Re:Dining out is a reason Americans are broke and overweight
by ip26 on Friday December 14, 2018 @02:39PM
(#18683888)
Frozen or canned is not always as good for you as fresh, depends on the produce. So access to fresh is still good.
There's also a bathtub curve I think. Bulk carrots, onion, potatoes, and celery are cheap. But as you move up the scale it starts to be not-cheap, with spices, shallots, olive oil, garlic, leafy greens, organic anything (which has been shown to be healthier long term). I cook from scratch and shop savvy but, perhaps partly due to cuisine and partly caloric needs, struggle to keep it in the $300/mo range I hear some couples and small families manage.
Healthy food is unbelievably dirt cheap in the US and available almost everywhere but it takes a lot of time and effort to prepare it. When you are working 60+ hours per week, that isn't always an attractive option. Poor people can afford healthy food.
Tangentially, the common definition of "food desert" improperly and tacitly conflates expensive food with healthy food. You can eat a very healthy and more importantly very cheap diet while living in a nominal food desert. Poor people can't afford boutique organic heirloom tomatoes so they don't sell them where poor people live. Frozen and canned vegetables are perfectly nutritious and cheaper substitute -- and I can vouch that poor people eat these in abundance -- but for the purposes of labeling an area a "food desert" they don't count.