Tucker Carlson: 'Poor people are fat' because of access to an 'amazing abundance' of food

Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested on Wednesday that obesity was only a problem for poor people because "there's not a single fat person" in rich neighborhoods.

On the Fox News show Out Numbered, host Harris Faulkner noted that recent studies had shown that unemployed people were at risk for gaining weight.

"I'd have to think that this is embarrassing for this White House," Faulkner argued. "You've got on the one hand, the first lady doing the 'Let's Move' campaign, and you've got on the other hand, 'Well, where is the president on the 'Let's Move with Jobs' campaign?'"

"You're right, their agendas are at loggerheads with one another," Carlson agreed. "His economic policy meets her fitness policy, and collision."

But Carlson also saw a silver lining in the news that unemployment leads to weight gain.

"All of us should be happy about one thing, and it's that for the first time in human history you have a country whose poor people are fat. So this does show this sort of amazing abundance," he opined.

"What?" Faulkner gasped.

"For the last however many millennia, poor people starved to death," Carlson explained. "And this is a country that's so rich, whose agriculture sector is so vibrant and at the cutting edge technologically, that our food is so cheap, poor people are fat! I mean, I don't know. We shouldn't take that for granted."

"The cheaper foods tend to have the more fattening and artificial ingredients," Faulkner pointed out.

"I just saying, up until about 20 minutes ago -- historically speaking -- people just wanted enough calories," Carlson replied. "And we've certainly achieved that."

Carlson admitted that "people eat their feelings" when they were depressed about finding work, but he said that obesity was "also a cultural divide."

"Go to a rich neighborhood, there's not a single fat person on the street," he opined. "No one smokes cigarettes, no one's overweight. The middle of the country looks nothing like the edges. And that is a problem, I think."

Watch the video below from Fox News' Out Numbered, broadcast May 14, 2014.