5 ms·

While eating healthy can indeed be cheap, I think systemically there are other costs like having the free time and free energy (which both might be depleted aft

While eating healthy can indeed be cheap, I think systemically there are other costs like having the free time and free energy (which both might be depleted after a long day of hard work), other issues like the need to have some sort of transit to a grocer with fresh goods. For many parts of the United States, there's only Dollar General within accessible distance, and many people cannot afford to own or rent cars, and public transportation likely don't exist in their area. I think it's unlikely that prominent statistics of lower income being correlated with lower quality diets can be explained just by "poor people are lazy"

ajsnigrutin 3y ago
Poorer people are fatter in other countries too, and in most countries (at least the developed ones), very few people work more than 8 hours per day (so enough time to cook), and grocery stores are easily accessible.
- youngtaff 3y ago
  Poor people often have to work multiple jobs and often work many more hourse than 8 hours a day. The stress of worrying about how you’re going to feed your kids, pay energy costs, rent etc soon eats time too
  - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    Maybe in USA, not in europe. 40 hours is pretty much the max, maybe 48 for some professions. Random independent contractors (electricians, painters,...) are an exception, but they're far from poor. Having to work multiple jobs and many hours and low access to food (stores) is pretty much a uniquely US problem.
    - asdff 3y ago
      Depends on where you are in europe. Germany, probably better than the U.S. Romania, far worse.
      - petre 3y ago
        Depends where you live and work. I'd totally pick Romania or even Bulgaria over Germany. Healthier and tastier food for one, and I'm not talking restaurants, but farmer's markets. Cities are probably worse, more cars parked eveywhere, more annoying drivers operating them, more pollution, more chaos. I've also met people from Moldova and Ukraine telling me food is way less expensive there. They also eat tastier and more healthy food: borsch, fish, salads but lack EU regulation for big agriculture, so grain, and industrially grown vegetables and meat is probably laced with chemicals banned or regulated in the EU. In Germany the traditional food is quite boring. I won't venture to say awful, because it's still eatable, but doesn't have much variety or taste, like South or East European food. Czech Republic and Poland were also very pleasant food wise: great pickles or cabbage based foods. Hingary? They're eating too much meat. But the goulash and sausages ate usually quite good.
    - youngtaff 3y ago
      Certainly happens in the UK and some of the Eastern European countries
jwells89 3y ago
Even if one technically has time, cooking is a considerable commitment and so it’s easy to end up having little to no downtime after working it into a schedule, especially in a family situation. It’s hard to keep that kind of tight schedule up for long periods while maintaining sanity. Even if you start out cooking regularly and eating healthy it’s easy to burn out and wind up in a funk which then causes a spiraling effect that makes it ever-harder to get back to a healthy lifestyle. So I might suggest that many don’t just need time and energy to be able to cook healthy, but enough to cook healthy and still have time and energy left over. In other words, a sustainable schedule.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  One thing to note here: although industrial agriculture in the US is criticized for using too much energy, we in the US use more energy cooking food than is used to grow it (including all energy used to fuel farm equipment and make agrochemicals.) So don't think that cooking is somehow a trivial problem, especially for the world's poor.
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    That happens only because most people use energetically inefficient methods of cooking, not because it is something intrinsic to cooking. Everything that I eat is cooked by myself from raw ingredients and for that I consume around 0.6 kWh of electric energy per day.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      As opposed to the global poor, who have highly energy efficient cooking equipment? That doesn't sound right.
      - adrian_b 3y ago
        While the maximum energy efficiency for cooking is obtained with modern equipment, like microwave ovens, cooking equipment does not necessarily have to be modern and expensive. I am pretty certain that the kitchen stove used by my grandparents had a much better energy efficiency than the kitchen stoves that burn natural gas and which are still very widespread now. That old kitchen stove was a wood-burning kitchen stove, but only a small quantity of wood had to be burned, because it had a huge thermal inertia and after becoming hot enough food could be cooked for hours with minimal wood consumption. The heat transfer from the large hot iron stove (but with a temperature close to that needed for food, i.e. much lower than the temperature of a gas flame) was much better than from a gas burner, which resulted in much less lost heat. The efficiency of such a wood-burning kitchen stove is likely to have been similar with the efficiency of an induction electric stove.

ajsnigrutin 3y ago

Poorer people are fatter in other countries too, and in most countries (at least the developed ones), very few people work more than 8 hours per day (so enough time to cook), and grocery stores are easily accessible.

youngtaff 3y ago
Poor people often have to work multiple jobs and often work many more hourse than 8 hours a day. The stress of worrying about how you’re going to feed your kids, pay energy costs, rent etc soon eats time too
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  Maybe in USA, not in europe. 40 hours is pretty much the max, maybe 48 for some professions. Random independent contractors (electricians, painters,...) are an exception, but they're far from poor. Having to work multiple jobs and many hours and low access to food (stores) is pretty much a uniquely US problem.
  - asdff 3y ago
    Depends on where you are in europe. Germany, probably better than the U.S. Romania, far worse.
    - petre 3y ago
      Depends where you live and work. I'd totally pick Romania or even Bulgaria over Germany. Healthier and tastier food for one, and I'm not talking restaurants, but farmer's markets. Cities are probably worse, more cars parked eveywhere, more annoying drivers operating them, more pollution, more chaos. I've also met people from Moldova and Ukraine telling me food is way less expensive there. They also eat tastier and more healthy food: borsch, fish, salads but lack EU regulation for big agriculture, so grain, and industrially grown vegetables and meat is probably laced with chemicals banned or regulated in the EU. In Germany the traditional food is quite boring. I won't venture to say awful, because it's still eatable, but doesn't have much variety or taste, like South or East European food. Czech Republic and Poland were also very pleasant food wise: great pickles or cabbage based foods. Hingary? They're eating too much meat. But the goulash and sausages ate usually quite good.
  - youngtaff 3y ago
    Certainly happens in the UK and some of the Eastern European countries

jwells89 3y ago

Even if one technically has time, cooking is a considerable commitment and so it’s easy to end up having little to no downtime after working it into a schedule, especially in a family situation. It’s hard to keep that kind of tight schedule up for long periods while maintaining sanity. Even if you start out cooking regularly and eating healthy it’s easy to burn out and wind up in a funk which then causes a spiraling effect that makes it ever-harder to get back to a healthy lifestyle. So I might suggest that many don’t just need time and energy to be able to cook healthy, but enough to cook healthy and still have time and energy left over. In other words, a sustainable schedule.

pfdietz 3y ago
One thing to note here: although industrial agriculture in the US is criticized for using too much energy, we in the US use more energy cooking food than is used to grow it (including all energy used to fuel farm equipment and make agrochemicals.) So don't think that cooking is somehow a trivial problem, especially for the world's poor.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  That happens only because most people use energetically inefficient methods of cooking, not because it is something intrinsic to cooking. Everything that I eat is cooked by myself from raw ingredients and for that I consume around 0.6 kWh of electric energy per day.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    As opposed to the global poor, who have highly energy efficient cooking equipment? That doesn't sound right.
    - adrian_b 3y ago
      While the maximum energy efficiency for cooking is obtained with modern equipment, like microwave ovens, cooking equipment does not necessarily have to be modern and expensive. I am pretty certain that the kitchen stove used by my grandparents had a much better energy efficiency than the kitchen stoves that burn natural gas and which are still very widespread now. That old kitchen stove was a wood-burning kitchen stove, but only a small quantity of wood had to be burned, because it had a huge thermal inertia and after becoming hot enough food could be cooked for hours with minimal wood consumption. The heat transfer from the large hot iron stove (but with a temperature close to that needed for food, i.e. much lower than the temperature of a gas flame) was much better than from a gas burner, which resulted in much less lost heat. The efficiency of such a wood-burning kitchen stove is likely to have been similar with the efficiency of an induction electric stove.