It's too cost prohibitive to be healthy, and even if it wasn't there is too much mental energy needed to be picky about which foods/ingredients you're buying (Checking labels, researching nutritional values, etc)
They're easier to store and last longer than fresh alternatives so they're both cheaper for the store to stock and sell and easier to use as a consumer because they won't go bad waiting to be used.
> Are fatty foods and empty carbs cheaper to produce than less processed, healthier food?
They are subsidized by the government, ie: Corn subsidies. That said, even without subsidies, I'd imagine that they'd be cheaper for another reason: You can store them long term without too much cost.
> More to the point, is there money to be made by making real food more readily available?
Not likely. Any advantage you squeeze out could probably be copied by another company willing to sell less healthy food. So the only your only real option for differentiation would be marketing how healthy your food is. But that requires people to care.
If the government provided free healthy food to everyone, fully cooked, ready to go, at a reasonably well-prepared level, at as many locations as there are fast food restaurants, then, I think it would actually make some impact on health.
Hm. Maybe the government should just subsidize salads at restaurants/fast food joints.
> > More to the point, is there money to be made by making real food more readily available?
> Not likely. Any advantage you squeeze out could probably be copied by another company willing to sell less healthy food. So the only your only real option for differentiation would be marketing how healthy your food is. But that requires people to care.
I wasn't trying to make real food cheaper - just on par, so that the "path of least resistance" wasn't to eat garbage. We can't make people care. But can we make them not have to care so much, or try so hard?
Meat is heavily subsidized as well. That farmer's markets, small farmers, and vegetable farmers get way less financial assistance than the sugar industry is really weird. Sugar beets, corn, and cane sugar are all pretty large crops that we provide assistance too.
It's cheaper, engineered to be more addictive, and it takes little to no prep (ready to eat or just throw in the microwave, oven or stove to heat up). Healthier options have price tags of luxury goods, often 1.5x-3x the cost of the unhealthy version. Veggies are generally cheap, but require much more food prep unless you want to eat everything raw.
The path of least resistance is not a social issue, it's purely practical. It isn't a "failure of western civilization" that wheat based goods are an extremely economical way to satiate hunger.
It is a failure of individuals that they fail to do anything outside of the path of least resistance.
It's not some law of nature that corn syrup is cheap in the US and used in everything, it's subsidies. If the path of least resistance was bread and baked potatoes (both very cheap and efficient) the US would be in a better place than it is now.
Grains are so heavily subsidized it distorts incentives. The actual costs without subsidies would significantly reduce the relative cost of greens etc and thus tend to a better diet for most people. We are actively and at great cost making things worse.
To be honest not all places if "western civilization" encourage the consumption of:
- massive consumption of empty calories in the form of soft drinks
- huge portion sizes (as in, > 100% of recommended calories in a single meal)
- "substitution" of non-processed foods by massively processed ones (either by cost, access, massive spread of fast food chains or just general culture)
If you're poor, it's prohibitively expensive to maintain one's mental health -- the focus on nutrition is spot on, but it's lacking. If you're working 2 or 3 minimum wage jobs, you don't have time for self care. You can't afford therapy; time or money. You probably can't maintain a regular sleep habit, exercise schedule, etc.
What I find funny about food banks is that they often have products that are lower quality than you find on supermarket shelves.
For instance, the food bank around here gives out cans of "tuna fish" that contain about 10% protein from soy that are imported from Mexico. They also have Peanut Butter imported from India.
There was an article the other day about how you shouldn't give cans to charity because it is more cost effective for them to buy food through their supply chain but in this case it is more cost effective because their supply chain is getting worse stuff.
Sorry I'm just checking that this is sarcastic, because why should it matter that peanut butter is from India? Or did I miss a memo about Indian peanut butter?
You did say that, though. You said "lower quality...for instance...peanut butter from India...worse stuff". If it's not an issue, why did you include it in a statement of issues?
This makes no sense to me (might be being slow today...). What is wrong about tuna cans with 10% soy protein from mexico and peanut butter imported from india (Aside from carbon footprint) if people need food.
I am going to get flack for this but I believe both health and wealth are both highly correlated with personal will power. For instance, intermittent fasting for me has been the best thing I've done for my health and I really have no trouble doing it, but I do believe it takes significant will power.
If you look at the research then habit formation is all about not relying on willpower. Willpower is a limited resource and is easily drained. People do not form long-term behaviours by willpower alone.
Yes, you need some willpower to start doing something new - but it’s all about habit formation after that.
There is a correlation but the direction of causation isn't always the direction you would think.
Take the famous delayed gratification study where kids were given 2 treats if they didn't eat the 1 that was placed in front of them. More recent studies have indicated that eating the treat immediately may be a developed response to deprivation. And that wealthier kids were more likely to delay gratification--possibly because their experience taught them to believe the adult when they said there would be to 2 treats available later.
According to the new results, the will power displayed in the delayed gratification tests was a result of wealth not a cause of wealth.
I think you're missing the point. The point is return per unit will power is massively correlated with your socioeconomic background—poor and disadvantaged people have to use a lot more will power to get the same benefits that rich people born into privilege do. What's more, people have a finite supply of will power, people who desperately struggle to make ends meet may have little will left over at the end of the day to eat a balanced dinner, or go for a run, to put it simply.
The word "willpower" is a near-useless metric in a vacuum. It's not the same as physical strength, where its measurement, attainment, and abilities are all pretty straightforward. The mental portion of one's ability to do hard things is a complex function of a ton of variables, both environmental and intrinsic. The portion that is under our control is just one of those variables - though it is certainly a critical portion, and people should absolutely be encouraged to be proactive and try to go above and beyond what they feel like that portion makes them capable of. But to boil it down to "health and wealth are both highly correlated with personal will power... I really have no trouble doing it" is kind of short on substance.
Try intermittent fasting while waking up at 5am, feeding 3 kids whatever you got with your EBT, swinging a hammer for 12 hours (if you're lucky and got that many hours of work), then sitting in a security booth for another 4... and rinse and repeat.
I naturally fall into a loose form of intermittent fasting - I've never been a breakfast person, and I tend to forget to stop for lunch. Most days, I don't usually think about food at all until around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and eat around 6pm.
It takes zero will power at all, and if I get hungry earlier (or want to go out with coworkers for lunch or get hungry again later in the evening), I'll still eat. I just usually don't, and tend to stay in an intermittent fasting state >80% of the time. It also acts as a natural counterweight to my generally poor eating choice, which would not be sustainable if I ate more frequently.
But it takes a _massive_ amount of willpower for me to be active. I frequently switch between highly technical work to executive-level engagement to client management and business development work, all within the same day, and it leaves me completely mentally exhausted at the end of it. In fact, I _don't_ have the willpower to force myself to be active most of the time. But I have a few friends that I am eternally grateful for, who are like energizer bunnies and always going, understand that aspect of me, and share their willpower with me when needed. They're able to tell when it's time to ignore my declining their invites and to show up anyway and drag me out to a hike or swim or something. And I feel great once we get going.
Understanding your personal will power is critical, but what you do with that understanding is even more so. I've leaned into where mine is at, and have developed support structures in my life to compensate for where mine isn't. But my success in doing so has been predicated on understanding and adapting to my willpower, not on the strength of it nor fighting against it. It's really hard to generalize the shape that takes or to project out the difficulty of something to someone else, since they'll likely have completely different strengths and weaknesses in that regard.
I'm more surprised when I come across very rich people (e.g. VCs, CEOs, etc.) who are obese. You have all the money in the world and somehow made it to the top without the self-control and determination to take care of your body (and in turn mind)?
There are many other reasons. The most obvious one is self-medicating, either stress or some undiagnosed condition. People are good at unconsciously developing coping mechanisms.
Some people have medical issues causing obesity, sure, but we’re the same species we were 50 years ago. Any physiological cause of obesity in people today was also present then, presumably at the same rates. But they didn’t have an obesity epidemic.
Whatever thing (or set of things) is driving the change in obesity rates, it is not a biological force that is outside of out control.
That may be a good enough explanation for why one individual is fat. It doesn't explain why whole societies are becoming heavier. Something must have changed other than our species as a whole just becoming lazier for no particular reason.
Heh. To me, it indicates that success is a function of something other than self-control and determination (ie largely luck, circumstance and nepotism).
Behaviours serve a purpose - or they become extinct. Sugar, fats and the like can serve to self-sooth. Humans, contrary to what it sounds like you think - aren't terribly rational - humans are emotional creatures. To understand why a particular individual is overweight needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. What is the function of overeating in this case? Is it biological (e.g. damaged hypothalamus) - are they depressed - stressed? What function does the behaviour serve?
The human condition and success encompasses more factors than simple self-control and determination (so does financial success as well - it's not purely a function of determination and self-control... for example, what if you're a great schmoozer? You're taking clients out to dinner all the time & drinking with them? What if they're also overweight? What if this is one of the root causes of your success? (in your mind))...
Thinking + feeling = judging. So, you think why are they fat? (a thought) and then you feel something (surprise). So now you're judging - and this can very well get in the way of truly understanding others. I hope this helps :-)
Well said. Maybe they are workaholics and spend 16 hours a day at work. Nutrition doesn't matter to them only money and success and fame. Health may not be a metric they track or care about any more than work:life balance or good family relationships.
Speaking from experience, when I eat like crap I feel tired mid-day, can't sleep well, and can't focus.
Part of what I was trying to get at is if I cared to make myself an ultra productive work machine, then eating healthy and exercising (especially if I have an unlimited budget to do so) would be a key component to making that happen.
I share the same reasoning and why I personally, question a person in a position of management. Being overweight, fine. But being obese is just a lack of will power.
It is refreshing to see CEOs like Musk and Bezos work on their health as they became more successful.
I'd find it very interesting to understand other people's "self-control", vs "normal behaviour".
As brief background, I've lost about 80kg, but I've put 20kg of that back on.
My main problem is what my body "wants" is about 1000-1500 calories a day too many. When I'm eating "properly", I'm hungry ALL THE TIME. And the world is full of tasty food, in basically every street one walks down.
I'm guessing that most people aren't hungry all the time, every day. Could you, in the middle of the afternoon, eat and enjoy an extra 1500 calories and then still feel hungry for dinner?
Reading this makes we wonder if we are even the same species.
You've lost more weight than I ever weighed at my highest (while trying to gain weight during weightlifting).
2 things come to mind:
1. Being hungry all the time sucks. I hated working out when hungry, nor am I a good contributor while hungry. It makes one very irritable at small things that normally would not bother me.
> Could you, in the middle of the afternoon, eat and enjoy an extra 1500 calories and then still feel hungry for dinner?
2. Maybe my stomach is just small, but I find it incredibly hard to eat more than 1000 calories in a single meal. It would result in extreme fatigue and a 'food coma' for at least an hour. I guess it's technically possible if you only eat the highest possible density foods like meat and fat and protein powder, but that doesn't seem like a healthy diet.
> Reading this makes we wonder if we are even the same species.
humans vary wildly on almost any metric you choose to examine. I have a hard time just maintaining my weight. I almost never feel actual hunger; I just get something to eat when I notice that I can't focus on work anymore. if I'm not working, I might forget altogether.
If you get a chance, read "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis. One section is on a group on the trading floor that have some really bad eating habits (gluttons) that is part of their work culture.
Rather than thinking of the six-figure professional overdoing it on ribeye and baked potato, think about a 20-year old without a job and no family to support them. On a good day they might have one meal of ramen noodles.
It's funny how I don't use as much money since I went carnivore. My health has improved greatly, my depression went away.
For about 3 months I was keto, basically unaffordable, so I cut the fresh greens and went with meat alone.
3 months of eating 1.5 KG pork every day, still expensive.
went with about 500 grams of ground meat for about a year and after I figured out the keto-carnivore thing it's about
1 block of butter every 3 days as well as 250 grams of beef is enough to survive.
I'm building my own mealworm farm for protein and fat as well as a snail hatchery for giant african snails for protein.
as poor person you basically never know when you will have to rely on yourself. So I'm trying to build for self sufficiency with solar panel and car battery as well as my own food production.
so many questions help!
1. Why? - I wanted to try it for the depression - it worked for multiple other ailments https://meatheals.com has a lot of similar stories - some people live like that for a long time now.
2. Will I die from scurvey or other nutrient deficiency? - I dont't know. Bloodwork looked okay. Cholesterol is high (Dave Feldman has some interesting things to say about that)
Yes I do fear that I don't get some nutrients but I eat some organ meat now and then, add gelatine to my meat, drink milk and eat butter, eggs, cheese, fish, different animals, different states of fermentation now and then.
3. Did I supplement? - yes, I took magnesium citrate for a while but not taking any now, except for when I have a headache. When I still ate "normal", zinc did a lot for my depression.
4. why insects rather than plants? - Plants in general seem to give me allergic reactions -> Carbs and sugar seem to make me depressed, greens and onions seem to amplify anxiety, plant oils give me headaches. After having symptoms every time I tried another plant, I stopped trying and these trials are getting less and less. There is something about anti-nutrients in plants that seems to screw with the absorbtion of minerals and vitamins from food.
5. Did I talk to a doctor? - Yes, I did, she just sat there and noded asked for a blood test and that's it. LDL is high, trigs are low (Dave Feldman prediction for cholesterol)
6. what about cancer? protein spikes IGF1 or something? I don't know... I don't want to go back to Plants because they make me feel like shit. Everyone dies and I will too one day. There is some article of someone who researched the WHO connection of cancer and red meat, and it doesn't seem to hold up.
7. do I still have symptoms? - Yes, depression is there sometimes and anxiety as well. I've lived with them for so long that I still have the habits of depression and they're hard to break. But I've accomplished about 500 km of the camino trail in europe as well as worked 9-5 hours which was never possible for me before. Childhood hunger never leaves you,(also it feels like germany is destabilizing as a democratic system) hence the preparation for crisis.
Exactly, I've had to live in a budget recently and I went from keto adapated to only rice/potatoes/beans. I gained weight and overall felt terrible but managed to stay well under budget.
I'm really sad for you :( Keto is a really good diet seemingly. In the end I was eating wild dandelion and rucula with my butter and meat. Didn't stick to that though.
It was only a short while and I am back to regular. But now I hate eating only meat/vegetables. So I incorporated exercise with more whole grains. Trying a more balanced approach.
So what are you eating nowadays? I don't think pure meat is viable for long term as I understand it does not provide all that our bodies require to function properly, ie scurvy.
No scurvy yet. Seems like I get bad headache from the plant fats if I ingest them.
Sometimes my belly hurts(beef is too sturdy sometimes) or I'm nauseous from too much fat. Or clogged up from enjoying too much cheese.
On the other hand, I have all my teeth(xept for wisdom teeth which got pulled when I was 12 or so) and my gums are healthier and my teeth are stronger than ever before.
Wouldnt white meat, and especially chicken and turkey, be much cheaper ? In any generic supermarket in France, 1 Kg of chicken, the good kind with no additionnal hormones and grown up on the outside (as opposed to factory chicken) costs maybe a third of the equivalent in beef, and is also significantly lower than pork (and we're not talking high quality beef and pork there).
Not making any opinion as the overall point of you comment, just wondering why beef if money is the big factor.
On a keto diet one seeks to eat (typically) less than 25g of carbohydrates a day. That's net carbs, btw, so subtract fiber or sugar alcohols. For reference, that's an apple.
It's a pretty interesting diet. Attractive if you're overweight because of eating habits (me) because you can eat "a lot" and still lose weight - as long as you don't eat carbs. Not as good if you're only losing, say, 10 lbs, because as soon as you get off keto you'll bloat right back up to those 10 lbs.
But beef and pork are pretty much always cheaper than chicken?
If I go to my supermarket's site right now, chicken is ~€12 per kilo[0], beef is ~€7 per kilo[1] and pork-beef mix (can't get pure pork minced meat) is €5,30 per kilo[2]. And it'll be like that in every supermarket in The Netherlands (and possibly Europe)
Go to Aldi or Lidl. You can buy fresh seasonal vegetables there. Some frozen vegetables are cheaper (spinach, green beans out-of-season). Pasta, gnocci and potatoes are all very cheap. Pulses are also cheap if bought in bulk.
You should be able to grow your own basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary and parsley.
With that you can cook healthy and tasty food on a small budget.
On a serious note, I personally hate vegetables. I'd honestly rather die of starvation, and I (am pretty sure I am) not kidding. I've heard it said that people like what they eat. Well, the more I eat veggies, the more I wanna puke. Of the few veggies I kind of like, they get old really fast if I eat them often. No matter who hungry I have ever been, the thought of eating a tomato, especially a raw one, makes me want to gag.
Serious question... Any suggestions on how to be poor & eat healthy with a (genetic?) anti-veggie preference like mine? Some fruit is expensive. 12 ounces (340 g) of the less expensive $4.99 at Trader Joe's (I just called them). Fortunately bananas are cheaper at just 19 cents each, at least until they all get wiped out by some global fungus (cuz banana cloning monoculture).
It's really hard for me to imagine that. I mean, there were some vegetables that I hated but that was only because I didn't know how to cook them. Things like broccoli, brussel sprouts I hated until I learnt how to prepare them properly.
As someone who has been broke, it's pretty crazy to start think of food intake in terms of price per calorie. I need more food than the average human, as I am 6'5" / 196cm tall. For a few years, I'd drink a lot of skim milk to get protein. I could get 2 quarts (1.9L) for about $2.99 USD, which contained something like 60 or 70 grams of protein. There weren't many sources cheaper than that, except for larger volumes that were hard for me to acquire & store.
>If everyone followed Public Health England’s eating advice, people in the bottom decile of household income would spend 74 per cent of their income on food
I find this very interesting. I'm a graduate student in Midwest of the US. My income places me in the bottom 20% of household incomes. Not poor, but money must be carefully managed. In my experience, eating well isn't that expensive in terms of time or money, provided you are willing to adjust your diet. I keep good track of my finances and diet, and I spend nowhere near that figure (and I still wouldn't, even if I made half of what I do) and I have a pretty healthy diet and reasonably active lifestyle.
What are in these guidelines making them so expensive? Or in the US, particularly in the Midwest, is the cost of food that much cheaper than the UK?
Part of the advice [0] is "Over a third of the diet should come from fruit and vegetables". Also "Aim for at least two portions (2 x 140g) of fish a week".
Neither of those two are necessarily cheap. However I don't see that approaching 74% of the income either when you choose sensible options for vegetables and fish.
> This advice is geared toward helping women who are pregnant or may become pregnant – as well as breastfeeding mothers and parents of young children – make informed choices when it comes to fish that are healthy and safe to eat.
Not sure how much food costs in the UK but that would cost $2-4 in the US if you satisfy that with canned sardines/tuna/salmon, or farmed tilapia.
Vegetables are cheaper than most people think. I usually buy $1/lb frozen peas and $1.5/lb frozen broccoli. Washed and cut fresh carrots are also about $1.5/lb. Spinach and kale are not bad either. Just don't waste money on fresh vegetables, by the time you cook them they will probably be in worse condition than the frozen stuff.
Fruits are probably the most expensive. The cheapest fruits don't even have great nutritional profiles other than fiber and maybe vitamin C (which not a lot of people know is actually abundant in many common vegetables).
Things like dried beans/peas, eggs, full grain rice, sunflower seeds, whole potatoes, green leafs, tomatoes, brassicaceaes, onions, apples, bananas and carrots can all be obtained at a fair price. You can cover a lot with these, and it's much better than fried chips and pasta.
My take is more than:
- a scary amount of people of my generation are completely uneducated about food. They don't know what a balanced diet is. They don't know how to cook. They don't know where to shop. They don't know how to choose a product. They don't know how much their health is affected by this. And they rather spend an hour on facebook than starting to figure it out.
- food is hard. Our society make it harder: we have a huge quantity of low quality food at our disposal. We solved the starving problem, but replaced it with a malnutrition problem, aggravated with the desire to make money which lead to the promotion of shitty food and the production of it. Getting proper information on nutrition is a hell of confusion, contradictory messages, social pressure and guilt.
- tasty balanced food is expensive and requires time + work + planning. Anybody can buy the stuff I talked about. But if you go to your usual supermarket and buy them, they will taste like crap. In fact, it's even hard to find nice food at the farmer market nowadays. So of course they don't want to eat them. I mean, between this red plastic ball they call a tomato and a kit kat, why the hell would a kid not choose the kit kat ? Why would the exhausted parents fight again and again to force the kid to eat something themselves think taste bad ? Life is hard enough.
- there are too many of us. To feed everyone we need to use use production, processing and distribution methods that lead to crappy food. Over population affects everything, from medical care quality to democracy. Food is no exception.
- our culture is messed up. We made it so that eating meat was a social status indicator. So everybody started to want to it meat. Then everybody started to eat it every day. Producing meat is incredibly expensive, so we have to use tricks to produce such a quantity, which lead to terrible food again.
- morality is an issue. I've work in OHS for some times. The amount of disgusting things that are done to food for profit is astonishing. And people just shut up. SEP field. If you photophop food for a living, if you participate to those marketing studies, if you work in a factory making crap, if you cook in a fast food, if you sign on contracts for bad food, if you code a website for an immoral actor, you are part of the problem. I know people have many constraint, and I don't pretend to have the moral high ground. I'm part of it as well. But my point is, we are responsible too.
> - a scary amount of people of my generation are completely uneducated about food
A scary amount of my peers are afraid of cooking; I mean they're suddenly comfortable w/ their Blue Apron w/ instructions, but having a home standby is unheard of them for the most part.
Saying a generation has a "fear of sauce" seems a little exaggerated, given that the article quoted one college student who came home because she "didn't like food with sauce", which was clearly an outlier given that her parents went way overboard throughout her childhood helping her avoid sauced foods.
industrial plant agriculture is bad for every animal :( mice are shredded with the earth, deer are killed whith the harvest and shot when trying to eat it. The stuff is sprayed with insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, rodenticides. Poor People who can't afford organic eat these poisons and kill their gut microbiome which then leads to all sorts of illnesses. It's really bad, no matter if you eat meat or plant food.
That's not the problem. The resources (land, energy, man power, products, water, pollution, money, etc) required by calorie are way higher for meat.
Hence we must produce crappy food to get that quantity for everybody. And of course as a consequence, we have a lot less resources for growing things for human.
Also, because animals are higher in the food chain, they concentrate all the active products we give to them directly (hormones, antibiotics...) or indirectly (pesticides, herbicides...).
You can have a pretty decent vegan diet on £150/month/person. If you want to add fish oil or some basic vitamins add ~£10/month/person. At least my family spends no more than that.
The National Minimum Wage is £7.83, which is about £1200/month after tax, you can do just fine with that in a village. In major cities, well, that's a different story, but who is to blame if you live in a property you can't afford? NMW is the same everywhere, but the property prices are not.
It's certainly possible, but not easy, to eat for £1 per meal to those guidelines. You'd have to go to big superstores to buy the cheapest veg, every week so it doesn't go bad, which would incur a few pounds and hours of travel time too. You'd need to own, have space for, and power a fridge and freezer too, so thats another £50 or so for electricity per year.
That would put the total cost at £1100 per year per person, or £2530 per household (average size 2.3).
The lowest decile of household income is £199 per week, so food accounts for 25% of income.
Those who earn £199 per week in one of the strongest economy, have bigger problem with their lifestyle than having their 5-a-day. They need professional help. Everyone else who earn at least the National Minimum Wage, being able to eat healthy is not a financial issue.
Not sure why there is no question if the Public Health advice is actually good to begin with. In France for decades the French authorities heavily promoted the consumption of milk-derivative products as part of a "healthy diet" and this seems to have sparked the percentage of people suffering from lactose intolerance.
Eating advice is usually based on very poor quality data to begin with, and observational studies is not really good science either.
I ran out of money in college and didn't think to turn to loans, grants, parents, food bank or anything. I managed to keep paying rent but ran out of food except for a bag of flour and a gallon of oil. I literally lived on nothing but Navajo style fry bread. Just a simple water flour dough fried in some oil.
It's absolutely insane to look back on, but it makes me understand how people fall into eating so terribly when you're poor.
Looking back I would instead just eat potatoes, carrots, rice, beans, and try and throw some apples/oranges in there occasionally. Homemade bread when you've got time is a nice and cheap addition as well. You can live just fine on everything I just listed and it won't cost you much.
The apples and oranges will be pretty pricey for a poor person. Should probably only do that when you're splurging.
Also, if you're in a place where the rest of the list is too expensive, priority should be placed on the rice and beans. Potatoes and carrots aren't strictly speaking "necessary" when you're in crisis like that. Try to get a fishing rod and use your local lakes and rivers. Varying degrees of healthy there, but fishing can usually be done for free on off hours.
Well, I'm just trying to list things that won't potentially spike in price. Bananas are, calorie for calorie, a better option than most of the foods on the list. But I don't think any reasonable person would argue the fact that they occupy a very precarious place in the global food supply chain right now.
It is double the calories, but that’s an extra 80 per fruit.
If you’re counting every calorie, it’s a problem. If you’re dirt poor and need to save where you can because you’re trying to avoid cheap grains, go for the banana.
A friend of a friend, as a poor MIT student, actually got scurvy, from eating mostly instant ramen noodles, plain (without the seasoning packet).
Presumably the student had previously taken health classes in primary school, and probably gotten good grades. But it's very easy to be slammed with work and stress (like a poor person might be), and just not have the time/energy to think about nutrition.
That's what I find so interesting about Samin Nosrat's "Salt Fat Acid Heat". Sure it's a list of what it takes to make food taste good, but it also happens to be a comprehensive list of what you need to stay alive. It's also why I added oranges into the list, although there's probably a cheaper way to not get scurvy?
It must steer clear of the idea that “all we have to do is convey to people how to eat sensibly and then everything will be fine,” he says. “That would be a significant step backwards.”
“I’ll give you an example,” he adds, “If everyone followed Public Health England’s eating advice, people in the bottom decile of household income would spend 74 per cent of their income on food. So, there’s not much point telling them follow the healthy eating advice they can’t afford.
I think I can see why. Here is Public Health England's "A Quick Guide to the Government’s Healthy Eating Recommendations":
It advises people to eat more expensive meat (oily fish) in place of cheaper meats, and to eat large portions of fruits and vegetables. Those two factors look to explain the cost increase. The other advice (choose unsaturated oils, eat complex carbohydrates instead of simple ones) does not require buying more expensive foods.
If you just bought foods according to the pictures and examples in the Public Health England brochure, you could spend a lot more money on food. It's possible to follow dietary recommendations without spending much (if any) more if you know how to budget and optimize, and if you already have a stove and refrigerator/freezer. I don't really think it's possible if you don't have a refrigerator/freezer. Limited transportation options can make it harder too.
Worst of all, IMO, is that the brochure and linked eating guides contain no sample meal plans, shopping plans, or example prices/budgets. Bridging this sort of gap used to be (still is?) sometimes taught in Home Economics and Personal Finance classes in the United States. (I took both in high school.) It's also the sort of skill that children often used to acquire from their parents, but perhaps acquire less often now. It's way too hard for someone without that skill to go from this Healthy Eating brochure to a cost-and-health satisficing shopping plan with accompanying meal plans.
The trouble is one of priorities. Even if you can’t afford to eat fresh fruit you can choose better options. Health recommendations are expressed in a huge package all at once, take it or leave it.
Lean meat and fish in particular are also expensive and over-emphasized. You can get a similar protein/fat ratio by eating cheap meat or cheese with legumes or oats and it comes with fiber.
Eggs are unfairly demonized. Only a tiny proportion of the population needs to limit egg consumption beyond what taste will do naturally. But protein is the most expensive macronutrient and eggs are a cheap source with relatively low fat and loads of vitamins. Cheese also falls into this category, with many people who do not currently have any tumors rigorously avoiding a small increase in their IGF-1, a hormone which performs many essential functions but slightly increases tumor growth rates. You can thank T. Colin Campbell for this absurdity.
Potassium is very confusing. The most economical sources for most people are probably from canned tomato products, beans and fresh potatoes — the latter being a cheap vegetable whose nutritional value is highly underrated thanks to a proliferation of processed potato products. Most people, however, will reach for bananas and avocadoes — delicacies to the poor.
Bread, too, deserves a more nuanced look. It ranges from sweet, thick and highly glycemic to relatively health-neutral and highly pragmatic wrt home-made lunches. “Bread” here can be extended to wraps and tortillas. “Don’t eat bread” is very often impractical. Pasta, on the other hand, is loved by diet authorities for its satiating bulk, but it’s a mess to make and requires you to wash a pot and a bowl. The rice cooker has yet to assume its rightful place on the counter.
Home cooking in general has been neutered by making everyone terrified of adding butter or salt. So people choose between bland foods with no butter or salt or packaged foods with absurd amounts of salt, palm oil and artificial flavor. This advice should be revised with an eye to taste.
It is not too surprising that health advice designed for the rich does not serve the poor. I don’t think the obesity crisis can be solved with health advice alone, but I also think the advice could be a lot better than it is. I don’t think we need to teach people to cook — people can learn to cook. Most people, however, do not have the number sense to assimilate hundreds of nutrition labels and prices into a diet strategy. That is difficult and boring. It doesn’t help that many products have such tiny serving sizes that the nutrient label is meaningless thanks to rounding errors. The system could be simpler and clearer. (Even with extreme effort I find myself constantly revising my own plans.)
It's a real mess isn't it. Personally I'm awed by Japanese cuisine, which seems to have integrated the need for healthy nutrition with amazing flavours and satiety, and embedded it into the culture as a cherished component. Replicating that with a bunch of rules is nigh on impossible I'd suggest.
Certainly not a fan of their hunting of whales though.
It's not about economic poverty. Firstly food is (as I understand it) pretty much at its cheapest ever, even zero cost from food banks (notwithstanding the supposed shame, and I can tell you my family would have had no shame in taking food from a food bank when they were starving in rural Wales during the Great Depression, and this family history somewhat limits my sympathy to arguments about the shame of using food banks); secondly people are not poor in economic terms, with our definition of poverty having had to be changed (making it a relative measure) because it had ceased to be meaningful; and thirdly under rationing food was obviously strictly limited, and yet the nation was so (we are told) never fitter.
The problem is that the person at the sharp is incapable for whatever reason of providing nutritious meals despite the basic conditions generally being available for them to do so. It's a poverty of history, culture, community, education, imagination, willingness, instinct, morale perhaps, but not money. None of that is the fault of the socially deprived, but the idea that more money will magically fix everything (as the left constantly parrot) is just as much of an untruth as the idea that the poor are too stupid and lazy to sort out their own lives.
Apart from that I do think it's amazing that politicians are surprised that despair is increasing. When was the last time you heard a politician stand up and praise Britain and the British people absent virtue signalling about diversity etc.? Constantly demoralise people for decades, do nothing to properly integrate minorities nor construct a cohesive unified nation: get demoralised people.
The word "food" occurs only 2 times in the body of the executive summary. So I think it's a stretch to use "can't afford" as the main title of the article.
The full report doesn't have much to support it, it never shows us what food cost, how they're unable to afford it. At best it talks about "availability" of healthy food as if the supermarkets doesn't sell it.
The report never considers that the unhealthy food might be a taste preference just like smoking even though everybody knows it's very unhealthy and very expensive. Giving up smoking isn't expensive, it's not money that stops people from quitting smoking.
Low-income groups are more likely to consume fat spreads, non-diet soft drinks, meat dishes, pizzas, processed meats, whole milk and table sugar than the better-off (pg 133)
My personal observation from observing shoppers in a number of supermarkets: poor people buys quite a lot more soft drinks than the well educated.
The health of the poor is not improved much by giving them (free) fresh produce when they drink a couple of liters of non-diet Coca Cola every day. They end up obese or with diabetes which are the mother of all ills. An ounce of broccoli can't cure 2L of Coca Cola.
I think the single most effective policy would be to ban sugar in drinks and severely restrict its use in fast food (and bread). The fat-free policies must be reverted to avoid foods using sugar as replacement for fat.
Your prescribed initiative to improve the lives of poor people is to remove one of the few cheap pleasures available to them?
I think many people here understand how stress and mood inform eating habits. Who among us has not indulged after a particularly bad day? Now imagine that bad day was every day, and you don't have the money, time, and energy to drown your feelings with healthier activities like strenuous exercise.
The best way to improve the lives of poor people is to give them money. Enough with this know-better-than-thou ban & incentize crap. Poor people get jerked around enough already.
When that "pleasure" ends up making peoples live a lot worse, then yes I do want to remove it.
If we were never to take away pleasures no matter their consequences, you could just as well legalize "the Russian Krokodil" (don't google images that).
"If everyone followed Public Health England’s eating advice, people in the bottom decile of household income would spend 74 per cent of their income on food"
Bullshit.
I'll preface what I'm going to say next by saying I'm in the US and I know this was a UK report - but I highly doubt things are so incredibly different over there in terms of cost. That being said, there's utterly no way that has to be the case. Raw produce (not meats) from a farmer's market or most major supermarkets are very cheap. I can spend $30-$40 and have enough for 3-4 people for a full week. Also, sausage is usually very cheap. I buy the store brand (which happens to be delicious) and it's usually <$3 per lb. The 73% beef from Walmart is cheap as hell and usually hovers around $3-$3.25 per lb most of the time. One of those burgers (quarter-pounder, so 4 oz) has 340 calories and is a dream for anyone doing keto. So that $3 package contains about 1350 to 1400 calories! The cereal I make myself has only 4 ingredients and is loaded with healthy carbs (steel cut oats, flax seed, walnuts, and raisins). $12 to $15 dollars buys a bag of each of those ingredients which all have around 15 or so servings - that's over two weeks...or less than a dollar a day (per person). And that is a very high calorie breakfast, BTW. Water costs essentially nothing per gallon. Eggs are cheap and super healthy. There's plenty of cheap, tasty cheeses you can buy in bulk, too. You can get whole seasoned, rotisserie, cooked and ready-to-eat chickens for $5! That's multiple meals for a single person or a meal for an entire family. And I don't live in a rural part of the US where prices are cheaper - I live in an expensive area of the northeast.
You can easily feed a family of 4 on $125 a week using the items I outlined above (along with other cheap options).
I fully agree. But the intersection of people who read articles like this and buy their food at Walmart (or any other source that specifically tries to be low cost) and pay attention to the prices is likely quite small so people who tend to read and discuss these kinds of articles forget how cheap food can be at the low end.
Eggs at my local Walmart are $1.20-$1.70/dozen (depending on large/medium/small/white/brown), milk is $2.19/gal and you can get several different large loafs of wheat (or white) bread for under $2. It's been awhile since I've done the shopping but IIRC boneless chicken breast is under $2/lb and ground beef is $3.xx/lb.
I wouldn't be putting bread on the list of stuff to buy if we're aiming for healthy things, but yes, that's also really cheap as well.
I'm not sure I understand your point about the intersection of readers and those buying food at Walmart. I get that the overlap is probably not large, but I don't see the connection to the claim made by the article. Whether or not a low-income person reads that report they are probably still shopping at a place like Walmart so the prices are what they are. And that claim from the report is still bullshit either way because however they are measuring it is clearly designed to fulfill the desired outcome so they could write it up this way.
>I wouldn't be putting bread on the list of stuff to buy if we're aiming for healthy things
I can think of plenty "healthy enough" meals of which bread is a component.
>I'm not sure I understand your point about the intersection of readers and those buying food at Walmart. I get that the overlap is probably not large, but I don't see the connection to the claim made by the article
This article is written for a more wealthy audience that is going to be less aware of what food actually costs at the low end (i.e. just buying the cheapest X on the shelf instead of the X you like). My point is that few reading the article have the requisite knowledge/experience to call it out for portraying the situation inaccurately as the top level comment is doing and several here are agreeing with.
Agreed. I'm also in the US, but my family of four's food budget is about $100 per week and we eat very healthy. Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. Meat tends to be the most expensive thing, but you can get cheap cuts (<$3/lb = <$3 for 2.5 servings) and always supplement protein with beans.
I wonder to what extent this difference between the perceived cost of food in the UK vs US is driven by the relative difference in amount of food imported vs grown locally? As far as I could tell the US is a net exporter of food whereas the UK seems to import something like 50% of its food [0].
Plus a lot of fruit/vegetables don't grow well here meaning oranges will be from Spain or Israel or somewhere. Its not uncommon for fresh green beans to be from Kenya or Mozambique or Peru. I'm not sure if the lower cost of production offsets transport and tariff costs?
Do you have a freezer? Do you have a car? Do you have enough income to bulk buy some items?
How much are you paying for energy? Poor people may be on prepayment meters for gas and electricity, which will charge about 25 pence per day per fuel (so about 50 pence per day, or about 60 cents a day) just to have the meter, before any gas or electricity is supplied.
I have a normal fridge with freezer on top. No car. And we don't buy in bulk with at least one or two trips per week to the store, $50 tops, but could break it into small buys if needed.
If I had trouble getting energy to cook, I'd do what the low income folks in SF do - buy a cheap camp cooker and use that to cook.
That's a fair point, because that would be in the 70% range. But that doesn't factor in income assistance. I know essentially nothing about UK law in this regard, but I imagine they have some sort of income assistance programs for low-income individuals/families, yes? That would raise their income substantially, would it not?
That money is mostly not used to pay rent, so we can ignore housing costs.
Single and under 25 £251.77
Single and 25 or over £317.82
In a couple and you’re both under 25 £395.20 (for you both)
In a couple and either of you are 25 or over £498.89 (for you both)
This also assumes there are no sanctions in place. Sanctions can take the income down to as low as £1 per week.
I don't disagree with your overall analysis except:
> Raw produce (not meats) from a farmer's market or most major supermarkets are very cheap.
The vast majority of poor Americans live in places where there are no Farmer's Market (that's a thing for affluent cities) and more poor than you realize live far away from a major grocery stores. Dollar stores are driving a lot of small grocery stores/ bodegas out of business in the US. I still think you are right that spending 74% of income on food to be healthy is an exaggeration for the US.
> Farmer's Markets... (that's a thing for affluent cities)
There are farmers markets and then there are "farmers" markets. The original having existed at most major transportation hubs and required for farmers to get their food to market.
And, in the case that rural areas where farmed goods are the top product, (the SouthEast, Midwest, California) authentic farmer's markets exist (though they might also be the local flea market)
> Dollar stores are driving a lot of small grocery stores
!Cough! Dollar General expansion. Luckily, a restaurateur in a small town that I visit has started increases his fresh ingredient orders from local farms and selling them.
In the US you have sacrificed ethics and standards for price and profit. Its why there is such a panic around Brexit leaving us open to US farming practices. You also have hugely cheaper transportation costs. I'd like to compare the cost US to UK, i wouldn't be surprised if it was x2 or x3 times more in the UK overall, fruit is especially pricey eggs locally are as much as 3$ for 6. 74% is a bit much though, most of the poorest spend at least half of their wage on rent as the last thirty years of government has brought right to buy with no new social housing.
It is expensive to be poor, where i can buy in bulk, saving some money, poorer people have to pay through the nose, wealthy people have pantries and chest freezers, poorer people generally have small fridge freezers that hold a week of food at most so they can't take advantage to most deals. Farmers markets are not generally much cheaper than supermarkets and you would be lucky to live near one. There is a minimum limit on delivery from supermarkets (about $60). I'm quite close to a supermarket only about $14 in diesel for every trip. I cook everything, and freeze dozens of meals at a time, I've been able to get down to about $2-$3 per day, but couldn't get near that if i was poor, and my diet has almost no fruit to speak of.
"the poorest spend at least half of their wage on rent"
Now that I believe. Similar situation in the US for sure. Hard to find places less than $800 a month in most places and those places usually aren't great. If you're making 20-25k a year, that's easily close to 10k on rent (40-50%) and doesn't generally include all utilities.
It wasn't even all that many years ago that I was in my first job out of school making substantially less than I am now. Even though I was well above poverty level, I was still spending around 22k on housing (I bought a small house which cost $1800 a month for mortgage + property tax, not including utilities). So it was still in the 40-50% range for me and I had a job way above minimum wage with benefits at a major corporation.
My parents were born very poor (they were both taken out of school and put to work at 11 years old - yeah let this sink in for a minute). They did work all their lives until they retired though, specially my mom that having no job formation kept picking up any jobs she could find. My father went to school at night (started studying again while he was forcibly conscripted for war) and had two jobs.
We always did eat very healthy at home. First because my parents saw that as one of the priorities (they never went to dinner out, lunch out, even coffee out in my early years, since they couldn't afford that lifestyle and keep their finances in a proper state... I guess the only luxury we had was having a dog - for which I am very grateful), second because they would take the time and effort to prepare a proper meal (yes, even after arriving home from working all day in their physically demanding jobs) and the ingredients to a healthy meal are cheap, but it takes effort to put that kind of meal together.
All this happened in what is today a somewhat rich western European country.
It really bothers me (and I guess other people like me), this culture of constantly dismissing people lack of self responsibility. In the EU (and I would go as far as saying, in the all 1st world), if you are willing to work and to watch how you spend your money (and this means closely, no 5$ latte like another article today just talks about, or ordering pizza because you don't want to prepare dinner), anyone can end up having a comfortable life.
Here, even in super expensive CA, In college I got by with less than 2-3$ per day on rolled oats (70c per lb), Onions, potatoes, flax seeds, green peppers, bananas, whole wheat flour etc, all of which were less than 1$ per lb if you go to the right stores (for example Sprouts).
Going to McDonalds is much more expensive, something like 20$ per day!
With the proper education, you can eat cost effectively and very healthily. And, I know it's really controversial to say this because of the decades of conditioning we've received from the dairy and meat industry, but Meat and Dairy aren't needed in the diet, and have been shown to even cause cancer, heart disease and heart stroke for many. (source Forks over Knives, the documentary, plus the China study -> check it out, seriously.)
It's nice that while you were in college and had obligations of 12-18 hours a week, you found the time to shop at multiple stores to maximize your savings.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people (single moms, for example) that work 80 hours a week at three minimum wage jobs, each of which purposefully employ people at non-full-time hours to avoid needing to provide benefits, and they just don't have the time to go to research prices and recipes, visit multiple stores, go home exhausted, and still find time to cook.
>Going to McDonalds is much more expensive, something like 20$ per day!
If you're ordering off of the value menu it's nowhere near that expensive in most of the country.
>rolled oats (70c per lb), Onions, potatoes, flax seeds, green peppers, bananas, whole wheat flour etc
Most of those particularly the wheat flour requires significant preparation--knowledge, time, a stocked and functioning kitchen.
A lot of those people in the bottom 10% of income in the UK aren't going to have an oven.
>With the proper education,
Yes, proper education, plus time, plus a working kitchen. 3 things that the very poor aren't likely to have. And keep in mind this was when you were a single college student, not a working single mother with 2 small kids.
I wonder why supermarkets themselves aren't making more blue-apron style meal plans aimed at different income categories. It is a relatively inexpensive way to value-add items you already have and differentiate yourself from other supermarkets. And you can help people that either don't know/don't care about nutrition (enough to come up with a nutrition regime) eat healthy; perhaps creating the meal kits could be partially subsidized by the gov.
You can feed someone very well for $50/week. And you can even do it in a way that requires only low-effort cooking: meat that can be baked, microwaveable vegetables, eggs that can be simply boiled or cooked in a pan with butter, pasta and oatmeal. Dairy products, fruits, some vegetables, and nuts can just be eaten without processing. Canned food that can be eaten right out of the can or just heated up.
Assuming a main reason poor people don't eat healthier food is due to lack of time, cognitive overhead, or lack of knowledge (not only re: what food is healthy or not, but also how to optimize nutrition/f(cost, time, effort)) it could help. I don't have time to go into how it's even possible healthy food could take 75% of someone's income (assuming that person has an income of $10k/year, that is over $140/week) but there are surely compromises you can make to get the majority of the benefits of eating healthy food without spending nearly that much.
I'm surprised the government, some nonprofit or some university's sociology department isn't doing this. It wouldn't be hard to publish a weekly newsletter with meals for various family sizes that can be made at various price points using all SNAP-compatible ingredients.
How much would it really cost to send a weekly pamphlet of cheap and not nutritionally terrible meal ideas to the address of every kid who gets free lunch?
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadIt takes effort to do anything else.
More to the point, is there money to be made by making real food more readily available?
It is very easy to make things taste good by loading them with fat and sugar.
No.
> Are fatty foods and empty carbs cheaper to produce than less processed, healthier food?
They are subsidized by the government, ie: Corn subsidies. That said, even without subsidies, I'd imagine that they'd be cheaper for another reason: You can store them long term without too much cost.
> More to the point, is there money to be made by making real food more readily available?
Not likely. Any advantage you squeeze out could probably be copied by another company willing to sell less healthy food. So the only your only real option for differentiation would be marketing how healthy your food is. But that requires people to care.
If the government provided free healthy food to everyone, fully cooked, ready to go, at a reasonably well-prepared level, at as many locations as there are fast food restaurants, then, I think it would actually make some impact on health.
Hm. Maybe the government should just subsidize salads at restaurants/fast food joints.
> Not likely. Any advantage you squeeze out could probably be copied by another company willing to sell less healthy food. So the only your only real option for differentiation would be marketing how healthy your food is. But that requires people to care.
I wasn't trying to make real food cheaper - just on par, so that the "path of least resistance" wasn't to eat garbage. We can't make people care. But can we make them not have to care so much, or try so hard?
> It takes effort to do anything else.
True. But the point of having a civilization is arguably that thriving should require less and less effort.
It is a failure of individuals that they fail to do anything outside of the path of least resistance.
- massive consumption of empty calories in the form of soft drinks
- huge portion sizes (as in, > 100% of recommended calories in a single meal)
- "substitution" of non-processed foods by massively processed ones (either by cost, access, massive spread of fast food chains or just general culture)
For instance, the food bank around here gives out cans of "tuna fish" that contain about 10% protein from soy that are imported from Mexico. They also have Peanut Butter imported from India.
There was an article the other day about how you shouldn't give cans to charity because it is more cost effective for them to buy food through their supply chain but in this case it is more cost effective because their supply chain is getting worse stuff.
Wow what a scandal.
You did say that, though. You said "lower quality...for instance...peanut butter from India...worse stuff". If it's not an issue, why did you include it in a statement of issues?
Yes, you need some willpower to start doing something new - but it’s all about habit formation after that.
https://angeladuckworth.com/publications/
That study unfortunately failed to replicate
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/willpower-ego-de...
Take the famous delayed gratification study where kids were given 2 treats if they didn't eat the 1 that was placed in front of them. More recent studies have indicated that eating the treat immediately may be a developed response to deprivation. And that wealthier kids were more likely to delay gratification--possibly because their experience taught them to believe the adult when they said there would be to 2 treats available later.
According to the new results, the will power displayed in the delayed gratification tests was a result of wealth not a cause of wealth.
It takes zero will power at all, and if I get hungry earlier (or want to go out with coworkers for lunch or get hungry again later in the evening), I'll still eat. I just usually don't, and tend to stay in an intermittent fasting state >80% of the time. It also acts as a natural counterweight to my generally poor eating choice, which would not be sustainable if I ate more frequently.
But it takes a _massive_ amount of willpower for me to be active. I frequently switch between highly technical work to executive-level engagement to client management and business development work, all within the same day, and it leaves me completely mentally exhausted at the end of it. In fact, I _don't_ have the willpower to force myself to be active most of the time. But I have a few friends that I am eternally grateful for, who are like energizer bunnies and always going, understand that aspect of me, and share their willpower with me when needed. They're able to tell when it's time to ignore my declining their invites and to show up anyway and drag me out to a hike or swim or something. And I feel great once we get going.
Understanding your personal will power is critical, but what you do with that understanding is even more so. I've leaned into where mine is at, and have developed support structures in my life to compensate for where mine isn't. But my success in doing so has been predicated on understanding and adapting to my willpower, not on the strength of it nor fighting against it. It's really hard to generalize the shape that takes or to project out the difficulty of something to someone else, since they'll likely have completely different strengths and weaknesses in that regard.
There are many other reasons. The most obvious one is self-medicating, either stress or some undiagnosed condition. People are good at unconsciously developing coping mechanisms.
Whatever thing (or set of things) is driving the change in obesity rates, it is not a biological force that is outside of out control.
The human condition and success encompasses more factors than simple self-control and determination (so does financial success as well - it's not purely a function of determination and self-control... for example, what if you're a great schmoozer? You're taking clients out to dinner all the time & drinking with them? What if they're also overweight? What if this is one of the root causes of your success? (in your mind))...
Thinking + feeling = judging. So, you think why are they fat? (a thought) and then you feel something (surprise). So now you're judging - and this can very well get in the way of truly understanding others. I hope this helps :-)
Part of what I was trying to get at is if I cared to make myself an ultra productive work machine, then eating healthy and exercising (especially if I have an unlimited budget to do so) would be a key component to making that happen.
It is refreshing to see CEOs like Musk and Bezos work on their health as they became more successful.
High power people are certainly stressed.
They may drive/be driven around everywhere.
They may neglect exercise due to the two factors above.
But they could be executing well at a job, possibly at the expense of these other things.
As brief background, I've lost about 80kg, but I've put 20kg of that back on.
My main problem is what my body "wants" is about 1000-1500 calories a day too many. When I'm eating "properly", I'm hungry ALL THE TIME. And the world is full of tasty food, in basically every street one walks down.
I'm guessing that most people aren't hungry all the time, every day. Could you, in the middle of the afternoon, eat and enjoy an extra 1500 calories and then still feel hungry for dinner?
You've lost more weight than I ever weighed at my highest (while trying to gain weight during weightlifting).
2 things come to mind:
1. Being hungry all the time sucks. I hated working out when hungry, nor am I a good contributor while hungry. It makes one very irritable at small things that normally would not bother me.
> Could you, in the middle of the afternoon, eat and enjoy an extra 1500 calories and then still feel hungry for dinner?
2. Maybe my stomach is just small, but I find it incredibly hard to eat more than 1000 calories in a single meal. It would result in extreme fatigue and a 'food coma' for at least an hour. I guess it's technically possible if you only eat the highest possible density foods like meat and fat and protein powder, but that doesn't seem like a healthy diet.
humans vary wildly on almost any metric you choose to examine. I have a hard time just maintaining my weight. I almost never feel actual hunger; I just get something to eat when I notice that I can't focus on work anymore. if I'm not working, I might forget altogether.
It's funny how I don't use as much money since I went carnivore. My health has improved greatly, my depression went away.
For about 3 months I was keto, basically unaffordable, so I cut the fresh greens and went with meat alone.
3 months of eating 1.5 KG pork every day, still expensive. went with about 500 grams of ground meat for about a year and after I figured out the keto-carnivore thing it's about
1 block of butter every 3 days as well as 250 grams of beef is enough to survive.
I'm building my own mealworm farm for protein and fat as well as a snail hatchery for giant african snails for protein.
as poor person you basically never know when you will have to rely on yourself. So I'm trying to build for self sufficiency with solar panel and car battery as well as my own food production.
so many questions help! 1. Why? - I wanted to try it for the depression - it worked for multiple other ailments https://meatheals.com has a lot of similar stories - some people live like that for a long time now.
2. Will I die from scurvey or other nutrient deficiency? - I dont't know. Bloodwork looked okay. Cholesterol is high (Dave Feldman has some interesting things to say about that) Yes I do fear that I don't get some nutrients but I eat some organ meat now and then, add gelatine to my meat, drink milk and eat butter, eggs, cheese, fish, different animals, different states of fermentation now and then.
3. Did I supplement? - yes, I took magnesium citrate for a while but not taking any now, except for when I have a headache. When I still ate "normal", zinc did a lot for my depression.
4. why insects rather than plants? - Plants in general seem to give me allergic reactions -> Carbs and sugar seem to make me depressed, greens and onions seem to amplify anxiety, plant oils give me headaches. After having symptoms every time I tried another plant, I stopped trying and these trials are getting less and less. There is something about anti-nutrients in plants that seems to screw with the absorbtion of minerals and vitamins from food.
5. Did I talk to a doctor? - Yes, I did, she just sat there and noded asked for a blood test and that's it. LDL is high, trigs are low (Dave Feldman prediction for cholesterol)
6. what about cancer? protein spikes IGF1 or something? I don't know... I don't want to go back to Plants because they make me feel like shit. Everyone dies and I will too one day. There is some article of someone who researched the WHO connection of cancer and red meat, and it doesn't seem to hold up.
7. do I still have symptoms? - Yes, depression is there sometimes and anxiety as well. I've lived with them for so long that I still have the habits of depression and they're hard to break. But I've accomplished about 500 km of the camino trail in europe as well as worked 9-5 hours which was never possible for me before. Childhood hunger never leaves you,(also it feels like germany is destabilizing as a democratic system) hence the preparation for crisis.
onions and greens seem to be responsible for anxiety
plant oils make me a headache, like really bad migraines.
On the other hand, I have all my teeth(xept for wisdom teeth which got pulled when I was 12 or so) and my gums are healthier and my teeth are stronger than ever before.
Not making any opinion as the overall point of you comment, just wondering why beef if money is the big factor.
It's a pretty interesting diet. Attractive if you're overweight because of eating habits (me) because you can eat "a lot" and still lose weight - as long as you don't eat carbs. Not as good if you're only losing, say, 10 lbs, because as soon as you get off keto you'll bloat right back up to those 10 lbs.
When I was poor it was beans and rice, maybe chicken, and vegetables were the "fillers," I could get them dirt cheap at the local mexi-mart.
Where are you getting beef and pork that it's cheaper than beans or chicken?
If I go to my supermarket's site right now, chicken is ~€12 per kilo[0], beef is ~€7 per kilo[1] and pork-beef mix (can't get pure pork minced meat) is €5,30 per kilo[2]. And it'll be like that in every supermarket in The Netherlands (and possibly Europe)
[0] https://www.jumbo.com/jumbo-kipfilet-2-stuks-ca-390g/187400K...
[1]https://www.jumbo.com/jumbo-rund-rundergehakt-500g/131278BAK...
[2]https://www.jumbo.com/jumbo-rund--varken-gemengd-gehakt-500g...
Go to Aldi or Lidl. You can buy fresh seasonal vegetables there. Some frozen vegetables are cheaper (spinach, green beans out-of-season). Pasta, gnocci and potatoes are all very cheap. Pulses are also cheap if bought in bulk.
You should be able to grow your own basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary and parsley.
With that you can cook healthy and tasty food on a small budget.
Serious question... Any suggestions on how to be poor & eat healthy with a (genetic?) anti-veggie preference like mine? Some fruit is expensive. 12 ounces (340 g) of the less expensive $4.99 at Trader Joe's (I just called them). Fortunately bananas are cheaper at just 19 cents each, at least until they all get wiped out by some global fungus (cuz banana cloning monoculture).
Meat is super easy to prepare in comparison.
I find this very interesting. I'm a graduate student in Midwest of the US. My income places me in the bottom 20% of household incomes. Not poor, but money must be carefully managed. In my experience, eating well isn't that expensive in terms of time or money, provided you are willing to adjust your diet. I keep good track of my finances and diet, and I spend nowhere near that figure (and I still wouldn't, even if I made half of what I do) and I have a pretty healthy diet and reasonably active lifestyle.
What are in these guidelines making them so expensive? Or in the US, particularly in the Midwest, is the cost of food that much cheaper than the UK?
Neither of those two are necessarily cheap. However I don't see that approaching 74% of the income either when you choose sensible options for vegetables and fish.
0: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Vegetables are cheaper than most people think. I usually buy $1/lb frozen peas and $1.5/lb frozen broccoli. Washed and cut fresh carrots are also about $1.5/lb. Spinach and kale are not bad either. Just don't waste money on fresh vegetables, by the time you cook them they will probably be in worse condition than the frozen stuff.
Fruits are probably the most expensive. The cheapest fruits don't even have great nutritional profiles other than fiber and maybe vitamin C (which not a lot of people know is actually abundant in many common vegetables).
My take is more than:
- a scary amount of people of my generation are completely uneducated about food. They don't know what a balanced diet is. They don't know how to cook. They don't know where to shop. They don't know how to choose a product. They don't know how much their health is affected by this. And they rather spend an hour on facebook than starting to figure it out.
- food is hard. Our society make it harder: we have a huge quantity of low quality food at our disposal. We solved the starving problem, but replaced it with a malnutrition problem, aggravated with the desire to make money which lead to the promotion of shitty food and the production of it. Getting proper information on nutrition is a hell of confusion, contradictory messages, social pressure and guilt.
- tasty balanced food is expensive and requires time + work + planning. Anybody can buy the stuff I talked about. But if you go to your usual supermarket and buy them, they will taste like crap. In fact, it's even hard to find nice food at the farmer market nowadays. So of course they don't want to eat them. I mean, between this red plastic ball they call a tomato and a kit kat, why the hell would a kid not choose the kit kat ? Why would the exhausted parents fight again and again to force the kid to eat something themselves think taste bad ? Life is hard enough.
- there are too many of us. To feed everyone we need to use use production, processing and distribution methods that lead to crappy food. Over population affects everything, from medical care quality to democracy. Food is no exception.
- our culture is messed up. We made it so that eating meat was a social status indicator. So everybody started to want to it meat. Then everybody started to eat it every day. Producing meat is incredibly expensive, so we have to use tricks to produce such a quantity, which lead to terrible food again.
- morality is an issue. I've work in OHS for some times. The amount of disgusting things that are done to food for profit is astonishing. And people just shut up. SEP field. If you photophop food for a living, if you participate to those marketing studies, if you work in a factory making crap, if you cook in a fast food, if you sign on contracts for bad food, if you code a website for an immoral actor, you are part of the problem. I know people have many constraint, and I don't pretend to have the moral high ground. I'm part of it as well. But my point is, we are responsible too.
A scary amount of my peers are afraid of cooking; I mean they're suddenly comfortable w/ their Blue Apron w/ instructions, but having a home standby is unheard of them for the most part.
Now, follow the causality chain.
Hence we must produce crappy food to get that quantity for everybody. And of course as a consequence, we have a lot less resources for growing things for human.
Also, because animals are higher in the food chain, they concentrate all the active products we give to them directly (hormones, antibiotics...) or indirectly (pesticides, herbicides...).
Dry legumes are also affordable: - Natco stuff are ok quality. 2kg mung, kidney, white beans are between £7-10: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=natco+beans&ref=nb_sb_noss
You can have a pretty decent vegan diet on £150/month/person. If you want to add fish oil or some basic vitamins add ~£10/month/person. At least my family spends no more than that.
The National Minimum Wage is £7.83, which is about £1200/month after tax, you can do just fine with that in a village. In major cities, well, that's a different story, but who is to blame if you live in a property you can't afford? NMW is the same everywhere, but the property prices are not.
That would put the total cost at £1100 per year per person, or £2530 per household (average size 2.3).
The lowest decile of household income is £199 per week, so food accounts for 25% of income.
Still pretty big...
Not sure why there is no question if the Public Health advice is actually good to begin with. In France for decades the French authorities heavily promoted the consumption of milk-derivative products as part of a "healthy diet" and this seems to have sparked the percentage of people suffering from lactose intolerance.
Eating advice is usually based on very poor quality data to begin with, and observational studies is not really good science either.
You're mixing up cause and consequence
It's absolutely insane to look back on, but it makes me understand how people fall into eating so terribly when you're poor.
Looking back I would instead just eat potatoes, carrots, rice, beans, and try and throw some apples/oranges in there occasionally. Homemade bread when you've got time is a nice and cheap addition as well. You can live just fine on everything I just listed and it won't cost you much.
Also, if you're in a place where the rest of the list is too expensive, priority should be placed on the rice and beans. Potatoes and carrots aren't strictly speaking "necessary" when you're in crisis like that. Try to get a fishing rod and use your local lakes and rivers. Varying degrees of healthy there, but fishing can usually be done for free on off hours.
But they’re not a domestic crop, so we can’t be pointing that out.
If you’re counting every calorie, it’s a problem. If you’re dirt poor and need to save where you can because you’re trying to avoid cheap grains, go for the banana.
Presumably the student had previously taken health classes in primary school, and probably gotten good grades. But it's very easy to be slammed with work and stress (like a poor person might be), and just not have the time/energy to think about nutrition.
“I’ll give you an example,” he adds, “If everyone followed Public Health England’s eating advice, people in the bottom decile of household income would spend 74 per cent of their income on food. So, there’s not much point telling them follow the healthy eating advice they can’t afford.
I think I can see why. Here is Public Health England's "A Quick Guide to the Government’s Healthy Eating Recommendations":
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
It advises people to eat more expensive meat (oily fish) in place of cheaper meats, and to eat large portions of fruits and vegetables. Those two factors look to explain the cost increase. The other advice (choose unsaturated oils, eat complex carbohydrates instead of simple ones) does not require buying more expensive foods.
If you just bought foods according to the pictures and examples in the Public Health England brochure, you could spend a lot more money on food. It's possible to follow dietary recommendations without spending much (if any) more if you know how to budget and optimize, and if you already have a stove and refrigerator/freezer. I don't really think it's possible if you don't have a refrigerator/freezer. Limited transportation options can make it harder too.
Worst of all, IMO, is that the brochure and linked eating guides contain no sample meal plans, shopping plans, or example prices/budgets. Bridging this sort of gap used to be (still is?) sometimes taught in Home Economics and Personal Finance classes in the United States. (I took both in high school.) It's also the sort of skill that children often used to acquire from their parents, but perhaps acquire less often now. It's way too hard for someone without that skill to go from this Healthy Eating brochure to a cost-and-health satisficing shopping plan with accompanying meal plans.
Lean meat and fish in particular are also expensive and over-emphasized. You can get a similar protein/fat ratio by eating cheap meat or cheese with legumes or oats and it comes with fiber.
Eggs are unfairly demonized. Only a tiny proportion of the population needs to limit egg consumption beyond what taste will do naturally. But protein is the most expensive macronutrient and eggs are a cheap source with relatively low fat and loads of vitamins. Cheese also falls into this category, with many people who do not currently have any tumors rigorously avoiding a small increase in their IGF-1, a hormone which performs many essential functions but slightly increases tumor growth rates. You can thank T. Colin Campbell for this absurdity.
Potassium is very confusing. The most economical sources for most people are probably from canned tomato products, beans and fresh potatoes — the latter being a cheap vegetable whose nutritional value is highly underrated thanks to a proliferation of processed potato products. Most people, however, will reach for bananas and avocadoes — delicacies to the poor.
Bread, too, deserves a more nuanced look. It ranges from sweet, thick and highly glycemic to relatively health-neutral and highly pragmatic wrt home-made lunches. “Bread” here can be extended to wraps and tortillas. “Don’t eat bread” is very often impractical. Pasta, on the other hand, is loved by diet authorities for its satiating bulk, but it’s a mess to make and requires you to wash a pot and a bowl. The rice cooker has yet to assume its rightful place on the counter.
Home cooking in general has been neutered by making everyone terrified of adding butter or salt. So people choose between bland foods with no butter or salt or packaged foods with absurd amounts of salt, palm oil and artificial flavor. This advice should be revised with an eye to taste.
It is not too surprising that health advice designed for the rich does not serve the poor. I don’t think the obesity crisis can be solved with health advice alone, but I also think the advice could be a lot better than it is. I don’t think we need to teach people to cook — people can learn to cook. Most people, however, do not have the number sense to assimilate hundreds of nutrition labels and prices into a diet strategy. That is difficult and boring. It doesn’t help that many products have such tiny serving sizes that the nutrient label is meaningless thanks to rounding errors. The system could be simpler and clearer. (Even with extreme effort I find myself constantly revising my own plans.)
Certainly not a fan of their hunting of whales though.
The problem is that the person at the sharp is incapable for whatever reason of providing nutritious meals despite the basic conditions generally being available for them to do so. It's a poverty of history, culture, community, education, imagination, willingness, instinct, morale perhaps, but not money. None of that is the fault of the socially deprived, but the idea that more money will magically fix everything (as the left constantly parrot) is just as much of an untruth as the idea that the poor are too stupid and lazy to sort out their own lives.
Apart from that I do think it's amazing that politicians are surprised that despair is increasing. When was the last time you heard a politician stand up and praise Britain and the British people absent virtue signalling about diversity etc.? Constantly demoralise people for decades, do nothing to properly integrate minorities nor construct a cohesive unified nation: get demoralised people.
The full report doesn't have much to support it, it never shows us what food cost, how they're unable to afford it. At best it talks about "availability" of healthy food as if the supermarkets doesn't sell it.
The report never considers that the unhealthy food might be a taste preference just like smoking even though everybody knows it's very unhealthy and very expensive. Giving up smoking isn't expensive, it's not money that stops people from quitting smoking.
Low-income groups are more likely to consume fat spreads, non-diet soft drinks, meat dishes, pizzas, processed meats, whole milk and table sugar than the better-off (pg 133)
My personal observation from observing shoppers in a number of supermarkets: poor people buys quite a lot more soft drinks than the well educated.
The health of the poor is not improved much by giving them (free) fresh produce when they drink a couple of liters of non-diet Coca Cola every day. They end up obese or with diabetes which are the mother of all ills. An ounce of broccoli can't cure 2L of Coca Cola.
I think the single most effective policy would be to ban sugar in drinks and severely restrict its use in fast food (and bread). The fat-free policies must be reverted to avoid foods using sugar as replacement for fat.
I think many people here understand how stress and mood inform eating habits. Who among us has not indulged after a particularly bad day? Now imagine that bad day was every day, and you don't have the money, time, and energy to drown your feelings with healthier activities like strenuous exercise.
The best way to improve the lives of poor people is to give them money. Enough with this know-better-than-thou ban & incentize crap. Poor people get jerked around enough already.
If we were never to take away pleasures no matter their consequences, you could just as well legalize "the Russian Krokodil" (don't google images that).
Bullshit.
I'll preface what I'm going to say next by saying I'm in the US and I know this was a UK report - but I highly doubt things are so incredibly different over there in terms of cost. That being said, there's utterly no way that has to be the case. Raw produce (not meats) from a farmer's market or most major supermarkets are very cheap. I can spend $30-$40 and have enough for 3-4 people for a full week. Also, sausage is usually very cheap. I buy the store brand (which happens to be delicious) and it's usually <$3 per lb. The 73% beef from Walmart is cheap as hell and usually hovers around $3-$3.25 per lb most of the time. One of those burgers (quarter-pounder, so 4 oz) has 340 calories and is a dream for anyone doing keto. So that $3 package contains about 1350 to 1400 calories! The cereal I make myself has only 4 ingredients and is loaded with healthy carbs (steel cut oats, flax seed, walnuts, and raisins). $12 to $15 dollars buys a bag of each of those ingredients which all have around 15 or so servings - that's over two weeks...or less than a dollar a day (per person). And that is a very high calorie breakfast, BTW. Water costs essentially nothing per gallon. Eggs are cheap and super healthy. There's plenty of cheap, tasty cheeses you can buy in bulk, too. You can get whole seasoned, rotisserie, cooked and ready-to-eat chickens for $5! That's multiple meals for a single person or a meal for an entire family. And I don't live in a rural part of the US where prices are cheaper - I live in an expensive area of the northeast.
You can easily feed a family of 4 on $125 a week using the items I outlined above (along with other cheap options).
Eggs at my local Walmart are $1.20-$1.70/dozen (depending on large/medium/small/white/brown), milk is $2.19/gal and you can get several different large loafs of wheat (or white) bread for under $2. It's been awhile since I've done the shopping but IIRC boneless chicken breast is under $2/lb and ground beef is $3.xx/lb.
I'm not sure I understand your point about the intersection of readers and those buying food at Walmart. I get that the overlap is probably not large, but I don't see the connection to the claim made by the article. Whether or not a low-income person reads that report they are probably still shopping at a place like Walmart so the prices are what they are. And that claim from the report is still bullshit either way because however they are measuring it is clearly designed to fulfill the desired outcome so they could write it up this way.
I can think of plenty "healthy enough" meals of which bread is a component.
>I'm not sure I understand your point about the intersection of readers and those buying food at Walmart. I get that the overlap is probably not large, but I don't see the connection to the claim made by the article
This article is written for a more wealthy audience that is going to be less aware of what food actually costs at the low end (i.e. just buying the cheapest X on the shelf instead of the X you like). My point is that few reading the article have the requisite knowledge/experience to call it out for portraying the situation inaccurately as the top level comment is doing and several here are agreeing with.
Plus a lot of fruit/vegetables don't grow well here meaning oranges will be from Spain or Israel or somewhere. Its not uncommon for fresh green beans to be from Kenya or Mozambique or Peru. I'm not sure if the lower cost of production offsets transport and tariff costs?
[0]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/food-statistics-p...
How much are you paying for energy? Poor people may be on prepayment meters for gas and electricity, which will charge about 25 pence per day per fuel (so about 50 pence per day, or about 60 cents a day) just to have the meter, before any gas or electricity is supplied.
If I had trouble getting energy to cook, I'd do what the low income folks in SF do - buy a cheap camp cooker and use that to cook.
> Also, sausage is usually very cheap
Almost no one is going to recommend that you make processed, preserved, and likely sweetened meat a significant portion of your diet.
> You can easily feed a family of 4 on $125 a week using the items I outlined above
It looks like the bottom decile had an average income of £130/week in 2015.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...
Current rate for a single person claiming Universal Credit is listed here: https://www.gov.uk/universal-credit/what-youll-get
That money is mostly not used to pay rent, so we can ignore housing costs.
Single and under 25 £251.77 Single and 25 or over £317.82 In a couple and you’re both under 25 £395.20 (for you both) In a couple and either of you are 25 or over £498.89 (for you both)
This also assumes there are no sanctions in place. Sanctions can take the income down to as low as £1 per week.
I'd also note that the UK has significantly lower incomes than the US.
> Raw produce (not meats) from a farmer's market or most major supermarkets are very cheap.
The vast majority of poor Americans live in places where there are no Farmer's Market (that's a thing for affluent cities) and more poor than you realize live far away from a major grocery stores. Dollar stores are driving a lot of small grocery stores/ bodegas out of business in the US. I still think you are right that spending 74% of income on food to be healthy is an exaggeration for the US.
There are farmers markets and then there are "farmers" markets. The original having existed at most major transportation hubs and required for farmers to get their food to market.
And, in the case that rural areas where farmed goods are the top product, (the SouthEast, Midwest, California) authentic farmer's markets exist (though they might also be the local flea market)
> Dollar stores are driving a lot of small grocery stores
!Cough! Dollar General expansion. Luckily, a restaurateur in a small town that I visit has started increases his fresh ingredient orders from local farms and selling them.
It is expensive to be poor, where i can buy in bulk, saving some money, poorer people have to pay through the nose, wealthy people have pantries and chest freezers, poorer people generally have small fridge freezers that hold a week of food at most so they can't take advantage to most deals. Farmers markets are not generally much cheaper than supermarkets and you would be lucky to live near one. There is a minimum limit on delivery from supermarkets (about $60). I'm quite close to a supermarket only about $14 in diesel for every trip. I cook everything, and freeze dozens of meals at a time, I've been able to get down to about $2-$3 per day, but couldn't get near that if i was poor, and my diet has almost no fruit to speak of.
Now that I believe. Similar situation in the US for sure. Hard to find places less than $800 a month in most places and those places usually aren't great. If you're making 20-25k a year, that's easily close to 10k on rent (40-50%) and doesn't generally include all utilities.
It wasn't even all that many years ago that I was in my first job out of school making substantially less than I am now. Even though I was well above poverty level, I was still spending around 22k on housing (I bought a small house which cost $1800 a month for mortgage + property tax, not including utilities). So it was still in the 40-50% range for me and I had a job way above minimum wage with benefits at a major corporation.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180126-the-100-most-nutrit...
We always did eat very healthy at home. First because my parents saw that as one of the priorities (they never went to dinner out, lunch out, even coffee out in my early years, since they couldn't afford that lifestyle and keep their finances in a proper state... I guess the only luxury we had was having a dog - for which I am very grateful), second because they would take the time and effort to prepare a proper meal (yes, even after arriving home from working all day in their physically demanding jobs) and the ingredients to a healthy meal are cheap, but it takes effort to put that kind of meal together.
All this happened in what is today a somewhat rich western European country.
It really bothers me (and I guess other people like me), this culture of constantly dismissing people lack of self responsibility. In the EU (and I would go as far as saying, in the all 1st world), if you are willing to work and to watch how you spend your money (and this means closely, no 5$ latte like another article today just talks about, or ordering pizza because you don't want to prepare dinner), anyone can end up having a comfortable life.
Going to McDonalds is much more expensive, something like 20$ per day!
With the proper education, you can eat cost effectively and very healthily. And, I know it's really controversial to say this because of the decades of conditioning we've received from the dairy and meat industry, but Meat and Dairy aren't needed in the diet, and have been shown to even cause cancer, heart disease and heart stroke for many. (source Forks over Knives, the documentary, plus the China study -> check it out, seriously.)
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people (single moms, for example) that work 80 hours a week at three minimum wage jobs, each of which purposefully employ people at non-full-time hours to avoid needing to provide benefits, and they just don't have the time to go to research prices and recipes, visit multiple stores, go home exhausted, and still find time to cook.
If you're ordering off of the value menu it's nowhere near that expensive in most of the country.
>rolled oats (70c per lb), Onions, potatoes, flax seeds, green peppers, bananas, whole wheat flour etc
Most of those particularly the wheat flour requires significant preparation--knowledge, time, a stocked and functioning kitchen.
A lot of those people in the bottom 10% of income in the UK aren't going to have an oven.
>With the proper education,
Yes, proper education, plus time, plus a working kitchen. 3 things that the very poor aren't likely to have. And keep in mind this was when you were a single college student, not a working single mother with 2 small kids.
You can feed someone very well for $50/week. And you can even do it in a way that requires only low-effort cooking: meat that can be baked, microwaveable vegetables, eggs that can be simply boiled or cooked in a pan with butter, pasta and oatmeal. Dairy products, fruits, some vegetables, and nuts can just be eaten without processing. Canned food that can be eaten right out of the can or just heated up.
Assuming a main reason poor people don't eat healthier food is due to lack of time, cognitive overhead, or lack of knowledge (not only re: what food is healthy or not, but also how to optimize nutrition/f(cost, time, effort)) it could help. I don't have time to go into how it's even possible healthy food could take 75% of someone's income (assuming that person has an income of $10k/year, that is over $140/week) but there are surely compromises you can make to get the majority of the benefits of eating healthy food without spending nearly that much.
How much would it really cost to send a weekly pamphlet of cheap and not nutritionally terrible meal ideas to the address of every kid who gets free lunch?