6 ms·

"She then wipes down the family’s small refrigerator, stuffed with lukewarm milk, Tropicana grape juice and containers of leftover Chinese." Eating out is a gr

"She then wipes down the family’s small refrigerator, stuffed with lukewarm milk, Tropicana grape juice and containers of leftover Chinese." Eating out is a great way to stay poor.

daeken 13y ago
There are two things that make eating out the most viable option for a whole meal when you're poor: The first is that when you have a refrigerator that's sub-par and don't have a freezer, you have to buy the smallest quantities of anything perishable; that means it's expensive as hell. There are things like rice that you can buy in bulk, but if you're in a place with bugs and rodents (like they are), you're screwed on that too, generally. The second is that if you're in a homeless shelter, you can't cook. At most, you can make a sandwich, but that goes back to point #1. Eating out isn't a convenience for them; it's survival.
- amerika_blog 13y ago
  This is nonsense. Refrigerators are easily found used for under $100 (just like the flat screen TV from someone else's example here). Eating out, at a minimum, is 2-3x ingredient cost. Besides, you're reading way more into my comment than was intended. Its substance was: "To save money, don't eat out." You're projecting.
  - bluedino 13y ago
    The argument to this is that Chinese takeout tastes good (loaded with sugar and grease) and it's fast and readily available when the family comes in to $20. They live in a food desert and the mom never learned to cook. You can't blame the family in the article for falling for instant gratification or 'treating themselves' which is also the excuse for a lot of the other behavior in the article. The mom is drinking a beer on the bus, isn't she? I'm guessing that because it's in a brown paper bag.
  - scarmig 13y ago
    I'm curious: if you found another engineer who was in a messy codebase doing something something seemingly crazy, would you 1) assume they're an idiot or 2) reserve judgment until you know more? I would hope 2). Because here's the thing: we can't extricate ourselves from our history, and the people closest to the problem have a lot more information about it than those moralizing from afar. There's a bunch of questions you don't bother to ask yourself: Was the container of Chinese food actually purchased or found? Who knows. Probably, but the parents don't seem to make a habit of it: the daughter makes her siblings PB&Js. And is it a crazy expense? Also who knows, but buying a couple containers of cooked white rice in NYC isn't going to be crazy expensive. Are there nearby grocery stores to buy actual food? Maybe, but more likely the nearest places will be liquor stores selling shitty food for outrageous prices. Does the facility they're in provide the means to cook raw ingredients? Probably not. Is the electricity supplied consistent enough to trust having more than a single meal in the fridge? Who knows. And perhaps the biggest thing: do the parents have the capability to plan to cook and to succeed in that endeavor? You might say that "these people deserve to suffer if they can't manage to cook rice and beans," but here's the thing: maybe they can't. Maybe they never picked up that skill, maybe drugs have destroyed their capabilities for planning more than a minute ahead. But regardless, they can't. In tech, we recognize that we have to build systems out of potentially faulty components. But when we're building a society, there's a strain of thought saying that you shouldn't design for fault, because if a component is faulty, it deserves to be dumped into a garbage bin. That's perverse.
    - amerika_blog 13y ago
      You're having a mental failure here: "I'm curious: if you found another engineer who was in a messy codebase doing something something seemingly crazy, would you 1) assume they're an idiot or 2) reserve judgment until you know more?" I might say: "Having a messy codebase is a way to keep having bugs." That's analogous to my original statement.
      - tinco 13y ago
        It's also as helpful and insightful as your original statement.
  - beat 13y ago
    When you're poor, $100 is a tremendous amount of money. When you're poor, homeless, and don't own a car, moving refrigerators is not practical. When you're poor and living in a nightmare hole of a shelter, your nice new fridge might well be just taken from you.
  - yardie 13y ago
    You can carry a flatscreen TV on the bus or subway. I see that all the time. I haven't seen anyone carry a $100 refridgerator (except the tiny ones) anywhere. A friend of mine recently, moved into social housing. I donated some of my furniture to him for free. I also paid 50 euros for a moving van and 20 to have some guys help me. The furniture cost $0 to him, a little bit to me.
- scarmig 13y ago
  Are you implying that some readers of Hacker News might not know much about the particular problems that homeless individuals are trying to solve, and their simplistic prescriptions that don't take into account actual lived circumstances might not be a cure-all for everyone on the planet? Blasphemy!
- logfromblammo 13y ago
  Also, article stated that the shelter guests are not allowed to bring in canned goods. In order to have food stored, it basically has to be packaged in plastic or glass. Peanut butter. Jelly. Bread. A jar of peanut butter is the perfect food for someone without fridge or pantry. It can be stored at room temperature, it is calorie-dense, it is cheap, and it actually has some nutritional value. If I am ever forced to live at poverty income without basic residential infrastructure, I would definitely walk to the nearest actual grocery store and carry back peanut butter. You can also keep eggs around a while, even in the US, if you can replace the cuticle (removed during processing) with wax. I'd probably cook them in their shells with an electric kettle, dip them in paraffin from plumbers' candles, and put them back into the container.
  - amerika_blog 13y ago
    That's not a terrible idea at all. Around here, you can also get bean filling in jars, which is another good source of protein (and flatulence, but what isn't these days).
ColinWright 13y ago
Having no facilities for storing or cooking food is a great way to get very sick, very quickly.
gress 13y ago
Cooking healthy means requires capital expenditure that the truly poor cannot afford.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Even without a fridge, you can replace lots of take-out meals with things prepared at home, just with a container that seals to keep out bugs. A loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. Bananas. Eggs. Canned tuna. If you have some method of heating, you can add pasta and rice and beans and oats and sweet potatoes and lentils. If people are really lacking these tools, I'd be happy to write a check to a New York charity that provides them.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    The article makes a point of the fact that the girl in question often makes peanut butter sandwiches for her siblings. (re your last point, I don't see how this family is going to take advantage of incremental assistance like that)
  - sanskritabelt 13y ago
    I notice that you put "eggs" in the category of things that you can prepare without a method of heating, which is an excellent way to get salmonella.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      Eggs are in the category of things can do not need a fridge for storage, not of things that do not need heat to prepare. Whether that's true or not depends where you live. The US and Europe have developed different systems for egg production and storage. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5325540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5325540
    - danielweber 13y ago
      Yeah, I goofed by listing them in the heatless category. You can short-term store them without a fridge, though. Obviously none of the things I listed will form a complete diet, but if you are eating mostly take-out they are probably a superior substitute for some fraction of those take-out meals.
incision 13y ago
Clicking into a nearly 30,000 word article describing a very complex issue and boiling it down to a vapid attempt at a witty one-liner is a great way to stay ignorant. Reading Daeken's comment would be a good start toward turing that around.
zzesers 13y ago
How do you know they paid for it and didn't dumpster dive for it?
- JackFr 13y ago
  How do we really know anything about this case? It is heart-wrenching no doubt, and I am sympathetic. But it's a piece of literature (albeit non-fiction), but it's not journalism. Facts are cast in a particular light to make the author's point. Statistics are provided without context; everything is provided without context, except where the author pulls back the curtain and lets us see what he or she wants us to see. It's an effective piece -- it's able to wring fresh emotion from people who've been hearing similar stories for decades and have become desensitized. But it's not a policy discussion, and it's not even a good starting point for a policy decision.
  - amerika_blog 13y ago
    Much of journalism is actually fiction, mainly because it shows you one detail and neglects to mention context. Source: former journalist.
texan 13y ago
And the flat screen TV? It seems to me that this family has many issues, one of them being how to prioritize. One would think that someone struggling at that level would sell the TV, and get books from the library for entertainment. How many of the kids have phones? I know of several upper-middle-class families where the kids have to earn their own money to buy get a cell. A culture of independence.
- sanskritabelt 13y ago
  Flat screen TVs are cheap as shit nowadays.
- rayiner 13y ago
  This is moralistic pablum. You can buy a flat screen TV for $100 at Wal-Mart. You'll spend more on subway fare going to the library.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

"She then wipes down the family’s small refrigerator, stuffed with lukewarm milk, Tropicana grape juice and containers of leftover Chinese." Eating out is a great way to stay poor.

daeken 13y ago

There are two things that make eating out the most viable option for a whole meal when you're poor: The first is that when you have a refrigerator that's sub-par and don't have a freezer, you have to buy the smallest quantities of anything perishable; that means it's expensive as hell. There are things like rice that you can buy in bulk, but if you're in a place with bugs and rodents (like they are), you're screwed on that too, generally. The second is that if you're in a homeless shelter, you can't cook. At most, you can make a sandwich, but that goes back to point #1. Eating out isn't a convenience for them; it's survival.

amerika_blog 13y ago
This is nonsense. Refrigerators are easily found used for under $100 (just like the flat screen TV from someone else's example here). Eating out, at a minimum, is 2-3x ingredient cost. Besides, you're reading way more into my comment than was intended. Its substance was: "To save money, don't eat out." You're projecting.
- bluedino 13y ago
  The argument to this is that Chinese takeout tastes good (loaded with sugar and grease) and it's fast and readily available when the family comes in to $20. They live in a food desert and the mom never learned to cook. You can't blame the family in the article for falling for instant gratification or 'treating themselves' which is also the excuse for a lot of the other behavior in the article. The mom is drinking a beer on the bus, isn't she? I'm guessing that because it's in a brown paper bag.
- scarmig 13y ago
  I'm curious: if you found another engineer who was in a messy codebase doing something something seemingly crazy, would you 1) assume they're an idiot or 2) reserve judgment until you know more? I would hope 2). Because here's the thing: we can't extricate ourselves from our history, and the people closest to the problem have a lot more information about it than those moralizing from afar. There's a bunch of questions you don't bother to ask yourself: Was the container of Chinese food actually purchased or found? Who knows. Probably, but the parents don't seem to make a habit of it: the daughter makes her siblings PB&Js. And is it a crazy expense? Also who knows, but buying a couple containers of cooked white rice in NYC isn't going to be crazy expensive. Are there nearby grocery stores to buy actual food? Maybe, but more likely the nearest places will be liquor stores selling shitty food for outrageous prices. Does the facility they're in provide the means to cook raw ingredients? Probably not. Is the electricity supplied consistent enough to trust having more than a single meal in the fridge? Who knows. And perhaps the biggest thing: do the parents have the capability to plan to cook and to succeed in that endeavor? You might say that "these people deserve to suffer if they can't manage to cook rice and beans," but here's the thing: maybe they can't. Maybe they never picked up that skill, maybe drugs have destroyed their capabilities for planning more than a minute ahead. But regardless, they can't. In tech, we recognize that we have to build systems out of potentially faulty components. But when we're building a society, there's a strain of thought saying that you shouldn't design for fault, because if a component is faulty, it deserves to be dumped into a garbage bin. That's perverse.
  - amerika_blog 13y ago
    You're having a mental failure here: "I'm curious: if you found another engineer who was in a messy codebase doing something something seemingly crazy, would you 1) assume they're an idiot or 2) reserve judgment until you know more?" I might say: "Having a messy codebase is a way to keep having bugs." That's analogous to my original statement.
    - tinco 13y ago
      It's also as helpful and insightful as your original statement.
- beat 13y ago
  When you're poor, $100 is a tremendous amount of money. When you're poor, homeless, and don't own a car, moving refrigerators is not practical. When you're poor and living in a nightmare hole of a shelter, your nice new fridge might well be just taken from you.
- yardie 13y ago
  You can carry a flatscreen TV on the bus or subway. I see that all the time. I haven't seen anyone carry a $100 refridgerator (except the tiny ones) anywhere. A friend of mine recently, moved into social housing. I donated some of my furniture to him for free. I also paid 50 euros for a moving van and 20 to have some guys help me. The furniture cost $0 to him, a little bit to me.
scarmig 13y ago
Are you implying that some readers of Hacker News might not know much about the particular problems that homeless individuals are trying to solve, and their simplistic prescriptions that don't take into account actual lived circumstances might not be a cure-all for everyone on the planet? Blasphemy!
logfromblammo 13y ago
Also, article stated that the shelter guests are not allowed to bring in canned goods. In order to have food stored, it basically has to be packaged in plastic or glass. Peanut butter. Jelly. Bread. A jar of peanut butter is the perfect food for someone without fridge or pantry. It can be stored at room temperature, it is calorie-dense, it is cheap, and it actually has some nutritional value. If I am ever forced to live at poverty income without basic residential infrastructure, I would definitely walk to the nearest actual grocery store and carry back peanut butter. You can also keep eggs around a while, even in the US, if you can replace the cuticle (removed during processing) with wax. I'd probably cook them in their shells with an electric kettle, dip them in paraffin from plumbers' candles, and put them back into the container.
- amerika_blog 13y ago
  That's not a terrible idea at all. Around here, you can also get bean filling in jars, which is another good source of protein (and flatulence, but what isn't these days).

ColinWright 13y ago

Having no facilities for storing or cooking food is a great way to get very sick, very quickly.

gress 13y ago

Cooking healthy means requires capital expenditure that the truly poor cannot afford.

danielweber 13y ago
Even without a fridge, you can replace lots of take-out meals with things prepared at home, just with a container that seals to keep out bugs. A loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. Bananas. Eggs. Canned tuna. If you have some method of heating, you can add pasta and rice and beans and oats and sweet potatoes and lentils. If people are really lacking these tools, I'd be happy to write a check to a New York charity that provides them.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  The article makes a point of the fact that the girl in question often makes peanut butter sandwiches for her siblings. (re your last point, I don't see how this family is going to take advantage of incremental assistance like that)
- sanskritabelt 13y ago
  I notice that you put "eggs" in the category of things that you can prepare without a method of heating, which is an excellent way to get salmonella.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Eggs are in the category of things can do not need a fridge for storage, not of things that do not need heat to prepare. Whether that's true or not depends where you live. The US and Europe have developed different systems for egg production and storage. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5325540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5325540
  - danielweber 13y ago
    Yeah, I goofed by listing them in the heatless category. You can short-term store them without a fridge, though. Obviously none of the things I listed will form a complete diet, but if you are eating mostly take-out they are probably a superior substitute for some fraction of those take-out meals.

incision 13y ago

Clicking into a nearly 30,000 word article describing a very complex issue and boiling it down to a vapid attempt at a witty one-liner is a great way to stay ignorant. Reading Daeken's comment would be a good start toward turing that around.

zzesers 13y ago

How do you know they paid for it and didn't dumpster dive for it?

JackFr 13y ago
How do we really know anything about this case? It is heart-wrenching no doubt, and I am sympathetic. But it's a piece of literature (albeit non-fiction), but it's not journalism. Facts are cast in a particular light to make the author's point. Statistics are provided without context; everything is provided without context, except where the author pulls back the curtain and lets us see what he or she wants us to see. It's an effective piece -- it's able to wring fresh emotion from people who've been hearing similar stories for decades and have become desensitized. But it's not a policy discussion, and it's not even a good starting point for a policy decision.
- amerika_blog 13y ago
  Much of journalism is actually fiction, mainly because it shows you one detail and neglects to mention context. Source: former journalist.

texan 13y ago

And the flat screen TV? It seems to me that this family has many issues, one of them being how to prioritize. One would think that someone struggling at that level would sell the TV, and get books from the library for entertainment. How many of the kids have phones? I know of several upper-middle-class families where the kids have to earn their own money to buy get a cell. A culture of independence.

sanskritabelt 13y ago
Flat screen TVs are cheap as shit nowadays.
rayiner 13y ago
This is moralistic pablum. You can buy a flat screen TV for $100 at Wal-Mart. You'll spend more on subway fare going to the library.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]