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Not to harp on it, but bisquick pancake mix perfectly exemplifies my point: The cheapest per unit bisquick they have at walmart is 6 lbs for $9.38. Keep in mind

Not to harp on it, but bisquick pancake mix perfectly exemplifies my point: The cheapest per unit bisquick they have at walmart is 6 lbs for $9.38. Keep in mind you still need to add your own milk and eggs to this anyway. Compare to home made: - 10 lbs bag of flour for $3.98, - 1 8.1 oz can of baking powder - $1.98 -- you'd have a few tablespoons leftover but let's just allot the whole can to it - 48 oz vegetable oil - $3.64 -- you'd use 20oz per 10 lbs flour, so $1.52 worth, with 28 oz remaining for other cooking. So, you can have 6 lbs of bisquick for $9.38, or 11 lbs of homemade mix for $7.48. That's $0.68/lbs homemade, versus $1.56/lbs for bisquick. You're paying about 2.5x in order to not dump a little bit of baking powder and oil into some flour. It's a bad financial decision to buy bisquick instead of the ingredients and DIY.

wahern 3y ago
This is HN, so that's fair. I just don't think that food was the wealth bottle neck for which these people were optimizing, for better or worse. A starving college student might deliberately resolve themself to eat frank & beans every day while completing their degree (setting aside that that's definitely not the optimal calorie/$ strategy), but someone living squarely in an impoverished environment is often focusing on other perceived limiters, specifically related to upward mobility or steady income. That said, such an explanation doesn't lend any credence to the so-called food desert argument, either. Quite the contrary, it would explain why people often eat as-if they're in a food desert even when they're not--i.e. eat lots of junk food from the convenience store or fast food outlet down the block, rather than buying staples from the grocery that's a 10 minute walk away, behavior I've seen and experienced in many areas. Short-term and myopic thinking and behavioral patterns (variously described as rational or irrational, depending on how its contextualized) is a hallmark of poverty that has been rigorously shown time and again, notwithstanding that the concept of a "culture of poverty" has become taboo.

wahern 3y ago

This is HN, so that's fair. I just don't think that food was the wealth bottle neck for which these people were optimizing, for better or worse. A starving college student might deliberately resolve themself to eat frank & beans every day while completing their degree (setting aside that that's definitely not the optimal calorie/$ strategy), but someone living squarely in an impoverished environment is often focusing on other perceived limiters, specifically related to upward mobility or steady income. That said, such an explanation doesn't lend any credence to the so-called food desert argument, either. Quite the contrary, it would explain why people often eat as-if they're in a food desert even when they're not--i.e. eat lots of junk food from the convenience store or fast food outlet down the block, rather than buying staples from the grocery that's a 10 minute walk away, behavior I've seen and experienced in many areas. Short-term and myopic thinking and behavioral patterns (variously described as rational or irrational, depending on how its contextualized) is a hallmark of poverty that has been rigorously shown time and again, notwithstanding that the concept of a "culture of poverty" has become taboo.