Whole Foods isn’t the only store providing vegetables or pre-cut vegetables.

Even my local Walmart has pre-cut vegetables.

It’s not an affordability issue either. It’s cheaper to buy the same number of calories from vegetables, fruits, and legumes than meat right now. Meat prices are unusually high and it doesn’t seem to be slowing consumption.

My consumption of beef is way down because of the cost. I'm almost exclusively buying poultry and pork now for meat. Occasionally I'll get something like a top round or flank cut if it's on sale.

Is it? Chicken breasts are 2.69/lb at my store. I guess it's been creeping up over the years, but doesn't seem unusually high to me.

Vegetables are pretty terrible for caloric sustenance. Low density and high price.

It depends on what you call a vegetable. In the US, corn, potatoes, and ketchup are considered vegetables.

You need to make a distinction between leafy greens and starch.

Well, corn and potatoes are indeed vegetables, so there's that. And I think the only person who ever said ketchup was a vegetable with a straight face was Ronald Reagan 40 or 45 years ago.

"Eat your vegetables. They're good for you." shouldn't mean dipping your fries in ketchup. But that is what happens if you call corn and potatoes as vegetables.

Also price. What percentile of income do you need to feed a family of 4 on Whole Foods?

Cause and effect is backward. The locations indicate where people are buying it. And cheap doesn't really add up either because if somebody wants the cheapest possible calories they would be buying rice, flour/pasta, potato...

I don't know why the problem is shied away from. It is because people are addicted to fast food and to their sedentary lifestyles. It's not the price or availability of good food, not the first order effect anyway.

You'll never be able to force "whole foods" sellers into unprofitable places and if you did by some miracle, you'll never be able to force people to buy it no matter how much money you gave them. Vegetables and grains and basics could be free and many obese food addicts will go buy a burger from a drive thru.

Cooking good food takes time. I can slap some pre-made burgers in a pan, throw some buns in a toaster and have a "meal" in 10 minutes. I can stop by fast food on the way and have the same meal (at only slightly more cost) in 5 minutes.

I typically spend more than an hour in the kitchen cooking every day, and then there is half an hour clean up after my family is done eating. I eat much better and healthier food, but it takes time. (If I'm having noodles I'm making them from scratch myself - I could save some time buy less of things like that and the cost wouldn't be much different if any - but even then the whole meal takes time).

Plenty of ways to automate the kitchen and also cook fast and easy meals. I can spend 20 minutes on the kitchen and have food for a week. 2-3 minutes of reheating per meal

So you're buying premade burgers (which take 2 minutes to make from fresh ingredients) but are making noodles from scratch every time, are you?

Protein + carb + veg is cheap and takes less than 30 minutes to prepare, I have no idea what people are talking about in these threads.

Fast food almost always takes longer than that unless you can literally drive through while driving home from work.

Also, you're comparing making noodles from scratch to a typical meal. I can do an asian style chicken/veggie/rice meal in < 30 minutes and have the kitchen mostly cleaned by the time the rice is done.

i said on the way for fast food. Since those places are eherywhere it is likely you can find one on the way when you were going and so the time cost to go is zero.

i agree you canecook faster than I normally do - a lot of meals benefit from simmering while the flavors blend.

The average American spends five hours a day watching television. They could find the time if they wanted.

Not poor people, they are too busy to watch TV.

I grew up in a poor neighborhood. Busy doing what, exactly?

This comment is so out of touch it must be a joke right? At least I hope so.

Far more time was spent in front of the TV than any other activity by far by my peers and their families. Moving to a more middle class area opened my eyes in how many other options people had to do with their time, and how much time and effort was spent maintaining their lifestyles.

You are correct. I should have added /s

Humour is wasted here.

Well, uh, working. The less you make per hour of work means the more hours you need to maintain a normal standard of living. Obviously there's variance in standards of living, but wealthier people don't typically work two or three jobs. Poor people do, I've met people who do. The reality is that at 12 dollars an hour, 40 hours is just not gonna cut it.

And it's a little more complicated than even just that. Another reality is that, at 12 bucks an hour, nobody is going to be giving you a steady 40 hours. You need extra shifts for buffers, and your shifts will be shorter.

Sure, working 50 hours a week across 7 days isn't technically more than 50 across 5 days. But it does certainly drain your will to live a lot more, from what I've seen.

Poor obese people aren't working so much they don't have time to cook.

And using numbers to support that idea doesn't work, it actually goes against you. A small (much smaller than most obese people will eat in one sitting) fast food meal costs about an hour of minimum wage! Buying stable calories in cereals where the time to buy and cook them can be amortized into many more servings can be amortized is actually cheaper and also takes less time.

In the US, obesity rates rise as income drops, but it continues to rise beyond the point at which income drops below a full time federal minimum wage income.

It's over-eating and under-exercising. I know this is hard for certain ideologies to accept because it means obesity is not inflicted upon victims against their will and beyond their control. If you really need to minimize their agency and responsibility for their choices you can call it addiction to food and addiction to sedentary lifestyle if it helps.

I’m pretty sure this has reversed in recent decades. Wealthy people are far more likely to work long hours than the poor.

Or you slap the burgers in a pan and serve it with some broccoli, and sliced fresh red peppers or other other quick healthy sides and have a balanced meal. The bun, fries and soda are the unhealthy part of a burger, anyways (assuming it's good quality meat).

> Cooking good food takes time [...]

This does not address what I wrote though because it is not what I was arguing against.

I agree part of the reason people buy junk food and fast food rather than "whole food" is because the real or perceived effort required to turn it into something they will eat. Or they don't know how to make things that can compete on taste and satisfy their food addiction like those fast foods. It's not because they are time-poor either. They are just addicted to this sedentary "lazy" lifestyle. 30 minute drive to get fast food and eat it while watching TV or tiktok for the next hour or so beats making food and cleaning up for an hour.

People do not want to be accountable for what they put in their body. "Cooking is hard. Eating healthy is hard."

It's shocking.