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Comment by 001sky | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the issue that poor people cannot afford fresh food? The calorie/dollar of veg+fruit is not a good value because in places like NYC or SF the markets are completely gentrified and the prices are astronomical. The other consideration is that the poor cannot live in nice real estate areas -- they live in grocery ghettoes. Take a look at the un-even distribution of places like trader joes around the uS and compare that to wal-mart. TJs is only in NFL metros for the most part (with upscale exceptions proving the rule). All of these public health "concerns" reeek of 1st world problems by weatlthy urban people who don't farm or have extensive familiarity with subsistence living. Remember that food stamps were created for poor white people in rural appalccia. The urban poor have completely different health concerns tied to the economics of real estate and transportation. None of this is served or in the scope of normal by the usda.

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Current US grocery prices are distorted by farmbill subsidies. Beef, dairy, corn, wheat, soy, sugar, etc are all heavily subsidized by the Federal government's farming policies and tax deductions.

This doesn't change the fact that, relatively speaking, food is more expensive where the cost of living is more expensive and I do not dispute the fact that there are so called "grocery ghettoes".

This also doesn't change the fact that McDonald's burgers are vastly cheaper per Calorie than consumer-packaged vegetables or raw meats, but that is to be expected. The dressing on a salad is almost always more calorie-dense than the salad itself.

Here's the actual price data of U.S. cities compared to the midwest:

http://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/AverageRetailFo...

Obviously real estate and food prices are correlated at the county and/or zip code level and that is a bit of a data challenge in reviewing this linked data.

My point above is that its a hard thing to mandate people eat food X when it might be $10 for 2,000 calories vs $2 for 2,000 calories. Its also a problem if the $10 option pre-supposed you buy in bulk, have access to refrigeration, and use spreadsheets to minimize wastage which otherwsie might be as high as 30% (making it $10 for 1400 calories down the gullet). My understanding of what little research has been done in this area has highlighted that the logistics and economics of fresh fruit/veg are heavily biased towards the upper/middle classes in many ways that are not obviously apparent nor addressed stricly by "guidance" on what is a "better" mix of foods. To use an analogy that people with white priveldge may be more able to understand: if I tell you to pack a weeks worth of fresh fruit and raw meat for a hike in yosemite, which you have to carry, and forbid you from eating anything like nuts/granola/raisins/cliffbars/dried meat, you probably would have a bad time lugging around that backpack over 10,000 ft passes and what not. The reality is that rich white people in the backcountry eat the same crappy food as inner city poor people once they lose access to refrigeration/storage and frequent/convenient resupply options. It doesn matter if you look at a pro bar or a nature valley or a power bar or a snickers. They are all interchangeble in that context and do the job, despite some being up to 7x as expensive. And nobody would call a diet of 8 probars and a pack of beef jerkey a day either healthy or well rounded, but you will survive your trip. Of course, if you eat this diet in a sedentary culture, you're BMI will get out of wack. But that is the power of the explanation.

Don't Walmart sell fruit and vegetables?

The British supermarket they bought, Asda, is the cheapest major supermarket in the UK and it certainly sells fresh fruit and veg.

https://www.google.dk/search?q=asda&prmd=imvn&tbm=isch#tbm=i...

It's not fantastic quality, but it's very cheap.

yes, walmart is one of the largest us grocers. the issue is that walmart is not in many areas despite being in a much larger footprint than TJs. traders joes, on the other hand, is only in ABC1 demos in the US which means its an upper/middle class niche biz. While wallmart is much more avail than TJ it is still limited to Interstate corridors, which is another form of premium real estate. That link is sort of important to think about. Also, wall mart does not have cheap meat for the most part and its fresh produce is mid-tier pricing. More expensive than say, Aldi.

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