r/FluentInFinance • u/The-Lucky-Investor • 13d ago

“Medicare for All” would save the U.S $5.1 Trillion over 10 years Discussion/ Debate

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/11/30/easy-pay-something-costs-less-new-study-shows-medicare-all-would-save-us-51-trillion
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u/BigPlantsGuy 13d ago

What’s your proposal?

it is crazy how well obesity rates correlate to political parties.

If you start at the fattest state, you have to go to number 13 before you hit your first democratic 2020 voting state. 19 for your second. Only 2 dem states in the bottom 20, only 4 rep states in the top 20

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u/ncroofer 13d ago

It’s also crazy how it correlates to poverty. Poor people are fat, and poor people vote Republican.

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u/TummyDrums 13d ago

The poverty-fat relation has actually been studied a lot anthropologically. Basically throughout the history of mankind, the least nutritious, fattening foods are the cheapest, while the healthiest are more expensive. Essentially Top Ramen and hotdogs are cheap while fresh vegetables and lean properly fed meats are more expensive. Not that its that simple on a case by case basis, but when you look at the population as a whole the theory is that it has a very large effect.

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u/chill_brudda 12d ago edited 12d ago

Vegetables are very cheap. Rice, beans, lentils are very cheap. Obviously, you don't buy them very often either. Only buy food with 1 ingredient(potatoes, cheese, green beans, banana etc), and you'll be surprised how much you save. Fast food, heavily processed foods way more expensive and less nutrient dense.

If anything it's a problem of having time to process whole foods snd access. There are food deserts in the US where large swaths of folks do not have grocery stores thst carry fresh produce, it's all Dollar stores etc

It's also about preference. People love fried food, pizza, grain based dessert and sugar drinks. Broccoli and leafy greens not so much

Obesity is not a problem humans have been dealing with "throughout the history of mankind" it's a modern problem. Eating 4000 calories per day while sitting on your ass was not easy "throughout the history of mankind"

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u/TummyDrums 12d ago

Obviously you don't know the meaning of "fresh" vegetables as I mentioned, if you listed rice, beans, and lentils. Also notice those things are much higher in carbohydrates. Nobody has a big pile of rice and calls it a serving of vegetables; that's a serving of starch.

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u/chill_brudda 12d ago edited 12d ago

I mentioned rice and beans in a separate sentence than vegetables, obviously denoting their difference. Bad faith argument there

My overall point was about whole foods which fresh vegetables are a part of, being cheaper and loaded with more nutrients than highkt processed highly palatble foods. Besides you cannot just survive from fresh vegetables alone, we are talking about the real world here.

The fast food industry is a multi billion dollar a year industry. People choose to buy that food over making a healthy life style decision to eat a whole food nutrient dense diet.

Billions of people survive off rice, legumes snd fresh vegetables and are not obese.

Becoming obese requires consuming more calories than you expend on a daily basis for quite a long time. It's basic science.