The left would tell you that the lower life expectancy of poor folks is down to poverty forcing them into unhealthy lifestyle choices. I will gloss over the fact that more poorer folks smoke or drink heavily than the affluent although no-one forces them to do so and just focus on food. Junk food is expensive. Healthy food can be far cheaper.
When in Shipston, staying with my father, I bought two pheasants from the butcher, pre plucked at £5.99. I saw many folks in the local Co-Op who were happily loading their baskets with more expensive pre-prepared junk meals.
For the past two nights the Mrs and I have dined on the pheasant. On Monday I roasted both and we ate one together with the last of the Christmas vegetables: sprouts in a garlic butter and honey glazed carrots. Last night I used up the last two large potatoes from Yuletide, making roast spuds. The other pheasant was reheated on a base of chopped onion on butter with a pint of stock added later with a dash of port.
That last bit of port was an extravegance but the total cost of two meals for two adults was, by my calculation, just under £7.50. That works out at £1.875 per person per meal. And what we had was healthy, balanced, filling, tasted fantastic and was far cheaper than junk food.
I realise pheasant is seasonal and probably only available for rural folks but equally I am pretty sure that if I went direct to someone in Shipston and was prepared to pluck a bird I could get those birds even more cheaply. Let the peasants eat pheasants.
If folks eat themselves to death it is not because they are poor it is because they make that lifestyle choice irrespective of what nanny state tells them or how much of, other people's, cash Guardian reading employees of the nanny state chucks at them