So we’re doing this project at my church, for healthy living. It’s fairly comprehensive, with a competitive biggest-loser-style weight-loss component.

One enterprising participant even managed to get a local donor to give 10 pounds of food to a local food pantry for every pound lost by our church, or other churches in town that we can get to join us. They were having weigh-ins after service yesterday.

This has to be a good thing, because while weight loss is not an across-the-board good, and is certainly not the holy grail of healthy living, getting a handle on obesity is fairly basic to health.

My church is very mixed in socio-economic status. It’s one of the things we don’t like to talk about, but there is a clear (but not absolute) relationship between poverty and obesity, and the relationship is somewhat visible at our church, which draws on blighted neighborhoods and the university in roughly equal measure.

The bottom line is that high-fat, high-sugar food is much more affordable, and is much easier to preserve and prepare, and is generally more accessible to poor neighborhoods, than fresh produce.