this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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Yeah, no.
First: eating strictly healthy is more expensive than eating trash.
Second: Time. Poor people tend to have less of it available, which means that it's harder to cook meals at home (which, in theory, should be cheaper to eat healthy). That same lake of time also makes exercise challenging.
Until you get to the point of poverty where you're risking starvation, poor people are more likely to be overweight than people that are in better circumstances.
I feel like way too much emphasis is put on cost. It's really easy to find cheap stuff to eat that is healthy. It's almost all of the second point: it just takes time and effort.
If you want to eat quick with little effort, it's cheaper to eat unhealthy. Which is ultimately the problem. But if you put in the time to cook for yourself, it isn't. It's almost more expensive to eat unhealthy if you spend time to prepare and cook.
And I think too many people use this as an excuse to eat unhealthy. "Well, it's too expensive, so I might as well not even try. Let me go get McDonald's."
I already addressed that, and you have conveniently ignored it. Cooking for yourself takes time. Time is a commodity that poor people often don't have nearly enough of. If you're poor, you're going to tend to have a longer commute to get to work, and you're more likely to have more than one job that you have to juggle a schedule around. You're more likely to live in a neighborhood where you don't have ready access to grocery stores at all.
When I lived in Chicago, the last neighborhood I lived in was poor/working class. The closest real grocery store---not a corner store that had a couple of bananas and some slightly soft apples--was about two miles away. If I didn't have a car, that would have been a pretty long walk, or a 30 minute bus ride with one transfer. Public transit from where I lived to where i worked? About an hour and a half one way, by bus, train, and then a 2nd bus. With an 8.5 hour day, that means that I'm away from home a minimum of 11.5 hours. If I can get up, grab coffee, get a shower, and be out the door in one hour, that's 12.5 hours for my day so far. When I get home, I still have daily cleaning, laundry, etc. Best case scenario, if I don't want to get anything else done in a day, that's 3.5 hours at the end of the day before I have to be asleep. If I'd had a second job instead of coming straight home, well, there goes sleep and any time to do general daily housework. I'm certainly not going to have time to go to the gym, or take an hour run in the morning.
I made gyudon for myself tonight; it took about an hour and a half between prep time, cooking, and clean up, give or take. I used top round (it was cheap at Costco, and is very lean). Between all the ingredients I used--the top round roast, onions, rice, sake, soy sauce, hondashi, togarashi, ginger, and eggs--I probably spent about as much as a super-sized meal at McDonals, but it took me 85 minutes more time. And that's a pretty simple meal.
You read only the first 2 sentences of my post, and accused me of ignoring something that I explicitly addressed and agreed with in the third. You could have saved yourself all of that time writing if you had just not, hypocritically, ignored most of my post.
I think that you're talking around the problem.
There simply isn't time for most poor people to spend much, if any, time cooking, because they often have so many other demands on their time. It's not an excuse to eat unhealthy food, they just don't have the realistic option to do otherwise.
You led with "it's too expensive." This was your primary point. Now, in multiple points, you focused on time. A point I've explicitly agreed with now twice (and now, twice, you've attempted to argue that I'm not making this point. I'm quite dumbfounded by this, actually).
It's you who originally talking around the problem by focusing on price. I challenged your primary point because I believe (as I've seen it myself) people use it to justify their laziness. And I'm not talking about not having time or being exhausted, but simply throwing their hands up claiming it's too expensive to eat healthy, and using that as an excuse to eat like absolute shit.
"Expense" isn't just money. Everything has a price. Everything. Some things cost more than a person can afford.
Except from the context we both realize that this is not what you meant, because you clearly separated out expense and time into two separate categories. If you meant expense to cover both time and what most people mean when they colloquially use the term expense, why did you repeat it?
We both know what you meant. Why are you trying to pretend otherwise?
Go ahead and tell me more about what I really meant and think, hmmm? It's not even a very good attempt at gaslighting, and I've been gaslit by people that were much better at it.
I'm curious to hear the explanation as to why you separated them out if they were both covered in one.
I suspect your claim of gaslighting is, as usual, a projection.
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Sure healthier might be more expensive, but eating less energy isn't more expensive.
If you consume less energy, but end up malnourished because you weren't getting enough micronutrients, then you haven't really come out ahead, have you? Rickets and scurvy ain't cool.
Are there lots of nutrients in cheap food?
It's incredibly easy to avoid scurvy.
Lots of calories from fats. Generally poor in micronutrients. There's very good reasons that you're supposed to eat lots of leafy vegetables. Multivitamins may stave off the worst effects of malnutrition, but the bioavailability of multivitamins is generally poor, e.g. you can take 100x the necessary daily amount of D3, and still have low levels of vitamin D if you aren't getting enough time outside in sunlight.
You don't have to eat perfectly all the time to avoid malnutrition, but if your diet is consistently high in fats and simple carbs--which is what really cheap food tends to be--you're probably going to have chronic deficiencies.
So generally just decreasing food intake if you eat primarily bad food isn't any more dangerous, because 0 nutrients - 0 nutrients is still 0 nutrients.
So here's the kicker that SO many people forget to consider:
Jobs that pay shit in the U.S., and/or have garbage benefits, are often also the ones that make you move around an extraordinary amount, or have you on your feet for 8-10 hours with a 50/50 chance of being allowed to sit down for 15 minutes.
Both of the activities above illustrate one incredibly important unseen factor: Energy. Use more, eat more, spend more.
Do the math.
Moreover, in these highly stressful positions eating generates the elusive dopamine. Which combined with 15 minutes to shove food down your throat often means sugar, grease, and salt.
But if one gets fat then they obviously have excess energy.
And they also have access to aspects of being overweight that makes them more tired and less likely to enjoy activities, and more likely to get less nightly rest.
Basically, while less calories in than out is the way to go, it is rarely that simple for nearly everyone.
I think the other posters point is that ultimately it's calories in, calories out. If you are getting fat, then eat fewer calories, which can be done by just eating less of the same exact thing you are currently eating.
Yeah, of course that's the point. Mine is that not all calories are made equal and more expensive options, aside from obvious options, tend to fill more for [caloric] less, and provide additional nutrients that supplement the body in a way that supports a healthier lifestyle.