Eating Healthy Big Issue for Poor

Governments, health authorities, doctors and scientists say our population, children especially, are becoming obese at very young age. 

They say we are not exercising enough and families spend too much time in front of the television, computers and game systems. In some cases this may be true.

In many more cases however, it is because of our diet.

I am a limited-income single mother. I am in the not-so-unique position of being able to say I can buy a three pack of hotdogs from SuperStore-enough for 3 meals-for a quarter of the cost of a nice healthy roast for one meal.

It is cheaper to buy generic cheese slices than to buy a block of real cheese. That thick juicy steak is $20 to $30 more than regular ground beef.

You would think that the more the food is processed the more it would cost. So why isn't it?

Could part of the problem be that the cost of farming has skyrocketed as well? Farming is an industry and has become very expensive from what I have seen.

But, why does a head of lettuce cost $2.00 while a bag of chips costs less? Ground beef costs more than buying the convenient pre-packaged beef patties and when you pay 97 cents for a 2 liter bottle of pop but almost $2 for 1L of real fruit juice, eating healthy is very difficult, if not impossible, to do on a limited budget.
Another issue that comes up is when those in need use the local food banks. Much of the stuff donated to the food banks is processed foods. So again, mostly stuff like mac and cheese, packaged noodles or rice. 
Some farmers, greenhouses and local grocery stores do donate their older stock of vegetables and fruit but much of that goes fast or isn't very good by the time people can use it.
The healthy canned goods are gone fast from food banks, baby supplies, female supplies, kids lunch supplies like sandwich meats and juice boxes and other things that we take for granted everyday, cleaning supplies for instance, are not donated.

Exercise is a part of the solution but exercise is not the whole solution. You can be thin, you can exercise as much as you want, but eating healthy is the biggest issue the poor have when it comes to weight gain. 

Before blaming technology for the weight issues of children and adults, professionals should look at changing the cost of feeding families with healthy meals instead of making it cheaper to eat unhealthy and fast foods.

It is not technology or laziness that is making us fat, it is the ever increasing amount of money it takes to eat healthy.