Re:The Food of My Youth
by moate on Thursday July 19, 2018 @02:41PM
(#17569193)
Alright, let's break this one down.
1- Because they're stereotypes? Because nobody actually understands how people eat. Poor Americans eat rice and oats and beans, but those aren't stereotypical American. Ask yourself, is rice an American food? Do you imagine Americans eating it? I'm sure poor Asian Americans and Latinxs are. Do you think about poor people in Louisiana sustenance hunting/fishing? The US has an image, and that influences what people show/are willing to see.
2- Food Deserts. The US has large urban populations where the vast majority of the food available is canned/prepared. You can't cook over an open fire in a city because of regulations. You might live in a high rise apartment where you can't really cook much of anything because of the lack of space available. In those types of situations, it's easier to get a 1 dollar cheeseburger from a restaurant to meet your immediate food needs than try to buy a 20 LB bag of rice, carry it through downtown, and then store it in your living room.
3-When you're dealing with food, most people's immediate desire is calories. Your body is stupid, and when it has nutritional needs it often expresses them as just blanket hunger. People are able to get cheap calories in the US, but many of them are nutritionally minimal.
4- Relative value of money. You grew up somewhere that was poorer than the US, but there was likely deflation of the price of goods consummate with that. Poor in the US is not the same as poor in China or poor in the Sudan. They each come with their own special flavors of terrible options available to you.
1- Because they're stereotypes? Because nobody actually understands how people eat. Poor Americans eat rice and oats and beans, but those aren't stereotypical American. Ask yourself, is rice an American food? Do you imagine Americans eating it? I'm sure poor Asian Americans and Latinxs are. Do you think about poor people in Louisiana sustenance hunting/fishing? The US has an image, and that influences what people show/are willing to see.
2- Food Deserts. The US has large urban populations where the vast majority of the food available is canned/prepared. You can't cook over an open fire in a city because of regulations. You might live in a high rise apartment where you can't really cook much of anything because of the lack of space available. In those types of situations, it's easier to get a 1 dollar cheeseburger from a restaurant to meet your immediate food needs than try to buy a 20 LB bag of rice, carry it through downtown, and then store it in your living room.
3-When you're dealing with food, most people's immediate desire is calories. Your body is stupid, and when it has nutritional needs it often expresses them as just blanket hunger. People are able to get cheap calories in the US, but many of them are nutritionally minimal.
4- Relative value of money. You grew up somewhere that was poorer than the US, but there was likely deflation of the price of goods consummate with that. Poor in the US is not the same as poor in China or poor in the Sudan. They each come with their own special flavors of terrible options available to you.