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This idea that people are actually going hungry due to poverty in the US is absurd. A full day's worth of calories can be had for less than $3. And I'm not just

This idea that people are actually going hungry due to poverty in the US is absurd. A full day's worth of calories can be had for less than $3. And I'm not just talking about going to McDonalds and ordering off the dollar menu, which is certainly an option occasionally. I mean real food. https://www.upstart.com/blog/lowest-cost-per-calorie-foods https://www.upstart.com/blog/lowest-cost-per-calorie-foods And in fact, it is firmly established that it's the poorest people in America who tend to be the fattest. And what free school lunches often solve is not hunger but neglect. There are lots of shitty parents who don't care enough to deposit lunch money in the school account or pack lunch for their kid, or who make appalling dietary choices for their children. I wish people would have a little more skepticism and apply some independent common sense when consuming statistics. People getting food from food banks or consuming free lunch doesn't mean that they are otherwise going hungry. It means they are accepting something offered for free. There are myriad, complicated reasons why those patterns would change. But it's a strong, unjustified conclusion to say it's because they would otherwise go hungry.

maxerickson 6y ago
Eat cold lard for a month challenge.
- throwaway8581 6y ago
  Eggs – $1.61 per 2,000 calories Spaghetti – $1.49 per 2,000 calories Pinto beans – $1.39 per 2,000 calories Whole milk – $1.37 per 2,000 calories Peanut butter – $1.25 per 2,000 calories White rice – $0.41 per 2,000 calories Top ramen (beef & chicken) – $1.82 per 2,000 calories Potatoes – $1.79 per 2,000 calories And if you do more research, you'd see that a loaf of bread is about $2 for about 2000 calories.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Are you supposed to eat the spaghetti uncooked? What about the eggs? Where are homeless people getting the refrigerators to store their milk and eggs?
    - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
      Only a small fraction of those experiencing food insecurity are homeless. Not every solution needs to cover every single person in order to be valuable. Solutions for feeding the homeless are different than the solutions for feeding a single parent with five children living in social housing.
heavyset_go 6y ago
> A full day's worth of calories can be had for less than $3 The problem is that people often don't have that $3.
- throwaway8581 6y ago
  Believe it or not, America is a welfare state and while not as generous as Europe, no one is lacking for $3 to buy food unless they are blowing their government money on something they shouldn't be.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > no one is lacking for $3 I mean, it must be nice to believe this, but the lived experience of millions of Americans would beg to differ.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      "Lived experience" is just a fancy word for "anecdote". I can also point to the lived experience of millions of Americans that enjoy dinner every day (myself included), and we'd be no better off in understanding what the truth is. Per the data, the US is ranked #11 in the world for food security: https://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Index https://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Index
      - throwaway8581 6y ago
        “The lived experiences ...” is what sanctimonious rich liberals say to sound profound when they don’t have anything intelligent to say.
  - Valkhyr 6y ago
    > Believe it or not, America is a welfare state [...] Compared to where? Certainly not most industrialized western countries.
    - 6y ago
soared 6y ago
There are other factors besides money at play. I only know the basics so I'm sure someone can do a better job, but a few examples: * Food deserts. Many low income neighborhoods don't have grocery stores, so residents would need to take public transport both ways with all of their groceries. * Building on above, it takes time to cook your own food. Especially if you're riding the bus to the store, and to work, and to pick up the kids, etc. * Education. Many low income people are taught mcdonalds is the cheapest food, and so thats what they buy. Can you blame someone for something they do not know? * Financial planning and decision making. Same as above. Its difficult for us to understand the low income situation. A family member of mine is a counselor at a high school for kids who get expelled. All these kids want to be lawyers, police officers, or government workers when they grow up because they've literally never seen a white collar worker in real life. They don't know that data science exists, much less step 1 in getting there.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  Food deserts are a matter of lack of demand, not supply. Where poor people want fresh food the market is quite willing to sell it to them. > THE GEOGRAPHY OF POVERTY AND NUTRITION: FOOD DESERTS AND FOOD CHOICES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES > We study the causes of “nutritional inequality”: why the wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the U.S. Using two event study designs exploiting entry of new supermarkets and households’ moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject that neighborhood environments have economically meaningful effects on healthy eating. Using a structural demand model, we find that exposing low-income households to the same food availability and prices experienced by high-income households would reduce nutritional inequality by only 9%, while the remaining 91% is driven by differences in demand. In turn, these income-related demand differences are partially explained by education, nutrition knowledge, and regional preferences. These findings contrast with discussions of nutritional inequality that emphasize supply-side issues such as food deserts.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Supply/demand is a feedback system. Both are the cause. When trying to change a feedback system, you don't look for a root cause because it's literally an infinite loop. Instead you either look for a way to break the loop, or look for a variable you can change that has the best ROI. In the case of a food desert within a residential area, it's probably a lot easier to boost demand by artificially increasing supply, rather than the other way around.
libraryatnight 6y ago
I used to wonder this too, and it's a much more nuanced (like everything!) problem than just money/calories. But the point you make is more or less addressed in any literature or documentation on food issues in the US should you care to find it. I suppose here's the modern starting point for most people engaging with a topic they don't understand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States
igammarays 6y ago
If all of your money is going to rent, health bills have bankrupted you, and you don't have the energy and clarity of mind that comes with healthy food and a stable home, you're expecting such a person to have the mental energy required to cost-optimize on $3/day? Cost-optimization is a hard problem, which is why companies spend a lot of money for consultants to do it, and programmers spend a lot of time figuring out ways to optimize CPU/RAM, for example. So yes, it's actually very easy to end up in a situation where you would go hungry without food banks, even in America.
- throwaway8581 6y ago
  If you can't make the decision to spend your government food stamps card to buy food to eat, then I don't know what society can do for you. What do you want? Prepared food delivered to the home of everyone who lacks the "energy and clarity of mind" or the "mental energy" to make such a simple decision?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

maxerickson 6y ago

Eat cold lard for a month challenge.

throwaway8581 6y ago
Eggs – $1.61 per 2,000 calories Spaghetti – $1.49 per 2,000 calories Pinto beans – $1.39 per 2,000 calories Whole milk – $1.37 per 2,000 calories Peanut butter – $1.25 per 2,000 calories White rice – $0.41 per 2,000 calories Top ramen (beef & chicken) – $1.82 per 2,000 calories Potatoes – $1.79 per 2,000 calories And if you do more research, you'd see that a loaf of bread is about $2 for about 2000 calories.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Are you supposed to eat the spaghetti uncooked? What about the eggs? Where are homeless people getting the refrigerators to store their milk and eggs?
  - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
    Only a small fraction of those experiencing food insecurity are homeless. Not every solution needs to cover every single person in order to be valuable. Solutions for feeding the homeless are different than the solutions for feeding a single parent with five children living in social housing.

heavyset_go 6y ago

> A full day's worth of calories can be had for less than $3 The problem is that people often don't have that $3.

throwaway8581 6y ago
Believe it or not, America is a welfare state and while not as generous as Europe, no one is lacking for $3 to buy food unless they are blowing their government money on something they shouldn't be.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > no one is lacking for $3 I mean, it must be nice to believe this, but the lived experience of millions of Americans would beg to differ.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    "Lived experience" is just a fancy word for "anecdote". I can also point to the lived experience of millions of Americans that enjoy dinner every day (myself included), and we'd be no better off in understanding what the truth is. Per the data, the US is ranked #11 in the world for food security: https://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Index https://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Index
    - throwaway8581 6y ago
      “The lived experiences ...” is what sanctimonious rich liberals say to sound profound when they don’t have anything intelligent to say.
- Valkhyr 6y ago
  > Believe it or not, America is a welfare state [...] Compared to where? Certainly not most industrialized western countries.
  - 6y ago

soared 6y ago

There are other factors besides money at play. I only know the basics so I'm sure someone can do a better job, but a few examples: * Food deserts. Many low income neighborhoods don't have grocery stores, so residents would need to take public transport both ways with all of their groceries. * Building on above, it takes time to cook your own food. Especially if you're riding the bus to the store, and to work, and to pick up the kids, etc. * Education. Many low income people are taught mcdonalds is the cheapest food, and so thats what they buy. Can you blame someone for something they do not know? * Financial planning and decision making. Same as above. Its difficult for us to understand the low income situation. A family member of mine is a counselor at a high school for kids who get expelled. All these kids want to be lawyers, police officers, or government workers when they grow up because they've literally never seen a white collar worker in real life. They don't know that data science exists, much less step 1 in getting there.

barry-cotter 6y ago
Food deserts are a matter of lack of demand, not supply. Where poor people want fresh food the market is quite willing to sell it to them. > THE GEOGRAPHY OF POVERTY AND NUTRITION: FOOD DESERTS AND FOOD CHOICES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES > We study the causes of “nutritional inequality”: why the wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the U.S. Using two event study designs exploiting entry of new supermarkets and households’ moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject that neighborhood environments have economically meaningful effects on healthy eating. Using a structural demand model, we find that exposing low-income households to the same food availability and prices experienced by high-income households would reduce nutritional inequality by only 9%, while the remaining 91% is driven by differences in demand. In turn, these income-related demand differences are partially explained by education, nutrition knowledge, and regional preferences. These findings contrast with discussions of nutritional inequality that emphasize supply-side issues such as food deserts.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Supply/demand is a feedback system. Both are the cause. When trying to change a feedback system, you don't look for a root cause because it's literally an infinite loop. Instead you either look for a way to break the loop, or look for a variable you can change that has the best ROI. In the case of a food desert within a residential area, it's probably a lot easier to boost demand by artificially increasing supply, rather than the other way around.

libraryatnight 6y ago

I used to wonder this too, and it's a much more nuanced (like everything!) problem than just money/calories. But the point you make is more or less addressed in any literature or documentation on food issues in the US should you care to find it. I suppose here's the modern starting point for most people engaging with a topic they don't understand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States

igammarays 6y ago

If all of your money is going to rent, health bills have bankrupted you, and you don't have the energy and clarity of mind that comes with healthy food and a stable home, you're expecting such a person to have the mental energy required to cost-optimize on $3/day? Cost-optimization is a hard problem, which is why companies spend a lot of money for consultants to do it, and programmers spend a lot of time figuring out ways to optimize CPU/RAM, for example. So yes, it's actually very easy to end up in a situation where you would go hungry without food banks, even in America.

throwaway8581 6y ago
If you can't make the decision to spend your government food stamps card to buy food to eat, then I don't know what society can do for you. What do you want? Prepared food delivered to the home of everyone who lacks the "energy and clarity of mind" or the "mental energy" to make such a simple decision?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]