Comment by dcolkitt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dcolkitt | Hacker News Reader

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Except this isn't really supported by the evidence. We have examples of fast food being restricted, and it has virtually no impact on obesity or health[1]. We now have tons of data regarding the Federal government's efforts to build full-fledged grocery stores in low-income areas. And the results show virtually no impact on health[2]

The second point I want to make is that you have a mis-placed emphasis on "fresh food". Frozen or canned vegetables, fruits and legumes are actually more nutritious than fresh produce. And the cost, variety and quality of canned and frozen produce has been improving steadily for decades.

The food desert hypothesis sounds compelling, but simply doesn't jibe with the evidence. Obesity among the lower classes is almost certainly driven by cultural and/or genetic factors, not lack of access to healthy food.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/20/393943031/wh... [2] https://www.vox.com/2015/12/22/10644738/food-desert-evidence

i deserve to be downvoted for lack of evidence. and i have a skewed view of things. i have lived in two separate "food deserts" in the rural US in the past three years, where the nearest food sources are either fast food, "comfort food", or dollar general/family dollar, with the nearest grocery store a 20-30 minute drive. both towns have a local farmers market during growing months, but prices are very expensive compared to local wages. i see your point, but still don't think that all blame can be placed on poor consumers.

>We have examples of fast food being restricted, and it has virtually no impact on obesity or health[1]

Your own link does not support your point, and contains a detailed analysis of why that particular experiment failed (it was completely ineffectual at actually restricting fast food).

Focusing on physical locations of supermarkets is missing the forest for the trees. As your link points out, the problem is that healthy food costs more. A "food desert" is just as real if you can't afford it, as if the food weren't there.

>Obesity among the lower classes is almost certainly driven by cultural and/or genetic factors

Ouch. Lower classes genetically inferior? That's a real dangerous road you're on pal.

> Ouch. Lower classes genetically inferior? That's a real dangerous road you're on pal.

Decades of twin studies have consistently shown that IQ[1], obesity[2], educational attainment[3], and lifetime earnings[4] all have significant components of genetic heritability. These are among the most replicated results in all of psychology.

GWAS have also found that intelligence is highly polygenic, involving at least 500 SNPs[5]. GWAS has confirmed that obesity is also highly polygenic, involving at least 400 SNPs[6]. The majority of those SNPs occur on genetic loci relating to brain function[7].

Given the fact that intelligence (a major determinant of SES in modern industrial economies) and obesity both involve a huge number of genes specifically related to neurological development, it would be shocking if there wasn't at least some overlap between the respective genetic structure of the two traits.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ [2] https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/29/1/49/437222#35942... [3] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01065905 [4] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2253264 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201185 [6] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6028139/ [7] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/274654v2

The problem with this theory is that it's lazy. It's quite probably true to some extent that some of the negative outcomes disproportionately experienced by poor people are not a direct consequence of poverty, but due to common intrinsic factors that make them poor in the first place. Some of these may even be heritable. Great, now what? Short of eugenics, there's nothing you can do about that. But, and here's the thing, such common intrinsic factors cannot account for all of the negative outcomes we see. There has to be some element of poor circumstance, some lever we can push - we surely can influence outcomes positively one way or another. This whole discussion is about exploring those ways. So why on Earth would you bring up the stuff we can't change, except to shut down that discussion?

Let me draw an analogy with baldness. We can agree that baldness is a problem for humanity. Maybe not the biggest problem, but every year many people go bald and are unhappy about it. So, if we could eliminate involuntary baldness that'd be great.

Now, let's say our philanthropic anti-baldness initiative notices that men go bald at significantly higher rates than women. So, we come to the conclusion that we have to figure out the sociological factors that make men bald. Maybe video games contributes to baldness, or maybe it's the stress of having looser ties to family, or maybe its the rate of military service?

As we both know, baldness, including the higher rate of male baldness, is driven by genetic-biological factors. If we refused to even consider this hypothesis it would lead to some pretty absurd conclusions and policies. But knowing that the problem has a biological basis lets us direct our humanitarian efforts at the root cause. We know that to treat baldness we need to target biology, with things like Rogaine and hair transplants, not sociology.

Social factors require social responses. Your analogy doesn't follow.

Your idea falls apart as soon as you consider the economic growth in the past. Did genetics suddenly change over the last 200 years and made everyone smarter but not in developing countries and suddenly their genetics are improving as well?

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