Too much of too little

obese 10She had been born in the United States in the last years when being poor also usually meant being thin. Her parents had lied about her age when she was 11 so she could get a job picking with them in the fields. They ate what they picked, raised their own chickens and boiled rice by the pound. But the sprawl of McAllen edged into the farmland, and Blanca dropped out of school in 10th grade and took a job at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. She had her first baby at 19 and her second a few years later, with a man who soon disappeared to Mexico. She applied for public housing in a community that offered little space to grow her own food, near a commercial road lined with 17 fast-food restaurants. Now, each morning on the way to school, her children rode past signs that advertised “Dollar Menu,” “Ultimate Dollar Menu,” “Dollar Tacos,” and “Hot Cheetos, two for a dollar.” These were the treats they loved and the treats they could afford.

For years, Blanca had tried to provide an antidote by forcing the children to sit nearby as she gave herself insulin shots. “You need to look at your future,” she told them. “Is this what you want?” She had tried planning a menu and cooking family dinners, but tailoring meals on a budget to the varied tastes of five children exhausted her. They would eat broccoli only if she slathered it with butter and cheese. They would eat Mexican mole sauce only if it came with a hulking side of tortilla chips. The prepackaged diet lunches she splurged on at $3.50 each sometimes came back from school with uneaten turkey and whole-wheat crackers.

As her health worsened, she had started shopping mostly for foods she knew they would eat and prepare themselves. She was a single mother with little money and less energy, she reasoned; it was more important to provide enough than it was to worry about what, exactly, she was providing.

Now Antonio came into the kitchen looking for something to eat. “Make a smart choice,” she told him. She watched him grab a bag of Super Mario Brothers Fruit Flavored Snacks and a Coke Zero.

“Fruit and diet,” he said.

“Good,” she said.obese 11

They sat together in the living room, shoulder to shoulder on the couch while Antonio did math homework and ate his snack. Three o’clock came, and together they swallowed their cholesterol medication. Four o’clock came, and Salas pricked her thumb and tested her blood sugar. Five o’clock came, and she injected her next dosage of insulin.

“I’m hungry,” Antonio told her.

“Wait for dinner,” she said.

He sat next to her for a few more minutes on the couch, attempting to be patient, caught in the cycle that has confounded politicians and nutritionists and families in the Rio Grande Valley. Was it more hazardous to go hungry or to eat junk? The choice was left to a 9-year-old boy stuck in a culture that provided him both too much and far too little.

“I need to eat,” he said, and he walked back to the kitchen and opened the fridge.

Article Appeared @http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2013/11/09/too-much-of-too-little/?hpid=z3

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