Welcome!

To start, I thought I might post a little bit about what we're doing and why we're doing it. 

• Sixteen percent of people in the Southwest Missouri area have to worry about when they will eat next. That means that of Springfield, Missouri’s 165,378 people, approximately 26,460 do not know when they will be able to have another meal.

• Generalizing that, one in five children alone go hungry every day in the United States. That is almost 15 million children that starve. 
• An additional half million live in poverty-stricken homes. 

If you can suspend your disbelief to allow those statistics into your wealth of knowledge, I ask you to stay with me a few moments longer.

• A family sized bag of chips averages between $2.50 and $3.00 and houses several servings. 
• Yogurt (assuming we are looking at the off-brand) costs roughly .50 for one. This allows for five to six servings of yogurt for the same $2.50-$3.00. 
• Which one costs less and gets more servings? The bag of chips. Most healthy foods are this way, costing more than unhealthy ones. That’s not to say that there aren’t healthy foods available for cheap: bananas can usually be found for only a couple of dollars, oranges are generally under a dollar as well per orange, but the resources do not go much beyond those. 

Not Big But Broke believes: 

• that every person has the inherent right to eat healthy, nutritious food that will benefit and not harm them. 
• obesity should be in DSM as a disease much like any other eating disorder
• That the idea of children not having access to the food they need may be leading to unhealthy eating rather than them choosing. 
• that the subsidizing of farmers is not helping but hurting America’s healthy food source. Therefore, grants and subsidies should be given more to health food producers and possibly distributors in order to bring the healthy food prices down.

Not Big But Broke is focusing on children and young adults who are overweight due to a lack of nourishing foods available. 

Currently Not Big But Broke is currently:

• writing a law that provides subsidies and grants to health-food companies (rather than to farmers) to get healthy foods into more homes. 
• working to provide education on the purchasing of foods and what constitutes 'healthy' and how to make those purchases that are just as good for your pocket book. 
• researching the possibility of working with insurance companies to give rebates to consumers for the purchase of healthy foods. 
• trying to get obesity as a disorder in the DSM 5 (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders).  

Insurance Matters!

I wasn't going to share this article on the home page, but I think it's an important idea to consider, and I'm hoping it will give all of you something to think about as we establish our work. This article is directly taken from the website.

"

Eating better for less

To treat the obesity epidemic, why not lower prices on 

healthier food

By Roland Sturm and Derek Yach  | May 25, 2013

Since the early 1980s, federal dietary guidelines have urged Americans to eat more nutrient-rich foods and cut back on fatty foods and highly processed “empty calorie” snacks such as cookies and chips. But those pleas have fallen on deaf ears. It's time to start thinking differently about how to encourage Americans to make smarter food choices—and a fine place to start would be cutting the costs of healthy foods in our supermarket aisles.

This is easier said than done. Americans don't enjoy being told to change what they eat. A majority of Americans do not eat enough fruits and vegetables. But we do manage to gulp down lots of so-called discretionary calories, especially added sugars and solid fats.

So how can we help encourage Americans to put down the potato chips and pick up an apple? It turns out that the road to our stomachs may run through our wallets. One important new idea for changing what we eat revolves around changing food pricing and it's being pioneered in South Africa.

Food and agriculture policies have always manipulated prices. For decades, the U.S. government has subsidized efforts to increase agricultural output, no matter what it does to the quality of Americans' diets. The last five-year farm bill, for instance, included $300 billion in spending—but such spending has never been used as a tool to improve the population's nutrition.

For two decades, subsidies to farmers have helped make corn and soy increasingly cheaper than fruit, vegetables and whole grains. Food companies have built entire brands based on these cheaper commodities, which make up the raw material for a range of unhealthy processed foods and animal feed—all at a very real cost to the quality of the calories we consume.

We know that people respond to food-price taxes on fat, sugar or other unhealthy ingredients. The more that food based on such ingredients costs, the less we consume.

But proposals to tax unhealthy foods have been very contentious—and, at least in the U.S., not very successful. Such taxes don't do anything about what consumers may substitute for the newly taxed product. The impact on obesity could be minimal. And the mere mention of taxes on foodstuffs raises the specter of the “nanny state.”

So if Americans don't want to be forced to pay more for unhealthy foods, perhaps we should flip the logic on its head: Reduce the cost of healthy foods.

Would such a program work on a large scale—improving consumers' diets without bankrupting farmers? Fortunately, we have some helpful and encouraging insights from an unexpected place.

For the past four years, South Africa's largest health insurer has operated an innovative program called HealthyFood for its members. Participants receive a 25% rebate on healthy foods (as defined by international dietary guidelines) in 800 supermarkets nationwide. More than 300,000 middle-income South Africans are participating.

Sturm

So far, the results are compelling. Lowering the costs of healthy foods in supermarkets not only increases the amount of fruits, vegetables and whole grains that people eat, but it also seems to reduce their consumption of less nutritionally desirable foods.

Using data from the grocery clerks' scanners, we estimate that a 25% rebate on healthy foods raises the share of healthier foods that program participants buy by 9%, while cutting the share of less desirable foods they purchase by about 6%.

There's other good news from the South African experiment. Surveys suggest that the price changes altered behavior, too: Consumers reported that they were eating larger amounts of fruits, vegetables and whole-grain foods, and said that they were eating less processed meat and foods high in added sugars, fats or salt. (Unfortunately, we have found no evidence that these new eating patterns reduced obesity rates.)

Overall, the South African program offers encouraging evidence that lowering the cost of healthier foods can motivate people to substantially improve their diets. But behavior changes also seem to be proportional to price changes. When people's actual eating behaviors are far from what nutritionists would recommend, even a 25% price cut can close only a small fraction of the gap.

Yach

There is no single cure for America's obesity epidemic, which has deep roots in the social inequality that drives poor people to buy artery-clogging fast food. After all, the least healthy foods are usually the cheapest, the most advertised in poor neighborhoods, and the most available in inner cities—making it far harder to make healthy food choices.

But our work suggests that a combination of things might well slow the obesity epidemic while also improving the American people's overall nutritional well-being: price incentives, initiatives to control portion sizes and a long-term campaign to support better food quality.

Nations such as South Africa are teaching the U.S. and the world a crucial lesson: If we can find ways to get past the resistance to adopting such policies, they could make us all a lot healthier.

Roland Sturm is a senior economist at the not-for-profit, nonpartisan RAND Corp., and Derek Yach is executive director of the Vitality Institute."

Into Perspective...

This is an editorial that I have written.

The average grocery bill costs between $140 and $300 per week (nbc11news.com). That doesn’t go very far when you consider that most people don’t just eat meals (a meat, a vegetable, a starch and maybe a fruit) but snacks in between. In a family of four that’s between $5 and $10 a day to eat on. Let’s take a basic meal. (All pricing taken from pricecutter.com and divided by amount of servings.) 

• Sandwich (with no condiments) and basic salad. Our sandwich has two pieces of bread (0.10 a piece in a cheap loaf), 
• one slice of bologna (0.50) and 
• a slice of cheese (0.25). Now for our salad. 
• Lettuce (0.50), 
• three slices of cucumbers (0.17), 
• a tomato (0.25). 

Our very basic meal just took almost two ($1.77) dollars out of our daily allotment for that person. We are left with only $3.23 for breakfast, dinner and any snacks we may eat in the meantime. 

            What if you can’t afford even that? Your options are to steal, go to a kitchen, get government aid or go hungry. Only the last choice does not directly affect our economy.

There may be other options. Providing subsidies and grants to companies like Dole Food Company to lower their costs to distributors would allow for more groups of people to get good food into the home.

I’m referring to the elderly woman who wants strawberries, but can’t afford it. The family of four who eat decent but not great. The teacher who puts food on the table, but not the best food. The student who is living off ramen noodles and frozen pizza.

With lowered healthy food costs, we could better afford to be a healthier nation. What can you do? 1. Go to http://notbigbutbroke.blogspot.com/ and become better educated about the problem. 2. Sign the petition located on the above site. 3. Speak up. Educate others and then take it to Congress.

We live in the most overweight country in the world. But step-by-step we can change that. Get one apple to one person who couldn’t have one before. That’s a small start, but it is a start.

Shout Out!

I just wanted to give a shout out to Robbie Kight! He is currently trying to raise money to buy tents for the homeless in Speingfield, Mo. I personally think this is a WONDERFUL cause. I hope you will take the time to at least go look at his account. If you feel compelled to do more, great! If not, you support the cause just by acknowledging it.

Comic

I found this picture of kids' classification of food, I thought it was funny, but it also helps demonstrate the struggle with getting kids to eat healthy. (I, personally, preferred fruits and vegetables as my mom will testify to, but most kids aren't so easy to convince.) To see what they should REALLY be eating, go look at the real food pyramid.

Various Eating Disorders: What's not listed.

This is taken directly (with added emphasis from me in some parts- also note pictures were added by me, they are not a part of the original article.) from the APA's website on the DSM-5. This is the official diagnostic guideline of any and all mental disorders. (Or at least those it views as being disorders.) Note that obesity is NOT listed. If it is listed elsewhere, it can not be readily found.

"The chapter on Feeding and Eating Disorders in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) includes several changes to better represent the symptoms and behaviors of patients dealing with these conditions across the lifespan. Among the most substantial changes are recognition of binge eating disorder, revisions to the diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, and inclusion of pica, rumination and avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder. DSM-IV listed the latter three among Disorders Usually First Diagnosed in Infancy, Childhood, or Adolescence, a chapter that will not exist in DSM-5. In recent years, clinicians and researchers have realized that a significant number of individuals with eating disorders did not fit into the DSM-IV categories of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. By default, many received a diagnosis of “eating disorder not otherwise specified.” Studies have suggested that a significant portion of individuals in that “not otherwise specified” category may actually have binge eating disorder.

• Binge Eating Disorder Binge eating disorder was approved for inclusion in DSM-5 as its own category of eating disorder. In DSM-IV, binge-eating disorder was not recognized as a disorder but rather described in Appendix B: Criteria Sets and Axes Provided for Further Study and was diagnosable using only the catch-all category of “eating disorder not otherwise specified.” Binge eating disorder is defined as recurring episodes of eating significantly more food in a short period of time than most people would eat under similar circumstances, with episodes marked by feelings of lack of control. Someone with binge eating disorder may eat too quickly, even when he or she is not hungry. The person may have feelings of guilt, embarrassment, or disgust and may binge eat alone to hide the behavior. This disorder is associated with marked distress and occurs, on average, at least once a week over three months. This change is intended to increase awareness of the substantial differences between binge eating disorder and the common phenomenon of overeating. While overeating is a challenge for many Americans, recurrent binge eating is much less common, far more severe, and is associated with significant physical and psychological problems. 

• Anorexia Nervosa Anorexia nervosa, which primarily affects adolescent girls and young women, is characterized by distorted body image and excessive dieting that leads to severe weight loss with a pathological fear of becoming fat. The criteria have several minor but important changes: • Criterion A focuses on behaviors, like restricting calorie intake, and no longer includes the word “refusal” in terms of weight maintenance since that implies intention on the part of the patient and can be difficult to assess. The DSM-IV Criterion D requiring amenorrhea, or the absence of at least three menstrual cycles, will be deleted. This criterion cannot be applied to males, pre-menarchal females, females taking oral contraceptives and post-menopausal females. In some cases, individuals exhibit all other symptoms and signs of anorexia nervosa but still report some menstrual activity.

• Bulimia Nervosa Bulimia nervosa is characterized by frequent episodes of binge eating followed by inappropriate behaviors such as self-induced vomiting to avoid weight gain. DSM-5 criteria reduce the frequency of binge eating and compensatory behaviors that people with bulimia nervosa must exhibit, to once a week from twice weekly as specified in DSM-IV. 

• Overall Changes The Eating Disorders Work Group intended for DSM-5 changes to minimize use of the catch-all diagnoses of Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorder and Unspecified Feeding and Eating Disorder. A primary goal is for more people experiencing eating disorders to have a diagnosis that accurately describes their symptoms and behaviors. Determining an accurate diagnosis is a first step for clinicians and patients in defining a treatment plan. DSM is the manual used by clinicians and researchers to diagnose and classify mental disorders." 

Here's what I hope to have pointed out to you: The diagnosis that include EATING were not previously included yet the diagnosis that include STARVATION or PURGING were. Those that eat were classified as "other". Another word for that being "different", "abnormal", they didn't deserve their own category. That's what we want to change. The inclusion of obesity in the DSM would mean that it could be treated as any of the above diagnosis would be. Imagine what that could mean for the future of the world's largest country- America. 

The Petition!

The petition has been approved!!!!!!!!
Below is a copy! Click here to sign it!

Petition Background (Preamble):

We want to create a law that will provide subsidies to health food companies and subsequently allow grocers to lower the costs of healthy foods for everyone, not just a select group of people.

Organizations like WIC and Food Stamps provide healthy foods for the poor and food insecure but what about the rest of the population? The ones who don't qualify for those helpful tools or maybe don't have kids (for WIC)? The ones who make enough to survive and live, but not enough to eat healthy foods? They deserve the same good foods as the others... regardless of income. We have emphasized low income families for the sake of providing our basis, but in all actuality we are hoping to provide healthy foods to all families, not just the ones in dire need.

In order to provide adequate food to each of these, we would need to spend over 24 BILLION dollars nationally. Imagine, now, what this does. If you know that you do not have enough money to feed your family, what are your options? 

Steal (which decreases the values of stores in your community) 

Go to a kitchen (which is usually funded by government grants) 

Get aid (which, again, is government funded) or 

Starve. 

Only the last option does not take it's financial toll on the government.

Petition:

We, the undersigned, call on the Office of Federal Management Financial Standards and Grants Branch to provide subsidies and grants to health food companies (like Dole) to bring the cost of healthy foods down.

This includes fresh foods and frozen. This will bring the costs down for all consumers, because it will effect how much the grocers can charge.