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Comment by oneepic | Hacker News Reader

...both financially and mentally.

I don’t understand what you are saying here?

It's too cost prohibitive to be healthy, and even if it wasn't there is too much mental energy needed to be picky about which foods/ingredients you're buying (Checking labels, researching nutritional values, etc)

The path of least resistance for the typical American is fatty foods and empty carbs.

It takes effort to do anything else.

Is there any good reason for that? Are fatty foods and empty carbs cheaper to produce than less processed, healthier food?

More to the point, is there money to be made by making real food more readily available?

For one it's much easier to make good tasting unhealthy food that it is to make good tasting unhealthy food.

It is very easy to make things taste good by loading them with fat and sugar.

They hit the sweet spot (no pun intended) between addiction, profitability, and marketability (stuff like convenience, spoilage resistance, etc.).

They're easier to store and last longer than fresh alternatives so they're both cheaper for the store to stock and sell and easier to use as a consumer because they won't go bad waiting to be used.

> Is there any good reason for that?

No.

> Are fatty foods and empty carbs cheaper to produce than less processed, healthier food?

They are subsidized by the government, ie: Corn subsidies. That said, even without subsidies, I'd imagine that they'd be cheaper for another reason: You can store them long term without too much cost.

> More to the point, is there money to be made by making real food more readily available?

Not likely. Any advantage you squeeze out could probably be copied by another company willing to sell less healthy food. So the only your only real option for differentiation would be marketing how healthy your food is. But that requires people to care.

If the government provided free healthy food to everyone, fully cooked, ready to go, at a reasonably well-prepared level, at as many locations as there are fast food restaurants, then, I think it would actually make some impact on health.

Hm. Maybe the government should just subsidize salads at restaurants/fast food joints.

> > More to the point, is there money to be made by making real food more readily available?

> Not likely. Any advantage you squeeze out could probably be copied by another company willing to sell less healthy food. So the only your only real option for differentiation would be marketing how healthy your food is. But that requires people to care.

I wasn't trying to make real food cheaper - just on par, so that the "path of least resistance" wasn't to eat garbage. We can't make people care. But can we make them not have to care so much, or try so hard?

Meat is heavily subsidized as well. That farmer's markets, small farmers, and vegetable farmers get way less financial assistance than the sugar industry is really weird. Sugar beets, corn, and cane sugar are all pretty large crops that we provide assistance too.

It's cheaper, engineered to be more addictive, and it takes little to no prep (ready to eat or just throw in the microwave, oven or stove to heat up). Healthier options have price tags of luxury goods, often 1.5x-3x the cost of the unhealthy version. Veggies are generally cheap, but require much more food prep unless you want to eat everything raw.

That's a huge systemic failure of western civilization. The "path of least resistance" should be somewhat healthy.

> It takes effort to do anything else.

True. But the point of having a civilization is arguably that thriving should require less and less effort.

The path of least resistance is not a social issue, it's purely practical. It isn't a "failure of western civilization" that wheat based goods are an extremely economical way to satiate hunger.

It is a failure of individuals that they fail to do anything outside of the path of least resistance.

It's not some law of nature that corn syrup is cheap in the US and used in everything, it's subsidies. If the path of least resistance was bread and baked potatoes (both very cheap and efficient) the US would be in a better place than it is now.

Grains are so heavily subsidized it distorts incentives. The actual costs without subsidies would significantly reduce the relative cost of greens etc and thus tend to a better diet for most people. We are actively and at great cost making things worse.

To be honest not all places if "western civilization" encourage the consumption of:

- massive consumption of empty calories in the form of soft drinks

- huge portion sizes (as in, > 100% of recommended calories in a single meal)

- "substitution" of non-processed foods by massively processed ones (either by cost, access, massive spread of fast food chains or just general culture)

If you're poor, it's prohibitively expensive to maintain one's mental health -- the focus on nutrition is spot on, but it's lacking. If you're working 2 or 3 minimum wage jobs, you don't have time for self care. You can't afford therapy; time or money. You probably can't maintain a regular sleep habit, exercise schedule, etc.

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