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Not only do urban areas lack healthy food sources, they also lack safe places to exercise. In areas with high crime rates, Parents are less likely to let their children go out to play, or even to exercise themselves. In such neighborhoods, physical exercise is a luxury, not a secure reality. Students in poor neighborhoods suffer even further, because their schools face tough financial situations that frequently force them to cut physical education classes. Children can grow up being taught the importance of exercise and good eating, but when they are unable to put their knowledge into practice, it it unrealistic to expect them to develop into healthy adults
In addition to what lower-income communities concretely lack—transportation, good quality produce, healthy restaurant options, safe exercise space— the lifestyle demanded by poverty exacerbates problem. Time is an important factor to consider, especially in single-parent homes. In households where one or both parents work multiple jobs, there are fewer opportunities for food shopping and less time to prepare nutritious meals. According to Kelly Brownell, stress also plays a role in promoting obesity, since it determines the quantity and type of food people eat. In some cases, people eat less when confronted with stress, but uusually food intake rises. Poverty is generally associated with high levels of stress, affecting an individual’s ability to eat and exercise normally.
When it comes to the right environment for health, America suffers from clear social disparities. The solutions to these embedded social problems are unclear, but no one can argue that poverty conduces to healthy patterns of eating and exercise. But it is a mistake to assume that health inequality pertains only to food acquisition: the way food is marketed to poor people is fundamentally unequal, as well. According to Brownell: “There’s a long history of the tobacco industry going after one demographic after another. The food industry has done the same thing, with population specific advertising, and that’s the thing that gets people really mad when they realize it.” Brownell and Jenny Carrillo (also of Yale University) conducted a study on ethnic marketing, measuring the incidence and evaluating the content of food commercials on the highest-rated television shows for three groups: African Americans, Latinos, and the whites. The study found the density of advertisements for food products to be significantly greater in programs geared towards African Americans than in those geared toward either Latinos or Whites. In fact, the number of food commercials was almost double for African Americans compared to whites. The study assessed the themes that were stated either directly or implicitly in the food commercials, finding themes such as “abundance,” “portion,” and “taste/flavor” more common in food advertising on African American programming. “Abundance” was emphasized over three times more often in commercials directed at African Americans than in those directed at the general population, and “taste/flavor” almost as frequently
It’s worrisome enough to think that each hour of TV geared towards African Americans is filled with twice as many messages to buy food as the programming prepared for whites, but the results of Carrillo’s and Brownell’s study become even more alarming when one considers how many hours minorities typically spend in front of the TV. It has been proven that half of African American and Latino children watch four more hours of TV a week more than white children in their same age group. This means that minority children are not just exposed to more food advertisements per hour, but their overall viewing time is higher, making the propensity toward unhealthy eating habits in minority communities even more pronounced.
Group-specific marketing practices force us to call into question our society’s assumption that personal agency is at the root of the obesity epidemic. If the food industry is targeting particular groups to buy unhealthy products, does our country need new lifestyle choices or new commercial and governmental practices?