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What if you are eating processed food because you don't have the time, place, ability, or necessary tools to cook? What if you live in a food desert and you do

What if you are eating processed food because you don't have the time, place, ability, or necessary tools to cook? What if you live in a food desert and you do not have reliable transportation to take you to a grocery with fresh foods? What if you have Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder and are also poor? Should you then just starve?

derekp7 7y ago
For "food deserts", this can be fixed by requiring places to offer a good selection of quality healthy items in order to be able to accept food stamps. This will work, as long as the food stamp based income is significant enough for those shops (they wouldn't want to give up that revenue just to avoid adjusting their inventory). Same with a requirement to serve those with dietary restrictions. For the affordability issue, healthy items can be classified as getting a discount on the food stamps. This can be implemented with food stamps plus coupons (that are only good when used in conjunction with them).
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  The requirement you describe is often why convenience stores have a basket with one or two each of Red Delicious apples, bananas, and navel oranges, with a sign saying "fruit $2" It the same sort of dodge as defining ketchup or pizza sauce as a serving of vegetables in school lunches. There's never going to be enough funding to enforce the spirit of the regulation instead of just the literal wording of it.
simonsarris 7y ago
It seems like HN treads a lot of the same ground every time these things are discussed. 1. "Food deserts" are what happens when the demand for ideologically congenial explanations for socially inconvenient facts greatly exceeds the supply. There is an assumed causal directionality which turns out to not be supported. There's a lot of literature on food deserts (as typically stated) being more or less a meme since 2015, here's one example with a couple studies to back it: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/upshot/giving-the-poor-easy-access-to-healthy-food-doesnt-mean-theyll-buy-it.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/upshot/giving-the-poor-ea... > Another study, published this week as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, looked across the country and found that no more than a tenth of the variation in the food people bought could be explained by the availability of a nearby grocery store. The education level of the shoppers, for example, was far more predictive. 2. > because you don't have the time Almost all data we have suggests poor people have more time too cook than middle class people. Examples abound: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-free-time-paradox-in-america/499826/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-fre... They may not have the resources/tools though.

derekp7 7y ago

For "food deserts", this can be fixed by requiring places to offer a good selection of quality healthy items in order to be able to accept food stamps. This will work, as long as the food stamp based income is significant enough for those shops (they wouldn't want to give up that revenue just to avoid adjusting their inventory). Same with a requirement to serve those with dietary restrictions. For the affordability issue, healthy items can be classified as getting a discount on the food stamps. This can be implemented with food stamps plus coupons (that are only good when used in conjunction with them).

logfromblammo 7y ago
The requirement you describe is often why convenience stores have a basket with one or two each of Red Delicious apples, bananas, and navel oranges, with a sign saying "fruit $2" It the same sort of dodge as defining ketchup or pizza sauce as a serving of vegetables in school lunches. There's never going to be enough funding to enforce the spirit of the regulation instead of just the literal wording of it.

simonsarris 7y ago

It seems like HN treads a lot of the same ground every time these things are discussed. 1. "Food deserts" are what happens when the demand for ideologically congenial explanations for socially inconvenient facts greatly exceeds the supply. There is an assumed causal directionality which turns out to not be supported. There's a lot of literature on food deserts (as typically stated) being more or less a meme since 2015, here's one example with a couple studies to back it: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/upshot/giving-the-poor-easy-access-to-healthy-food-doesnt-mean-theyll-buy-it.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/upshot/giving-the-poor-ea... > Another study, published this week as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, looked across the country and found that no more than a tenth of the variation in the food people bought could be explained by the availability of a nearby grocery store. The education level of the shoppers, for example, was far more predictive. 2. > because you don't have the time Almost all data we have suggests poor people have more time too cook than middle class people. Examples abound: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-free-time-paradox-in-america/499826/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-fre... They may not have the resources/tools though.