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Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

1) Availability to "food" and availability to __healthy food__ are two different things.

2) Poverty creates perma-stress. It effects the body. It effects the mind. It effects decision making.

Poverty is not sinply about income. It's much more complicated than that.

I don't know why you are being downvoted, since this is a perfectly valid topic that has been researched: http://www.businessinsider.com/poverty-effect-on-intelligenc....

There is also an effect about being time poor and having little to no time to cook. And coming from an also poor and time poor family, and never having learned how to cook. Etc. Poverty fucks you in many ways, and is indeed a complicated beast.

Time. Yes that's important as well. It's not just cooking.

Time is lost waiting for the bus, because you can't afford a car. You wait in line at the store because it can't afford another cashier and better technology. Etc.

People think poverty is their well to do life but with less money. Oh God, that's so ignorant.

BTW, the book Evicted is an eye and heart opener. Highly recommended.

Seriously, who in western countries does not have availability to "healthy food"? Everybody has basic grocery stores with cheap simple stuff just as available to them as convenience junk shops.

It's education about how food affects you that makes all the difference. People literally don't know what they're putting in themselves. There's a lot of food purchasing decisions based on stressors related to your very reasonable 2nd point. Basic food education at a personal level brings people out of that particular negative health cycle.

Not that I trust the CDC per se but if you query yourself you'll see there are plenty of other sources.

https://www.cdc.gov/features/FoodDeserts/index.html

Regardless, what you're naively discounting is the effects of poverty on the mind (and the body). Imagine, if you can, a state of permanent stress, fear, worry, etc. The human mind is __not__ wired to make optimal decisions under such circumstances.

Now let's just say it's time to eat...You're running from your 2nd job to your 3rd...how do you think that decision is going to go?

Poverty is not a lack of wealth. That's a side effect. Poverty is the result of mental, emotional and spiritual starvation; in the face of a world of plenty for everyone else but you and yours.

A main quote from that link is "a small percentage of American consumers are limited in their ability to access" healthier food, seemingly mostly tied to lack of transportation to otherwise close-by stores in densely populated areas. I would posit that's a much smaller percentage than those eating unhealthily in low/poverty income situations.

Your post here coincides with mine. Somebody running between jobs does have means of transportation, but is in a highly stressed life situation. The main problem is not one of literal access to healthy food, yet that is always the first supposition made. Healthy food is cheap, and it is not far away. The problems are beyond that.

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