The Off Topic Topic

[Duque de Bragança]

There's a reason the Irish emigrated, potatoes and milk, while a complete diet, is not very fulfilling.

*shrug* Me and my relatives have eaten well and very cheaply when poor, others can too.

Most poor people used to be very good at eating cheapy and reasonably well indeed. Gout used to be a privilege of the rich.

[Josquius]

I have seen or read that veggies is actually hard to come by in poorer areas of the US. Propaganda or sometging to it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

I'm not really convinced of the causality.  Poor folks like the taste of junk food and will go for that over healthier food when given the choice.

Poor people have different taste buds?

[derspiess]

They often have different palates.

[crazy canuck]

I have seen or read that veggies is actually hard to come by in poorer areas of the US. Propaganda or sometging to it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

I'm not really convinced of the causality.  Poor folks like the taste of junk food and will go for that over healthier food when given the choice.

I prefer the cause identified below rather than one dependent on an assumption that poor people are physiologically different from affluent people.

Food deserts are brought about by a number of factors. They are typically located in low income areas where people often do not own a car. While public transportation can assist these people in some instances, often economic flux has driven grocery stores out of the city and into the suburbs. Suburban stores are often so far from the person, they may have to spend most of a day getting to and from the grocers, not to mention the task of carrying groceries home from a bus or subway stop. Secondly, food deserts are socio-economic, meaning they arise in communities of color combined with low income. Less disposable income combined with a lack of transportation typically leads to the purchase of fast foods and processed foods available at the corner store. This leads to an increase in heart disease, higher incidence of obesity and diabetes.

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/lifestyle/food-desert-information.htm

They often have different palates.

I have been both poor and in the top 1%.  The only thing that has really changed is I can now purchase food and drink I wanted to purchase when I was poor.

[Grey Fox]

Being wealthy is more than having money. It's everything that comes with that money.

[Savonarola]

The map with that is highly misleading, I think.  I would have assumed that those "fresh food deserts" were largely in poor inner-city areas.  The areas shown as being the worst on that map are largely rural areas;  those aren't places where the only local store is a convenience store that doesn't have much in the way of fresh food--there places where there aren't any stores, period--but where lots of people have veggie gardens, if they aren't farmers in the first place.

Looking at data on a per-county basis will make rural areas look worse since pockets of inner city misery are small relative to the total population of the county.  For example Keweenaw County in Michigan is bright red on the map (as is Isle Royale, those poor wolves), but it has a population of 2100 people.  Most of the city of Detroit is a food desert (though nowhere near as bad as it was a decade ago); but Wayne County is yellow; the suburban population masks Detroit's problems.  Looking at the data on a per-FIPs or per-Zip Code would provide a better picture.

[dps]

No. It’s says “no car and no supermarket”. Your farmers will have a car. These are poor rural populations, or populations living in small communities, in addition to inner city food deserts.

I wasn't talking about commercial farming operations, more subsistence farmers and the like.

Those don't exist in the western world anymore.

Clearly you've never spent much time in rural Appalachia.  Or east central NC, for that matter.

[Grey Fox]

Really? There are, today, in the USA, farmers that only farm their land for their own food supply?!

3rd world country indeed.

[dps]

I have seen or read that veggies is actually hard to come by in poorer areas of the US. Propaganda or sometging to it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

I'm not really convinced of the causality.  Poor folks like the taste of junk food and will go for that over healthier food when given the choice.

There's truth in that, but it's also true that it's cheaper to eat crappy food.

[Syt]

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? 

[HVC]

Really? There are, today, in the USA, farmers that only farm their land for their own food supply?!

3rd world country indeed.

There's a population of what I can only describe as conservative farmer hipsters. Raising "heritage" breed farm animals and crops. Homesteading is surprisingly big. the overlap with  prepers is large too.

[Zoupa]

I have seen or read that veggies is actually hard to come by in poorer areas of the US. Propaganda or sometging to it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

I'm not really convinced of the causality.  Poor folks like the taste of junk food and will go for that over healthier food when given the choice.

Don't feed the troll guys.

[Admiral Yi]

How is that a troll? 

[mongers]

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'. 

[crazy canuck]

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?