Overweight and Poor

What do you think of when you think of children in poverty? Do you think of kids who are skin and bones, with ribs sticking out? Yeah well that is not me.

I am an eleven year old girl who is overweight. To the world, I am fat because I like to eat junk food or I have no self-control over the type of foods that I eat. But that is not the case. I want fruits, vegetables and grains. But my mom says we can’t afford it.

At the store, I point towards the apples and bananas but mom says not today. Instead she grabs cookies off the shelf and says that it can be my afternoon snack. I don’t mind because I like the cookies. I heard that people used to think that fat people were rich. That is not the case anymore. There are 50.2 million people starving in the US but diabetes and other diet-related diseases are at its highest. People look at me and think that I eat too much and am too lazy. But what people don’t understand is that I am just a kid, who eats what her mom can afford. My mom works every day and sometimes on the weekend, but she still says it is hard to buy the healthy food.

Because my mom cannot afford the healthy foods at the store, I am 1.7 times more likely to be severely obese than you. People want me to be skinny and healthy but mom says we can’t afford it. Why do they make these things unaffordable? Why don’t people seem to care about my health?

I am 1 of 46 million Americans living in poverty with my mom. So why don’t people understand why I am “obese”? My body cannot metabolize and store food properly because most of my life, we have lived in poverty. So I store it as fat instead. Obesity rates increased by 23% from 2003 to 2007 for kids like me, kids who have parents who little or no more. Please help. Because I am not just a fat eleven year old. I am a little girl who cannot afford those healthy foods. If people don’t help children like me, obesity rates will double in just 15 years.

Think about the future of your children.

 

Sources:

http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/are-low-income-people-at-greater-risk-for-overweight-or-obesity/

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/60/11/2667.full

Patel, R. (2008). Stuffed and starved: The hidden battle for the world food system. Brooklyn, N.Y: Melville House Pub.