the obese, acid refluxed, chronically achy, Fox channel watching, gun toting and pick up driving crowd

Studies again are revealing the fact that Southern states, led by West Virginia, are not only poorer but have much higher levels of prescription drug intake. Oddly enough, this is generally the same region that is most vociferously opposed to universal health care. This can be analyzed through he class prism or through the state as big brother prism. I would like to think that poorer people opt for less healthier foods because they simply have not been made aware of the benefits of the much reviled arugula, sprouts and other "liberal" food staples.Here in the town of New Paltz, the Latte Drinking, Sushi Eating, Volvo Driving, New York Times Reading, NPR listening crowd wins without a doubt but oddly enough I suspect that the obesity rates are kept down because people are opting to not buy into what some would call "the personal choice" of eating junk food and drinking super Slurpees, and instead spend their spare time tending to their gardens and walking or biking around the many nature trails so easy to maintain and so beneficial to use. People do not realize that it isn't big government that leads to obesity but big business. A garden in your back yard is a lot less profitable than a big barbecue grill. I don't have to go into the economics of it because they are obvious enough; so although the idea of government trying to tell me what food to eat has little appeal to me, the idea that the big corporations which run big government don't even want to give me a choice has even less appeal.
As my husband points it would be a lot cheaper to treat all the obese, acid refluxed, chronically achy crowd than to run 2 wars in two countries that BTW have universal health care paid for by us, the American tax payers, but that's besides the point. War is what it is, promoted by who it is and that's an argument. On another note perhaps connected but still on another note is the question of why it is that the poorest citizens have the worst health, both physical and mental, suffer the most pain and eat the worst diet. Perhaps because they are less educated? You don't have a choice when you are not aware of the possibility of having one!