Reporter Astonished to Find Poor, Uneducated Make Lousy Dieticians

Yet another big article from this mornings Post:

 
Too much of too little

...For almost a decade, Blanca had supported her five children by stretching $430 in monthly food stamp benefits, adding lard to thicken her refried beans and buying instant soup by the case at a nearby dollar store. She shopped for “quantity over quality,” she said, aiming to fill a grocery cart for $100 or less.

But the cheap foods she could afford on the standard government allotment of about $1.50 per meal also tended to be among the least nutritious — heavy in preservatives, fats, salt and refined sugar. Now Clarissa, her 13-year-old daughter, had a darkening ring around her neck that suggested early-onset diabetes from too much sugar. Now Antonio, 9, was sharing dosages of his mother’s cholesterol medication. Now Blanca herself was too sick to work, receiving disability payments at age 40 and testing her blood-sugar level twice each day to guard against the stroke doctors warned was forthcoming as a result of her diet...

The story focuses on a second generation Mexican American family living on the Food Stamp Program (SNAP) in the Rio Grande valley in Texas, struggling with the cost of food by eating largely convenience food, high in sugars and fats, not so much because she doesn't have the time (she's not working, she's on disability as a result of her lousy diet), but because that's all she knows how to do, and leading her own children down the same path.

Parenthetically, I would note that the photos both on line, and in the dead tree addition demonstrate that Blanca has a pretty nice SUV for the family of 3...  It's all about priorities.

However, I do wonder if she might not be descended from Pima Indians in Mexico.  The Pimas have long been observed to have high rates of obesity and diabetes in the United States than their Mexican counterparts have on a more traditional diet.