> > First, it takes money. Healthier diets... generally cost more... They note that the unprocessed diet they fed participants cost 40% more than the ultra-proc

> > First, it takes money. Healthier diets... generally cost more... They note that the unprocessed diet they fed participants cost 40% more than the ultra-processed diet. > And yet, a paragraph later: > > Lots of families in our study cooked almost every night, in part because it was the cheapest option > So wait, hold on, is cooking more expensive or not? What are they eating that's supposedly healthier but significantly more expensive? The next sentence is: "But when their cupboards ran bare, they ate ramen and hot dogs, not a pan of roast chicken and vegetables, as food gurus recommend." > > This means making healthy food more affordable, but it also means addressing the other challenges families face: for example, by guaranteeing workers a living wage and fair working conditions and by investing in families through universal free school lunch and subsidized child care, so that parents don't feel like they're doing it all on their own. > Wait, hold on, what? I thought we were talking about food cooking barriers? I can understand the connection to free school lunch (make sure kids get one solid meal in them a day, if you can call government supplied cafeteria materials food), but, what? All of these have fairly obvious connections to food preparation time. If you do backbreaking labor all day, or work two or three jobs because none of them individually pay enough to support you, you won't have much time or energy to spend on food preparation. And there are the sentences just a few paragraphs earlier: "At a minimum, it requires a working stove and enough money to pay the electric bill to run the stove. One family in our book experienced homelessness during the time we spent with the family. Patricia Washington, her daughter and her two grandchildren moved into a hotel room after being evicted when they couldn't keep up with both the rent and the heating bill." Point being, economic barriers are food preparation barriers.