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I suspect this is true in any rural area. Alabama is our version of rural Romania. The population density doesn't support the economy of scale required to make

by ohyes 9y ago

I suspect this is true in any rural area. Alabama is our version of rural Romania. The population density doesn't support the economy of scale required to make daily fresh produce profitable. So you get frozen/canned/otherwise preserved products. If it were profitable, someone would do it. You go to a more populated area in the US (basically any major metro), you can get the good stuff fairly easily. We also have 'food deserts' in poorer urban centers (certain cities in Alabama could qualify). I don't have an explanation for those, I think it has to do with poverty.

rayiner 9y ago
Even in metro areas the major chains are terrible. But we’re also less willing to pay more for food compared to Western Europe.
maxerickson 9y ago
Food deserts are places where people mostly have cars and drive to the store. It's a bad situation for people that don't have cars, but for people with cars, 2 or 3 miles to a grocer is irrelevant. In Detroit, roughly 90% of households have at least 1 vehicle: https://datausa.io/profile/geo/detroit-mi/#category_transportation https://datausa.io/profile/geo/detroit-mi/#category_transpor...
cat199 9y ago
> The population density doesn't support the economy of scale required to make daily fresh produce profitable. Yet strangely, before mass-market supermarkets existed, people in rural areas ate fresh produce directly from farmers without having such 'economy of scale'.. and the people in the city had trouble accessing them.. when the 'economy of scale' is devoured by the middlemen creating it, it is neither economical nor scalable..
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  > Yet strangely, before mass-market supermarkets existed, people in rural areas ate fresh produce directly from farmers Before mass-market supermarkets existed, rural people ate fresh produce often only because they grew it themselves, not because they were able to buy it direct from a farmer. To buy from a farmer, you need cash, and a lot of rural families were cash-poor. Instead, people in the countryside maintained their own gardens and they made a lot of pickled foods for the winter. However, that is all a lot of work, and in fact historically a lot of rural families had poor nutrition in terms of fresh vegetables in spite of living in the regions that these vegetables came from.

by ohyes 9y ago

rayiner 9y ago

Even in metro areas the major chains are terrible. But we’re also less willing to pay more for food compared to Western Europe.

maxerickson 9y ago

Food deserts are places where people mostly have cars and drive to the store. It's a bad situation for people that don't have cars, but for people with cars, 2 or 3 miles to a grocer is irrelevant. In Detroit, roughly 90% of households have at least 1 vehicle: https://datausa.io/profile/geo/detroit-mi/#category_transportation https://datausa.io/profile/geo/detroit-mi/#category_transpor...

cat199 9y ago

> The population density doesn't support the economy of scale required to make daily fresh produce profitable. Yet strangely, before mass-market supermarkets existed, people in rural areas ate fresh produce directly from farmers without having such 'economy of scale'.. and the people in the city had trouble accessing them.. when the 'economy of scale' is devoured by the middlemen creating it, it is neither economical nor scalable..

Mediterraneo10 9y ago
> Yet strangely, before mass-market supermarkets existed, people in rural areas ate fresh produce directly from farmers Before mass-market supermarkets existed, rural people ate fresh produce often only because they grew it themselves, not because they were able to buy it direct from a farmer. To buy from a farmer, you need cash, and a lot of rural families were cash-poor. Instead, people in the countryside maintained their own gardens and they made a lot of pickled foods for the winter. However, that is all a lot of work, and in fact historically a lot of rural families had poor nutrition in terms of fresh vegetables in spite of living in the regions that these vegetables came from.