Hacker News Reader

Comment by muglug | Hacker News Reader

It’s not just food education. If you’re poor in the US you’re much less likely to live near a source of fresh meat and produce, which makes calorie-rich fast food more tempting. You’re more at the mercy of many multi-billion-dollar industries that serve unhealthy food to the masses.

View on HN

There's an opportunity cost and a time cost (and an attention cost) to making food properly and eating right.

Opportunity: if your area cannot give you produce (raw materials to cook with) that's pretty direct. Time: I'm fortunate enough that I can blow at least an hour a day just cutting up meat for stir-fry or preparing my omelet and oatmeal, and a lot of this is really time-optimized but it's still way more than the microwave-box lifestyle. That hour (at least, and distributed among all my meals for the day) is also an attention sink that I can't skip, even though I make the same stuff over and over. If I couldn't do that, I'd have to not only be getting different foodstuffs, but also figuring out different recipes every time I got bored.

You can let corporate America do that stuff for you and just pick different enticing boxes of microwaveable stuff, but you will get bombed with combinations of sugar and salt because competing in the supermarket aisle is serious business and those who fail are lost. They'd be putting fentanyl in the Hot Pockets if they dared. Anything to make the sale, it's that or perish.

Then, that's what you eat, if you're poor and can't spend hours doing it yourself and doing it right. And if you're poor enough… the selection at Cumberland Farms is going to be strictly kept to whatever the other poor people in your neighborhood are addicted to, because that's what will sell.

> poor in the US

That's it. There's a huge difference between US and many other countries

It also compounds with the social/cultural context of a living in a city full of very wealthy people.

I'm from a developing country where these things are affordable and less wealthy people spend money on cigarettes rather than salads. Here it definitely isn't about money but about having proper food culture

When you have a hard life and can't afford comparatively costly luxuries like a vacation or air conditioning, you find cheaper pleasures.

“Less likely”, “more at the mercy”, it still comes down to the individuals choices, it’s not that hard to not be obese when poor.

“it’s not that hard to not be obese when poor.”

The statistics make it quite clear that it is hard, maybe your assumptions are wrong.

I'm not particularly interested in some "studies" that come out with statistics saying its hard not to be obese when poor. The fact of the matter is that it's possible to eat relatively healthy affordably (e.g. rice, potatoes, food on sale/discount), and that if you were truly poor you should be saving money by eating less food.

Or your assumption wrong. Here is a reasonable explanation: People are poor since they got bad self control, which also makes them fat. People who lack self control are easily tempted with shitty fast food, so their areas mostly serves it rather than real food creating these "food deserts".

If there was demand for food in those areas people would sell it, but there isn't.

Edit: A strong piece of evidence is that people aren't getting poorer, but they sure are getting fatter.

If we're talking about the obesity rate, statistics make it clear that it's easy to be obese when poor, not that it's not easy to not be obese for the poor.

Or are you talking about statistics that asked if poor people tried to not be overweight but couldn't do it? If so, could you please send link to that - as I'm not aware of any such large-scale study and quick search didn't reveal anything significant?

If it's not hard to avoid being overweight when poor, and most poor people are overweight... what is happening? Do you see the obvious conclusion here? Do you endorse it?

People are getting fatter and fatter. It is much worse now than 20 years ago, and even much much worse than 40 years ago. Any explanation you can come up with needs to be able to explain this as well. Does poor people have worse access to food today? Do they have less money for food today?

If we put poor people in the same conditions they had 40 years ago they would be slimmer than rich people today.

Over the past 30 years, grocery store prices have risen 4.5 percent above economy-wide prices, indicating that food has become relatively more expensive than some other consumer goods... Real prices for fresh fruits and vegetables grew the most among all major food categories, increasing just over 40 percent... Over the same time period, real prices for fats and oils, sugar and sweets, and nonalcoholic beverages grew less than overall inflation.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2015/july/growth-in-inf...

Yes I know where you stand on this, I don't need more information about your opinion.

I asked if you see the conclusion of this view, and if you endorse it.

To be very very clear it goes like this: if poor are fat because they make bad choices and for no other reasons, then you can reasonably conclude that that is also why they are poor. That they deserve to be poor for that reason.

Is that a fair summary of your view?

> That they deserve to be poor for that reason.

Where are they saying that? This entire conversation has no relevance to what one deserves. Causality is not changed by one deserving something.

That's not a fair summary of anyone's view, and you know it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com