The Off Topic Topic

[Josquius]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-45420295

Poor people  can't afford to eat healthy. In the UK where food deserts aren't such a thing.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm not sure I would characterize needing 42% of income after taxes and housing expenses as "can't afford to eat healthy."

[Valmy]

How is that a troll?

Really, poor people have different taste buds?  Rich people have some super special gene they acquire from their bank accounts that makes them immune from craving the salt sugar and fat junk food is laced with?

That is not what he is saying I don't think. There are certain cultures around eating that have class distinctions, especially here in Texas. I think the whole issue is very complicated.

As in I don't know if the issue would quickly go away if we just required subsidized healthy food shops on every corner or something.

[Richard Hakluyt]

From a 1980 BBC bit about the redeveloped Covent Garden market building:

"[...] and the traders were forced out to Nine Elms, kind of Los Angeles of the fruit and veg business on the South bank of the Thames."

"Los Angeles of the fruit and veg business"? What does that even mean? 

Especially as Nine Elms is all of what 1-1.5 miles from Westminster and the Thames, about 5 stops on the northern line iirc when I used to park there to get into 'Town'. 

It probably just means that there are a couple of largeish roads leading to the market.

[alfred russel]

Really, poor people have different taste buds?  Rich people have some super special gene they acquire from their bank accounts that makes them immune from craving the salt sugar and fat junk food is laced with?

I think there is significant evidence that taste preferences are not completely genetic.

[crazy canuck]

Really, poor people have different taste buds?  Rich people have some super special gene they acquire from their bank accounts that makes them immune from craving the salt sugar and fat junk food is laced with?

I think there is significant evidence that taste preferences are not completely genetic.

Yeah has a lot to do with the food one can access and afford to purchase


The assertion that poor people wouldn't eat healthy food if it was available and affordable is I suppose one that must be made to excuse a broken system.

[dps]

Really, poor people have different taste buds?  Rich people have some super special gene they acquire from their bank accounts that makes them immune from craving the salt sugar and fat junk food is laced with?

I think there is significant evidence that taste preferences are not completely genetic.

Yeah has a lot to do with the food one can access and afford to purchase


The assertion that poor people wouldn’t eat healthy food if it was available and affordable is I suppose one that must be made to excuse a broken system.

There's what, for lack of a better term, one might call an educational element to it.  When I was dating the social worker who did child protective services, she told me that a lot of her cases involved children who weren't getting proper nutrition, and very rarely was it a matter of parents eating well but deliberately starving their children (though things like that do happen---what can you say, some people are just evil or crazy);  mostly, it was low-income, poorly educated people who had to be taught how to prepare healthy meals on a budget.

[crazy canuck]

There's what, for lack of a better term, one might call an educational element to it.  When I was dating the social worker who did child protective services, she told me that a lot of her cases involved children who weren't getting proper nutrition, and very rarely was it a matter of parents eating well but deliberately starving their children (though things like that do happen---what can you say, some people are just evil or crazy);  mostly, it was low-income, poorly educated people who had to be taught how to prepare healthy meals on a budget.

I have no doubt that is part of it.  But a small part.  The links I posted suggest the creation of food deserts have a lot do to with incomes not being high enough to purchase real food.

[grumbler]

There's what, for lack of a better term, one might call an educational element to it.  When I was dating the social worker who did child protective services, she told me that a lot of her cases involved children who weren't getting proper nutrition, and very rarely was it a matter of parents eating well but deliberately starving their children (though things like that do happen---what can you say, some people are just evil or crazy);  mostly, it was low-income, poorly educated people who had to be taught how to prepare healthy meals on a budget.

I have no doubt that is part of it.  But a small part.  The links I posted suggest the creation of food deserts have a lot do to with incomes not being high enough to purchase real food.

Food deserts have a lot to do with the perceived market for "real food" in an area, and consequent desirability of investing in creating a supermarket there.  You can assume, as you do, that there simply isn't enough money there to purchase fresh hamburger at $2 a pound, so the people can only afford cooked hamburgers at $20 a pound, but the real answer is almost certainly more complex than such simplistic assumptions.  Potential supermarket customers have to realize the health benefits that come from eating better food, and they have to have the time to prepare meals.  If they can afford fast food, they can afford real food.  If the market materializes, the grocery stores will come.

[Threviel]

Isn't that something of a catch 22? No market no stores, no stores, hard to build a market. Besides the point of education.

[crazy canuck]

You can assume, as you do...

I am making no assumptions.  Simply reporting what people who have actually studied the phenomenon have to say about it.

[grumbler]

You can assume, as you do...

I am making no assumptions.  Simply reporting what people who have actually studied the phenomenon have to say about it.

Who has studied the problem and reported that "food deserts have a lot do to with incomes not being high enough to purchase real food"?  When you brought it up, even you conceded that "links I posted suggest" which is different from your claim now that that "say" it.

It is worth noting that, while a "food desert" is by definition a low-income area, three-quarters of the low-income areas are NOT food deserts.  This would seem to suggest that food deserts are not caused by "incomes not being high enough to purchase real food" as you argue, but rather by a more complex series of inter-relationships, as I argue.  There is something that distinguishes food-desert poor areas from non-food-desert poor areas.  One seems to be population loss, which is about 10 percent over the last 20 years in urban food deserts (less than 5 percent in non-food-desert poor tracts).  This obviously is going to be off-putting for someone contemplating opening or renovating or even keeping a grocery store.

Researchers at Stanford did a study in which "simulations show  that  exposing  low-income  households  to  the  same  products  and  prices  available  to  high-income households reduces nutritional inequality by only about ten percent, while the remaining 90 percent is driven by differences in demand."

The idea that food deserts exist because people cannot afford to buy real food seems contradicted by
1. the fact that people, CAN afford to buy more expensive fast and prepared foods
2. the fact that three times as many poor areas are not food deserts than are, and
3. the fact that comparison of food deserts to other equally poor areas highlight other important distinctions unrelated to actual income levels.

See https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45014/30940_err140.pdf

Researchers at Stanford did a study in which "simulations show  that  exposing  low-income  households  to  the  same  products  and  prices  available  to  high-income households reduces nutritional inequality by only about ten percent, while the remaining 90 percent is driven by differences in demand."

[grumbler]

Isn't that something of a catch 22? No market no stores, no stores, hard to build a market. Besides the point of education.

People in food deserts do travel outside their immediate (1-mile radius in urban areas) neighborhood to shop for groceries.  It's just that many find it hard to take the time, and easy to get the processed food at the corner market.

"Food deserts" are a symptom, not a cause, of the problem.  Poverty is certainly a part of it, but education is, as well (as you note).

[Threviel]

So grumbsy, what is the difference in demand and what's causing it?

[crazy canuck]

You can assume, as you do...

I am making no assumptions.  Simply reporting what people who have actually studied the phenomenon have to say about it.

Who has studied the problem and reported that "food deserts have a lot do to with incomes not being high enough to purchase real food"?

From the very study you linked

In this report, we examine the socioeconomic
and demographic characteristics of these tracts to see how they differ from other census
tracts and the extent to which these differences influence food desert status. Relative to
all other census tracts, food desert tracts tend to have smaller populations, higher rates
of abandoned or vacant homes, and residents who have lower levels of education, lower
incomes, and higher unemployment. Census tracts with higher poverty rates are more
likely to be food deserts than otherwise similar low-income census tracts in rural and in
very dense (highly populated) urban areas. For less dense urban areas, census tracts with
higher concentrations of minority populations are more likely to be food deserts, while
tracts with substantial decreases in minority populations between 1990 and 2000 were
less likely to be identified as food deserts in 2000.