Hacker News Reader

Comment by okmokmz | Hacker News Reader

I shop at a local Hispanic grocery store, and I'm always surprised how many people will buy soda, sugary breakfast cereals, candy, essentially boxed fast food, and other garbage with their food stamps rather than the great fresh produce, meats, seafood, etc. that's available. It certainly isn't everyone, but it does seem to be the majority anecdotally. I agree that education is a far more important piece of resolving this issue

View on HN

One should not underestimate the extent to which stress, depression, and anxiety can make us crave comfort food, and rob the energy to do things like cook your own meals. Especially if you're a working poor and already tired when you get home.

Not to mention mental health issues can also make "healthy" meals just taste like shit making everything worse and driving people to get more unhealthy food.

Definitely! Depression has a habit of blunting sensory experiences, including taste.

True, but that's a self reinforcing feedback loop.

Eat junk -> Feel like crap, low energy -> Eat more junk

Not a good long term strategy. There are widely available low cost foods that can help break that loop. Rice, beans, eggs, frozen vegetables... In fact frozen vegetables are often more nutritious than non-frozen, unless you're eating close enough to picking time.

Eat junk -> Feel like crap

Put a bunch of effort into making good food -> Feel like crap

Seems obvious what I pick.

> Not a good long term strategy.

That's exactly the point. When you're poor, you don't have the luxury of considering a long term strategy.

> that's a self reinforcing feedback loop.

That's exactly the point. You don't break out of those just by deciding one day to be rational.

People do it all the time. It's unfortunately the exception, not the rule.

One should also not underestimate the roles that culture and ignorance play in food selection.

Don't bend over backwards to excuse people of personal responsibility.

Looks like we should stop saying "comfort food" and just say "high calories/high carbohydrate unhealthy food"?

What you call it is immaterial, what matters is how it makes your System 1 feel. Comfort food is just a phrase I chose to use because that's what it is.

Worth noting that processed foods also provide far more calories per dollar. So in a way, they're maximizing their limited funds, albeit with long term consequences.

Maximizing calorie per dollar almost certainly means boxes of pasta, jars of peanut butter, and bags of rice and beans. I think comfort, habit, and convenience have more to do with it than calories.

I think it's both!

I agree, it's unlikely many people have literally thought through "what single food will best maximize my calorie intake?"

However, it's relatively intuitive that spending some amount of money on cereal will get you further than spending the same amount on Apples. And so they buy cereal.

But all of those need time and effort to prepare. If you put a dollar cost on the effort involved McDonalds dollar menu might come ahead.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com