Surely after headlines about fast food bans in lower-income neighborhoods, you've heard the argument that poorer people consume the most fast food and are more likely to become obese. Correlations have been made that rates of obesity go up when income goes down.
A recently published study from UC Davis puts
the part about the fast food consumption on its head. Researchers found it's actually middle-class customers who are eating a lot more fast
food. They discovered that visits to such restaurants increased with incomes. In
fact, poorer people were spending less on fast food
than lower-middle and middle-income Americans.
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It's noted that the fast food habit doesn't start to taper off until household income
hits $60,000. Cited as a possible explanation: middle-class folks are often in a time crunch and appreciate the convenience of
drive-thrus.
Another possible reason: rich or poor, french fries are tasty!
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.