> When you're poor, you can't afford to buy massive bags of rice and store them airtight to keep out insects, so instead you buy small portions which are much more expensive. You can't afford the time to cook the rice, and you don't have anything decent to season it with.

This sounds like it was written by an alien trying to reason about poverty from first principles. I've been poor. Nothing prevented me from buying big bags of rice. I wouldn't have had any trouble keeping insects out of that bag. And, despite myths about the noble, ever-working poor man, I had more than enough time to cook it.

I mostly bought shit food because I liked eating shit food. There's no reason to imagine further impediments. That one's sufficient.

I grew up poor as dirt on the east coast. We couldn't keep flour on hand more than a couple of weeks because it would almost certainly be infested with loaches in the summer. I had many cases of opening bags of rice to the same (extremely unappetizing) surprise.

I didn't lack time to do cooking because I was working constantly. I lacked time to do cooking because my work schedule was all over the place and the buses in the DC metro area are never on time. Between working and trying to get classes in (or working a second job, or watching your kid) you don't really have time to watch rice cook for an hour.

I'm sorry my experience growing up poor as dirt doesn't align with your preference for eating shitty food. Obviously I'm the one in the wrong here.

While I agree he was being more than a little dismissive, I think this is an important thing to understand: "Poor" doesn't mean the same thing to everyone.

When you grow up in the suburbs and your friends get brand new clothes every month when they get taken shopping, and you're lucky to get 2 new sets of clothes at the start of the school year, you feel poor. And the kid who grew up in a homeless shelter thinks you both sound rich.

Poor does different things to different people because poor is always relative. I was "poor" in NJ working in restaurants in my 20's and I never cooked at home because I worked 12-14 hour days. I still paid my rent, put gas in my car, and had money to buy drugs after it all. If I told someone who couldn't feed their kids what I was doing, they'd have looked at me like I was the biggest wastrel in the world. But when all I could see was the rich people rolling into the dining room day after day, I couldn't help but feel like I was at the very bottom of everything.

What you went through sounds terrible. And saying that it's just because you're lazy or stupid or "weren't being poor right" doesn't fix anything but just acts as a way to explain someone else's feelings/opinions. I wish you luck fellow human, because none of this is easy.

> And saying that it's just because you're lazy or stupid or "weren't being poor right" doesn't fix anything but just acts as a way to explain someone else's feelings/opinions.

Indeed! My dismissiveness comes from repeated encounters with well-meaning, well-off liberals who seemingly cannot find a single behavior they aren't willing to excuse on the basis of poverty, until they've by degrees whittled the poor down to automaton-like slugs in their minds, useless dependents, capable of nothing, completely lacking in agency.

I've been poor. I could make rice.

If the person I'm responding to's experience was different, I take them at their word.

People are making bad choices. How do you get them to make better choices, or do you just put your hands in your pockets and tell them it's their fault?

One might start by recognizing that poor people are, first of all, just people, which means there are lazy ones and hard-working ones and smart ones and dumb ones and some who've had bad luck and some who have brought all their problems on themselves -- and every possibility in between.

It isn't empathetic or helpful to treat a group of people as though they have no control over their own lives.

Americans should have mandatory cooking classes if this is how the average person thinks of food. Rice does not take an hour to cook. You can even cook normal rice in the microwave in 12 minutes, just put it in a bowl, add enough water, cover with plastic wrap (with a small space for the steam to escape), and that's it.

I've been arguing for years that cooking should be taught as science courses in school.It's far and away the most practical application of STEM. And even the most scientifically disinclined could still take something away from the class.

Harvard has one that's available as a MOOC.

https://www.edx.org/course/science-cooking-haute-cuisine-sof...

IMO, it was an imperfect class for a number of reasons but the idea is a good one.

Well when I was in middle school we did, "Home Economics". Sure it was a bit dated with "How to write checks" and such. Other than that we learned a ton about the basics of cooking. Using an oven, food prep, and what was a good "deal" when making food purchases.

Yes, I know someone who likes unhealthy food and would not eat healthy food even if I paid for it. Sometimes I would give in and eat unhealthy with her, for which she would thank me. Somewhere deep down crap food provides her comfort, I guess.