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Comment by doix | Hacker News Reader

This is such an over simplification. What about people who have knowledge and are unable to be healthy? There are "food deserts" where due to geography/economics it's difficult to purchase healthy food.

There was an article on HN the other day showing that after you gain weight and lose it, it's difficult to keep it off because you don't feel full easily and feel hungry more often. So if you were fat as a kid, you're at a huge disadvantage later on in life.

It's "easy" to live on a SW engineering salary where you can afford whatever food you want, after being raised by parents that fed you good food and not be fat.

It's much harder when you grew up fat, working a minimum wage job and living in a food desert.

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I lived in an area that would be a borderline food desert. Families car pooled to places like sam's club and split the cost of one membership. Years later, I lived in a different area and with only a dollar general in early adulthood. I could never understand the desert. I bought rice and lentils until I could afford more. Dollar general has simple foods like nuts, seeds, etc. It is certainly a problem that people are eating processed junk food, but the desert argument has always been a tough sell for me.

we need an article written from a poor person s perspective on how to afford good food and motivate them to be healthy without blowing their wallets off while they work a minimum wage 12 hr shift, havent come across a post like this ever

> There are "food deserts" where due to geography/economics it's difficult to purchase healthy food.

What is a concrete example of such a place?

Part of my childhood was in West Virginia and visit family occasionally. I can attest to the comment about food deserts.

There's a nearby Dollar General, which is fine for processed food and sodas, but you have to go 20 miles away to a grocery store with proper fresh food.

Here's an article from 2015. Things have seemingly not gotten better:

https://wvpublic.org/whats-an-appalachian-food-desert-and-wh...

I have bought plenty of healthy food from Dollar General. Rice, beans, canned tuna, nuts, seeds, frozen veggies, etc. It's all the same types of things I would recommend someone trying to eat healthier to get from a supermarket

Here's a more recent article (2023): https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2023/01/26/wv-healthy-foo...

Access to fresh fruit and veg in West Virginia is mostly a problem in the rural areas from what I can tell (and by searching for "fruit and vegetable" or "supermarket" on google maps).

Would teaching people how to grow their own fresh produce in the rural areas work?

Maybe, but it's harder. If I had to grow my own fruit and vegetables, I probably wouldn't and just wouldn't eat them.

My argument isn't that it's impossible to be healthy in such places, just that it's harder.

> It's much harder when you grew up fat, working a minimum wage job and living in a food desert.

Need examples. I've lived on 50K for 4 years and it was perfectly manageable.

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