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Comment by etchalon | Hacker News Reader

I'm being explicit about what "demand" means, and how the economics of grocery stores intersect with things like physical space, infrastructure, government regulation, etc. lest someone think "there's not enough demand" means "poor people just don't want affordable, nutritious food."

There can be plenty of demand for a quality grocery store, but not enough square footage available to support a store that sells the volume and mix of goods necessary to create a profitable business.

There can be plenty of square footage, and relatively high demand but not enough literal humans in the area to support it.

And there can be enough space, and enough people, but infrastructure problems which create uneven costs on the business.

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I understand what you're saying, but, a priori, how can you say the existence of food deserts is because of reason X vs. Y.

For instance, the poorest Americans drink the most sugary drinks [0]. I can accept there may be other reasons for the existence of food deserts, but to outright dismiss that preferences might differ across incomes without any evidence feels like an argument made purely out of ideology.

[0]: https://theconversation.com/poorest-americans-drink-a-lot-mo...

Growing up poor, my house and the houses of my friends basically had three options – milk, sugary drinks and water. And milk was rationed like it was war.

Sugary drinks are cheap, shelf-stable and dense with calories.

When you don't have a lot of better options for calories, they fit the bill. It's not preference, it's survival.

We know that despite the difference in sugary drink consumption, obesity doesn't vary in population sets [0]:

"… evidence from 4 nationally representative US surveys has shown that populations who frequently consume sugar-sweetened beverages do not have a higher obesity rate or risk than populations who infrequently consume these beverages."

… which makes sense if sugary drinks are replacing calories that would otherwise be found in better foods.

I'd recommend spending some time with working-class people before adopting any belief which treats them as fundamentally different than higher-income people in terms of preferences.

[0]:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2957908/

Sugary beverages have been correlated with obesity and weight gain in multiple other studies, however. One thing that’s interesting having read a few of these is that there are often contradictory results when doing meta-analysis of multiple studies.

Having empathy on a subject is definitely important. But it’s also important not to take an argument personally and not let personal anecdotes influence you more than they warrant. We’re not really talking about every poor person here and we’re not talking about your childhood friends. We’re mostly talking in generalizations about broad demographic trends.

Random study on obesity’s correlation with sugary drinks: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862465/

The importance of the study I linked is that it examined consumption in low-income populations, and not the broader public.

As my point was that sugary drinks are often a form of caloric replacement, and not preference, for low-income people – as was my lived experience – the study was relevant as it's the type of result you'd expect were that to be the case.

I was not arguing that sugary drinks don't contribute to obesity in the general public.

I too grew up poor and we never had soft drinks. Instead my mom would make us kool-aid on occasion. We almost exclusively ate at home, from food my mom prepared. We did have a kitchen, so if you don’t have access to a kitchen your options are limited.

I've followed your comments in this thread. You'd benefit from educating yourself on the subject of food deserts it is not an unknown or new subject. There are hundreds of studies that explain how and why food deserts exist and why poor people make the decision that they do.

Feel free to share any resources you find particularly illuminating.

you may want to look here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4810442/#:~:tex....

From the stores perspective, I can imagine that there are a few reasons why it can make sense for them to move out of impoverished areas even while demand exists there.

Wealthy customers who can easily travel to stores in impoverished areas are turned off by poor conditions and higher crime rates and will shop elsewhere. They may also feel less comfortable shopping in areas where the majority of the other customers are of a different race or culture. The stores and staff may themselves experience increases in theft, vandalism, and violence in low income areas. Stores can't sell as many overpriced items in low income areas where the majority of their clientele are struggling to afford necessities.

It really doesn't matter that a store can make a healthy profit by serving customers who live in a low income area. If that same store feels that they could make even greater profits by being in an area with wealthier customers, then that is exactly what we must expect they will do.

One of the main indicators of in the study you linked was sales volume, i.e. demand.

> It really doesn't matter that a store can make a healthy profit by serving customers who live in a low income area. If that same store feels that they could make even greater profits by being in an area with wealthier customers

This only holds true if a chain can open a fixed amount of stores. In reality, they can open as many stores as they want provided that the stores operate profitably.

> One of the main indicators of in the study you linked was sales volume, i.e. demand.

Sales is a poor measure of demand, because there are a lot of other factors that impact sales, but stores in low income areas certainly face demand problems in some ways. Demand for expensive products that might sell well in other areas will be much lower in neighborhoods where few people can ever afford them.

A store in a low income area is also insulated since fewer people from outside of the immediate area will come to shop there and many will deliberately avoid shopping there. That's certain to impact sales.

> In reality, they can open as many stores as they want provided that the stores operate profitably.

As long as they can continuously open stores, it would still make them the most money to limit themselves to the most profitable areas right? As long as they have the option to open a new store in a wealthy neighborhood where they can make the most sales and highest profits, why should they open one in an impoverished neighborhood? I live in a pretty nice area and there are five grocery stores within 10 minutes of my house (two owned by the same company), and that's not not counting stores like target/walmart that also sell groceries and are less than 10 minutes away!

Never mind that the paper specifically calls attention to profitability, you seem to believe businesses have access to unlimited capital, provided they can show a profit?

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