5 ms·
You do know that healthy food is more expensive than junk food, right?
by belltaco 7y ago
You do know that healthy food is more expensive than junk food, right?
- rb808 7y agoNot if you're careful. Rice, beans, frozen veg are cheap AF.
- technofiend 7y agoAssuming you don't live in a food desert. Cheapest food from a place served by dollar stores, bodegas, gas stations and other small chains is often not rice, beans and frozen veg. I invite you to try shopping at a Family Dollar and see what comes out the cheapest per calorie. Most likely it'll be high carb high fat processed food.
- javagram 7y agoFood deserts are overhyped https://www.bluezones.com/2017/11/news-food-swamps-contribute-obesity-food-deserts/ https://www.bluezones.com/2017/11/news-food-swamps-contribut... Anyone who owns a car can get out of their “food desert” anyway and the obesity crisis is hardly limited to those who don’t drive.
- qntty 7y agoWhen you're talking about poor people, you can't assume that people have a car. Some of the worst food deserts are in cities where you can get by without a car. Plus when you work 3 jobs and have kids, driving an extra 10 minutes both ways to get to a better grocery store can be too much.
- javagram 7y agoI know I can’t assume that which is why I said there are people without cars. The parent post listed foods like rice, beans, and frozen veg all of which have long shelf life. If you swap canned veg for the frozen, you don’t even need refrigeration. That means you don’t need more than a weekly trip to the grocery store. If you do have a car, the extra 10 minutes of travel time isn’t that much. Once you bring time and overworked parents into the picture things look different. It’s certainly a lot easier from a time perspective to grab food from McDonald’s or other unhealthy ultraprocessed foods that don’t need any cooking or prep work at all. But that has little to do with the “food desert” concept since it affects you no matter how close the grocery store is.
- technofiend 7y ago"Extra 10 minutes of travel time"? Sir I believe you are misinformed on typical public transportation travel times. The median wait time for a bus usually exceeds 10 minutes. Factor in the fact that a proper grocery store may not be on the bus line that gets you out of the neighborhood and you're easily looking at hours on a bus there and back to shop at a proper grocery store.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- burkaman 7y agoThe study says that both food deserts and food swamps contribute to obesity. Also: > The present study has limitations. First, as noted by Dunn, highways are an imperfect instrument. There were 1672 counties with no highway exits, so this IV approach did not provide information about counties where the food environment is not associated with the number of highway exits. 1672 counties is more than half the country. I recommend reading the rest of the Limitations section as well.
- asveikau 7y agoMy first read was similar to another reply, that a phrasing "anyone who owns a car" is pretty much a "let them eat cake" moment. But ignoring that for a moment.... It's funny that cars are implicit in your comment. I have always felt that car culture itself contributes to obesity in a big way. I've never been low-income, but I myself was obese for much of the current decade, until I drastically reduced my car usage a few years ago. So I think for some people you have a bunch of factors re-enforcing each other: low income / multiple jobs, stress, car culture, but importantly, if you have that last one as a hard requirement, you get additional stress and increased income requirements from needing that car. i.e. Imagine a situation where you need extra hours at work or another job to pay for the car to drive to get your food, and you need extra time and stress for all of this.
- technofiend 7y ago>Food deserts are overhyped According to Blue Zones, who have a clear agenda around removing unhealthy choices versus adding healthy ones as well as a meal plan to sell.
- harimau777 7y agoCompared to processed food, I think it could be more difficult to prepare those in an appetizing way.
- cgriswald 7y agoRice, beans, and frozen veg sounds like a high carb, low nutrient diet. Especially if it’s white rice.
- crooked-v 7y agoThe better way to describe it is that healthy food that triggers the same visceral pleasure reactions as junk food and that takes the same minimal amount of time to prepare is more expensive than junk food.
- zcid 7y agoCan you show me some examples of cheap junk food? A bag of chips and a soda costs about the same here as a pound of chicken or pork and any one vegetable side. Go down the frozen meal aisle where I'm assuming most unhealthy people shop and it's far more expensive than buying the raw ingredients. Sure it requires more effort to cook from scratch, but you can't throw money at people not willing to put in the work and expect better results.
- Karunamon 7y agoAny fast food place that has a value menu (so, most of them). A double cheeseburger at the local McDonalds can be had for around $1.30, and this is both tasty and filling (440cal), if terribly unhealthy. Something that I think gets missed in this is time value. If you're poorer, you likely have less free time, and that cuts into things like shopping for groceries (doubly if you're one of the 23.5 million that live in a "food desert" [1]) and meal prep. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
- burkaman 7y agoPlease factor the following into your cost comparison: - Extra time required to cook - A home with a functional refrigerator, oven, stove, etc. - Time and transportation costs to and from a grocery store. Remember that poor people tend to live much further from a grocery store than you're used to. - More money required up front. If you have literally $20 in your bank account, are you gonna spend some of it on bus fare to get to the grocery store an hour away, buy $10 of food, and come home, or are you gonna get a $1 hot dog from the 7/11 down the street?
- mschuster91 7y agoGP means, and that rightfully, that increasing funding for food stamps is not the way to go - it simply hides the problem, which is wages too low to live on. Food stamps for working people are nothing more than a massive subsidy for companies such as Wal-Mart. What's more, food stamps are psychologically degrading. Imagine working one or two jobs and not being able to provide proper food for your family!
- qntty 7y agoIt would probably be good to increase wages and food stamps. Most people on food stamps are on them for less than a year while they fall on hard times. No need to deprive people of food during a time like this. Although, if they have a job, they shouldn't need to be on food stamps if min wage is reasonable.
- cgriswald 7y agoFood stamps means we all pay for it through taxes (including Walmart). We can (and do) exclude the poor from paying. The end result is increased buying power for the poor when it comes to food. Raising minimum wages at Walmart means we all pay through higher prices (except Walmart, who passes the costs on). The poor cannot be excluded from this, so although their wages increase, it’s not clear their buying power increases.
- pkaye 7y agoYup it is about $1.50/day more to eat healthy food. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/healthy-vs-unhealthy-diet-costs-1-50-more/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/healthy-vs-...
- lvmii 7y agoIf you really believe most people on food stamps use them to buy healthy food I have a bridge to sell you.