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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

I just opened up www dot amazon dot com and filled my cart with $50 worth of food that will be delivered to my door in a few hours: rice, potatoes, farro, beans, peppers, ginger, onions, garlic frozen peas, frozen carrots, plain low-fat yogurt, chicken thighs, and good bread. I don't want to hear anyone telling me that American capitalism has robbed us of real food. If anything, American capitalism has heaped upon us the cheapest and most convenient selection of food imaginable, but some people just can't stop shoveling down Flamin' Hot Froot Loops.

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> some people just can't stop shoveling down Flamin' Hot Froot Loops.

If over a third if the country has serious problems with this then it seems to me there is a systemic problem, and you can't only chuck it to individual failure.

Doesn't mean there is no individual responsibility at all – but there's a reason obesity rates have risen so sharply and why there are quite big differences between countries of comparable levels of development.

I don't think anyone claimed that it's impossible to eat healthy food – certainly the article didn't.

Explain to me how socal works then. For $12 you can get a massive burrito. A plate of excellent tacos. A decent amount of sushi. All sorts of sandwiches. Pupusa. Kebab. Salads. Ramen. Bahn mi. All from local businesses making real food made to order in maybe 10 mins.

And yet, mcdonalds still does tidy business in this environment despite everyone saying mcdonalds is more expensive than ever.

Explain to me how that doesn't reflect widespread individual failure? Why does mcdonalds even exist in this market where you can eat amazing food from around the world in about the same time for about the same price? It isn't like these people are devoid of choice or limited by price. They are actively choosing mcdonalds over other options that are objectively better. I mean its like smoking cigarettes still despite all the information out there.

Widespread individual failure becomes a social problem, and social problems call for social, not individual, solutions.

You can say it's their fault all you want, but that doesn't actually help you fix it.

How would you solve the fact people seem happy to eat bad food even given better alternatives that compete on price and convenience?

Regulation.

Not to say that bad food should be illegal, but you can constrain portion sizes, you can constrain ubiquity (limit the # of fast food places per square mile/per population), you can constrain ingredients, you can constrain their marketing, you can limit how they decorate their buildings, you can do all sorts of things if the public will is there.

Now, whether or not the public will is there is another matter entirely. Policy prescriptions are easy, patient compliance is harder.

Edit: And frankly, I think we're in more agreement than you might realize. I grew up in the Bay Area, and it still drives me crazy how many of my peers would eat Chipotle. McDonalds is one thing, it's bad but at least it's unique, but Chipotle is just bad, expensive Mexican food. What's the point?? But, eventually, you have to accept that people will have bad taste and make bad decisions, and once those bad decisions start affecting society as a whole it's a policy issue, not an individual issue.

If you make a system that has 1,000 nudges towards Fruit Loops and hides the healthy thing, then it isn't just an individual choice. Nudges include advertising, availability, addictive ingredients, misleading marketing claims, food engineering, etc. I recommend reading this to get an understanding of how much effort goes into making people make the wrong choices: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinar...

Maybe pricing has something to do with it?

Total 27,00€ ($31.57)

1kg potatos, 0,99€

3pcs bell peppers, 1,03€ (x)

1pcs ginger, 0,90€ (x)

1kg onions, 1,59€

100g garlic, 1,45€ (x)

500g carrots, 0,89€

500g frozen peas, 1,09€

1 can white beans, 1,09€ (x)

fresh fancy bread, 3,69€

400g chicken thighs, 4,99€

1l plain low-fat yogurt, 2,55€

1kg rice, 3,79€ (x)

650g ”farro”, 2,95€

(x) imported, not local

Typical prices in Finland, which is considered to be expensive European country.

Could maybe go down to 20+€ with cheapest options.

My prices weren't very different from those, but my quantities were higher: 5lb (2.25kg) potatoes, 4lb (1.8kg) dried beans, 15lb (6.8kg) of rice, yogurt 1kg by weight not sure of volume, etc.

Sad that you have to buy this stuff online. I can go downstairs to a grocery store and just buy it from real humans, not lining bezos pockets.

I don't have to buy it online. I live in Berkeley, California where, if anything, we have a totally unsustainable flood of food outlets that keep going out of business because the competition is too great. I only point to Amazon because it's a website, anyone can order from it even if their local grocers are bozos.

I didn't realize how obscenely spoiled I was with Berkeley Bowl until I moved. Sure, I knew the quality was good, but I didn't realize that the produce and the bulk sections were actually comparatively quite cheap too! It's ridiculous.

> I don't want to hear anyone telling me that American capitalism has robbed us of real food

they didn't rob it, they hid it and put zillions of billboards selling their ultra-proccessed ultra-palatable anything with a huge profit margin.

Almost every grocery store I've been to in the US has either the produce or bakery section right at the front door.

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