I'd argue it's unfixable for low income workers. Excessive sugar in all the cheap food is a trap they can't avoid. They don't have money to buy better food and don't have time to shop and cook for themselves. That's assuming they recognize this problem at all.

Vegetables are cheap. Beans are cheap. Chicken and turkey are cheap.

McDonalds is not cheap, but it’s easy. It astounds me how many people eat out almost every meal.

Beans and all that isn't cheap overall: it takes will, effort and time to figure out what to buy and how to cook it. If that was packaged into cheap ready to eat burgers, spiced with something to make it more tolerable, then poor folks would switch to it. This approach isn't economically sound, though: it has 0 profit margins and it cuts deep into the fastfood & healthcare owners.

They are cheap if bought in bulk (which many poor people can't do because of upfront cost or lack of freezer space) and if there actually is a place to buy at least decent-quality vegs.

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

Quality vegetables aren't cheap. At least not for the consumer.

More than 40 million Americans are on food stamps (govt food support). In reality, many food basics like milk, rice and beans are healthy and affordable.

Plenty of people are low income or otherwise cash poor by reasonable standards, but not low enough to qualify for food stamps.

Affordable, yes, but require more time and skill to cook a meal that hits the same reward centers as the edible junk sold in cheap restaurant chains... often both short in supply among those on food stamps.

Milk is not healthy, rice barely can qualify but I guess it's food. Beans are.

A) don’t subsidise sugar B) tax sugar

You assume good faith here. I'd argue that the "system" is intentionally set up this way.

> B

It was tried and rolled back in chicago because it was deemed as unfairly targeting the poor.

Since there is a higher incidence of smoking among poorer folks[0], couldn't the same argument apply to the massive sin tax on cigarettes? We justify such sin taxes as being to the benefit of discouraging a harmful health behavior and personally I see the same link with higher sugar consumption.

[0] https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/targeted-comm...

> It was tried and rolled back in chicago because it was deemed as unfairly targeting the poor.

There's no reason why you couldn't pair taxing sugar with price-subsidies on non-sugary foods. The US already knows how to subsidize food production. Just stop subsidizing corn syrup and shift the subsidies to something less clearly destructive.

> price-subsidies on non-sugary foods.

That makes a big assumption that people aren't buying more spinach because of price of spinach.

beans and rice are already super cheap. Much healthier and cheaper option than mcdonalds.

> beans and rice are already super cheap. Much healthier and cheaper option than mcdonalds.

Why are you slyly shifting from "sugar" to "mcdonalds"? Minus drinks and desserts, McDonalds' offerings are not high in sugar.

> That makes a big assumption that people aren't buying more spinach because of price of spinach.

The price per calorie of spinach is extremely high. Micronutrients are great and all, but you can't live off micronutrients alone.

> Why are you slyly shifting from "sugar" to "mcdonalds"? Minus drinks and desserts, McDonalds' offerings are not high in sugar.

Aren't carbohydrates sugar though?

Why is the distinction between sugar in drinks and sugar is burger buns relevant to the discussion.

> Micronutrients are great and all, but you can't live off micronutrients alone.

Why did you slyly ignore 'beans and rice' in my comment. I wasn't suggesting people get their calories from spinach, what a weird interpretation.

my mexican family of 5 ate this combo every single day ,growing up. spinach + rice+ beans and occasional meat was afforable on one gardner's salary.

I think a multipronged approach is needed. Many families in the food deserts lost the know how to cook properly. But it’s very unfortunate that the most subsidised crop is corn. If beans were, I am sure it would be perverted too somehow but maybe not as bad.

My general point is that the incentives today are all wrong. Many things need to be fixed and subsidies of corn syrup is one egregious thing.

Did Chicago stop corn subsidies in the US?

no? but wouldn't it have the same effect of burdening the poor more?

No