The point is, good food can be cheap. And yes, food deserts exist. And yes, people buy poor quality food from stores like Dollar General. But perhaps there is a correlation here? Maybe (some) food deserts exists because there is little demand for fresh food in those regions.
This blew my mind and is a facet of poverty I hadn’t even considered.
Also, are you actually making the point that food deserts exist because all the people in the area just decided not to buy groceries? I haven’t read such a blatant “blame the poors for their situation” take in a while.
It got me thinking though. My partner got evicted when she was younger (early twenties) because her roommate was lying and stealing rent money. Her credit was shot and she had to live with family for years while getting her record cleared. It’s sad to think that if she hadn’t had family to fall back on, she could’ve ended up in that situation. More people than one would think are just one bad situation away from falling into that trap.
This is a great point to keep in mind. I think a lot of folks are blind to how fragile financial stability is in the US and how much of a role luck plays in all of this.
The ones I see around here[1] specifically advertise having full kitchens. Both on their local signage and on their website.
Those are relatively nice weekly/monthly hotels. That's not where the desperately poor go. There are ~$30/night extended stay motels but the quality is what you'd expect. No fridge, no cooking, heat/AC doesn't work, very filty.
It's only a problem if you want to be Bill Gates lifestyle while making $15K per year.
I'm open to other interpretations. But I would need a compelling, non-demand reason why affordable food, which exists in surplus elsewhere, can't be sold in certain neighborhoods.
Grocery stores are very low-margin. They basically only work at scale. You need a lot of space, and a lot of customers. Those two factors combine to eliminate numerous areas where demand for the product otherwise exists. Not enough customers and/or not enough physical space available.
And constrained by either space, or customer count, you've got some hard choices to make.
Produce, fruit, fresh meat, etc are not high-profit items for grocery stores (They're often high-margin, but spoilage destroys net profit). You need a certain amount of turn-over to make the math work.
On top of turn-over, you need to be selling a lot of high-profit goods to make up for all the offsets in a grocery business. In low-income neighborhoods, how many customers will you have for deli products with high-markups? Or Prepared Foods? Hell, with EBT rules, a lot of high-margin goods can't even be bought by your core customer. You can't buy alcohol with EBT, for instance, and that's a huge chunk of profit for modern grocery stores.
And without all those healthy margin items, your labor costs need to be incredibly low.
What are you left with? Shelf-stable, low-quantity, bulk-purchased items in a store with the lowest possible labor costs.
And what is a Dollar Store?
Yes, the ability to profitably run a store is based off of margin and volume. Both of those are driven by demand.
There can be plenty of demand for a quality grocery store, but not enough square footage available to support a store that sells the volume and mix of goods necessary to create a profitable business.
There can be plenty of square footage, and relatively high demand but not enough literal humans in the area to support it.
And there can be enough space, and enough people, but infrastructure problems which create uneven costs on the business.
For instance, the poorest Americans drink the most sugary drinks [0]. I can accept there may be other reasons for the existence of food deserts, but to outright dismiss that preferences might differ across incomes without any evidence feels like an argument made purely out of ideology.
[0]: https://theconversation.com/poorest-americans-drink-a-lot-mo...
Sugary drinks are cheap, shelf-stable and dense with calories.
When you don't have a lot of better options for calories, they fit the bill. It's not preference, it's survival.
We know that despite the difference in sugary drink consumption, obesity doesn't vary in population sets [0]:
"… evidence from 4 nationally representative US surveys has shown that populations who frequently consume sugar-sweetened beverages do not have a higher obesity rate or risk than populations who infrequently consume these beverages."
… which makes sense if sugary drinks are replacing calories that would otherwise be found in better foods.
Having empathy on a subject is definitely important. But it’s also important not to take an argument personally and not let personal anecdotes influence you more than they warrant. We’re not really talking about every poor person here and we’re not talking about your childhood friends. We’re mostly talking in generalizations about broad demographic trends.
Random study on obesity’s correlation with sugary drinks: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862465/
As my point was that sugary drinks were a function of caloric replacement, and not preference, for low-income people – as was my lived experience – the study was relevant as it's the type of result you'd expect were that to be the case.
I was not arguing that sugary drinks don't contribute to obesity in the general public.
From the stores perspective, I can imagine that there are a few reasons why it can make sense for them to move out of impoverished areas even while demand exists there.
Wealthy customers who can easily travel to stores in impoverished areas are turned off by poor conditions and higher crime rates and will shop elsewhere. They may also feel less comfortable shopping in areas where the majority of the other customers are of a different race or culture. The stores and staff may themselves experience increases in theft, vandalism, and violence in low income areas. Stores can't sell as many overpriced items in low income areas where the majority of their clientele are struggling to afford necessities.
It really doesn't matter that a store can make a healthy profit by serving customers who live in a low income area. If that same store feels that they could make even greater profits by being in an area with wealthier customers, then that is exactly what we must expect they will do.
> It really doesn't matter that a store can make a healthy profit by serving customers who live in a low income area. If that same store feels that they could make even greater profits by being in an area with wealthier customers
This only holds true if a chain can open a fixed amount of stores. In reality, they can open as many stores as they want provided that the stores operate profitably.
Sales is a poor measure of demand, because there are a lot of other factors that impact sales, but stores in low income areas certainly face demand problems in some ways. Demand for expensive products that might sell well in other areas will be much lower in neighborhoods where few people can ever afford them.
A store in a low income area is also insulated since fewer people from outside of the immediate area will come to shop there and many will deliberately avoid shopping there. That's certain to impact sales.
> In reality, they can open as many stores as they want provided that the stores operate profitably.
As long as they can continuously open stores, it would still make them the most money to limit themselves to the most profitable areas right? As long as they have the option to open a new store in a wealthy neighborhood where they can make the most sales and highest profits, why should they open one in an impoverished neighborhood? I live in a pretty nice area and there are five grocery stores within 10 minutes of my house (two owned by the same company), and that's not not counting stores like target/walmart that also sell groceries and are less than 10 minutes away!
> Grocery stores are very low-margin. They basically only work at scale.
> You need a lot of space, and a lot of customers.
That contradicts most of human history and is still wrong today.
In fact for most of history most people walked to a small store that had some fresh products outside and you just pick them up.
The problem is that in the US you force stores into these commercial zones that are separated from housing zones and force people to drive there.
Countries that are much poorer then the US have systems where almost everybody can get pretty easy access to a store and that store usually had fresh products.
Me and a friend walk threw some back allies in Haifa Israel and walked right up to a little store with some fresh fruit and most of what you need. Yet, such stores don't exist in US suberbia.
These are all urban planning issues.
I'm living here in US suburbia (California) and it is literally (measured using google maps) 600ft to the nearest store that sells some groceries and 1300ft to the nearest full-size supermarket. And the second full-size supermaket is about 2000ft away.
And it also shows up in data showing how many less then 5mile trips are maybe by car in the US and grocery shopping is one of the major drivers of such trips.
I read this a lot so I believe it, but haven't really experienced it. I've lived in a couple places on the east coast and multiple places in California and only once there hasn't been one or more supermarkets within walking distance. And that one place was quite rural so it was not comparable to any suburbs.
Yeah, but this is just an inconvenience. There is no reason why there should be an issue to drive 1 or 2 or 8 miles to get a good deal on healthy food. Even if you don't have a car, find a friend or church that does.
As I've said elsewhere, my relatives lived in the middle of nowhere, and had to travel 60 miles - an hour and a half each way - to go to the Costco to stock up on staples.
You have to drive for 15 minutes to a grocery store??? Oh, misery. The world is coming to an end.
We need to get someone here to peel my grapes and feed them to me, place them in my mouth one-by-one so that I have to do nothing. I just want to be treated as a Roman emperor, I live in the USA...isn't that everyone's right?
> As I've said elsewhere, my relatives lived in the middle of nowhere, and had to travel 60 miles - an hour and a half each way - to go to the Costco to stock up on staples.
That's a very exceptional situation and not really representative of how most people live.
> You have to drive for 15 minutes to a grocery store??? Oh, misery. The world is coming to an end.
Well yes, polluting the world with inefficient land use forcing 100s of millions to drive everytime they want to buy milk is a problem.
This is specially a problem when you can only go when you don't have to work and maybe at those time there is also traffic. So you only go once a week or every 2 weeks, meaning you end up buying less perishable foods.
15min, lol, in 15min I walk to the shop, buy something and I'm back home already.
Also, simply complaining that people are how they are isn't helpful, its just a reality of the situation. You can either have an urban planning and infrastructure policy that supports what makes people lives better, or you don't.
You act like suberbia exists without infrastructure and to support the live-style you advocate nothing needs to happen, its just free.
And what I am advocating is somehow a privilege that all Americans should be granted and this privilege is a luxury.
This is the exact opposite. A society driving every time they have to buy basic items, large roads connecting to even larger connecting roads connecting to absurdly huge parking lots going into gigantic grocery store to buy basic food comes at an absurd cost.
Please actually inform yourself on the cost of those infrastructures, there is a reason most US towns are basically bankrupt. Why so many roads in the US are falling apart, because you simply can't afford it with the property taxes the city produces. The amount of infrastructure required here is a gigantic privilege and the results can be seen in places like Detroit.
However the more dense mixed use development I advocate for is actually a huge efficient. Its less pollution, produces more taxes then it consumes, less traffic and so on.
There are good data visualization that prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, check out Urban3 (they have lots of resources on YT and other places presenting these results to cites): https://www.urbanthree.com/
You are talking about city infrastructure and stuff that I'm not talking about. If you want to have a utterly completely different conversation about tearing down every single house and every single road, and do a big do-over, I guess we can do that.
But I'm just talking about how poor people can buy a tuna fish sandwich, dude.
Growing up, it took us 45 min one-way to drive to the closest grocery store my parents could afford. Thankfully we had enough space in the house to buy in bulk, but unfortunately that doesn’t help you with fresh produce. Did it kill us? No. Was it a shitty way to live? Yes. Even as a kid I recognized the stress it put on my mom.
I now live a mile from a grocery store, so I usually walk or bike there. Shockingly, it’s much easier to stay healthy and regularly eat fresh foods this way.
If you didn't have a car, make a friend. Find a friend that has a car that you can shop with. It's not that difficult and people like to help other people.
I don't know about your produce, but in my family, we all went to the orchards and picked our own. then we would freeze and can for 2 entire days.
My parents would buy an entire cow (we had a very big family), and hire a butcher to cut it up, and we put all that in two freezers we had in our garage.
Everything can be done, it just takes work and imagination to figure out how. I know, I've been there too.
And as I mentioned elsewhere, many in my family have lived in the middle of nowhere, and had to drive 1 1/2 hours to go to Costco. They did this about once per month and load up on the staples - bulk buying.
Actually, frozen and canned produce is much better nutritionally. This is because the produce is picked at it's peak nutritional value and taste. For fresh produce, a lot of times it is picked early because of transportation times.
I have a bunch of frozen and canned fruits and vegetables, they are great.
I could go on all day about what one can do. But it falls on deaf ears, all the time, like yours. Instead of being open, you shut completely down. Instead of saying, "Wow, how interesting, I don't think it can be done, but I want to know how you do it." But no, you answer with a sarcastic remark, so I know where you are at, mentally. Which is closed down and defensive.
I remember talking to a friend of mine - I told her she should purchase her next pair of prescription glasses at Zenni optical for $15-$40 for frames and lenses. I must have told her at least 6 to 8 times in our conversations, as we saw each other daily. She asked me how to save money, so not like I forced it on her. Well, after all our discussions, she went into a local optomitrist and spend $500+ on her glasses. Trust me, she was poor as f. This is why the poor stay poor. Even when I tried to help, she self sabotages. And this is by far the only person I've had this experience with, people who ask my help, and I give my opinion, and then they go off and blow their money anyways.
The point is that people don't care if you have suggestions of how to make their lives easier. They would rather do it the same way, even if it takes 45 minutes one way instead of finding a friend with a car to carpool with. Again, I don't know if that was your case, but other people have said they can't do anything because they have to ride public transportation.
It is sad, because here I am on this post, offering my assistance, and most of what I'm getting is vitriol, instead of people trying to learn, or even consider what I'm saying and simply ask questions to me as to how it is done.
Sad.
Of course it’s possible to eat healthily when poor, and I can appreciate your suggestions, but your example itself has demonstrated that it’s time-consuming and logistically difficult. It’s very fortunate that your family had the money and space to be able to buy in bulk, but you must recognize that this isn’t an option for everyone, especially on a strict budget. It’s also fortunate that your family lived close to orchards and had the space and free time to spend canning foods for later.
Please try to imagine how your solutions would be accomplished by someone who was already struggling with some of the other problems of being poor, such as lack of access to childcare, transportation, and/or medical care. It’s not impossible to manage all these things, but even with the suggestions you’ve provided, it’s another drain on one’s time and energy. Nobody wants that for their friends/family.
Zenni is legit though: quick, cheap, and passable quality. I tell everyone about them too. Weird that your friend didn’t decide to use them. I wonder if her optometrist warned her against the competition?
I know things are much different elsewhere.
My relatives lived in a food desert, but it was not in a city. They lived in the middle of nowhere. Rural. They were in an actual food desert, they had to drive 1 hour each way once a month to stock up at Costco. But they didn't bitch about how they were in a "food desert".
There are always solutions. They might take extra work...but so what?
Here in California, we have a store called The 99 Cent Only Store, which is a dollar store. A dollar store is where almost everything is a dollar. They HAVE had to raise their prices because of inflation, but so have all other grocery stores. A good dollar store is awesome to save money, if you buy the right stuff. It is awesome. I can buy blackberries there for $1, while at a regular supermarket they charge $3 or more. This is a 300% return on one's money to buy it at the dollar store. I can go into a dollar store and fill 3 grocery bags full of food that would only be half of one bag at a regular supermarket.
Mine has all kinds of other cool stuff, too. Buy a can opener for $1, rather than $5 or $8 at a supermarket - that is a 500% to 800% return on your money right there. Wouldn't you like to get 500-800% return on your money in the stock market? That's exactly what it is, exactly the same. Except if you sell your stocks, you have to pay taxes on them, but when you save money, you pay no taxes on saved money.
The point is that it is a choice to buy fruits, vegetables, eggs, etc, rather than cookies.
Everyone knows what a poor diet is at this point. Who doesn't know potato chips are not healthy, even in the most poverty-stricken areas? Who doesn't know that brocolli is healthier than Sugar Puffs cerial. Nobody, that's who.
“Stupid poor people. Just find a friend with a car and go to Costco!”
What is so difficult in finding a friend or organization with a car? Maybe it will take 2 or 3 or 4 weeks of trying to find someone to help, but eventually one can.
This is a complex problem. Your reductive takes don’t really address the issue at hand and instead seek to wave it away.
“I already believe our system is great, so I’ll blame the poors before applying critical perspective to the system itself.”
Yes, you're starting to get it! If demand existed for cheap, nutritious food, someone would provide it for profit. We already know the food can be provided cheaply and profitably in other, more expensive, regions. So what conclusion can we come to other than that food deserts exist because the demand for the food doesn't exist?
Reality is not a thought experiment, and “supply and demand” is a simplistic reduction that conveys a general principle of economics but does not cover the entire nuanced reality of the food desert phenomenon. You are approaching this like someone who just took Econ 101 and thinks they have the whole thing figured out.
And since it’s clear that you really are doubling down on your idea that “it is poor people’s fault if they live in a food desert,” all I can do is encourage you to read this article and read more about the subject before assuming you are smarter than everyone else who actually works on this type of issue. Cheers.
People don't have time to cook.
We haven't done enough to update our work arrangements to allow for someone to both work and eat well without mom having dinner waiting for dad when he gets home from work.
We haven't updated our food culture to allow for enough fresh, healthy options that don't take a lot of time.
Etc
I would be curious to know how many families actually sit down at a table for a nightly meal nowadays
The entire point I am making is that we are moving away from a life that revolves around the nuclear family. Many households in the US today have one to three members.
If you live alone or as part of a childless couple or are a single parent, etc. then this cooking from scratch "the way my mother did" just doesn't actually logistically work. And I see the evidence of this over and over and over in online forums, from comments to questions about how to cope with various aspects of the issue.
People are not happy with the way they eat and they don't know how to fix it. And the solutions we come up with are often not really very good solutions.
Let me illustrate how this happens. Walmart enters into a small town. They bankrupt the local groceries by undercutting and using economy of scale. They become the sole grocer in town. Healthier alternatives cannot exist because Walmart quickly crushes them.
Next, Walmart leaves because they've squeezed as much value as possible out of the town and are no longer seeing growth. The jobs and grocery that the town relied on vanish, and no other grocers can enter into that space because of the bootstrap costs.
This location is now a food desert. Nearest grocery access is a few towns over, or you get lucky and one of the dollar store chains enters in to help.
This isn't just an illustrative example. This is something that happens [1]. Constantly. [2].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/09/what-happene...
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Business/walmart-closures-leaving-sma...
Multiple reasons. I forgot the exact definition, grocery store within two miles or something.
Some neighborhoods the big chains leave because they lose a lot of money from theft. A whole lot of money. I heard all kinds of schemes from talking to people when I drove a cab, people would walk out of stores with full grocery carts. So they just write off that part of town and the locals get Dollar General and gas station convenience stores to shop at.
Then, grocery chains don’t like competing one store against another and there’s only three (I believe) major chains these days so won’t build them too close together. Depending on how they’re spread out you might end up with no stores reasonably close. So back to Dollar General.
One thing I noticed about Phoenix is the poor and rich areas both didn’t have much shopping. Rich areas, didn’t matter, they just drove to the store and were happy about it, try to find a gas station in Paradise Valley or North Scottsdale. Poor areas, matters a lot because they have to pay a premium to shop local or pay for a ride to a proper grocery store. Even if it’s only $20 round trip that adds up when money is tight. I used to get these calls where the insurance company would pay for a cab ride to pickup prescriptions and there’d be four adults with three full shopping carts thinking they were getting a free shopping trip. If they had a reasonable amount of groceries (they were there anyway…) I’d take them with maybe a little whining but if it’s a couple families doing their monthly shopping thinking I’m going to waste close to an hour for $6 then, no, I’d just leave them. Eh, got kind of off track there.
Its almost as if not every capitalist country has horrendously idiotic city planning.
https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts
Poor areas in cities will often not have an immediate, large, well stocked grocery store, but they are probably only a mile or two away from one, and there will certainly be smaller stores with some fresh items.
Only if it is sufficiently (read: highly) profitable.
Otherwise there can be all the demand in the world but it doesn't matter.
In fact, if you have good mixed use cities, your city shouldn't even need much policy in the first place.
Safety doesn't come from policy, but civil society. If you are relaying on policy to operate a basic store in a city you know you have big problems already.
And blaming 'wokeness' for the problems of inner cities in the US is crazy.
Same with fridges - can buy a used one for super inexpensive - a small one, to be sure, but at least you have something. Or could buy two of them over time.
There are always solutions.
There are no such thing as food deserts. I've seen the maps, and yes, there are areas that don't have large grocery stores. BUT, there are good grocery stores 5 or 8 miles away. If you have a car, you drive there. If you don't, you find someone who has a car to drive you there and carry inexpensive groceries back. Could be a neighbor, a church, yeah, it will take a little extra work, but so what? My family member lived way in the rural area and had to take a 1 hour trip each way to Costco once a month to stock up on staples. They took the time, why can't everyone else. Except they had to drive 60 miles, not 5 or 8 miles.
There are always easy solutions.
Unfortunately, I think I'm the only person in the known universe that knows the solutions.
> microwaves
Many cheap motels do not in fact have microwaves. Buying one for $15 is great if you live in a place where people are selling working microwaves for that price and eveyrone else is not also poor and looking for a microwave.
> They took the time, why can't everyone else.
Not if you're working 3 jobs and barely have time to sleep while being a caregiver. Some people don't get to take time off to do things.
> There are no such thing as food deserts. I've seen the maps, and yes, there are areas that don't have large grocery stores.
Perhaps talk to someone who'se lived in one? There's quite a lot of arrogance to say "I've looked at the maps so your problem doesn't exist" from wherever you're based on earth.
There are solutions in many situations but the cycle is vicious and you're one bad step away from getting eating alive in many places. Poor nutrition -> health problems -> limited time -> getting laid off for underperformance (or plain cruelty). It isn't always a way out in life without a dollop of luck.
I'm not saying it is easy - it isn't. But when you are there, you have to do what you have to do.
I think I AM the only one who knows the solution. Because when I was in my 20s, I been there, done that.
If you take a bus to work, you probably don’t have time cook.
I know a lot of poor people and I assure you that many of them have plenty of time. There are certainly many hard-working poor who desperately need time back in their day and would cook if they had the time, but time alone would certainly not solve the phenomena of poor people not cooking. What many other poor people do not have is executive functioning skills, the ability to plan ahead, or impulse control, and some of them also have addictions or expensive recreational drug habits, or live in unsafe scenarios where cooking would be an absurd afterthought.
Furthermore, many of the poorest people are recent immigrants (Mexican, Indian, Middle Eastern, African) and those households often rely on home cooking even more than many affluent households do.
Ultimately, I think it's likely that stress impacts everyone's executive functioning, not just poor people, but poor people may have a higher stress burden and also probably had lower raw "executive functioning" ability to begin with. In Western countries, where the economies are primarily based on rewarding jobs that prioritize extreme logical abstractions, there is a clear casual relationship between measured intelligence* and lifetime earning potential. I believe that this (unsavory) point is too often left out when proposing solutions to poverty because it implies the existence of an inherent, unfixable difference in human ability. To me this difference is obvious and should simply be planned for, but to many others it's a myth.
I do feel passionately about this subject because one of my family members is developmentally disabled enough that she cannot live a normal life but not enough that she's obviously impaired, and the rate at which her decisions lead her to live the life of a pretty run-of-the-mill American poor person is astonishing. If we didn't pay for everything she needed she would fit in perfectly with the behavior and lifestyles of the people in the slum areas of my city, and in fact she's already done some stints there due to some friends she made when she was unwilling to live at the family home.
(* = I am not saying "poor people are poor because they're dumb" or "if you're smarter you'll make more money" or that "IQ is real", only that "when you select a random adult, the less well they're able to perform on western-style intelligence tests the less likely it is they'll have a lot of money".)
It's not that complicated. Long term thinking requires certainty. Poor people generally dont have enough economic certainty to plan for longer periods into the future and that's the cause of their constant stress.
This stress and uncertainty poor people experience can constantly create survival scenarios where a longer chain of consecutive decisions have to be correct than for an equally intelligent rich person.
It's not hard to do simple, health, quick meal prep. Hell, buy some veggies, wash them and eat them is health as hell. Make rice or beans in 20 min.
If you have enough time to walk or drive to get fast food, you have enough time to make a healthy meal.
Beans are great, but require time to cook that not everyone has, especially when very poor. They also cost money to cook, require a kitchen, time to clean dishes, a place to store em if cooked in bulk, etc.
Bananas though
Let’s say $2 for 8 bananas vs $2 cheeseburger
Assuming normal size bananas, that’s about 800 cal worth of banana. From what I can tell about that cheeseburger, 415 cal per serving. So banana almost twice as good?
Not quite. Those 8 bananas are pure carbohydrate. You’re gonna digest those very quickly, and you’d still need a source for protein + fat, both of which you need to not die.
The shittiest cheeseburger, on the other hand, has tons of fat and a decent hit of protein. Way slower to digest. Also way easier to do stuff after eating. Eating that many bananas is a rough deal
10/10 times in severe poverty, I’d save up for for the cheeseburger.
I say though, the banana is still a very good additional carb source on a tight budget when combined with other foods. I ate, and will continue to eat, a boatload of bananas.
Food is something already solved in US. I think more expenses come from other sources: housing, medicine, transportation.
I lived on 500€/month for several years with only a microwave oven, and if your BMI is between 20 and 25, you can just eat canned vegetables at 0.50€ half of the time and be healthy.
I can't eat green beans anymore though.
If you're saving your money, why not go for the classic student combo of home brand bread, peanut butter and milk?
Just under 10,000 cal of diverse macronutrients for A$7.50 at Aldi, no cooking or significant prep required (cheeseburger equivalent would be closer to $50).
Get yourself those 8 bananas for $2 extra (realistically it'd probably be 5 big ones, though) and you'll get enough fibre to actually feel good too.
When I was very poor a friend of mine gave me a crockpot that got dented in shipping and Amazon sent a replacement. Throw some pinto beans in it in the morning and fire up the rice cooker (bought with an Amazon gift card from my sister for Christmas) when I got home and have the perfect cheap meal[0].
Once I figured out I could make cornbread in the rice cooker it was all over, $1.49 Jiffy cornbread box (think it needed an egg and maybe milk too so not all the time) with some beans thrown on top and I was in heaven.
Or sometimes I’d just make a giant pancake in the rice cooker which was also pretty awesome.
You’re gonna need to eat well over ten pounds of broccoli and carrots to get a full days calories. This is going to be something most are going to see more as supplemental, or as means to dip.
Beans and rice are well and good but they’re not actually very nutrient dense. I know people who QUIT rice due to concerns that a bowl of rice raises blood sugar. In fact a lot of the foods you suggested are fairly high in sugar. I’ve known others who quit beans because they’re notoriously harsh on digestion.
When poor it’s hard to get sufficient nutrients or avoid excessive carbs and sugars, and you don’t have the luxury of playing around with things like speciality diets because you just can’t afford to.
> And yes, food deserts exist.
Yes because car dependency and long distances involved. If you have a mixed use walkable area there is almost always access to freshish foods at least basic vegis.
Being depended on big box stores in some commercial district with a gigantic parking lot that you can't walk to that you only go to once every week or two is the problem.
A head of broccoli is going for ~$5 at Loblaws in Canada. It's not much cheaper at shops in NYC.
https://www.loblaws.ca/broccoli/p/20145621001_EA
I bring up this example because if you try hard enough, $5 will buy you an entire (unhealthy) meal. It's really hard to tell someone to spend their entire meal budget on a single head of broccoli!
> Organic rainbow carrots are $1.50 a pound
https://www.loblaws.ca/organic-carrots-bunched/p/20056027001...
Sold by the bunch, but really more like ~$10/lb.
I don't disagree that it's possible to eat healthily on a thin budget, but we're sadly past the point where this can be accomplished by buying fresh vegetables at the supermarket.
Regular supermarkets have plenty of bad food but still wide selection of nutritious food.
Is that better?
Hence, the entire point of the article. Beginning with the boots paradox.
Eggs, beans, rice, bread, potatoes, apples, bananas, are among the cheapest foods at any grocery store or supermarket.
Food in the US is insanely cheap. Wow.
$4.78 USD at the cheapest store here, and this is on special.
I was about to say that this is roughly what supermarket eggs cost here in Switzerland but then realised that your price was for a dozen and I was thinking a box of six.
Eggs here are often sold in units of one (you fill your own box with however many eggs you need) and cost about US$0.80 per egg.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-...
Food inflation is real but not experienced the same way by many Americans who consume mostly processed foods, which are less vulnerable to commodities shocks. So I can't be too surprised the HN crowd hasn't noticed. But eggs are apparently specially fucked[1] due to an avian flu outbreak, so you're kinda cherry picking. Cherries btw, have seemingly doubled in price, but pre-pandemic was the cheapest they'd ever been in the past 30 years.[2]
More importantly, I think you're missing the point the article and OP were making: dollar store supply chains for these goods suck compared to grocery stores that are optimized for this. Whatever inflation has done to raw goods is amplified at these small dollar stores.
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/11/why-egg-prices-are-surging-b... [2]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU01110203
It’s not just a matter of unit price, but also time, convenience, and cal/$. Fruit / veg in general is pretty expensive when looked at from a cal/$ perspective — you pay for a lot of water there. Potatoes, beans, rice are pretty slow cooking, and require dealing with dishes after.
So for my single mom, it was pretty hard to provide anything but
1) fast food (decent cal/$, extremely convenient)
2) microwaveable tv dinners (Meh cal per dollar, but long shelf life, extremely convenient)
3) PB / lunch meat sandwiches (basically god tier for poor chow)
For reference, my mom worked many jobs and got maybe 4-5 hrs sleep a night. Adding 30 minutes for a days worth of meals was a lot.
I have children so can empathise with anyone short of time and trying to accommodate juvenile palates, but pasta with some sauce options is one of our fallbacks - the two youngest like pesto. Rice is another (trivial in a rice cooker).
I doubt you don't have 30 minutes to "prepare" your dinner. After all you don't really prepare much. Just boil or fry whatever raw food you have.
Of course convincing kids to eat not very tasty good may be a different story but it's doable.
At a certain point you’re balancing how much sleep you need to perform at work (4-5 hours) and the amount of time you’d spend commuting and working (~16 hours a day). When you throw in errands, cleaning, maintenance, and maybe 30 minutes in passing period leisure, there really isn’t time to cook.
If you have kids perhaps the solution is for each one to wash its own plate(s). My point is that you can be poor and eat healthy but you have to want that.
- a lack of time
— a lack of resources (just two folks, no expendable income)
- a lack of cognitive energy, probably stress induced from managing the above two.
I think this is a particularly rich western country thing though, the method of being poor you describe works great when you have an extended family who can pool resources. But for a single mom and young child, you can’t smart your way out of it. It’s like trying to optimize a triple a game to run on twenty year old hardware —- just ain’t the cycles, have to reduce the workload.
I think this is really the most important point. We know we should do better but we lack the cognitive energy. I can totally understand it.
Getting yourself on the right track is hard but at least you can develop a mental story you can control and stay "in the zone". I can't imagine how hard it is being poor and single with children, always being distracted by thousands of small issues.
It’s a problem with not having enough time or money to eat well. That’s the take away. The cognitive stress is just a bonus.
Put another way, we totally could have eaten better if we had more time or money. It’s highly unlikely we could have eaten better if we had more mental fortitude.
To reinforce that point, my mom was a very fit person who prioritized eating well before becoming poor. Ran, mountain biked, ski-ed.
After I got money, pretty much all my disposable goes into health and food to fuel. Lift, cycle, surf, run. In high school, I wrestled explicitly because coach would buy me food. It wasn’t mental fortitude or will that was lacking.
It was just time and money.
I’d have to ask her about time and sleep but I remember it being more hectic than it was strained. This may not have been as true without the assistance we were able to take advantage of. I remember being woken up very early (around 4-5 AM) to be taken to a baby sitter. I must’ve been 4 or 5 at the time. I would sleep in the car along the way.
Buy 10 kg of rice, a bag of beans and some frozen veggies for under $20, cook it all at once in a big pot. You've got 10 meals for under $20 and maybe an hours time.
Put it in the fridge/freezer and you've got healthy meals for a week that cost $0.50 each.
Not sure how a single $10 meal at fast food could be considered "a cheaper alternative".
And yeah, if you have the time, highly recommend the bean and rice / boiled dry staples route. Way better. But if you don’t have the time, can be hard to pull off.
I agree with your post overall but would quibble with this point. Maximizing calories isn't a very good goal. Eating fewer calories but more fruits and vegetables would be an improvement for most people in the US, regardless of socioeconomic status.
When you’re really poor, if you buy food naively or based on what is recommended nutritionally for financially secure people, it’s very easy to end up in a situation where you spent all your cash but are still hungry. If you keep doing this, you’ll lose too much weight, get sick, and won’t be able to work. So you have to keep in mind the amount of satiety you’re getting for your cash when you buy food. Fruit and veg have tend to have very low satieties for the $, despite being nutritionally very valuable when you do have sufficient calories.
The amount of paternalistic "just make better choices!" nonsense in this thread is giving me a headache.
If DOLLAR GENERAL qualifies, for many poor communities it's the only option in town.
Frozen burritos did so I didn’t complain too much.
But you see people with SNAP pushing around carts full of things that aren't eggs and beans and potatoes... and why would they? The maximum monthly benefit for a family of 4 is $939/month, you can buy whatever you want with that.
<insert excuse that poor people can't cook or don't have time or ...>
And the correction, when applied, is always to the detriment of a huge number of other people who actually needed the help.
This is how we get means-testing, SALT caps, and bad immigration law. We have got to be more humane than this.
Maybe. But this is how America works. We wont let you starve to death. If you're truly physically disabled, we won't leave you to die. But beyond that it's up to you. And in exchange, what's "up to you" is limitless and celebrated and compensated endlessly. Other societies make this tradeoff in a different direction. But I'm happy there's at least one place on earth that doesn't.
It's up to you, but please be aware that you will be playing a rigged game.
In this game, those with money will be competing with you. They will also make the rules. In most situations they will also be referee.
Therefore please make every effort to be born into at least some money. That is, by far, your best chance of success.
Of course we are not heartless. We let a tiny number of previously poor people rise up to serve as both inspiration, and example to the rest. This helps re-enforce the idea that you too can rise up if you just worked "a little bit harder."
Unfortunately we cannot raise the standard of living for everyone - since most of you simply don't deserve it. Plus your cheap labour is necessary for our current comfort levels.
But I sleep well at night since my life is completely deserved, clearly we all had the same opportunities, I just worked harder than you did.
The standard of living has been rising constantly throughout American history
Perhaps by statement is better said as "we can't raise the standard at the same rate for everyone."
This isn't a universal rule though. Many countries have raised the standards of the poor in proportion to the rich. But you'll see fewer billionaire yachts or private jets in those places too.
Yes you will
> If you're truly physically disabled, we won't leave you to die.
Yes you will
Do you really think that as a nation that lacks so much empathy for the poor, THAT’S where we suddenly realize someone’s humanity? No, in fact if someone is at this point, most Americans would probably not even notice (and some amount would likely celebrate) their passing. If the safety net lets someone fall this far, why would it catch them now?
Just think of the blind eye we turn to people experiencing homelessness— as if their neighbors aren’t already wishing them harm while sipping a bottle of wine with their family and friends during their holiday dinner.
I used to live in downtown Phoenix and I’d have people trying to feed me when I was just riding my bike random places. Like, I’d be half a block away and they’d shout out “hey, man, you hungry?” And this is just people who would roam around looking for people to help not counting the permanent places that served food on a regular basis.
If you’re willing to accept help ‘merica has enough to go around but you have to show up to the shelters sober and have to at least put in the barest minimum of effort to maybe, just maybe, appear to be trying to improve your lot in life.
I spent nine years driving a cab and a big chunk of that job was hauling people to/from medical appointments because they didn’t have transportation (or couldn’t afford to drive) and the state was paying for their medical care. Once Uber/Lyft came to town that’s pretty much all I did and I kept pretty busy.
Unless you're a diabetic, then fuck you. Die.
Somewhere well below frozen burritos and pizzas: https://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/
Cooking takes time. Working too many hours (for good reasons) robs you of that time. Cooking adds other time-consumers, shopping, washing up and so on.
Equally, once you have a skill set, cooking doesn't need to take a lot of time. If you are lucky you learned to cook growing up, or if you have the time you can learn to cook as an adult.
While your nan breads are perhaps not the best example of quick cooking (flour isn't necessarily the best starting point) it's true that stir-frying some veggies, or anything with eggs etc can be done in a couple minutes.
But cooking quickly takes skills, and practice, and acquiring those takes time.
As an anecdote we required our children to learn to cook young, and by 13 cook a regular meal for the family once a week. Ultimately some enjoyed the process more than others, but all are able to feed themselves quickly, and with little effort. If I have one bit of useful advice it us to encourage kids to learn how to cook for themselves, and for others. And yes, alas, I'm aware of the cost in money and time in doing that.
Where it gets hard is over 70 hours a week.
And more importantly, you and I as engineers are going to operate in drastically different mental spaces than someone that has to work 60h weeks solely to survive. Someone that needs to work between multiple jobs, or deal with physically intensive jobs or customer facing jobs are not going to able to turn off after work as easily.
My parents were fishermen and would spend way more than that out in the bay due to the necessities of the job. When you're done with that work, after hauling bait and working on the boat you have zero energy to do much else afterwards.
In reality people who work more than the standard working hours (40) are effectively undercutting everyone else in terms of price per hour worked. Working more hours for the same pay is not something to be proud about; it is an attack on you colleagues. The overwork behaviour causes increased competition, where everybody's expected work hours will silently increase ('why don't you work as hard as they are'). The employer will of course be happy, because they get a better deal. Giving away your time for free shouldn't be something honorable.
It's a bit different if you are getting compensated for the extra hours, e.g. if you are the founder of the company, or are getting good overtime pay. But I still think there needs to be moderation.
Emolyees should be working less than they are today, not more. 40 hours is already too much to have a balanced life. I think a more reasonable level would be somewhere around 4x7 = 28 hours per week. But instead of moving an inch towards that level, our societies have gone in the other direction, where unpaid overtime is the norm.
I hope we can see a attitude change about work / overwork in my lifetime. But I'm not very optimistic about that.
Dollar stores are amazing for kids things. For example, balloons are a dollar at the dollar store and ten dollars for the same balloon at Safeway.
Any food will make you sick. You can find crap food at any store. Dollar stores don't have the monopoly on that. I think that 90% of "food" at ANY store is crap.
Food is extremely inexpensive if you learn how to make stuff yourself and don't buy anything that is prepackaged. Don't buy Thousand Island dressing for example, make it from base ingredients. Instead of paying $3 at a regular grocery store, you can make it for 25 cents, if that. Croutons? Costs $2.50 at the store, or make them at home in your oven for 10 cents or whatever. All you need is bread and spices, and as I said, this is not a $2.40 savings, oh no. it is a 2,500% return on your money.
It really does not take too long to make one's own food, if one does it correctly.
Here are my observations.
* The food will likely make you sick if you eat it regularly, the food options are highly processed and made of cheap, poor quality ingredients.
* Kids, lots of kids. Lots of lower income families have multiple kids and the dollar store is one way to stretch the budget.
* Dollar stores do a decent job at keeping things at $1.25. There were definitely some products that I would see 2x or 3x the price at other stores.
* It was busy, very busy.