Obese now outnumber hungry, says Red Cross

[TjW]

How can you have degrees of an absolute?[/B] It's like having degrees of pregnancy; it's impossible, it's an either you are or you aren't situation.

Take it up with the Kelvin scale.

 

[Beerina]

Yes! Let the hungry eat the fat!

So...you want the rich people to eat the poor people?

 

[23_Tauri]

Take it up with the Kelvin scale.

 

[bigred]

More fat than starving = species win.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=obese people&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi

No way would I call this a "species win."

 

[bjornart]

I'm aware that poverty is classified in this way, and a distinction is made between relative and absolute, but I've never really understood it. I think saying that starving to death = absolute poverty is simplistic. Someone might be completely outside of a money economy but living a hunter-gatherer life (i.e. the last remaining hunter-gatherer people in the Amazon who have no contact with outside world). They have no concept of monetary wealth and yet they are far from poor and definitely not starving.

Thus they're not in a state of absolute poverty. The clue is in "far from poor" and "definitely not starving".

 

[Psi Baba]

Where did you hear that from?

Can't point to specific posts or posters, but I hear it around here every so often. Sometimes it's implied. Clearly making unwise choices regarding diet is a universal (ie human) problem, not limited to any one culture or country, as some would claim, and that no one is immune to the effects of globalization of purveyors of junk food.

 

[slingblade]

On Conan tonight, slightly paraphrasing: "The obese people said, 'hey, we're hungry too! How do you think we got this way?'"

 

[Skepticemea]

Obese outnumber starving? Are they eating them?

 

[philkensebben]

Red Cross should hand out diet rice then.

 

[Almo]

Makes sense to me, too lazy to get a job so it stands to reason they would be too lazy to eat healthily/exercise and use birth control.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Take it up with the Kelvin scale.

The Kelvin scale is absolute in that sense - there is no such thing as degrees Kelvin. 20 degrees C = 293 K. Not 293 degrees K.

 

[Roboramma]

The Kelvin scale is absolute in that sense - there is no such thing as degrees Kelvin. 20 degrees C = 293 K. Not 293 degrees K.

You're saying Kelvin is absolute in this sense:

It's like having degrees of pregnancy; it's impossible, it's an either you are or you aren't situation.

Seriously?

 

[Roboramma]

The idea that poverty isn't subject to degree is equally ridiculous: A person who can support himself and one of his children, but not the other, is less poor than a person who can only support himself, but both are obviously impoverished.

Does it make sense, then, to speak of absolute poverty? Of course. If poverty were only a relative measure it wouldn't necessarily be negative: having less than your neighbors isn't necessarily bad. Not having enough to survive is. Not having enough to invest in improving your situation is. Etc.