Not an expert on the financial market, but this article may be worthwhile to consider, 'Actually, Most Americans Can Come Up With $400 in an Emergency' [1]
That's due to poverty... calorie dense, highly processed food is cheap as hell due to mass production efficiencies, but high quality food? Groceries? Ain't no one got the money for that, or they live in "food deserts" [1].
For poor kids, it's even worse, because all they have other than sub-par school lunches is whatever microwave meal their parents can afford not just financially but also time-wise. Cooking for a family takes time and energy, both scarce when you gotta work two jobs to make ends meet.
This completely ignores issues like food addiction (which is a hell of a drug - some of the, say, top obesity candidate genes are expressed in brain), an overabundance of sugar in the diet, and lack of anything that resembles a decent food culture. It is absolutely possible to maintain a quick and healthy diet on low budget - there are infinite reddit threads and substack articles on the topic.
> and lack of anything that resembles a decent food culture.
Yep. I mean, I'm European so I'm a bit biased - here over the pond, we associate American food culture with "tons of fat and sugar".
> It is absolutely possible to maintain a quick and healthy diet on low budget - there are infinite reddit threads and substack articles on the topic.
It is, if you have the resources: a car to get to a place where healthy food is sold, most especially, and time and energy to cook.
It simply is not possible to drag oneself out of poverty by the bootstraps. Most of these "live on a frugal budget" peddlers are highly privileged: they can afford to buy in bulk when stuff is on sale, they can afford to store bulk supplies without them going bad, they can afford to drive a lot just to get the best deals. Take these three points out of the equation and most "frugal" influencers get revealed as patronizing scammers who I believe have zero right to exist and bullshit others on the Internet. And the politicians who reference to these bullshit peddlers should be thrown into jail and be served nothing more than dry bread and water for a few weeks, just to get some humility into them.
I'm sick and fucking tired of all of that. Fix poverty instead of patronizing those who are in direst needs.
> They can afford to buy in bulk when stuff is on sale, they can afford to store bulk supplies without them going bad, they can afford to drive a lot just to get the best deals.
In my experience, none of those three are that key at food cost cutting anyway. The key is choosing what to eat. If you make food at home out of cheap, nutritious ingredients, you will do well. The bag of beans that is only 1 lb and is at the expensive convenience store, is a much better deal than the 40 lb Costco crate of frozen pizza or something.
Beans, rice, potatos, eggs, oats. Start with staples like these and it really doesn't matter whether you are getting the name brand or the bulk discount....
> and lack of anything that resembles a decent food culture.
...ah, but here's the problem. If your food culture consists of habits around pizza and burgers, around eating fast food and heating frozen things in microwaves ..... if you never even learned to cook beans, in fact, never learned to even enjoy them and are grossed out by them, if you have no idea how to make a raw potato edible and delicious in 5 minutes.... then... yeah, you won't have any good mental "software" to help you easily feed yourself with stuff like the aforementioned. Instead you'll have to expend valuable time and energy on experimenting and learning new habits and recipes. Until you spend that time you are locked out of the cheaper food and locked into the expensive processed food trap.
> I'm sick and fucking tired of all of that. Fix poverty instead of patronizing those who are in direst needs.
And I'm sick and tired of both sides of this argument. Yes, fix poverty rather than patronizing thoese in need -- but acnowledge the real poverty is primarily cultural, not monetary, and tailor solutions to that, by somehow helping people relearn cultural food skills that were lost during the 20th century industrialization program.
> Beans, rice, potatos, eggs, oats. Start with staples like these and it really doesn't matter whether you are getting the name brand or the bulk discount....
You're still ignoring the point that it can be very hard to even get access to basic staples, and I'm not just talking about the financial aspect but moreso about "how to get to a grocery store", especially in areas with no or derelict public transportation.
> but acnowledge the real poverty is primarily cultural, not monetary
Way over half of Americans can't cover an unexpected $500 emergency bill [1]. America's greatest problem is widespread poverty and income insecurity, everything else stems directly from that.
I agree. Reports from Pew Research Center and CDC show that the cause for obesity is complex and cannot be pinpointed to just poverty. The studies are a decade old, but are still prevalent.
Agreed, but tackling the poverty/food access issue is a pareto issue IMHO - get the wide masses out of poverty and provide equal access to healthy food supplies will get rid of a large chunk of the issue.
Only 64% of Americans could cover an expected bill of $400.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2021-economic-we...