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Comment by Nacdor | Hacker News Reader

> I noticed a substantial improvement in my health when I started putting HEPA air filters all over my house, and another jump when I moved away from a major road.

Same for me when I moved out of a stuffy old high-rise in Philadelphia. I had frequent coughs and wheezing, shortness of breath, and just lots of general discomfort with breathing. Every time I washed my car there was a thick black layer of soot covering it within a couple days, so I'm sure that was doing great things for my lungs. Also got a couple serious colds every year when I lived there. That was as a 20-something who never smoked, didn't have asthma and wasn't overweight.

Living in the suburbs now and haven't had an issue since moving.

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Air quality and health are quite significant in predicting COVID mortality on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis, too. Environmental air quality -- socioeconomic status -- health outcomes (and more) are tied in a very complex network with a lot of reinforcing cycles. I don't know what the distribution of stove type by income level is, but I do have the impression that richer Americans are more likely to have fancy induction ranges, and poorer Americans are more likely to use gas.

Annoying as I certainly find gas more pleasant to cook with.

When I think of a cheap apartment I imagine a stove with electric resistive coils.

Indeed. The only rentals with gas stoves are either the high-end market, or legacy housing stock probably 50+ years old.

Any lower/middle class oriented apartments I've seen built in the past 30 years in my area at least have all been electric.

Also spent a lot of my 20's in cheap apartments, and never had anything more than an electric coil stove.

>legacy housing stock probably 50+ years old

My first apartment out of college was an absolute trash heap. I lived in a studio, which had clearly at one point been a 1 br until someone put a wall in the middle of it to create 2 studios. Only two positive aspects about that place was the fact that it had a brand new gas stove, and that whoever had put up the wall failed to create a new electric circut for the studio, so my neighbor paid my electric bill for the year I was there :)

I'd say also geographic. Japan/Philippines have gas stoves vs electric simply because it is cheaper, reliable and not every house in the Philippines has electricity...

Ye olde grand cities new stock of apartments has gas, so Chicago, NYC, simply because it's already wired and can be cheaper than electricity in winter.

When I think of a fancy kitchen I think of an induction stove. It puts the least heat into the air since it heats the pan directly, its incredibly easy to clean because its a flat surface, it looks great because it can blend into the counter, and its absolutely the fastest way to boil a pot of water.

> I don't know what the distribution of stove type by income level is, but I do have the impression that richer Americans are more likely to have fancy induction ranges, and poorer Americans are more likely to use gas.

At a high enough income level you are right that kitchens separate the oven and stove. However you'd be surprised how many high end kitchens will use a gas stove because it's often a better and more versatile cooking tool, plus natural gas is something America has a lot of and is very cheap compared to the Russian gas that many Europeans have to deal with.

Also, the poorest of Americans will use electric ranges almost universally because we can make electric ranges for the same or less than a gas range and the poorest of people live in places that don't even get natural gas copper piped through their place. They would just live without it and have electricity only.

I always thought poor americans couldn't afford general cooking ingredients and end up eating a lot of fastfood?

It’s a time/energy issue more than a cost issue. General cooking ingredients are dirt cheap here. But finding time to cook while working multiple part time jobs isn’t as easy.

Fast food in the US is significantly more expensive than preparing your own food from basic ingredients. There may be some lower-income people who eat lots of fast food, but it's certainly not because it's the economical choice.

Learning to cook economically and edibly is a barrier to entry. And there's an ongoing higher time-cost per meal due to planning meals, getting ingredients, and (finally) cooking. So it's not suuuper surprising to me that people working 2+ jobs to cover basics end up eating a lot of fast food.

Cost is one problem. Availability is another: fresh produce takes up a lot of space, and the kinds of supermarkets that carry them don't want to move into poor neighborhoods.

Another is time: minimum wage for a 40 hour work week earns you less than $15,000 a year (in the US). So many working poor are working more than 40 hour weeks, and can't take the time to cook, even if they can afford and obtain ingredients. Fast food is cheap, available, and fast.

Cost for fresh food or even just generic ingredients in the US is crazy low. I'm in Canada but am from the US and there is a non-trivial cost difference in things like milk and veggies.

Bigger problem is that low-income folks don't have the time, the access, or the urge -- marketing aimed at low-income folks works as well as on any demographic -- so they miss out.

If you're working 49 hours a week in 2 jobs and taking the bus home, are you gonna have the time to make steel cut oats and organic quinoa with mushroom broth, or are you going to hit the easiest thing on the way home, aka a quick burger at McD's? Quinoa ain't bad, but it doesn't hit the spot a the way a burger does either.

Sadly, no. I ended up in a tough situation in college (someone bailed on housing part way through the semester), and I cut out fast food entirely. Take for example, the ubiquitous Big Mac meal, A drink, a burger, and fries for $5.99 (plus tax). You can assemble that your self (sans fries, maybe a salad instead) for probably $3 even. You can save up to 40% buying ground beef in larger "family packs", getting super cheap store-brand bread and buns helps stretch your money a bit more. Getting vegetables in bulk packs from places like Costco can save you money, that was pretty life changing to discover. When you really look at it, there's probably $2.50 of labor built into every fast food meal that you can save by cooking for yourself.

Fast food is an expensive luxury to poor Americans who would live on generically branded large bags of frozen goods that are heated in an electric oven or microwave.

If we're talking the cheapest and worst food habits of the poorest, we're talking lots of ramen and tons of frozen foods. You can get big bags of frozen french fries for way cheaper than fast food. $3 gets you a fry at McDonalds or a 2 pound bag of frozen generic.

Fast food would be the luxury version lol.

>However you'd be surprised how many high end kitchens will use a gas stove because it's often a better and more versatile cooking tool,

Since I switched to induction i think it's the best technology. Yes, you need specific pans, but all the good ones are induction ready anyway.

Besides that, it's safe like any electric, can be fast heating like gas, is more efficient than standard electric, and the oven plates don't burn you for more than a minute after taking off the hot pan or pot (since the vessel is heated, not the glass plate).

It's seriously the best way to cook now, and it has gotten quite affordable.

I had gas at my previous place, but when we moved into this house it did not have gas inside. So when we replaced the stove we went with induction. Its amazing, and heats faster than our previous gas stove. There is no loss from heating the air around the bottom of the pan, and you can pump a surprising amount of heat out real fast with induction.

Was also surprised to find out that it is actually the more economical choice for us as well. We can only do propane, and not natural gas, and its a lot more expensive, so it works out nicely.

Don't want to go back to anything other than induction at this point.

"The demand for natural gas has declined in Europe during the 2010–2013 period largely due to the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent recession and the migration of manufacturing industry to other world regions, but the lack of population growth and high prices have also contributed to the effect. Although there is currently an oversupply in the market, the trend has already reversed. Asia continuously diverts the LNG production surplus, while the US shale gas with its high variable cost and high sensitivity to LNG market prices cannot currently compete with the cheap Russian gas. The International Energy Agency (2017) forecasts flat demand and an average annual decline of −2.5%for European production. This amounts up to 34 bcm deficit in the 2017–2022 period and possible more in the future. Nord Stream 2 aims to close this gap."

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342533629_The_impac...

> Annoying as I certainly find gas more pleasant to cook with.

Induction gives you most of the benefits, without the hazards described in the article, or the same risks of fire and explosion.

Also, better induction cookers have useful enhancements such as "hold my pot at 85 degrees" or "hold my fry pan at 180 degrees".

I grew up with electric, and I've used gas a fair bit in my adult life. I feel like if I could choose only one, induction would be the winner for almost everything. The one exception I can think of is my wok - I'd have to start using a flat bottomed wok, and couldn't tilt it to move the heat onto the side, or lift it a few inches to lower the heat level.

> in Philadelphia ... Every time I washed my car there was a thick black layer of soot covering it within a couple days

A layer of soot in Philadelphia? I've spent plenty of time there, know plenty who live there, and never saw or heard of such a thing. Were you parking next to a chimney sweep?

I lived in LA and got layers of "soot" on my windows.. the screen would be black with mostly tire and road particles I think.

People in Philadelphia are like abused children. They’ll defend it to the last, but it’s not called filthadelphia for nothing.

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