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Comment by gress | Hacker News Reader

Cooking healthy means requires capital expenditure that the truly poor cannot afford.

Even without a fridge, you can replace lots of take-out meals with things prepared at home, just with a container that seals to keep out bugs. A loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. Bananas. Eggs. Canned tuna.

If you have some method of heating, you can add pasta and rice and beans and oats and sweet potatoes and lentils.

If people are really lacking these tools, I'd be happy to write a check to a New York charity that provides them.

The article makes a point of the fact that the girl in question often makes peanut butter sandwiches for her siblings.

(re your last point, I don't see how this family is going to take advantage of incremental assistance like that)

I notice that you put "eggs" in the category of things that you can prepare without a method of heating, which is an excellent way to get salmonella.

Eggs are in the category of things can do not need a fridge for storage, not of things that do not need heat to prepare.

Whether that's true or not depends where you live. The US and Europe have developed different systems for egg production and storage.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5325540

Yeah, I goofed by listing them in the heatless category. You can short-term store them without a fridge, though.

Obviously none of the things I listed will form a complete diet, but if you are eating mostly take-out they are probably a superior substitute for some fraction of those take-out meals.

True, but what fraction that is, and the time needed to do this in a safe and waste free manner actually matters a lot when you are on the margins.

What's the solution to the security problem? Why would you buy a mini fridge or a hotplate if some crackhead (maybe even your mom or her boyfriend) was just going to take it and pawn it. They already have enough issues just showering safely.

No, this isn't a technical problem. It's bigger than that.

Depending on your definitions of healthy and middle class, the middle class can't afford it either.

Depending on the definition of "healthy."

Eating normal food, with some organics but not all, is reasonably affordable if you're willing to cook.

That takes longer, but results are better.

I don't know how people afford to eat out. It seems that unless you go Taco Bell (and there's no shame in that) two people is $25-50 per meal.

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