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Comment by tiku | Hacker News Reader

Well it could be a lot of different things. No money for good food, sports and a lot of stress that accompanies having no steady source of income etc..

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Sure, eating flour mixed with water is cheaper than vegetables. But I don't think people do that.

Instead people wrongly think fast food is cheaper than home cooked food.

Not sure your point of "no money for good food"

Source- calories and protein and vitamins per dollar

Edit- fast food is not necessarily faster. Carrots and protein shakes are faster than waiting in line for example.

>Instead people wrongly think fast food is cheaper than home cooked food.

Fast food is cheaper than home cooked food when you factor in time & mental effort. Cooking at home requires skills that many people do not have.

This this this. It's all well and good cooking and prepping etc when you're in a comfortable house and have stocked kitchen space to yourself at home, but when you realise that a lot of people eating out every day don't have access to space in a kitchen that isn't busy with the four other people they live with, that don't get home until 7pm at night and have to leave at 7am in the morning to get to work etc, and you realise that unless cooking is your hobby in those situations you wouldn't have time to decompress after work and make a nutritious meal and also prep lunch for the following day etc.

Yes weekend meal prep is a thing too - but freezer space is at a premium in shared households and there's always the threat of a roommate or family member taking the food for themselves.

seems like people need to enter a 'team' mindset, where you share cooking duties with roommates etc.. trying to help each other pull themselves out of poverty. ofc this is 0.1% likely to happen, but when it does, i think it would work.

ofc this is 0.1% likely to happen

I think you severely underestimate the power of teamwork.

That's how our family has survived through 90s. This grandma will watch after everyone's kids. That only guy who has a car will buy cheap potatoes in bulk for everyone.

When you're in constant survival mode, it's hard to think like that. How can you spare the time helping someone else when you're already drowning?

The difficult thing is that we've gone a long way towards eliminating the tight-knit communities from our society. It's a lot easier to coordinate resource and effort sharing with people you've known your entire life (family, family-ish, and church cohorts).

Even just the church tradition of organizing bringing food to somebody in the community who is sick, indisposed or undergoing a stressful time in their lives (think: just had a kid) is falling by the wayside.

You're making the assumption that poor people expect upper middle class standards of inconvenience (well, lack thereof) in their daily lives. This is not the case because if you don't know what you're missing it's hard to miss it. If the kitchen is busy you wait or work around people. "Time to decompress" isn't even on most people's radar as a thing they want to do. When you have to eat dinner make lunch and go to sleep to get to work the next day that takes priority. It's not "woe is me I can't sit on my butt for half an hour and watch Jeopardy tonight," it's just life.

Sorry, this is beyond my understanding.

Morning porridge: pour water into oats. Microwave for 2 minutes.

Dinner: pour water into rice. Boil for 10 minutes. Add a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store.

My 7yo does it. Do you seriously think there's a non-disabled adult incapable of pouring water in a bowl?

Buying ready to eat chicken every day and buying fast food is different how?

People who are homeless or inadequately housed can have no access to the ability to do this. They may not have a microwave or means to boil water.

>Do you seriously think there's a non-disabled adult incapable of pouring water in a bowl?

I seriously think there are non-disabled adults that would never think to pour water into a bowl for oatmeal. That's the crux of my argument. The meta cognitive step to "change the status quo" appears to be beyond the capability of most people.

Great now you're able to eat one crappy meal forever. Maybe people want variety and taste and don't have time to invest in that?? Maybe people live in an area not near a good grocery store, which is VERY common in lower income areas... think harder if you can't envision this being more complicated than it seems

Of course rotisserie chicken is just another form of fast food. You're proving the point!

It's as "fast" as bread and instant coffee.

At least it's cheap, reasonably healthy and tasty.

It's not, actually, since it involves buying a microwave and waiting for things for cook... But more specifically, the above specifies cooking without relying on pre-made food like rotisserie, and you're proving the point that the cheap and healthy and tasty and easy choice is using pre-made food.

But a rotisserie chicken essentially costs as much as fast food would.

I'm usually sympathetic to this but dumping ramen into a coffee pot doesn't require skills. Frying an egg does but not much, and you could just microwave them instead. etc.

>Sure, eating flour mixed with water is cheaper than vegetables. But I don't think people do that.

You'd be surprised. Ever heard e.g. of "syrup sandwiches"?

Or dozens of other ways poor people get by with no money for food?

It's not just "fast food". And even that, it's not because they "wrongly think fast food is cheaper than home cooked food" -- it's because fast food is less stressful to make when you have to work like crazy, in excruciating jobs to make ends meets, and requires less time...

I remember my stepmother recalling her late teenage years / early adulthood poverty. She said she used to get a bunch of ketchup packets from a McDonalds to use a a very bad "tomato soup" base

I'm pretty sure that if someone thinks fast food is "cheaper" they are working off the "time is money" assumption.

Protein per dollar is actually quite expensive compared to carbs and fat. On the other hand, protein in fast food is even more expensive.

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