I'm honestly never sure how seriously to take those sorts of statistics. They tend to be based on participation in food programs, which doesn't tell you that much.
Deaths due to malnutrition are quite rare now, generally being confined to cases of abuse or niglect, while it used to be a normal cause of death.
Because they have access to only poor quality foods. There may not be calorie scarcity but there is nutrition scarcity.
And yes, for some there's also "food insecurity" which is not knowing where your next meal is coming from or having to choose between food and other necessities (shelter, warm winter clothing, medical care, transportation, etc.)
This talks around food scarcity without actually being food scarcity. First, you have to show that poor quality foods actually reduce willpower and contribute to further poverty. People used to fight wars on poor diets. I'm sure there's lots of military planners in the world that would love it if they could feed their army the way America feeds its poor.
Food insecurity isn't food scarcity either, it's just more income insecurity.
The distinctions matter because the policy you craft to fix actual food scarcity is different and far easier than the policy you craft to address income insecurity.
Edit: I'm going to go against my usual playbook and discuss my downvoters. You fix social problems with policy. Policy has to affect everyone. That's what makes it policy. If you tailor bad policy that doesn't work, because it doesn't address the root cause, then you've made the world worse and not better. Giving poor people cheap ubiquitous Whole Foods Markets isn't going to solve their problems.
This just isn't true. It's so obviously not true it's really very amazing that people repeat it. Go to a Dollar General in a poor area sometime. They have lots of potato chips and assorted crap. Yep. They also have canned beans, fruit, refrigerated sausage, cheese, chicken, etc. None of this is unaffordable.
That's Dollar General. Most places have access to a Walmart which is as good nutritionally as any grocery store that ever existed.
If people buy junk food it's because they enjoy it. Christ, even your typical gas station sells salad these days.
Cheap junk food is much more palatable than cheap healthy food.
> Most places have access to a Walmart which is as good nutritionally as any grocery store that ever existed.
Walmart tends to avoid the inner city. If you don't have a car there generally isn't one close enough to shop at more than once a week or so. Bringing home a week of groceries for a family on bus isn't a trivial task.
It's much easier to pick up some cheap food from a convenience store.
> Christ, even your typical gas station sells salad these days.
If you compare the per calorie price of that salad to junk food, it's much more expensive.
There is also an effect about being time poor and having little to no time to cook. And coming from an also poor and time poor family, and never having learned how to cook. Etc. Poverty fucks you in many ways, and is indeed a complicated beast.
Time. Yes that's important as well. It's not just cooking.
Time is lost waiting for the bus, because you can't afford a car. You wait in line at the store because it can't afford another cashier and better technology. Etc.
People think poverty is their well to do life but with less money. Oh God, that's so ignorant.
BTW, the book Evicted is an eye and heart opener. Highly recommended.
Seriously, who in western countries does not have availability to "healthy food"? Everybody has basic grocery stores with cheap simple stuff just as available to them as convenience junk shops.
It's education about how food affects you that makes all the difference. People literally don't know what they're putting in themselves. There's a lot of food purchasing decisions based on stressors related to your very reasonable 2nd point. Basic food education at a personal level brings people out of that particular negative health cycle.
Regardless, what you're naively discounting is the effects of poverty on the mind (and the body). Imagine, if you can, a state of permanent stress, fear, worry, etc. The human mind is __not__ wired to make optimal decisions under such circumstances.
Now let's just say it's time to eat...You're running from your 2nd job to your 3rd...how do you think that decision is going to go?
Poverty is not a lack of wealth. That's a side effect. Poverty is the result of mental, emotional and spiritual starvation; in the face of a world of plenty for everyone else but you and yours.
A main quote from that link is "a small percentage of American consumers are limited in their ability to access" healthier food, seemingly mostly tied to lack of transportation to otherwise close-by stores in densely populated areas. I would posit that's a much smaller percentage than those eating unhealthily in low/poverty income situations.
Your post here coincides with mine. Somebody running between jobs does have means of transportation, but is in a highly stressed life situation. The main problem is not one of literal access to healthy food, yet that is always the first supposition made. Healthy food is cheap, and it is not far away. The problems are beyond that.
Poverty makes your mind stressed and fatty high sugar foods are good to satistfy your mind.
Also these are cheaper and mass produced, highly marketed for low income masses and kids. Supermarkets are designed to make you buy shit.
It's a sad natural phenomenon that amplifies itself. It doesn't really cost a lot to eat healthy but it requires a steady mindset which is usually done by culture. But consumerism ate culture so .. everybody just go for short term convenience until they become obese.
Insecurity (partially) explains obesity, because body fat is an evolutionary adaptation to insecure food supplies. Our parents and grandparents were raised to eat what they were given and clear their plates. That's evolutionarily rational if you aren't sure where your next meal is coming from - food will spoil, but body fat will keep you alive through a famine.
Shaking off that habit is much easier if you never worry about whether you'll go hungry tomorrow; a lot of poor people don't have that luxury. If you're just scraping by, an unexpected bill or a parking ticket might force you to choose between a payday loan or an empty refrigerator. Combine economic insecurity with a food market full of cheap, high-calorie foods and you've got a recipe for nutritional disaster.
We're right to think that capitalism has created tremendous abundance, but we often under-estimate the pathological effects of insecurity. Without a sound safety net, the human brain just isn't capable of prudent long-term planning.
Healthy food isn't really more expensive. The price of the food depends a lot more on the shop it's being sold in than the particular item.
Nah, I think it really comes down to a mix of:
1. Many poorer people have jobs with longer/more awkward hours, and it's easier to buy unhealthy food in a rush/at an inconvenient time. Your local greengrocers/butchers shop/whatever likely closes at about 5PM whereas the corner shop stays open till the wee hours of the morning/doesn't close at all. And if you're in a rush, unhealthy food is often quicker to prepare/sold prepared based on whether you're talking microwave dinners or fast food.
2. Many poorer areas are food deserts, or at least have a lack of decent shops. For instance, over where I currently live, there are about 4 different supermarkets, local grocery shops, butcher's shops, bakeries, fishmongers, etc and every other kind of place to buy food you can imagine.
This means it's somewhat convenient to buy something healthy at almost any time of day.
On the other hand, if your only choices in walking distance are a corner shop, petrol station or pound store, the choices for healthy food are a fair bit less, and its more convenient to buy something unhealthy than travel to the shops elsewhere.
I think there is some truth in what you are saying, but if that is true then people without jobs getting SNAP benefits would tend toward buying healthier food. That isn't the general trend I see in the people I've worked with. Most of them tended toward buying highly processed food and it wasn't because they didn't have time to prepare meals.
I did work with one family who was very concerned about eating healthy, but they would tend to buy the absolutely most expensive food they could find thinking it was healthier and then running out of food halfway through the month.
I'm not saying there aren't people who buy unhealthy food because they can't find healthy food, but I see a lot more people hampered by poor life skills leading too poor food choices than grocery store closing hours.
I'm not sure that healthy food is more expensive when you only look at the items, because vegetables are not (some fruits are, but veggies are far more important). With even limited cooking skills you can produce pretty cheap and yet very good meals.
However, I still think your point is valid, because it's not just the food items themselves. You need time to prepare them, plus a stressful life puts psychological pressure (which is real and not "imagined") on your brain for swift and easy rewards. So if you don't just look at the stuff on the plate, but see "eating" as a system consisting of sooo much more, the entire context, I think that's a big part of what in the end indeed makes bad food more expensive.
I almost forgot to mention a possibly even bigger part: When you live in poor areas availability of certain foods is vastly limited, and availability of bad foods is through the roof. Try shopping in supermarkets in poor areas and compare it to a wealthy suburb supermarket.
Straw man at the very least? How many people use veggies for their energy? That's what most people use grains for - bread, pasta, potatoes. All of them also cheap.
Given obesity rates, the problem is too much energy. After all, one part of calling for more vegetable consumption is so that people lower their energy intake. Example: https://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org/eating-vegetable... (the number of articles on cutting calories by eating more vegetables is uncountable)
Just as an aside, a short excerpt from a bio.chem course that shows the connection between high energy intake and obesity: https://youtu.be/rTR-Ev3hj4c
Under scarcity, in choosing which foods to buy, how tolerant are you to the risk of being hungry because you allocated too few dollars to calories rich foods? My guess is extreme risk averse.
The link between poverty and obesity in the modern world is well established. That means you can hardly point to a lack of energy consumption. I added a video to my comment, from a bio.chem course, that shows a common pathway how high energy state leads to obesity.
Note that I can't and don't want to (and don't need to) show very much here, only provide an argument against what I think is a strange argument from @Retric about "not enough energy in veggies". Energy is not the problem (the psychological feeling of "I have no energy", which may be more prevalent in poor people (I don't know), is not the same as a low energy level).
I doubt the considerations you mention actually happen, or when then it's not widespread. I think it's automatic behaviors rather than conscious choices, and I doubt most people think about their foods energy content (given that a large majority of people, including and for some groups even especially among the poor, consume too much of it). As I see it, the energy claim doesn't fit the available data - which shows an excess, not a lack. That's why I think explanations as well as actions have to aim somewhere else - or would you say we should provide even more energy in food (especially aimed at poor people or not does not matter, since obesity affects all groups to varying degrees).
The point about low calories is veggies are inherently an extra and not a staple. You need to add veggies to your diet and can't simply replace a plate of rice and beans with them.
The preference for low cost per calorie foods makes it easy to over eat when your body is missing some nutrient. Which can create offial feedback loops. But, the simple "how do I eat for 20$ this week" is IMO a factor at the individual and cultural level that should not be ignored.
The point about calories was invalid, as I clearly pointed out. There is a problem of too much, there is no problem of not enough. And energy-rich carbs are cheap. So nothing remains of that argument, it was just silly!
> The preference for low cost per calorie foods makes it easy to over eat when your body is missing some nutrient.
Exactly.
If you agree with me, what's your point? I argued against your very specific - and very silly - argument in your first reply, which makes no sense whatsoever and is completely made up and artificial. See my response!
Please stop making stuff up and reply to what I actually wrote or not at all. I hate it when people make stuff up and pretend to "counter" my comment when they completely ignore it and make stuff up.
I think you are failing to grasp the price differences and my argument.
You can become obese eating rice and beans for less than the 1.50$ per day. Morbid obesity on cheap calorie dense food is cheaper than a healthy diet. This trend continues if you look at fast food or any quick options.
So, no being fat is not cost prohibitive, but eating veggies is. Further, as I said if you eat empty calories like Purple Drank you still need nutrition and again eating calorie dense foods and extra calories costs less than veggies.
This has social consequences as fewer people eat healthy foods they become less accessible, and culture adapted to eating cheap means all food options are high calorie.
Veggies are also perishable. - Rice and Beans don't go bad. You need to have a plan on what to do with said veggies when you get them and need to make sure you use them before they go bad. Rice and beans are as simple as two pots (one if you're lazy), a little bit of water, and 20 minutes of barely looking at the food.
> I think you are failing to grasp the price differences and my argument.
Thank you very much!
I think I DO understand your argument, but I have the suspicion that you fail at understanding my very first reply already, which sums it up quite nicely. Your "argument" is none because it addresses an issue that does not exist. You countered something that you yourself invented, an issue that does not exist.
Please, just read my original reply. This is just plain silly: As I already said, if you don't care one bit what I wrote, why did you (and still do) bother to reply? Again and again?
Yea, I read what you said as they don't need to eat that many calories, but over time their body says they do.
Do you know any poor people? People that grew up in poor families? Just like everyone else when overweight their body wants to maintain that weight. That's going to take food, and in some cases a lot of it which is a real cost.
Eating cheap calorie dense food can cover based nutrition requirements. It's not optimal for health, but it's cheap, really really cheap.
Poor people also indulge in nutrition free food like soda when they can afford it, but then they still need to cover nutrition and the cheapest way to do that is high caloric foods. After a while they need to eat just as much to maintain that weight. But, at no point in that viscous cycle are veggies more than a garnish.
Would a lifetime of 3 servings of veggies a day help avoid weight gain while allowing for some indulgences? Of course, but it would also cost significantly more especially when raising a family which starts up the cycle again.
This fixation on the idea "people eat only vegetables!" is a fabrication of YOUR mind. You keep bringing it up. Are you sick? Do you need professional help? I'm a little concerned for you my little stupid friend. You can't tell what's only in your head from what what's outside? How about you stick to what I wrote and stop posting utter nonsense and made-up bullshit?
