The video, The Weight of the Nation: Poverty and Obesity, was both informative and eye opening. There is a lot of research included to help make the point that poverty, and where a person lives and shops in a city, has a lot to do with their chances of being obese as well as developing diabetes. According to the video, life expectancy was shown to be dramatically different depending on which street a person lived (HBOdocs). It is sad to see that a person’s neighborhood or income level can have such a huge impact on not only obesity, but also on life expectancy. For example, “the Bronx is the lowest income county in New York State [with] nearly half of the residents living in poverty” and this county has some of the highest incidence of obesity and diabetes per capita (HBOdocs). The research seemed to correlate the lack of supermarkets with the number of obese children and adults living in the area. It is amazing that there are parts of some cities that have no place to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. The fact that cities are taking this problem seriously is good. Many cities are giving extra incentives to shop owners for selling fresh produce. There are even some community projects that have given neighborhoods their first supermarket in over 30 years. These programs which are being started in places of poverty show that, hopefully, this problem will eventually start to get better.
Opinion on the Comment
The comment about this video is somewhat insightful. It is likely that this person had no idea of the problems that people in poverty face. I think they will now have more compassion on the overweight and obese because of this video. They also have faith in the governmental programs that have been started to help turn the tide of obesity in our country. They believe that access to parks and fresh fruits and vegetable will be the answer to this epidemic.
Works Cited
HBOdocs. “The Weight of the Nation: Poverty and Obesity (HBO Docs)” [Online Video]. YouTube.YouTube, 2012. Web. 17 July 2015.
