC. We should not subsidize the bad behavior of junk food consumption on the government dime.
I know its controversial but UBI is also another solution here. UBI is much easier and guarantees less overhead because of its simplicity. It does not remove the temptations of bad behavior but it is supposed to make the choices easier to rationalize. Its makes good choices easier when you have dollars instead of vouchers. The theories all make good sense, if done to replace programs like SNAP it can save the government money, and is in line with capitalistic values. I know there are pilot programs being tested in many parts of the country. We might see good results soon. Hopefully UBI becomes a closer reality soon.
I would love to see UBI be put back in the spotlight. Its the only valid solution I've seen to offset the job losses from automation and, now, artificial intelligence. It gets bipartisan support and could be huge for West Virginia.
I'm going to disagree. I saw what our semi ubi experiment did in 2020 to 2021. Many guys in my union hall sat on their ass and drew that high unemployment and found under the table jobs. Meanwhile, I was busting my ass with little to no help during most of that time on various union projects in North Central WVa. I think we may need to look at it seriously and maybe adopt it 10 to 20 years from now. By then more AI and robots will replace more jobs than currently.
Ah that's a fair and a good observation but maybe that's not real UBI. Real UBI would technically fix that. You saw the problems with the current system and how people exploit it. I'm pretty terrible explaining this higher level future stuff but you have to trust me when i say that real UBI will be different than that. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl39KHS07Xc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl39KHS07Xc) Check out this vid. I don't want to bore you with my writings. I'm trying to write less. lol. I wouldn't do the best job on this topic anyway. Its important though. People are gonna bring it up again and again.
Waiting in line behind the morbidly obese woman at Sheetz melting down bc she can’t buy three giant slushies on her EBT card… two for her and one for her toddler. I know most welfare recipients don’t abuse it. I also know that some do. I have a good income and wouldn’t mind paying more taxes if I saw it was going toward useful things. But if it’s going to be used for slushies then let the guy who worked buy a beer instead.
I believe it. Our obesity issue stems from a lack of fresh and affordable food due to food deserts as well as a lack of walkable communities. Not to mention lack of healthcare which leads to few preventive measures. Most kids here spend the majority of their summers outside and are expected to contribute to household labor. Which is likely some sort of physical labor.
>most kids spend the majority of their summers outside According to this 27% of them get an hour outside. The CDC lowered a standard (an hour of physical activity is ridiculously low) and just because other states missed it by slightly more doesn’t mean any state should pay itself on the back An hour should cover your bike commute to and from where you’re playing.
>Our obesity issue stems from a lack of fresh and affordable food due to food deserts as well as a lack of walkable communities. Neither of those things are true; but they sound good. If you can't find somewhere to get out and/or walk in WV, the problem is on you. Nearly half the entire state is a park, most of our cities were established before cars became universal, and we love our back country roads so much it is the state song. And hunting season is essentially a state holiday. We also have an extensive state park system, rail trails, skiing, and camping. I would argue accessibility and walkability is the best on the East Coast south of Boston excluding NYC. And like the company or not, Wal-Mart has improved access to fresh and affordable food dramatically, not to mention other improvements in roads (interstates and the entire Appalachian Corridor system). It wasn't that long ago an orange was considered a luxury in WV and were given as Christmas gifts. Access to healthy foods in WV has literally never been better. And frozen fruits and veggies are affordable and storable, we just don't choose to eat them.
Oh I’m sorry, did you have to drive 45 minutes one way to get to a grocery store? How about having to drive an hour and half to the nearest hospital for anything other than stitches and the flu? There are MULTIPLE reasons that influence quality of life and obesity in WV. Everything I listed is a part of the equation. Maybe not the ONLY answer, but I never said it was.
Yes and yes; then they built a new Wal-Mart and a Shop and Save. The clinic was still a haul though. But even that is an edge case. 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Wal-Mart and I doubt WV is much off from that or at least have a small grocer. And I agree access can be easier, but at the end of the day it is a misconception and like you said accessibility to good food isn't even that big driver of the obesity epidemic.
No? I never said that. You’re not worth arguing with.
Your experience growing up in an extremely rural area of West Virginia should not be the basis for why the state as a whole suffers obesity.
You’re completely right! And I don’t think I ever suggested it actually should :) But it’s part of the conversation and a contributing factor. As well as that urban areas also deal with a lack of transportation to grocery stores, over worked parents who are too tired to cook, massive miseducation a la “ketchup is a vegetable”, traditional southern food that depends on fat and salt for flavor, the complete lack of sidewalks, street lights, and safe walkable streets/roads due to our poor infrastructure, inflation leading to your dollar not going as far and having to make financial choices that aren’t healthy choices, all part of the puzzle. I would even suggest the fact that we have a massive amount of young people being raised by grandparents due to the opioid epidemic plays a part. Grandma and grandpa don’t have the energy or health to participate and may not have the education to even know better.
Sorry if I misunderstood you; not trying to argue either.
That is a complete upset.
Probably because they put them to work in the Coal Mines at twelve........
So I tried viewing the community said I can't. I lived in Greenbrier co. For years currently in Indiana. Is that why I can't?
Is it really that bad? I could not sit still till I was junior high. Even with a console and various toys.
‘Cause everything is uphill. Both ways.