[enraged_camel]

>>One is left to speculate as to why

There is no need for speculation, since we already know the answer: fast-food is both affordable and calorie-dense, which is why lower-income people consume it and become overweight.

Ever noticed how many fast-food restaurants there are in lower-income neighborhoods?

[pbhjpbhj]

>since we already know the answer: fast-food is both affordable and calorie-dense //

Fast-food is not affordable in the UK. It's substantially more costly than preparing your own food. There is no way that we could afford to eat fast-food more than a couple of nights per week; then we'd have to cut the quality of food on other nights considerably.

McDonalds for one adult costs about what we spend on a meal for 4 cooked at home (not including energy costs).

That said friends we have friends on benefits who eat fast food regularly. How they afford it I don't know. They have the heating on all day (with windows open, in winter) and things too, it's all a mystery to me.

[Evbn]

Are you sure, on a calorie basis? McDonald's is far more calorie dense than anything a sane human could make at home.

[pbhjpbhj]

I was going more on a regular meal portion than an analysis of calorie content, fat, salt, additives and such.

FWIW a medium bowl of noodles is 2MJ (according to WolframAlpha; tea tonight, but we had pork left-overs in ours +0.5MJ [or so, not on WA]), Big Mac is listed as 2.2MJ + 1.3MJ for fries.

So that's only 40% more calories.

Big Mac and fries is ~£3.50 in the UK.

Our food was about 35p per portion plus the pork which I'd say was 75p + cooking and cleanup costs [40p?].

On that basis we'll say £1.50 vs £3.50 for 40% more calories as a gross estimate.

So I'm not sure but ...

[Evbn]

I thought it was because the UK rains money on people, free housing and the like.

[001sky]

I would add, the chemistry of stress. Fast food is a counter-stressor, chemically. the body responds to the presence of fatty/salty/sweet/high-carb etc food in a metabolic way.