I'm sad that this is worth mentioning. But if you are dealing with hunger amid threats to SNAP benefits, rice and beans are very cheap per meal and can be bought in bulk. Here's some tricks I've learned:
If you get dried beans, make sure you follow the directions to pre-soak them. Canned beans are easier to prepare, just dump in near the end of cooking to heat them up. Dried lentils don't need to be pre-soaked, but I prefer to cook them separately and drain the water they boil in.
Brown rice, barley, or other whole grains have much more protein than white rice and I find them more filling. Whole grains take longer to cook than white grains.
Frying diced onions in the pot before adding the grains and water is an easy way to kick the flavor up a notch. Use a generous amount of cooking oil (light olive oil is healthiest) for cost effective calories and help making the meal more filling.
Big carrots or celery in bulk are pretty cheap too. I like to dice carrots by partially cutting length wise into quarters, but leave the small end intact to keep the carrot together to make it easier to dice down the side. Add them to the same pot as the grains after the grains start to soften. Beets are also great; skin and cube then boil separately until soft. Change up your veggie to get a mix of vitamins
Get some bulk garlic powder, hot sauce, paprika, cumin, crushed red pepper, black pepper, etc. Season and salt the pot to taste.
You'll only need 1-2 pots and a cutting knife/board for veggies.
I recommend Harvard's Nutrition Source for science-based nutrition information and they have some recipes too
Edit: discussing big changes in diet with a primary care doctor or registered dietician is generally a good idea.
Probiotic supplements may help with gas.
As a bonus this sort of meal has a very small environmental footprint.
How can there be "huge swathes" of Americans who are "poorer than" the Americans who are so poor that they can only afford junk food and thus explain America's obesity statistics. This whole talking point makes no sense.
How are you not getting it?
You're right in claiming there is a link between obesity and poverty. However the difference in obesity rates between the upper quintile and lower quintile is still less than 10%.
Obesity is a problem across every single wealth bracket.
There is a problematically high number of people in America who are both poor and obese. But there are about twice as many people in poverty who are not obese.
Obese means fat, not just overweight. The fact that there are twice as many non-obese among the poor does not make them thin! Unless it's that people get fatter and fatter as they get poorer, until they get really poor and they suddenly they become skeletal, is that what we're claiming? This whole talking point makes no sense and you seem rational enough to be able to admit that.
I focussed on the obesity statistics because that is what you were talking about.
OK, let's flip this.
According to you, people with no money are not only buying junk food, but buying it in quantities to become overweight and obese.
People with no money are buying large quantities of food.
Is that what you're claiming? Is that how the world works in your head?
I'm saying that people with no money have no money to buy food. You're saying that people with no money somehow also have enough money to buy large quantities of unhealthy food.
At this point I can only assume that you're just arguing bad faith, because there isn't anything complicated to understand here.
Always the final resort to "you're arguing in bad faith"... You have no more idea what motivates me than I have about you, so why bother making this unfalsifiable accusation? Anyway. You have expressed what you don't understand about my argument, just as I've already expressed what I don't understand about yours, as well as I possibly can. Nobody else is listening. Let's just leave it there.