13 ms·

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

by 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.
    - maria2 4y ago
      So why do food deserts exist? The article simply states people live in food deserts. The article doesn't offer a reason for their existence.
      - DoreenMichele 4y ago
        Most likely, food deserts exist because we are transitioning away from an economy based on the idea of a nuclear family with a male breadwinner, female homemaker and 2.5 kids and all our benefits (medical, retirement), food culture etc. has all these baked in assumptions that mom is doing the grocery shopping and cooking for a family of four or more and that's no longer reality. People don't have time to cook. We haven't done enough to update our work arrangements to allow for someone to both work and eat well without mom having dinner waiting for dad when he gets home from work. We haven't updated our food culture to allow for enough fresh, healthy options that don't take a lot of time. Etc
        mym1990 4y ago
        I feel like advertising does so much to move the needle the wrong way, as well as services like Uber Eats. No one is out there advertising how great heads of broccoli are...its not a sexy product. But colorful Fruit Loops with 3000g of sugar per bowl that are addicting as anything I've ever come across...now there is a catch. I've also seen a shift of eating apart for families as well, I would be curious to know how many families actually sit down at a table for a nightly meal nowadays.
        DoreenMichele 4y ago
        Most people don't actually understand the problem space. You don't even seem to understand the problem space, given your closing line: I would be curious to know how many families actually sit down at a table for a nightly meal nowadays The entire point I am making is that we are moving away from a life that revolves around the nuclear family. Many households in the US today have one to three members. If you live alone or as part of a childless couple or are a single parent, etc. then this cooking from scratch "the way my mother did" just doesn't actually logistically work. And I see the evidence of this over and over and over in online forums, from comments to questions about how to cope with various aspects of the issue. People are not happy with the way they eat and they don't know how to fix it. And the solutions we come up with are often not really very good solutions.
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- fyfirhffuug 4y ago
  Rice and potatoes are cheap, milk is cheap, a tub of country crock is cheap, basic salad supplies (lettuce, tomato, onions, etc.) are cheap, beans are cheap, white bread and some bologna is cheap, even meat can be cheap if mixed amidst other things to spread it out. None of these things are so exotic or in such short supply that you couldn't find them somewhere within a few bus stops even if you lacked the barest of local options. The poor might be unhealthy but it's not because they lack for cheap nutrition or the means to access it.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Funny I live in a capitalist society and we don't have many of these food deserts. Its almost as if not every capitalist country has horrendously idiotic city planning.
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    Most of the area of food deserts (as defined by the USDA) is rural. People live out in the country (often by choice) and then show up in statistics saying that there are lots of people that have low access to food. https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts Poor areas in cities will often not have an immediate, large, well stocked grocery store, but they are probably only a mile or two away from one, and there will certainly be smaller stores with some fresh items.
escapedmoose 4y ago
A simple reason could be transportation cost/difficulties, especially for fresh foods like the ones you’ve described. Productive farmland isn’t ubiquitous. Outside of a spreadsheet, physical products certainly do not “materialize” from nothing.
etchalon 4y ago
You're collapsing "demand" into "they must not want it" instead of "the size of the demand doesn't match the minimal demand needed for the economics." Grocery stores are very low-margin. They basically only work at scale. You need a lot of space, and a lot of customers. Those two factors combine to eliminate numerous areas where demand for the product otherwise exists. Not enough customers and/or not enough physical space available. And constrained by either space, or customer count, you've got some hard choices to make. Produce, fruit, fresh meat, etc are not high-profit items for grocery stores (They're often high-margin, but spoilage destroys net profit). You need a certain amount of turn-over to make the math work. On top of turn-over, you need to be selling a lot of high-profit goods to make up for all the offsets in a grocery business. In low-income neighborhoods, how many customers will you have for deli products with high-markups? Or Prepared Foods? Hell, with EBT rules, a lot of high-margin goods can't even be bought by your core customer. You can't buy alcohol with EBT, for instance, and that's a huge chunk of profit for modern grocery stores. And without all those healthy margin items, your labor costs need to be incredibly low. What are you left with? Shelf-stable, low-quantity, bulk-purchased items in a densely packed store with the lowest possible labor costs. And what is a Dollar Store?
- maria2 4y ago
  This sounds very smart, but essentially what you're saying is that there isn't enough demand to support a store that sells fresh produce. Yes, the ability to profitably run a store is based off of margin and volume. Both of those are driven by demand.
  - etchalon 4y ago
    I'm being explicit about what "demand" means, and how the economics of grocery stores intersect with things like physical space, infrastructure, government regulation, etc. lest someone think "there's not enough demand" means "poor people just don't want affordable, nutritious food." There can be plenty of demand for a quality grocery store, but not enough square footage available to support a store that sells the volume and mix of goods necessary to create a profitable business. There can be plenty of square footage, and relatively high demand but not enough literal humans in the area to support it. And there can be enough space, and enough people, but infrastructure problems which create uneven costs on the business.
faeriechangling 4y ago
Capitalism is a mere social structure, we live on an earth with limited agricultural output. Soil depletion has already made food less nutritious and the problem isn’t getting better.
jjav 4y ago
> Where there exists demand for a good, supply materializes. Only if it is sufficiently (read: highly) profitable. Otherwise there can be all the demand in the world but it doesn't matter.

by maria2 4y ago

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.
  - maria2 4y ago
    So why do food deserts exist? The article simply states people live in food deserts. The article doesn't offer a reason for their existence.
    - DoreenMichele 4y ago
      Most likely, food deserts exist because we are transitioning away from an economy based on the idea of a nuclear family with a male breadwinner, female homemaker and 2.5 kids and all our benefits (medical, retirement), food culture etc. has all these baked in assumptions that mom is doing the grocery shopping and cooking for a family of four or more and that's no longer reality. People don't have time to cook. We haven't done enough to update our work arrangements to allow for someone to both work and eat well without mom having dinner waiting for dad when he gets home from work. We haven't updated our food culture to allow for enough fresh, healthy options that don't take a lot of time. Etc
      - mym1990 4y ago
        I feel like advertising does so much to move the needle the wrong way, as well as services like Uber Eats. No one is out there advertising how great heads of broccoli are...its not a sexy product. But colorful Fruit Loops with 3000g of sugar per bowl that are addicting as anything I've ever come across...now there is a catch. I've also seen a shift of eating apart for families as well, I would be curious to know how many families actually sit down at a table for a nightly meal nowadays.
        DoreenMichele 4y ago
        Most people don't actually understand the problem space. You don't even seem to understand the problem space, given your closing line: I would be curious to know how many families actually sit down at a table for a nightly meal nowadays The entire point I am making is that we are moving away from a life that revolves around the nuclear family. Many households in the US today have one to three members. If you live alone or as part of a childless couple or are a single parent, etc. then this cooking from scratch "the way my mother did" just doesn't actually logistically work. And I see the evidence of this over and over and over in online forums, from comments to questions about how to cope with various aspects of the issue. People are not happy with the way they eat and they don't know how to fix it. And the solutions we come up with are often not really very good solutions.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
fyfirhffuug 4y ago
Rice and potatoes are cheap, milk is cheap, a tub of country crock is cheap, basic salad supplies (lettuce, tomato, onions, etc.) are cheap, beans are cheap, white bread and some bologna is cheap, even meat can be cheap if mixed amidst other things to spread it out. None of these things are so exotic or in such short supply that you couldn't find them somewhere within a few bus stops even if you lacked the barest of local options. The poor might be unhealthy but it's not because they lack for cheap nutrition or the means to access it.
panick21_ 4y ago
Funny I live in a capitalist society and we don't have many of these food deserts. Its almost as if not every capitalist country has horrendously idiotic city planning.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  Most of the area of food deserts (as defined by the USDA) is rural. People live out in the country (often by choice) and then show up in statistics saying that there are lots of people that have low access to food. https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts Poor areas in cities will often not have an immediate, large, well stocked grocery store, but they are probably only a mile or two away from one, and there will certainly be smaller stores with some fresh items.

escapedmoose 4y ago

A simple reason could be transportation cost/difficulties, especially for fresh foods like the ones you’ve described. Productive farmland isn’t ubiquitous. Outside of a spreadsheet, physical products certainly do not “materialize” from nothing.

etchalon 4y ago

You're collapsing "demand" into "they must not want it" instead of "the size of the demand doesn't match the minimal demand needed for the economics." Grocery stores are very low-margin. They basically only work at scale. You need a lot of space, and a lot of customers. Those two factors combine to eliminate numerous areas where demand for the product otherwise exists. Not enough customers and/or not enough physical space available. And constrained by either space, or customer count, you've got some hard choices to make. Produce, fruit, fresh meat, etc are not high-profit items for grocery stores (They're often high-margin, but spoilage destroys net profit). You need a certain amount of turn-over to make the math work. On top of turn-over, you need to be selling a lot of high-profit goods to make up for all the offsets in a grocery business. In low-income neighborhoods, how many customers will you have for deli products with high-markups? Or Prepared Foods? Hell, with EBT rules, a lot of high-margin goods can't even be bought by your core customer. You can't buy alcohol with EBT, for instance, and that's a huge chunk of profit for modern grocery stores. And without all those healthy margin items, your labor costs need to be incredibly low. What are you left with? Shelf-stable, low-quantity, bulk-purchased items in a densely packed store with the lowest possible labor costs. And what is a Dollar Store?

maria2 4y ago
This sounds very smart, but essentially what you're saying is that there isn't enough demand to support a store that sells fresh produce. Yes, the ability to profitably run a store is based off of margin and volume. Both of those are driven by demand.
- etchalon 4y ago
  I'm being explicit about what "demand" means, and how the economics of grocery stores intersect with things like physical space, infrastructure, government regulation, etc. lest someone think "there's not enough demand" means "poor people just don't want affordable, nutritious food." There can be plenty of demand for a quality grocery store, but not enough square footage available to support a store that sells the volume and mix of goods necessary to create a profitable business. There can be plenty of square footage, and relatively high demand but not enough literal humans in the area to support it. And there can be enough space, and enough people, but infrastructure problems which create uneven costs on the business.

faeriechangling 4y ago

Capitalism is a mere social structure, we live on an earth with limited agricultural output. Soil depletion has already made food less nutritious and the problem isn’t getting better.

jjav 4y ago

> Where there exists demand for a good, supply materializes. Only if it is sufficiently (read: highly) profitable. Otherwise there can be all the demand in the world but it doesn't matter.