“An obese mother-of-two who lives on benefits says she needs more of taxpayers’ money to overhaul her unhealthy lifestyle. Christina Briggs, 26, says she hates being 160 kilos but she can’t do anything about it because she can only afford junk food. Meanwhile, exercise is out of the question because she doesn’t have the funds to join a gym.”
Unemployed Christina gets £20,000 in benefits a year and lives in a council house with her two children by different fathers, Helena, 10, and Robert, two.
She left school as a teenager after falling pregnant with her daughter following a one night stand.
The family feast everyday on takeaways, chocolate and crisps as Christina says they can’t afford low fat foods. As a result, the mother is currently a dress size 26.
She has been warned by her GP that her health is in danger because of her size – medical complications relating to obesity include heart disease and diabetes.
Christina is desperate not to leave her two children without a mother and doesn’t want her size to take her to an early grave.
But she insists ‘it’s not my fault – healthy food is too expensive’.
She feels her only hope is for the government to give her more money so she can afford to buy fruit and vegetables and join a gym.
She also believes she should be paid to lose weight as that would give her the motivation to fight the flab.
She told the magazine: ‘I need more benefits to eat healthily and exercise. It would be good if the government offered a cash incentive for me to lose weight. I’d like to get £1 for every pound I lose, or healthy food vouchers.
‘If the price of healthy food was lowered that would help, too. I need help, but I need it from the government.’
She added that she can’t get a job to gain more money because she’s needed at home to care for her children, especially as her daughter has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and issues with her kidneys.
She explained: ‘There’s no way I could get a job. I don’t feel bad about the taxpayer funding my life and my child’s medical problems, because I don’t treat myself or buy anything excessive. I just get enough money to live on – the taxpayers should help fund my diet.’
Is she too poor to be healthy? Comment below.
I believe that she is partially to blame but the government is partially and the media is partially to blame.
There will be many excuses not to be healthy, but many of them boil down to our belief that life should be good and life should be easy and life should taste good. You can be healthy on an incredibly low budget diet, but you have to sacrifice.
The government needs to understand that their influence has created much of the problem today. Their programs and push towards subsidizing megacrops has impeded health.
Then the media has pushed our thoughts to believe two errant things: The first is that unhealthy foods are healthy (The Cheerios=Healthy angle). The second is that healthy is expensive. You don’t have to shop at Whole Foods to eat healthy.
The change will have to come from the consumers.
Maybe this woman should check out some healthy low budget meals all over the web. It’s actually cheaper to eat a plant based diet than to eat the way she is supposing is cheapest. No the government should not pay her to loose weight that’s her job!
This is stupid and selfish… The gym membership to lose weight you can lose weight at home. Being healthy is a choice, and she chose not to. You can only afford junk food? I don’t think so. Healthy foods and organic foods can be reasonably priced, and it is not to the taxpayer to pay you for it. Seriously, her argument is just stupid.
Food is expensive. The tax payers are funding her as a housemanager. Yet she appears not to be a good one. Her job is to make her money work for the betterment of her life and family. Tax payers should never be expected to fund a life some themselves my never afford. She needs to raise pass her feelings of oppression. She needs to think herself out of the condition she is currently experiencing. That may mean educating herself to seek the opportunity to just do something and anything better. Take a stroll around the block could be just the inexpensive start needed to inspire.
Maybe she could stop spending money on orange hair dye, facial piercings, and trashy tattoos in order to feed her family better. What a joke. It’s the governments fault she’s fat becuse they don’t give her enough money. Cut her off completely.
Healthy food can be much cheaper than junk food if you have the time and means to acquire it and prepare it yourself. However you also need the knowledge of what to acquire and how to prepare it. Something no one’s being educated in b/c it isn’t profitable for any major corporation.
As to “it’s the govt fault” as USE YOUR HEAD said, in a somewhat indirect way it is. The govt has given the bankers the tools to destroy the world’s economy and created the vicious cycle of layoffs > less consumers> more layoffs > less consumers… etc. The govts of the world aren’t completely blame free for the problems of the world but you have to be able to connect dots that aren’t next to each other to know that.
I’d rather help her feed her kids than pay for endless war, torture, and corporate subsidies that make the rich richer and the poor poorer any day.
This article is a good example of how the media is to blame for turning the working man against himself instead of helping him focus on his oppressors.
tooo poor and uneducated!
Good healthy food really don’t cost any more than junk food. It just take more time and effort to prepare.
Leading back to the real problem here.
To lazy and lack of really caring.
I feed a large household on a very small budget. But we all work together. We grow our own food as much as we can. We break our own bread make everything from scratch.
Shameful reposting from a disgusting article. Why the f**k should the parentage of her 2 children have anything to do with the subject in hand? I have come to expect that kind of reporting from the Daily ‘Fail’, but for a so-called health resource site to repost is almost as appalling.
Gardening burns calories, can kill 2 birds with one stone. Instead of raising the amount she receives in government assistance, maybe she could approach someone in charge of council housing and offer to clean and maintain the grounds for the ability to plant a small garden?
Or even organizing a community garden with others in her housing area and local businesses. That would go far toward solving many problems
I should think that she is not the only one who is faced with reality of obesity after consuming cheap, convenience food that has been excessively processed.
She could ask local businesses for donations of materials to help with costs.
This would be a much better, long term solution that would prove valuable for all involved, (Except for the businesses that have an interest in maintaining the obesity problem; fast food, junk food manufacturers.)
Instead of feeling so entitled, seeing the world as owing you more; start to consider what you can do to improve your own situation.
We have created so many people who feel if they want something, their demanding it should result in it being handed to them.
What happened to the better idea of ‘if you want something, you need to work for it’?