Comment by alwillis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alwillis | Hacker News Reader

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From a big picture, socio-economic point of view, yes, the ruling class (Fortune 500 CEOs and elected officials they donate to and lobby) are essentially forcing the poor, the unaware, the average Joe to eat a diet full of high-fructose corn syrup and other carbohydrates, which happens to be produced by giant agricultural companies.

Corn is a subsidized crop by the US Department of Agriculture—we pay farmers to grow it. See the documentary "King Corn" about two guys who didn't know the first thing about growing corn but still made a profit on 1 acre of corn [1].

It's often said your zip code is a huge indicator of many demographic stats and what food you have access to is one of them.

I've lived in food deserts and I can tell you getting healthy food can be quite an arduous task, especially if you rely on public transportation.

Recent data shows that 80%(!) of black women in the United States are obese [2].

This isn't an organic phenomenon; this level of obesity is the result of a system—some intentional and some not—at work.

[1]: https://www.kingcorn.net

[2]: https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvlid=2...

"are essentially forcing"

Except for the fact that poor immigrants from Bangladesh or Africa do not suffer from the same problem in the first generation, because they are still used to buying staples in the market and cooking traditional meals at home.

The same can actually be seen in UK and Western Europe.

The deadly fact that is compounding the situation is that cooking skills haven't been passed down in a large portion of the Western population for almost two generations now. People who do not know how to cook rely on highly processed stuff that can be heated in 2 minutes in a microwave. Reliance on this highly processed stuff is strongly correlated with bad health outcomes.

Agree

> The deadly fact that is compounding the situation is that cooking skills haven't been passed down in a large portion of the Western population for almost two generations now. People who do not know how to cook rely on highly processed stuff that can be heated in 2 minutes in a microwave. Reliance on this highly processed stuff is strongly correlated with bad health outcomes.

People either feel that they don't have time to prepare and cook or they see it as inefficient since it is much faster and cheaper to dine-out or takeaway.

>Except for the fact that poor immigrants from Bangladesh or Africa do not suffer from the same problem in the first generation

Give them a a couple years or so, and many of them will want to live the American lifestyle - eating out every day, and stocking their pantry with snacks they see on TV. The ones that don't face the consequences of being obviously foreign.

In America, marketing and psychological hackery are second only to law in terms of "forcing" people to do things.

> I've lived in food deserts and I can tell you getting healthy food can be quite an arduous task, especially if you rely on public transportation.

That's what food desert means. As in, no food. Therefore food must be imported. Therefore it's expensive. Sugar just happens to be a well-preserving food.

The solution is quite simple: Don't live in a food desert.

>The solution is quite simple: Don't live in a food desert.

For the people on HN who tend to skew towards wealthy white-collar work this is fine advice, but it's absolutely not possible for a lot of people from lower incomes. Not only can they not afford to move, they can't afford to leave their entire social support structures and build them anew.

Excuses. History is rife with entire peoples migrating to greener pastures. If they wanted to move and eat better, they would.

I propose an experiment, find someone to look after your savings and belongings for a while and move to a new city with nothing more than US$500 or equivalent. You may not have friends or family within seventy miles of this location, nor a pre-arranged place to stay. You can come back for your money and possessions at any point, but if you don't last more than six months then you have to do a write-up on HN of your experiences and admit that poverty is more difficult to get out of than your naïve assumption.

They also can't afford to eat shit and have a shit life as a result.

Exactly, the notion that the poor are poor because they're inherently feckless and therefore deserve their poverty is an idea that's long past its sell-by date. These are the systemic issues of our day, and they won't be solved by sneering at the people affected.

Yeah wow that is quite possibly the most tone-deaf thing I've ever read on here. Plenty of people don't have the option to simply "not live in a food desert".

I hate calling out privilege but this just smacks of privilege.

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