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Comment by nkkollaw | Hacker News Reader

Meh, veggies, rice, etc. are super-cheap everywhere in the world.

It doesn't take money to eat healthy. It's not that fast food restaurants are the only choice is you don't have money. You can go to a grocery store and eat extremely healthy if you want to.

Those who eat at fast food restaurants all the time are more uneducated than poor (although both things might go hand-in-hand), and might not know how many calories are in a burger or more importantly sodas (I've seen people drinking liters every day).

You can buy an apple instead of a can of coke and save you both a few hundred calories and a few pennies. Nothing to do with money.

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FWIW Vietnam War prisoners (Americans held in North Vietnam) strongly tended to live longer than their peers after release. Years without artificial light eating a basic diet and limited calories made a big difference, even without factoring out torture.

In contrast the starvation diet the Japanese imposed on their WWII prisoners (from Hong Kong in particular) shortened their lives quite a bit.

Veggies are not cheap here, its cheaper in the UK and even in Singapore where everything is imported than in California.

Aww, come on! How much is 1 kg of carrots or potatoes?

Banana (0.25 kg) 0.63 $

Oranges (0.30 kg) 1.04 $

Tomato (0.20 kg) 0.85 $

Potato (0.20 kg) 0.60 $

Onion (0.10 kg) 0.26 $

Lettuce (0.20 head) 0.28 $

Not the best source probably, but by looking at https://www.numbeo.com/food-prices/in/Los-Angeles it doesn't seem like one can easily go broke from buying vegetables.

Yeah, all of those are single serving prices that you're looking at, and only the onion (and I guess lettuce if it's not romaine) is actually a vegetable. Potatoes are starches, the others are fruits (with higher sugar). They don't list much in the way of vegetable prices.

But, even given that; I can buy a head of lettuce for $1.40. Okay. Or, I could buy an 8 pack of little debbie snack cakes for the same amount. 5 servings of lettuce that has nearly no nutritional substance, and that I have to combine with something else anyway to make it palatable...or 8 servings of convenient, enjoyed food.

If I wanted crunch, I can get a giant bag of tortilla chips for $1, too. Why would I buy a head of lettuce for 40% more, when it takes more work, and more ingredients inflating the price even higher?

It was stated that the obesity crisis might be caused by the cost of vegetables (or otherwise healthy food). This is nonsense. I don't know why you're getting picky with definitions while that was just an example to prove that it's not as if an eggplant is $20 and a cheeseburger $1.

> Or, I could buy an 8 pack of little debbie snack cakes for the same amount. 5 servings of lettuce that has nearly no nutritional substance, and that I have to combine with something else anyway to make it palatable...or 8 servings of convenient, enjoyed food.

Right. I would never eat that, though. There are also plenty of ways to make vegetables palatable: eggplants with tomatoes with spices are very tasty, for instance.

I'm also not saying that junk food isn't cheaper, just that healthy food is affordable for everyone.

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