My wife is a volunteer at a food pantry, and she says that things like rice are pushed due to price, and shelf life. A lot of calories and carbs in rice.
@catfish1957Poor people will buy the cheapest food that has a long shelf life. Rice is one of those. A mother who stays at home and provides meals, will do more cooking from scratch that takes more time and is healthier. She may buy brown rice that is healthier than white rice but takes more time to cook. A working, away from home mother will buy fast food as she is exhausted from her away from home job. She will likely buy fast cooking/instant rice if she buys it at all.
A point about rice: Practically no one is allergic to rice. At one point in my life, I became allergic to some foods. I was losing 5 lbs. every week. I was sent to Houston to a certain doctor group that worked with food allergies. During the weeks they were working with me, they had me eat nothing but rice since that was a universal food with no known allergic reactions. A food bank will have rice to give people for that reason and it is cheap.
A working mother can buy McDonald's burgers and French Fries for the family and be done with providing a family meal. When we go to a casino, 2 of us, we stop at a close McDonalds and get two sausage biscuits and two medium size coffees, and the cost is less than $5.
The writing below blames the government for obesity due to eating white rice and kids eating at McDonald's. (This is ridiculous.)
"It has also been suggested that eating brown rice instead of white may lead to weight loss and more favorable blood fat levels. However, when it comes to white rice, the studies are a little more inconsistent. Numerous studies have shown that a dietary pattern high in refined grains like white rice is linked to weight gain and obesity . Kids are eating at McDonald’s too frequently, so the government needs to step in. Families choose housing that’s inconvenient to supermarkets where they can buy healthy foods, so the government needs to do something. And if playgrounds and athletic fields are not close enough to that housing, then that is the government’s fault as well."
When I was a child, there was no TV or individual phones - I went outside to play and ride my bike. Kids today, can stay inside and have numerous "sit down" things to do - play on their phones, computers. Eating and not moving will cause weight gain. In Jr. High School and High School, I was in our band, was lead Clarinet player, and marched several times a week on the football field, and the band director called me "Skinny". He called me that all through high school. We grew all kinds of veggies, grew two pigs a year, had chickens, so I had a healthy diet and walked it off in band and P.E. - and, I was a runner.
No one in that band was overweight - in fact no one in that high school was fat. What physical exercise are kids doing today in elementary, jr. high, and high school? Fast food and sitting leads to fat.
