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Food deserts are a tough problem to solve, because they’re often definitively caused by lack of demand, making supply unprofitable and impractical. For example
by MontyCarloHall 4y ago
Food deserts are a tough problem to solve, because they’re often definitively caused by lack of demand, making supply unprofitable and impractical. For example [0]:
> Between 2004 and 2016, more than a thousand supermarkets opened nationwide in neighborhoods around the country that had previously been food deserts. We studied the grocery purchases of about 10,000 households in those neighborhoods. While it’s true that these households buy less healthy groceries than people in wealthier neighborhoods, they do not start buying healthier groceries after a new supermarket opened. Instead, we find that people shop at the new supermarket, but they buy the same kinds of groceries they had been buying before.
> The food desert story is that the lack of supply of healthy foods in food deserts causes lower demand for healthy foods. But the modern economy is more sophisticated than this explanation allows for—grocers have become amazingly good at selling us exactly the kinds of foods we want to buy. As a result, our data support the opposite story: lower demand for healthy food is what causes the lack of supply.
[0] https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/december/what-really-happens-when-a-grocery-store-opens-in-a--food-desert.html https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/decemb...
- majormajor 4y agoI would imagine time is a bigger factor than supply: healthier foods often take longer to prep; to put it the other way, the faster the meal, often the worse the health.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoAnd, of course, the closer to the edge you are economically, the more you have worse problems than taking the time to cook something healthy.
- WalterBright 4y agoYes, it does take a few minutes to cook a steak in the microwave you can buy at the thrift store for $10. About 3 minutes to fry a couple eggs. I throw fresh veggies into the blender, grind them up, and drink them. I'm a very lazy man, and spend very little time preparing healthy meals.
- prawn 4y agoMaybe people should be encouraged to lean on frozen vegetables - they're already prepared (trimmed and chopped), no spoilage because you didn't get around to using them in time, can have them at hand like anything shelf stable, then incorporating them into something like a stirfry is almost instant. A very quick combo I make fairly often is rice in the rice cooker with dumplings (out of the freezer) steamed on top. Sprinkle with various sauces, deep fried shallots, etc and done. Then refrigerate the extra rice and use it to make fried rice the next day with frozen vegetables, etc. The rice cooker is hands-off. The fried rice is quick and leaves leftovers. I incorporate fresh ingredients from my garden but it's easy to make something decent without those.
- triyambakam 4y agoI really appreciate frozen broccoli for this reason and it's nice to put it on top of masoor dal while it cooks.
- wfhordie 4y agoIf I were going to give something to every household in the US, it would be a rice cooker. I made fun of these before I had one -- how hard is it to cook rice? -- but when it comes down to it, they just make everything so much easier. You can pretty much make any rice-like-thing in it, too: oatmeal, quinoa... and you literally cannot fuck it up. 2:1 water:rice, any setting, cook -- done.
- prawn 4y agoAgree - much easier than the stovetop. Put it on, dings when done and then switches to warm mode rather than boil over or burn. Plus the ability to steam at the top, again without fuss. Also, they're not necessarily expensive. Anyone lazy or remotely busy is crazy for not having one.
- tomcam 4y agoYes, and also air fryers
- mcntsh 4y agoIt takes me ~10 minutes to make beans/rice/frozen veggies. For comparison it takes 30-45 minutes to get food delivered.
- contingencies 4y agothey’re often definitively caused by lack of demand, making supply unprofitable and impractical Automation allows provisioning to reduced aggregate demand levels while maintaining profitability.
- WalterBright 4y ago> grocers have become amazingly good at selling us exactly the kinds of foods we want to buy The profit motive is quite the shiznit! Communist stores, on the other hand, tend to be very good at being out of stock of whatever you want to buy. Ask anyone who grew up the USSR. If you're above a certain age (I am) you'll also remember how good Nixon's DOE was at getting gas to your local gas station. You'd get to wait in line for hours, and you weren't allowed to buy gas at all if the last digit on your license plate was wrong for that day.
- pmoriarty 4y ago"grocers have become amazingly good at selling us exactly the kinds of foods we want to buy" ...and what people want to buy is in no small part determined by advertising. Peer pressure and tradition figure in to this too.
- mc32 4y agoYes, advertising definitely does detrimentally affect consumers... But I'll insist Sugar and sweetners, do not need any advertising whatsoever! Sugar sells itself. And these guys and gals know it and they pump it into everything, including most "healthy" things.