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Comment by tomcar288 | Hacker News Reader

i'm not saying anything about the content of infowars but I can't believe how much money people will spend on "supplements", and pills and artificial products. and yet, somehow don't have any money for fruits, vegetables and beans. i can only imagine, there's something broken in how people are being raised.

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It's more about the cult of personality of Alex Jones or Gwyneth Paltrow. They aren't buying products to be healthy, they are buying products to be more like/to support their favorite celebrities. While thinking about "blame", don't ignore that some people are working pretty hard to find & target these products to whales.

Before all this there has been GNC, taking advantage of the health conscious and gym rats.

As well as a whole Whole Foods aisle dedicated to supplements and natural substances but can’t carry Aspirin! It irks me that they can’t carry aspirin and basic OTCs you can get at a 7-11.

Even CostCo is 110% in on selling overpriced "supplements" to an ageing, afraid, and underinsured populace. Surely this industrial quantity of random pills will fix me!

But who looks at Alex Jones and thinks "I want to have what that guys having"?

There is a, frankly insane episode of This American Life, where they take a look at one of the stories Alex tells about his childhood. The ending of it is remarkable: even though they are talking to people who know the story that Alex tells is false, absolute fiction... they still believe him on everything else.

> It kept happening. All these people who knew for sure that Alex had been a liar back in Rockwall. A lot of them believed that what he says on Infowars might be true. They have a reference for him, like Coach Randy.

It gives some insight into the personalities here.

The segment of the episode in question: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/beware-the-jabberwock/a...

You're underestimating how many people live in food deserts and basically don't have access to fresh food. That might seem like a nitpick against a larger argument, but I think it serves as a good example for why you need to take a close look at the environment that these people exist in as a whole, and that it likely goes beyond their innate habits or those of just their immediate family in childhood.

The food desert concept is way overblown. They exist to some degree, but a lot of people choose to buy shit food when it would be equally convenient and affordable to buy something good. People walking around with 32oz (~1 liter) soda cups are not unable to find anything else to drink, they're sugar addicts.

Surely such a misanthropic shifting of blame to the poor themselves is well supported by research?

"Improved food access through establishment of a full-service food retailer, by itself, does not show strong evidence towards enhancing health-related outcomes over short durations."

-- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28566095/

"Initiatives to build supermarkets in low-income areas with relatively poor access to large food retailers (“food deserts”) have been implemented at all levels of government, although evaluative studies have not found these projects to improve diet or weight status for shoppers"

-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4899338/

"Living in a food desert census tract was not significantly associated with BMI"

-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5615612/

"Using a prospective controlled quasi-experimental design we evaluate the impact on Body Mass Index, fruit and vegetable intake and perceptions of food access, of increasing neighborhood supermarket provision in one community in Philadelphia. This increase in provision was one part of the wider public-private Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative. The intervention moderately increased perceptions of food access, but did not lead to changes in fruit and vegetable intake or BMI."

-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4201352/

"We found no evidence that the absolute or relative accessibility of supermarkets, fast food restaurants, or mass merchandisers were associated with individual BMI change"

-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5895451/

Who is blaming the poor? They are too poor to drink water? That makes no sense.

Blaming food choices is often blaming the poor, ignoring that nutritious foods tend to be more expensive. Even pure water can be pricey if you live in an area with degraded lead pipes.

I specifically wrote 'when it would be equally convenient and affordable to buy something good'. I've spent a lot of life in poverty; if anything, it made me more rigorous about not eating trash. I took some cooking/nutrition classes in high school, but I'm not expert on it by any means; I have just never liked processed/sugary foods other than in small quantities or rare occasions like a party.

I'm expressing skepticism about the assumption that food deserts are such a big problem because I've always looked for and found ways to get decent food. The specific example I had in mind with my original comment was from a place I used to live where I would see a guy who bought microwave lunch and a giant cup of soda at a 7-11 every day, even though there was a small grocery store with some fresh produce, a good selection of packaged foods, and large hand-made tasty sandwiches at the same price as the guy's 7-11 lunch literally across the street on the opposite corner.

That's almost nowhere. Drinking soda instead of water has nothing to do with poverty.

It's probably out of a study from the institute of healthy food.

Additionally, for several decades Americans have lived in an environment that makes time feel like a precious resource which must be stolen back any way possible, which companies are all too happy to play into with food products that sell themselves chiefly on the idea of convenience. This then shapes the collective palate to prefer processed foods over fresh alternatives.

Also, even when suburbans have decent access to fresh food, it’s often not favored because trips to the supermarket are an ordeal that only happens every ~2 weeks and fresh food doesn’t fare as well on longer timespans like that. Fresh diets work best for those who can walk to their grocer.

Even further, Americans are so heavily marketed on junk food we don't know what is what. We're told that fruit is a sugary treat, bananas are 'belly fat food', and I have no idea how to cook beans to make them interesting to eat. (Not that I have tried or thought about it recently - I'm sure I could with a minute of applied brain time)

Meanwhile sugary cereals like Heritage Flakes, and honey loaded granolas are what we think is healthy.

I wonder about that, even in the worst ghettos I've ever been in (I'm talking worse than bars on the door, but you have to ask the shopkeeper for what you want through a small hole and drawer) they've had some fruits and other forms of fresh-adjacent food.

I don't know how many people buy them, but a banana seems an easy snack.

No one is buying keratin/biotin "hair and nail" supplements because it's a 45 minute bus ride to the nearest place to buy lettuce.

"I don't have a grocery store near me so I'm going to buy a vagina scented candle" – no one ever.

People who value fresh produce are going to go out of the way to get it. If enough people do this, environments will adapt to that demand. NYC Chinatowns used to be quite poor and discriminated against, but they were still able to establish their own supply chains that provides cheaper and fresher vegetables than anywhere else in the city because vegetables are a quintessential part of Chinese cuisine. Food deserts, like gentrification, is a concept that assumes that demand follows supply, which is the opposite of how things actually play out in real life.

> a concept that assumes that demand follows supply

This is wayyyy too black and white. What is cheap and available is what becomes people's diets and historically folks are extremely creative with the stuff that's around. This is pretty much the entire story of culinary history and likely where all your favorite dishes originated. One of the reasons tea was so unbelievably popular in western Europe was because the staple diets of most folks was stale bread and people needed something to wash it down that didn't taste awful. Cheese follows a supply of milk and a demand to not have it spoil.

So you're right that just having the supply there doesn't work because there's no pressure to actually use any of it. The most economical foods by a wide margin non-perishables. When you get your CSA box you've already paid for the veggies so you're motivated to use them up before they turn but at the grocery store why would you even bother when you have anything else more important to do? If you were just handed a sack of apples you might find a way to use them all but "paying money to do more work" in an environment where every adult in the household works a full-time job, plus having kids or social obligations is quite the ask. Buying those apple bars is a much easier buy than fresh apples because they don't have an timer attached to them, you're guaranteed to extract all the value even when you're busy and not home for a few days.

And this isn't some new phenomenon, "cutting out work for wives and mothers trying to put food on the table every night" is an entire industry. Go look at any food ads from the 20th century.

I don't disagree with your first paragraph, but I don't think it contradicts the spirit of my original comment. Cheeses were invented because there was a demand for non-perishable protein.

> And this isn't some new phenomenon, "cutting out work for wives and mothers trying to put food on the table every night" is an entire industry. Go look at any food ads from the 20th century.

Sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean people's diets necessarily had to deteriorate. You get to pick 3 between healthy, convenient, cheap, and tasty, and Americans overwhelmingly chose the last three. This may caused some vicious cycles, but those are downstream affects caused by lack of demand.

That's a lot of words to say that fresh foods aren't available close by because people don't want them. They are demanding convenience foods with their dollars, so that is what the vendors provide. Forcing a store into existence by government (or other) proclamation to supply fresh foods won't make people buy them.

That's one read for the situation but that's not really how I meant it. My takeaway is that fresh produce is far too expensive in dollars to have any hope of competing with non-perishables in value. When the price of the food at your local grocery store is dominated by the price of the transportation to get it there low-value foods that either cause loss through expiration and/or require additional work to turn into a meal have no chance when they're the same price as non-perishables and prepared food. So yes people are demanding them with their dollars but that's less of a preference for them and more they would be stupid not to if budget is of any concern.

If all the fresh produce in the grocery store was $0 I bet consumers would choose it overwhelmingly compared to alternatives. So I contend there is a number where fresh produce wins but we're not even close to it. Because you have to save on dollars to make the additional work/risk worth it but right now you don't. And it's one thing to be like "well that's the market for ya" but we already heavily subsidize agriculture it's not that crazy to also subsidize produce at the point of sale both to reduce waste during harvest and to encourage healthier eating.

I've been heavily involved in a city council before that was trying to attract stores (especially a grocery store), so I'm pretty familiar with how it works, and this mostly incorrect. In fact, people going out of their way to get the produce elsewhere works against a new store, because the stores see that as cannabilization should they open a new closer location.

The decision to open new stores is mostly based on "number of daytime wallets in the area," which itself is mostly tied to the other existing businesses in the area. For example, for one major grocery chain, they wouldn't even consider it until we had 50,000 daytime wallets. For a commonly known gigantic home improvement chain, they wanted 100,000. It doesn't matter how badly people in the area want it. It just comes pretty mathematically with growth.

If you already have a grocery store that doesn't carry fresh produce, you can (sometimes) improve things by speaking with the store management, but beyond that you're pretty much out of luck unless you are willing to open your own store.

Dollar stores are the killer here. They can easily undercut regular grocery stores (low selection, low worker count) but they do not have produce sections. So people just give up the produce section to get all the other processed stuff cheaper.

Thankfully our local dollar store has a pretty decent produce section. Dollar General. I'm aware that we have one of the better dollar generals out there. (Hillsboro KS)

By decent I mean decent for a dollar store. They have apples and oranges and cabbage and lettuce etc, no beets or leeks or fresh cilantro.

Yes indeed, that's a real challenge

By "go out of the way," I just mean make some sort of sacrifice when it comes to getting fresh produce (e.g. gardening or paying more for vegetables). Even when we're talking about leaving your area, you're still increasing demand for vegetables somewhere, which prevents food deserts from spreading.

Was this effort at the request of residents of this food desert? Or was this an initiative of people outside of the area the proposed stores would serve?

Yes this was primarily at the request of residents as they frequently had to drive 20 to 25 minutes to get to a grocery store with fresh produce (and by "fresh" I mean "Walmart". Other stores were even further. Take that for what you will).

The mayor's office did also have broader commercial development goals as the strain of growth and traffic was brutalizing the budget. If we could put a grocery store in town, that would be highly appreciated by the people, and also cut a ton of traffic

So people who live in a food dessert secretly don't really want any vegetables?

If people in the area generally wanted vegetables, someone would sell them. So the most likely case is that the vast majority of people in food desserts don't really want vegetables.

That's just too black and white. The other replies to the comment I replied too have much better explanations than I could give as to why

We have a few convenience stores in my city that have started offering a small selection of fresh foods, something like a little basket with a few apples, oranges, and bananas. Some of them have expanded out into a full produce section. Others removed them entirely. Some are holding steady with the small basket. The stores are delivering what people are willing to buy in their areas.

A single fruit tree can yield 100-200 lbs of fruit (apples, pears, oranges, etc), conservatively. All you need is 40$ for a fruit tree and some water, and some space, and 5-10 years. Plant 5 of those and now you've got 500 to 1000 lbs of fruit per year.

If the free market refuses to provide what people want, then we can create our own food and let the execs wonder why they keep loosing market share every year.

You just described exactly how everyone in an ideal free market should behave.

Fruit is a tough one though: there are many hidden costs in providing it at scale. The 7 year waiting period is huge; add cost of the land, picking, transport, and spoilage. Fruit are fragile and stay fresh for a very short time.

There’s a reason fruit companies have tiny margins: here are the numbers for Fresh Del Monte: https://valustox.com/FDP

this math adds up only until tried

azurestandard or other wholesale companies sell large bags of orangic beans for just 50$ for 25 lbs (even in CA!). That's nearly 25 days worth of food for just 50$, much much cheaper than going to McFatBurger everyday.

People understand they have a problem and don’t know what to do.

They prioritize things they think will help, to the exclusion of generally healthy and good things (veggies, etc).

I think it’s human nature, although I’m sure good parenting helps.

Although I know some really smart people who spend $100/month in athletic greens and other well advertised snake oil. Pretty much all OTC supplements are bogus or have little effect. Yet smart people buy them. Hoping.

I realize I am painting with a broad brush here, but a lot of Americans love the idea of 2 things:

1. Magic pills which cure them

2. Not eating vegetables

So this is not a shock to me at all. Such folks I am sure pin their hopes on things which are more convenient and do not require lifestyle changes.

What makes you think it's a money thing and not just personal preference?

Also, for some of the things they are selling, like Chaga mushrooms or colloidal silver, there is not really a grocery store equivalent that has the same ingredients.

I don't disagree with your point but we could probably find a lot of billionaires that use these as well.

Ideas about wellness have been complete bullshit for 99% of human history. I think you could very plausibly argue that we're at an all-time peak of rational thinking about our health despite the existence of Goop.

Ideas about wellness have been complete bullshit for 99% of human history.

False, depending on what you mean by human history. Science on macronutrients was in that category once. Now it's science fact. So we've had some wellness which was borne out as fact for over a century. Human written history doesn't go back far enough for 99% history/100% bullshit to be correct.

Actually, some inklings about vitamins go back even further.

Is it “broken” if it was intentionally made to be that way? The American Heart Association reported that heart disease and stroke alone cost the U.S. healthcare system over $200 billion each year. Studies have shown that dietary improvements could save the U.S. billions in healthcare costs.

I’m pretty sure the guys who were gonna pocket all that cash prefer to have paying customers.

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