Everyone is worried about being overweight or obese, the notion usually is that someone is overweight because they are lazy and not caring what their figure looks like. In many cases this is not true. The type of food that most of American families can afford are unhealthy and the food that is healthy is just an expense that they can't afford.
In order to eat healthy an individual would have to spend and extra $1.50 on food each day. This is about $550 extra per year. Many people would think that is not very much, but to people that are poor this is a huge expense that many are not able to swing. For a family of four this would be $2200 extra they would have to spend just to be healthier. That expense doesn't make sense to families when their are far more important things that they could be spending their money on than fruits and vegetables. It is more logical for the poor to buy the cheap unhealthy processed foods.
The price is lower for processed foods because they have a longer shelf life which allows the stores to keep them in stock for longer, thus being cheaper for stores and consumers alike to buy them cheap. Fresh foods on the other hand are perishable and can only be left in the store for a short amount of time. This in turn increases the price for stores to keep them in stock and bumps the price up for the consumer. It is better to have unhealthy food than having no food at all. This is the thought of many families and I think it is a failure on our government to make it easier to buy fresh foods.
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