12 ms·

Nutritious food can be very cheap. Others have mentioned beans and rice. Beans are an amazing source of nutrition. Dried beans are dirt cheap and require little

by maria2 4y ago

Nutritious food can be very cheap. Others have mentioned beans and rice. Beans are an amazing source of nutrition. Dried beans are dirt cheap and require little work to prepare. Organic bananas from Whole Foods are about $0.50 each. I'm pretty sure you can find a cheaper banana elsewhere. Broccoli costs less than a $1 per head, typically. Organic rainbow carrots are $1.50 a pound. I could go on. The point is, good food can be cheap. And yes, food deserts exist. And yes, people buy poor quality food from stores like Dollar General. But perhaps there is a correlation here? Maybe (some) food deserts exists because there is little demand for fresh food in those regions.

Quarrelsome 4y ago
might also be hard to find the time to cook when you got two kids and three jobs.
satellites 4y ago
As mentioned in the article, some low income housing units literally don’t have kitchens or don’t allow cooking. This blew my mind and is a facet of poverty I hadn’t even considered. Also, are you actually making the point that food deserts exist because all the people in the area just decided not to buy groceries? I haven’t read such a blatant “blame the poors for their situation” take in a while.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  If you've really fallen out of society and gone through an eviction or foreclosure then your credit is shot so badly you can only afford to live at a weekly rate motel (you'll never pass a real apartment's credit check). Those places don't have or allow any kind of cooking. A mini fridge and a microwave that's hopefully still working is all you have.
  - satellites 4y ago
    Good point. I hadn’t considered that type of housing. It got me thinking though. My partner got evicted when she was younger (early twenties) because her roommate was lying and stealing rent money. Her credit was shot and she had to live with family for years while getting her record cleared. It’s sad to think that if she hadn’t had family to fall back on, she could’ve ended up in that situation. More people than one would think are just one bad situation away from falling into that trap.
    - rurp 4y ago
      > More people than one would think are just one bad situation away from falling into that trap. This is a great point to keep in mind. I think a lot of folks are blind to how fragile financial stability is in the US and how much of a role luck plays in all of this.
  - tbrownaw 4y ago
    > Those places don't have or allow any kind of cooking. A mini fridge and a microwave that's hopefully still working is all you have. The ones I see around here[1] specifically advertise having full kitchens. Both on their local signage and on their website. [1] https://www.extendedstayamerica.com/ https://www.extendedstayamerica.com/
    - jjav 4y ago
      > The ones I see around here[1] specifically advertise having full kitchens. Both on their local signage and on their website. Those are relatively nice weekly/monthly hotels. That's not where the desperately poor go. There are ~$30/night extended stay motels but the quality is what you'd expect. No fridge, no cooking, heat/AC doesn't work, very filty.
  - FrontierPsych 4y ago
    And there is zero wrong with a microwave and mini fridge. I personally don't see an issue with that. I've had to do that in the distant past, it was no problem at all, not at all. It's only a problem if you want to be Bill Gates lifestyle while making $15K per year.
- maria2 4y ago
  My argument is that nutritious, affordable food exists. We live in a capitalist society. Where there exists demand for a good, supply materializes. I'm open to other interpretations. But I would need a compelling, non-demand reason why affordable food, which exists in surplus elsewhere, can't be sold in certain neighborhoods.
  - satellites 4y ago
    … unless you live in a food desert, in which case that capitalist society is failing to provide for basic needs. This is a complex problem. Your reductive takes don’t really address the issue at hand and instead seek to wave it away. “I already believe our system is great, so I’ll blame the poors before applying critical perspective to the system itself.”
    - maria2 4y ago
      > … unless you live in a food desert, in which case that capitalist society is failing to provide for basic needs. Yes, you're starting to get it! If demand existed for cheap, nutritious food, someone would provide it for profit. We already know the food can be provided cheaply and profitably in other, more expensive, regions. So what conclusion can we come to other than that food deserts exist because the demand for the food doesn't exist?
      - satellites 4y ago
        I’m telling you that there IS demand, there IS need, but capitalism will not provide because market incentives are not enough to correct the situation. Reality is not a thought experiment, and “supply and demand” is a simplistic reduction that conveys a general principle of economics but does not cover the entire nuanced reality of the food desert phenomenon. You are approaching this like someone who just took Econ 101 and thinks they have the whole thing figured out. And since it’s clear that you really are doubling down on your idea that “it is poor people’s fault if they live in a food desert,” all I can do is encourage you to read this article and read more about the subject before assuming you are smarter than everyone else who actually works on this type of issue. Cheers.
- anon291 4y ago
  Food deserts occur because we tolerate petty crime in the name of wokeness. I'm seeing this play out in my own inner city neighborhood where grocery stores are talking about closing after the city destaffed police.
  - Aloha 4y ago
    The phenomenon was happening before 'wokeness' there are articles from the early 70's talking about the problem - also, intercity america and rural america often have the exact same problems which just manifest in different ways.
    - anon291 4y ago
      Okay, but I'm saying I'm seeing a food desert develop in real time, and the reason today is what I said it was. I don't know about the 70s and 60s in detail. But from what I do know of them, I imagine similar dynamics were at play.
      - Aloha 4y ago
        Yeah, and area that was already on the margins slips into poverty for a list of reasons. Grocery stores aren't closing en masse in poor areas. In most cases they've been gone for decades.
  - Eextra953 4y ago
    Please explain how tolerating petty crimes creates food deserts.
    - anon291 4y ago
      Businesses close... Local operators are at a disadvantage compared to owners in safer areas, thus they close or just don't expand as fast.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Nonsense. City centers were devastated by city planners in the 50/60s and cities in the US were hurt by zoneing regulation. In fact, if you have good mixed use cities, your city shouldn't even need much policy in the first place. Safety doesn't come from policy, but civil society. If you are relaying on policy to operate a basic store in a city you know you have big problems already. And blaming 'wokeness' for the problems of inner cities in the US is crazy.
- FrontierPsych 4y ago
  You can make anything in a microwave. There is no way that they don't allow microwaves. And I personally just bought a microwave from craigslist for $15, and it was almost brand new. The buttons that you press the time in still had the plastic covering on it. Same with fridges - can buy a used one for super inexpensive - a small one, to be sure, but at least you have something. Or could buy two of them over time. There are always solutions. There are no such thing as food deserts. I've seen the maps, and yes, there are areas that don't have large grocery stores. BUT, there are good grocery stores 5 or 8 miles away. If you have a car, you drive there. If you don't, you find someone who has a car to drive you there and carry inexpensive groceries back. Could be a neighbor, a church, yeah, it will take a little extra work, but so what? My family member lived way in the rural area and had to take a 1 hour trip each way to Costco once a month to stock up on staples. They took the time, why can't everyone else. Except they had to drive 60 miles, not 5 or 8 miles. There are always easy solutions. Unfortunately, I think I'm the only person in the known universe that knows the solutions.
  - Infinitesimus 4y ago
    No, you aren't the only one who knows the solutions. > microwaves Many cheap motels do not in fact have microwaves. Buying one for $15 is great if you live in a place where people are selling working microwaves for that price and eveyrone else is not also poor and looking for a microwave. > They took the time, why can't everyone else. Not if you're working 3 jobs and barely have time to sleep while being a caregiver. Some people don't get to take time off to do things. > There are no such thing as food deserts. I've seen the maps, and yes, there are areas that don't have large grocery stores. Perhaps talk to someone who'se lived in one? There's quite a lot of arrogance to say "I've looked at the maps so your problem doesn't exist" from wherever you're based on earth. There are solutions in many situations but the cycle is vicious and you're one bad step away from getting eating alive in many places. Poor nutrition -> health problems -> limited time -> getting laid off for underperformance (or plain cruelty). It isn't always a way out in life without a dollop of luck.
    - FrontierPsych 4y ago
      I personally work with a woman that has 5 children and works 2 fulltime jobs. Her husband used to do all the work but he died of health issue 3 years ago. She does have her mother and sister to help her with her children. But when I talk to her about this, she understands and agrees with what I say and does it. I'm not saying it is easy - it isn't. But when you are there, you have to do what you have to do. I think I AM the only one who knows the solution. Because when I was in my 20s, I been there, done that.
soared 4y ago
Dry beans and fresh food like you described cost a large amount of time to prepare compared to processed food, and time is a luxury poor people do not have. If you take a bus to work, you probably don’t have time cook.
- quacked 4y ago
  > Time is a luxury poor people do not have I know a lot of poor people and I assure you that many of them have plenty of time. There are certainly many hard-working poor who desperately need time back in their day and would cook if they had the time, but time alone would certainly not solve the phenomena of poor people not cooking. What many other poor people do not have is executive functioning skills, the ability to plan ahead, or impulse control, and some of them also have addictions or expensive recreational drug habits, or live in unsafe scenarios where cooking would be an absurd afterthought. Furthermore, many of the poorest people are recent immigrants (Mexican, Indian, Middle Eastern, African) and those households often rely on home cooking even more than many affluent households do.
  - gusgus01 4y ago
    I'll need to find a better source because I remember an actual study, but is it that they don't have executive functioning skills or is it that being poor affects their executive functioning skills via the constant stress: https://borgenproject.org/psychological-effects-poverty/ https://borgenproject.org/psychological-effects-poverty/
    - quacked 4y ago
      That's an interesting question; if stress alone impacts executive functioning skills you'd expect to see similar reductions in high-stress jobs like surgery, finance, war, extreme sports, etc. Of course one doesn't necessarily consent to the stress of poverty as one might the stress of a career; I suspect that the threat of violence and the fear of being evicted or moved would cause a different stress distribution on the brain then that of performing surgery or flying a fighting helicopter. Ultimately, I think it's likely that stress impacts everyone's executive functioning, not just poor people, but poor people may have a higher stress burden and also probably had lower raw "executive functioning" ability to begin with. In Western countries, where the economies are primarily based on rewarding jobs that prioritize extreme logical abstractions, there is a clear casual relationship between measured intelligence* and lifetime earning potential. I believe that this (unsavory) point is too often left out when proposing solutions to poverty because it implies the existence of an inherent, unfixable difference in human ability. To me this difference is obvious and should simply be planned for, but to many others it's a myth. I do feel passionately about this subject because one of my family members is developmentally disabled enough that she cannot live a normal life but not enough that she's obviously impaired, and the rate at which her decisions lead her to live the life of a pretty run-of-the-mill American poor person is astonishing. If we didn't pay for everything she needed she would fit in perfectly with the behavior and lifestyles of the people in the slum areas of my city, and in fact she's already done some stints there due to some friends she made when she was unwilling to live at the family home. (* = I am not saying "poor people are poor because they're dumb" or "if you're smarter you'll make more money" or that "IQ is real", only that "when you select a random adult, the less well they're able to perform on western-style intelligence tests the less likely it is they'll have a lot of money".)
trentgreene 4y ago
Pretty much all the food you mention are extremely expensive when your basic caloric needs arent met. $1 for broccoli that will give me basically zero energy is a really awful deal. If you have enough calories, then yeah, buy the broccoli. Beans are great, but require time to cook that not everyone has, especially when very poor. They also cost money to cook, require a kitchen, time to clean dishes, a place to store em if cooked in bulk, etc. Bananas though, are wonderful, sent from heaven. To some of your other posts, it’s not really sufficient that this food merely exists. otherwise, yeah, problemo solved, trivial. The bridge that has to be gapped is: - foods gotta be accessible - people gotta have enough time to cook the food, this is a biggy - people gotta have time to clean up from the food - people gotta have enough of the healthy food and with enough macronutrient diversity to not get sick. $1 worth of bananas ain’t gonna hold you like that $1 cheeseburger. Somewhere in all of this is that eating healthy is way more cognitive overload when you’re poor than when you’re stable. Now that I’m stable I have enough time on a Sunday to cook a weeks worth of meals. I don’t really have to scrunch to do it, I’m not cutting into sleep time to do it. Lotta folks don’t have that luxury.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  It might be a case of the US and Australia being different, but here here $1 will get you 3 or 4 bananas at an independent fruit shop whereas even the shittiest cheeseburger on the Hungry Jack's Penny Pinchers menu costs $2.
  - trentgreene 4y ago
    The tricky part of this is macro nutrient diversity and satiety. Let’s say $2 for 8 bananas vs $2 cheeseburger Assuming normal size bananas, that’s about 800 cal worth of banana. From what I can tell about that cheeseburger, 415 cal per serving. So banana almost twice as good? Not quite. Those 8 bananas are pure carbohydrate. You’re gonna digest those very quickly, and you’d still need a source for protein + fat, both of which you need to not die. The shittiest cheeseburger, on the other hand, has tons of fat and a decent hit of protein. Way slower to digest. Also way easier to do stuff after eating. Eating that many bananas is a rough deal 10/10 times in severe poverty, I’d save up for for the cheeseburger. I say though, the banana is still a very good additional carb source on a tight budget when combined with other foods. I ate, and will continue to eat, a boatload of bananas.
faeriechangling 4y ago
Yeah poor people know about Bananas for the most part. You’re gonna need to eat well over ten pounds of broccoli and carrots to get a full days calories. This is going to be something most are going to see more as supplemental, or as means to dip. Beans and rice are well and good but they’re not actually very nutrient dense. I know people who QUIT rice due to concerns that a bowl of rice raises blood sugar. In fact a lot of the foods you suggested are fairly high in sugar. I’ve known others who quit beans because they’re notoriously harsh on digestion. When poor it’s hard to get sufficient nutrients or avoid excessive carbs and sugars, and you don’t have the luxury of playing around with things like speciality diets because you just can’t afford to.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Nobody is suggesting that you get your calories from broccoli and carrots or bananas. That's what grains and fats are for.
- paddim8 4y ago
  Who said you have to eat only broccoli and only bananas? The person mentioned those because you need a varied diet. If you eat potatoes, lentils/beans, broccoli, banana, and some more things, that's a nutritious, cheap and health meal.
panick21_ 4y ago
As I wrote in my other post, its about city planning. > And yes, food deserts exist. Yes because car dependency and long distances involved. If you have a mixed use walkable area there is almost always access to freshish foods at least basic vegis. Being depended on big box stores in some commercial district with a gigantic parking lot that you can't walk to that you only go to once every week or two is the problem.
joenot443 4y ago
>Broccoli costs less than a $1 per head A head of broccoli is going for ~$5 at Loblaws in Canada. It's not much cheaper at shops in NYC. https://www.loblaws.ca/broccoli/p/20145621001_EA https://www.loblaws.ca/broccoli/p/20145621001_EA I bring up this example because if you try hard enough, $5 will buy you an entire (unhealthy) meal. It's really hard to tell someone to spend their entire meal budget on a single head of broccoli! > Organic rainbow carrots are $1.50 a pound https://www.loblaws.ca/organic-carrots-bunched/p/20056027001_EA https://www.loblaws.ca/organic-carrots-bunched/p/20056027001... Sold by the bunch, but really more like ~$10/lb. I don't disagree that it's possible to eat healthily on a thin budget, but we're sadly past the point where this can be accomplished by buying fresh vegetables at the supermarket.

by maria2 4y ago

Quarrelsome 4y ago

might also be hard to find the time to cook when you got two kids and three jobs.

satellites 4y ago

As mentioned in the article, some low income housing units literally don’t have kitchens or don’t allow cooking. This blew my mind and is a facet of poverty I hadn’t even considered. Also, are you actually making the point that food deserts exist because all the people in the area just decided not to buy groceries? I haven’t read such a blatant “blame the poors for their situation” take in a while.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
If you've really fallen out of society and gone through an eviction or foreclosure then your credit is shot so badly you can only afford to live at a weekly rate motel (you'll never pass a real apartment's credit check). Those places don't have or allow any kind of cooking. A mini fridge and a microwave that's hopefully still working is all you have.
- satellites 4y ago
  Good point. I hadn’t considered that type of housing. It got me thinking though. My partner got evicted when she was younger (early twenties) because her roommate was lying and stealing rent money. Her credit was shot and she had to live with family for years while getting her record cleared. It’s sad to think that if she hadn’t had family to fall back on, she could’ve ended up in that situation. More people than one would think are just one bad situation away from falling into that trap.
  - rurp 4y ago
    > More people than one would think are just one bad situation away from falling into that trap. This is a great point to keep in mind. I think a lot of folks are blind to how fragile financial stability is in the US and how much of a role luck plays in all of this.
- tbrownaw 4y ago
  > Those places don't have or allow any kind of cooking. A mini fridge and a microwave that's hopefully still working is all you have. The ones I see around here[1] specifically advertise having full kitchens. Both on their local signage and on their website. [1] https://www.extendedstayamerica.com/ https://www.extendedstayamerica.com/
  - jjav 4y ago
    > The ones I see around here[1] specifically advertise having full kitchens. Both on their local signage and on their website. Those are relatively nice weekly/monthly hotels. That's not where the desperately poor go. There are ~$30/night extended stay motels but the quality is what you'd expect. No fridge, no cooking, heat/AC doesn't work, very filty.
- FrontierPsych 4y ago
  And there is zero wrong with a microwave and mini fridge. I personally don't see an issue with that. I've had to do that in the distant past, it was no problem at all, not at all. It's only a problem if you want to be Bill Gates lifestyle while making $15K per year.
maria2 4y ago
My argument is that nutritious, affordable food exists. We live in a capitalist society. Where there exists demand for a good, supply materializes. I'm open to other interpretations. But I would need a compelling, non-demand reason why affordable food, which exists in surplus elsewhere, can't be sold in certain neighborhoods.
- satellites 4y ago
  … unless you live in a food desert, in which case that capitalist society is failing to provide for basic needs. This is a complex problem. Your reductive takes don’t really address the issue at hand and instead seek to wave it away. “I already believe our system is great, so I’ll blame the poors before applying critical perspective to the system itself.”
  - maria2 4y ago
    > … unless you live in a food desert, in which case that capitalist society is failing to provide for basic needs. Yes, you're starting to get it! If demand existed for cheap, nutritious food, someone would provide it for profit. We already know the food can be provided cheaply and profitably in other, more expensive, regions. So what conclusion can we come to other than that food deserts exist because the demand for the food doesn't exist?
    - satellites 4y ago
      I’m telling you that there IS demand, there IS need, but capitalism will not provide because market incentives are not enough to correct the situation. Reality is not a thought experiment, and “supply and demand” is a simplistic reduction that conveys a general principle of economics but does not cover the entire nuanced reality of the food desert phenomenon. You are approaching this like someone who just took Econ 101 and thinks they have the whole thing figured out. And since it’s clear that you really are doubling down on your idea that “it is poor people’s fault if they live in a food desert,” all I can do is encourage you to read this article and read more about the subject before assuming you are smarter than everyone else who actually works on this type of issue. Cheers.
anon291 4y ago
Food deserts occur because we tolerate petty crime in the name of wokeness. I'm seeing this play out in my own inner city neighborhood where grocery stores are talking about closing after the city destaffed police.
- Aloha 4y ago
  The phenomenon was happening before 'wokeness' there are articles from the early 70's talking about the problem - also, intercity america and rural america often have the exact same problems which just manifest in different ways.
  - anon291 4y ago
    Okay, but I'm saying I'm seeing a food desert develop in real time, and the reason today is what I said it was. I don't know about the 70s and 60s in detail. But from what I do know of them, I imagine similar dynamics were at play.
    - Aloha 4y ago
      Yeah, and area that was already on the margins slips into poverty for a list of reasons. Grocery stores aren't closing en masse in poor areas. In most cases they've been gone for decades.
- Eextra953 4y ago
  Please explain how tolerating petty crimes creates food deserts.
  - anon291 4y ago
    Businesses close... Local operators are at a disadvantage compared to owners in safer areas, thus they close or just don't expand as fast.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Nonsense. City centers were devastated by city planners in the 50/60s and cities in the US were hurt by zoneing regulation. In fact, if you have good mixed use cities, your city shouldn't even need much policy in the first place. Safety doesn't come from policy, but civil society. If you are relaying on policy to operate a basic store in a city you know you have big problems already. And blaming 'wokeness' for the problems of inner cities in the US is crazy.
FrontierPsych 4y ago
You can make anything in a microwave. There is no way that they don't allow microwaves. And I personally just bought a microwave from craigslist for $15, and it was almost brand new. The buttons that you press the time in still had the plastic covering on it. Same with fridges - can buy a used one for super inexpensive - a small one, to be sure, but at least you have something. Or could buy two of them over time. There are always solutions. There are no such thing as food deserts. I've seen the maps, and yes, there are areas that don't have large grocery stores. BUT, there are good grocery stores 5 or 8 miles away. If you have a car, you drive there. If you don't, you find someone who has a car to drive you there and carry inexpensive groceries back. Could be a neighbor, a church, yeah, it will take a little extra work, but so what? My family member lived way in the rural area and had to take a 1 hour trip each way to Costco once a month to stock up on staples. They took the time, why can't everyone else. Except they had to drive 60 miles, not 5 or 8 miles. There are always easy solutions. Unfortunately, I think I'm the only person in the known universe that knows the solutions.
- Infinitesimus 4y ago
  No, you aren't the only one who knows the solutions. > microwaves Many cheap motels do not in fact have microwaves. Buying one for $15 is great if you live in a place where people are selling working microwaves for that price and eveyrone else is not also poor and looking for a microwave. > They took the time, why can't everyone else. Not if you're working 3 jobs and barely have time to sleep while being a caregiver. Some people don't get to take time off to do things. > There are no such thing as food deserts. I've seen the maps, and yes, there are areas that don't have large grocery stores. Perhaps talk to someone who'se lived in one? There's quite a lot of arrogance to say "I've looked at the maps so your problem doesn't exist" from wherever you're based on earth. There are solutions in many situations but the cycle is vicious and you're one bad step away from getting eating alive in many places. Poor nutrition -> health problems -> limited time -> getting laid off for underperformance (or plain cruelty). It isn't always a way out in life without a dollop of luck.
  - FrontierPsych 4y ago
    I personally work with a woman that has 5 children and works 2 fulltime jobs. Her husband used to do all the work but he died of health issue 3 years ago. She does have her mother and sister to help her with her children. But when I talk to her about this, she understands and agrees with what I say and does it. I'm not saying it is easy - it isn't. But when you are there, you have to do what you have to do. I think I AM the only one who knows the solution. Because when I was in my 20s, I been there, done that.

soared 4y ago

Dry beans and fresh food like you described cost a large amount of time to prepare compared to processed food, and time is a luxury poor people do not have. If you take a bus to work, you probably don’t have time cook.

quacked 4y ago
> Time is a luxury poor people do not have I know a lot of poor people and I assure you that many of them have plenty of time. There are certainly many hard-working poor who desperately need time back in their day and would cook if they had the time, but time alone would certainly not solve the phenomena of poor people not cooking. What many other poor people do not have is executive functioning skills, the ability to plan ahead, or impulse control, and some of them also have addictions or expensive recreational drug habits, or live in unsafe scenarios where cooking would be an absurd afterthought. Furthermore, many of the poorest people are recent immigrants (Mexican, Indian, Middle Eastern, African) and those households often rely on home cooking even more than many affluent households do.
- gusgus01 4y ago
  I'll need to find a better source because I remember an actual study, but is it that they don't have executive functioning skills or is it that being poor affects their executive functioning skills via the constant stress: https://borgenproject.org/psychological-effects-poverty/ https://borgenproject.org/psychological-effects-poverty/
  - quacked 4y ago
    That's an interesting question; if stress alone impacts executive functioning skills you'd expect to see similar reductions in high-stress jobs like surgery, finance, war, extreme sports, etc. Of course one doesn't necessarily consent to the stress of poverty as one might the stress of a career; I suspect that the threat of violence and the fear of being evicted or moved would cause a different stress distribution on the brain then that of performing surgery or flying a fighting helicopter. Ultimately, I think it's likely that stress impacts everyone's executive functioning, not just poor people, but poor people may have a higher stress burden and also probably had lower raw "executive functioning" ability to begin with. In Western countries, where the economies are primarily based on rewarding jobs that prioritize extreme logical abstractions, there is a clear casual relationship between measured intelligence* and lifetime earning potential. I believe that this (unsavory) point is too often left out when proposing solutions to poverty because it implies the existence of an inherent, unfixable difference in human ability. To me this difference is obvious and should simply be planned for, but to many others it's a myth. I do feel passionately about this subject because one of my family members is developmentally disabled enough that she cannot live a normal life but not enough that she's obviously impaired, and the rate at which her decisions lead her to live the life of a pretty run-of-the-mill American poor person is astonishing. If we didn't pay for everything she needed she would fit in perfectly with the behavior and lifestyles of the people in the slum areas of my city, and in fact she's already done some stints there due to some friends she made when she was unwilling to live at the family home. (* = I am not saying "poor people are poor because they're dumb" or "if you're smarter you'll make more money" or that "IQ is real", only that "when you select a random adult, the less well they're able to perform on western-style intelligence tests the less likely it is they'll have a lot of money".)

trentgreene 4y ago

Pretty much all the food you mention are extremely expensive when your basic caloric needs arent met. $1 for broccoli that will give me basically zero energy is a really awful deal. If you have enough calories, then yeah, buy the broccoli. Beans are great, but require time to cook that not everyone has, especially when very poor. They also cost money to cook, require a kitchen, time to clean dishes, a place to store em if cooked in bulk, etc. Bananas though, are wonderful, sent from heaven. To some of your other posts, it’s not really sufficient that this food merely exists. otherwise, yeah, problemo solved, trivial. The bridge that has to be gapped is: - foods gotta be accessible - people gotta have enough time to cook the food, this is a biggy - people gotta have time to clean up from the food - people gotta have enough of the healthy food and with enough macronutrient diversity to not get sick. $1 worth of bananas ain’t gonna hold you like that $1 cheeseburger. Somewhere in all of this is that eating healthy is way more cognitive overload when you’re poor than when you’re stable. Now that I’m stable I have enough time on a Sunday to cook a weeks worth of meals. I don’t really have to scrunch to do it, I’m not cutting into sleep time to do it. Lotta folks don’t have that luxury.

AussieWog93 4y ago
It might be a case of the US and Australia being different, but here here $1 will get you 3 or 4 bananas at an independent fruit shop whereas even the shittiest cheeseburger on the Hungry Jack's Penny Pinchers menu costs $2.
- trentgreene 4y ago
  The tricky part of this is macro nutrient diversity and satiety. Let’s say $2 for 8 bananas vs $2 cheeseburger Assuming normal size bananas, that’s about 800 cal worth of banana. From what I can tell about that cheeseburger, 415 cal per serving. So banana almost twice as good? Not quite. Those 8 bananas are pure carbohydrate. You’re gonna digest those very quickly, and you’d still need a source for protein + fat, both of which you need to not die. The shittiest cheeseburger, on the other hand, has tons of fat and a decent hit of protein. Way slower to digest. Also way easier to do stuff after eating. Eating that many bananas is a rough deal 10/10 times in severe poverty, I’d save up for for the cheeseburger. I say though, the banana is still a very good additional carb source on a tight budget when combined with other foods. I ate, and will continue to eat, a boatload of bananas.

faeriechangling 4y ago

Yeah poor people know about Bananas for the most part. You’re gonna need to eat well over ten pounds of broccoli and carrots to get a full days calories. This is going to be something most are going to see more as supplemental, or as means to dip. Beans and rice are well and good but they’re not actually very nutrient dense. I know people who QUIT rice due to concerns that a bowl of rice raises blood sugar. In fact a lot of the foods you suggested are fairly high in sugar. I’ve known others who quit beans because they’re notoriously harsh on digestion. When poor it’s hard to get sufficient nutrients or avoid excessive carbs and sugars, and you don’t have the luxury of playing around with things like speciality diets because you just can’t afford to.

adrianN 4y ago
Nobody is suggesting that you get your calories from broccoli and carrots or bananas. That's what grains and fats are for.
paddim8 4y ago
Who said you have to eat only broccoli and only bananas? The person mentioned those because you need a varied diet. If you eat potatoes, lentils/beans, broccoli, banana, and some more things, that's a nutritious, cheap and health meal.

panick21_ 4y ago

As I wrote in my other post, its about city planning. > And yes, food deserts exist. Yes because car dependency and long distances involved. If you have a mixed use walkable area there is almost always access to freshish foods at least basic vegis. Being depended on big box stores in some commercial district with a gigantic parking lot that you can't walk to that you only go to once every week or two is the problem.

joenot443 4y ago

>Broccoli costs less than a $1 per head A head of broccoli is going for ~$5 at Loblaws in Canada. It's not much cheaper at shops in NYC. https://www.loblaws.ca/broccoli/p/20145621001_EA https://www.loblaws.ca/broccoli/p/20145621001_EA I bring up this example because if you try hard enough, $5 will buy you an entire (unhealthy) meal. It's really hard to tell someone to spend their entire meal budget on a single head of broccoli! > Organic rainbow carrots are $1.50 a pound https://www.loblaws.ca/organic-carrots-bunched/p/20056027001_EA https://www.loblaws.ca/organic-carrots-bunched/p/20056027001... Sold by the bunch, but really more like ~$10/lb. I don't disagree that it's possible to eat healthily on a thin budget, but we're sadly past the point where this can be accomplished by buying fresh vegetables at the supermarket.