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Concerns Regarding Obesity And Diabetes Amongst Our Ethnic Minority Population.

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anotheoldgit | 13:01 Sun 16th Nov 2014 | News
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-2830254/Obesity-higher-fast-food-areas.html

/// "We found a much higher number of fast-food outlets in more deprived areas where a higher number of black and minority ethnic populations resided. This in turn was associated with higher prevalence of obesity and diabetes." ///

Nobody showed such concerns when we once had a chip shop on every street corner.


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That's all it was...a chip shop. Not the proliferation of chains offering more and more bad food.
Part of the answer is also in this last statement..."portion sizes have increased two to fivefold over the last 50 years and a single fast-food meal provides approximately 1,400 calories. Furthermore, fast-food outlets often provide sugar-rich drinks."

Add to this the amount of junk food pushed at consumers by supermarket chains,and its not surprising that we are at crisis point.
What intrigues me is this paradox:

We are told that poverty in the UK is increasing, ever higher numbers of children grow up in families blighted by poverty, the cost of living crisis is causing low paid workers and those on benefits to choose between (among other things) eating or heating. And yet in the most so-called deprived areas fast food outlets thrive meaning that these same deprived people are able to pay somebody else to cook their dinner for them.

Before anybody chimes in with suggestions that it is impossible to eat healthily on a limited income, please don’t. It is perfectly possible. Vegetables can be obtained very cheaply (yesterday in Lidl’s I saw a pack of assorted vegetables and packs of meat sufficient to make a decent casserole for four people for less than £4 in total). A pound a head for a decent meal. All sorts of budget priced non-processed food is available. All it needs is to take a bit of time and trouble to look for it and cook it.

The reason obesity and related diseases are rife is because of what people buy. They buy rubbish in fast food outlets; they buy rubbish to eat and drink when they do cater for themselves (normally because it’s quick and easy, not because it is cheap) and they stuff themselves with large quantities of totally unsuitable food and drink.
ah but, NJ, "poverty" doesn't mean the same thing these days. it means your kids not dressed in football-star's wife designer clothes and riding in a landrover-sized buggy, it means not having a tv that occupies all of one wall and a service that provides 300 channels of celebrity pap, it means not having an giant aggressive 4x4 thugmobile without which you can't be see dead outside sainsbury's, etc
Question Author
PiperH

/// But we are not talking about one fast food outlet we are talking about several on one street, driving through a town in Scotland last week on one street I counted 9 outlets ///

You are no suggesting that they have a meal in each and every fast food outlet do you?

If you are,then we do indeed have a problem.
Yes of course, mush. The ridiculously misleading measure of relative income which is falsely used to define "poverty" leads to the situation you describe. Such measurements do not define poverty but inequality - a different matter entirely.

However, whatever methodology is used it goes no way to explain why people who are less well off choose to spend their meagre funds on rubbish food. There is far more to this than simply budgets. Many of these people have plenty of time to spend sourcing and preparing food which is well within their means, which will not make them fat and will lessen the likelihood of them to developing nasty diseases.
In South Wales where I live, we are awash with 1000's types of fast food outlets.

In my own village of just 12,543, we have 3 chips shops, 4 Indian Takeaways, 2 Chinese Takeaways, 2 Kebab shops and 1 Pizza place ! In addition to that we have a sit-in Indian Restaurant and 2 local Cafes.

When entering the village, strangers might be forgiven for thinking that everybodies gas and electric had been cut off. Our non-white population is entirely confined to the proprietors of the above takeaways, so I can't see a racial angle to this.
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mikey4444

/// so I can't see a racial angle to this. ///

Can't you Mikey? It's just another example of the downsides of a multi-racial society, we now have to cater for all tastes.

Unlike in the past when your typical Englishman and woman, were content with good old Fish & Chips in a newspaper along of course with the occasional healthy Mussels, Cockles, Whelks and Jellied Eels stalls.
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Poverty today relates to education..not money!
/It's just another example of the downsides of a multi-racial society, we now have to cater for all tastes./

The majority of customers for Indian, Chinese, Italian etc take-aways are (as for most things in the UK) White

Anyone who has been to China and India knows that the 'ethnic' food served in UK has little to do with the food eaten in those other cultures.

They are a British development driven by British tastes.

It's called variety and Choice.
/It's called variety and Choice. /

Something that was apparently in short supply in the past.

/we once had a chip shop on every street corner/
All I can say AOG is that in the case of my immediate locality, and that of most of working class South Wales, there appears to be no link between obesity and the ethnicity of the local population, unless the link is between white people and obesity.

In fact, if we were to have no Asian food outlets at all, the non-white minority would be even smaller than it is at present ! Most of then appear to be involved with the provision of our national dishes, like Chicken Jalfrezi and Duck with Ginger and Pineapple !

By the way, quite a large amount of the old-fashioned chip shops are owned by second and third generation Italian families. That goes for bakers and ice cream makers too. That started about a century ago, when Italians came to South Wales to work in the mines, and it increased after WW2 by inmates from an Italian POW camp not going home after VE Day.

Mind you there is a popular saying that goes " Wales is Italy in the Rain" after our love of singing and Opera, as well as our sunny disposition !
AOG...I am sure you mean "British" man and woman rather than "English" man and women. We are a tad touchy about that our side of Offa's Dyke, and I am sure that applies north of the Border as well.

But were Jellied Eels and Whelks that common out of the East End ?
Yes there were, Mikey.

Many pubs across right London had a shellfish stall outside where most shellfish (but not usually lobster) could be found. Shrimps, prawns, winkles, whelks cockles and mussels as well as the occasional crab were the usual fare and many sold jellied eels as well.

Back to the East End, most famously "Tubby" Isaac's jellied eel stall stood at the end of Goulston Street in Aldgate for nearly 100 years (it closed last year). Tubby's (real name Isaac Brenner) principle offering was jellied eels but he also sold shellfish, I'm not particularly fond of jellied eels but often went there after a night out with a few mates to scoff some eels in an attempt to sop up the beer. (When it was my turn to drive we went elsewhere!).

Tubby Isaac's stall has an interesting history. Tubby emigrated before WW2 and the business was taken over by the Gritzman brothers. One brother (Solly) ran the stall and his brother (Barney) cooked the eels in a railway arch down the road near Fenchurch Street. Some time (in the 50's, I think) the brothers had a big falling out and Barney opened a rival stall on the opposite corner of Goulston Street. I believe the two brothers never spoke again and I don't know where Solly got his eels for "Tubby's" stall. Both stalls survived opposite each other for many years.

All fascinating stuff and nothing whatsoever to do with the original question . Except, of course, "Tubby" Isaac Brenner was a Jewish immigrant.
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NJ....back in the 50's, my dad used to go down the East End quite a lot. He worked for Johnson Matthey, who made gold, silver and platinum wire, for the jewelry sector. He used to take me with him on a Sunday morning, when he made some of his deliveries. I remember visiting a Jewish Restaurant for lunch but at the age of 8, I really didn't like anything they they served !

I went back to Blooms in the late 80's and had some wonderful food ! The salt beef sandwiches were the best I have ever eaten. But as a boy, he also tried to get me to eat some jellied eels. They were revolting, and now at the age of 61 I still think the same !
''As a nation we have eaten foreign food for 100s of years'' Well I remember in the 1950/60s spaghetti was thought of as 'funny foreign food' we had never heard of pizza and curry was thought very exotic.
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"yesterday in Lidl’s I saw a pack of assorted vegetables and packs of meat sufficient to make a decent casserole for four people for less than £4 in total"

Well, I guess that's case closed then. If you saw one pack of veg/meat, then obviously this cost of living nonsense is all made up.

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