Is junk food actually cheaper than healthy food?

Factual Questions
81

Beg pardon? I can generally get cans of tuna for 3/$1. That’s less than a dollar a pound. Certainly, some fish is expensive, so poor folks shouldn’t buy those types of fish (or buy them in moderation, with sacrifices made elsewhere to make up for it, if they really like expensive fish). But some fish is cheap, too.

I’m seeing a lot of other prices inflated for healthy food here, too. I’ve never seen eggs selling for two bucks a dozen; the highest I’ve seen for jumbo eggs is $1.19, and often less than a dollar. Apples for a buck a piece? I’ve seen vending machines that have them for 65 cents, and you know there’s going to be a significant markup in a vending machine. And while rice and beans might not be too healthy separately, together they’re a great combination, and they’re two of the cheapest things in the grocery story.

82

After spending time with poor relatives who live in housing projects, one observation that I have that I don’t believe that anyone else has mentioned is that eating unhealthy junk food can be a form entertainment. It is pleasurable. Going to a clean, air conditioned McDonalds is something special. It is expensive to be entertained and it generally requires some sort of equipment or transportation. Sometimes getting your moneys together and getting a cheapo pizza is the highlight of the week.

When visiting low income relatives, the big activity is getting some money together and walking to the corner store and buying the most worst for you crap you can find. No one wants to walk and get some organic skinless chicken breast or salad- they want candy, sodas, hot cheetoes, chinese candy and other junk. Eating junk food is a way to feel pleasure like a rich person might go for a spa treatment or something.

From my observations, I would have to agree with those posters who said that it is tough to eat healthy when you don’t have reliable transportation, that most poor people don’t have a good idea of what the healthy alternatives are, and that a lot of low income people have difficulty looking ahead and planning so that they can develop a kitchen in which they can make healthier meals.

83

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
Ain’t callin’ ya a liar, but I have to wonder. I’ve run into any number of people who think that, because they didn’t have much money in their younger years while they were getting through school and getting their careers off the ground, they’ve “been there” and know all about poverty. Bear in mind that poverty isn’t simply a matter of household income.
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So what is it? Suppose someone grows up in a nice middle-class family, but ends up spending the first 5-10 years on their own living like a pauper. They can’t claim to know anything about poverty?

84

[QUOTE=chriscya]
After spending time with poor relatives who live in housing projects, one observation that I have that I don’t believe that anyone else has mentioned is that eating unhealthy junk food can be a form entertainment. It is pleasurable. Going to a clean, air conditioned McDonalds is something special. It is expensive to be entertained and it generally requires some sort of equipment or transportation. Sometimes getting your moneys together and getting a cheapo pizza is the highlight of the week.

Eating junk food is a way to feel pleasure like a rich person might go for a spa treatment or something.
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So true. It can be the only relief one has.

85

[QUOTE=Rigamarole]
So what is it? Suppose someone grows up in a nice middle-class family, but ends up spending the first 5-10 years on their own living like a pauper. They can’t claim to know anything about poverty?
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It’s not that they can’t claim anything. It’s that they have to be aware that their situation is very different from people who grow up poor - not getting all the benefits of a middle-class education - and who stay poor - not know that in the next 5 years they will have a good-paying, qualfied, interesting job. There are worlds of difference there, and therefore somebody saying “well, as college student/trainee my income was low, but I managed, so everybody else should manage, otherwise they are just dumb and lazy” is wrong and callous and extrapolating from his own atypical experience to a different situation without bothering to look at how the really poor people live.

86

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
Poor people in America don’t get fat because they eat only cheap pasta and rice and can’t afford vegetables. They get fat because they eat mountains of cheese, tablespoons of salt, buckets of oil, bags of sugar, logs of butter, tubs of deep-fried potatoes, and gallons of soda. They aren’t getting fat because they can only afford a meager helping of rice and nothing else!

I know Europeans like you often have odd ideas about America, but trust me, no one is starving to death here. Free food is everwhere, you just have to ask for it.
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Europeans like me don’t have odd ideas, because I didn’t say that poor Americans get fat from eating rice without veggies. I did say that rice in itself and alone isn’t healthy, but I also talked about junk food.
When talking about poor people who can only afford a bowl of rice, I was talking about India, not the US. Maybe you missed it in the other paragraph.
I also didn’t say that eating rice will make people fat. I said it will cause an illness. Eating rice fried in fat will make people overweight. Junk food with high fat and empty carb content will make people overweight.

So please, don’t put words in my mouth I didn’t say.

87

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
I know Europeans like you often have odd ideas about America, but trust me, no one is starving to death here. Free food is everwhere, you just have to ask for it.
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I don’t know if cites are going to convince you, but there is hunger in the US: Read the statistics at Second Harvest

And to adress that “the poor are lazy” nonsense: Read about the working poor

88

constanze, interesting hunger statistics, but I wouldn’t put too much stock in them until I find out how Second Harvest defines “food insecure.” A lot of these special interest groups have pretty expansive definitions of “problems” that seriously inflates their numbers.

Also, as far as statistics, here is a slightly-dated (data from ten years ago) Heritage Foundation publication (http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/BG1221.cfm) that points out that 70% of those in poverty own a car. So that means that at least 70% of people in poverty don’t have the excuse that they can’t get to the store in order to buy healthy food.

89

kawaiitentaclebeast, I agree with your assessment. After I dropped out of college in Cincinnati I had trouble finding work. I drifted around with a friend, trying to find work or shelter anywhere we could. We could easily fit everything we owned in the back of a small car. As far as kitchen supplies, I just had potatoes, flour, basic seasonings, and occasionally milk or eggs. I ate a lot of potatoes and rice but I never gained weight (just lost it). Because after a while you get bored of potatoes and rice and don’t feel like eating them anymore. Furthermore, I was poor, I couldn’t afford to eat more than 2 potatoes a day! Ramen noodles were also good and I learned how to make them actually taste delicious (now I only buy the expensive kind). I had 1 pot, 1 pan, and a can opener and that was all I needed. When I wanted to bake something, I’d put either the pot or the pan in the oven. I’d go to restaurants and get ketchup packages, hot water and make myself tomato soup. Sugar + lemons + water = lemonade. I couldn’t afford any fresh fruits or veggies, so I never bought any. I’d get canned goods that were dented for free or at discount. A lot of supermarkets, even in poor areas, throw out edible food especially canned goods.

I wasn’t a student, I was working, and the transportation took at least a half hour each way. I’d get up early, work all day and return home too tired to cook. No matter, 'cause all the stuff was easy to cook. Cut up potatoes, throw seasoning on them, stick them in the oven and eat them when they are done. Mix flour, milk and eggs together, pour it in a sauce pan and you got instant pancakes. Pour cream of mushroom soup over chicken in the pot and leave it on the stovetop or stick it in the oven. My neighbors ate poor not because it was cheaper but because they enjoyed their “comfort” foods. I would’ve spent more money on their diets than I was spending on my own. For a lot of them, food was the one thing that they didn’t skimp on and they tended to buy high fat food because it tasted good.

90

Do *any * of the “I eat cheap but healthy” folks on here have kids? That seems like a telling difference between these anecdotes and typical poor people.

91

[QUOTE=CJJ*]
I agree; substitute more beans/tofu, and start looking for some cheaper fish. Also, who pays up to a dollar for an apple, and $2.50 for a cantaloupe?
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$2.50 per canteloupe is usually the sale price here in Baltimore County.

92

[QUOTE=Harriet the Spry]
Do *any * of the “I eat cheap but healthy” folks on here have kids? That seems like a telling difference between these anecdotes and typical poor people.
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I have children. I probably spend about $250 a month on groceries. That’s not a lot for a family of four, but I can see where someone who works a low-paying job might think that’s an exorbitant amount. Divide my $250 by four and you get $62.50 - that isn’t much for an entire month, and we eat well and healthfully. Very rarely do I serve processed foods, and I think that might be where the difference is.

93

[QUOTE=Harriet the Spry]
Do *any * of the “I eat cheap but healthy” folks on here have kids? That seems like a telling difference between these anecdotes and typical poor people.
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What does that matter? It’s not as if eating at McDonald’s gets cheaper if you bring in more people or doughnuts are less expensive if you are buying for a family as opposed to one person. Yes, if you have a family you will spend more on healthy groceries but you will also spend more to eat out at a fast food place and more on unhealthy food.

94

The reason I believe it matters is that once a person has kids, time is at much more of a premium. What is realistic for a single working person to do is a lot more challenging for a working person who also has, say, two kids to take care of and feed.

Also, many kids are picky eaters, so you have to account for tastes at least to some extent. You may find a great deal on fresh kale, but good luck getting them to eat it. Yes, you can try to raise them with good habits, but most kids I know at least go through phases of pickiness.

95

The OP is asking about the cost of junk food compared to the cost of healthy food. It’s been fairly well established that healthy food is cheaper than junk food, so cost is not the reason that poor people avoid it.

As you say, Harriet, there are other factors that account for this. Time is certainly one, as is the pickiness of children. As far as the original question is concerned, though, cost is not a factor in why poor people choose to eat junk food.

96

For what it’s worth, the local grocer sells Banquet brand frozen meals for a buck a pop (with the grocer discount card but not on a limited sale). I’ve often predicted that I could live cheaply (albeit it not healthfully) off those for some time before the sodium and fat did me in. At $3.00 a day, it’s a lot cheaper than the standard McDonald’s comparison so long as you don’t mind Salisbury steak for breakfast.

97

Another factor may be poor people that rely on food banks (free food being the cheapest possible). When you donate food to a food bank, you have to donate non-perishable items. So often what people end up giving are the starchy rice, pasta, Mr. Noodle/Kraft Dinner type of products. The people who run food banks are always trying to encourage donations of canned protein (ie. tuna, chicken, etc) and other healthier fare (not that Spam is exactly healthy either), but the bulk of what’s given is still not the best food to eat on a regular basis.

98

[QUOTE=constanze]
No, nutrition is not readily available; junk food is cheap. The poor are those who don’t earn enough to meet the baseline demands - while a villa costs more than a modest house, and a 1-room apt. in a run-down-building costs less than a nicely renovated 3-room apt., there is a certain minimum price you have to pay for a room.

Similar, while you can live on rice and pasta instead of veggies and quality meat, there is a certain minimum amount you need each month to buy the food.

And the poor in the US often have no access to affordable health care.

It’s not SUVs they can’t afford, but any type of car, so they have to rely on public transport, which makes commuting to work (or even getting a better job) and shopping more difficult. Or they have a 10-year old rust-bucket, which costs them disproportianlly more in gasoline (bad mpg) and repairs, but is the only one they can afford.

Did you read the example about the bus ticket? If it’s not possible to put aside the 42 $ for a monthly ticket, because each weekly wage is spent on getting by - do you not call that poor?

Control group? What the heck are you talking about? The OP question was whether junk food (not only McD, but also cheap supermarket food) is cheaper than healthy food. That originated in a discussion about obesity. If you want to argue the general fact that more poor people (as defined by income both absoluetly below a minimum level and proportinally to the rest of the population, or to the standard of living/consumers index) are overweigth then middle/-upper class people, you will have a hard time, because there have been lots of studies finding the correlation. Since the same group - poor people - are also less educated, it’s not hard to see a connection.

No, nobody said that. I’m talking from the German perspective, because I have read the conclusion of the studies done here, and there is no ethnic factor (we never ask for race and we don’t have that many ethnics here as in the US, anyway).
That disproportinaly many poor people are black or belong to other minorities is a result of an unjust system; but also that poverty - partly because of the strong relation to bad education - is inherited.

Why not?
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You have nothing more than anecdtoal evidence. That is it. It is all humble opinions. No one has a definition of nutritious…of poor…of ‘bad’…of fat…of anything.

As soon as someone chimes in about how ‘healthy’ can be cheap, no one even disputes what is ‘healthy’. Yeah, it is now absurd to see an apple as breakfast. I suppose the next thing I should do is recall anecdotal evidence that suggests most people would do better to eat an apple and be a little hungry than to shove coffee and big breakfasts down their pie hole. No value in that type of observation.

That’s the point. The point that this in not a GQ quality thread, because it is choc full of opinions. Nothing has been defined. Toss this thread into GD or IMHO.

99

This whole thread is mired in poor definitions and poor assumptions about the definitions we’re trying to use.

What’s poor? Do we mean those on welfare with no jobs that live in a not-so-nice area? Or do we mean working class neighborhoods are are poor in relation to upper-middle-class neighborhoods? This is relevant; for example I think that my state – Michigan – is now the fattest (in the top five, anyway) in the union, and you can see the obesity in working class neighborhoods. I don’t think of them as poor, but maybe a lot of us do.

What areas? Kind of related to the above – are we talking inner city where chain grocery stores don’t exist, or the first ring suburbs where Kroger and Piggly Wiggly and all of the others exist aplenty?

What means of transportation exist? In my area, for example, even many of the inner city poor have cars. We have no public transportation to speak of. In the first tier suburbs, though, there is probably at least one car in 90% of the homes.

What’s healthy? The USDA food pryamid? Vegan lifestyle? South Beach diet?

Assuming equal access to everything, it should be fairly obvious that purchasing a mixed variety of fresh, healthful ingredients is always going to cost less than both fast food and processed foods at the grocery store. The whole three pages of this thread go off to explain all of the reasons for when there’s no unequal access, but then we’re totally against the spirit of the OP. Maybe we should let the OP define all of the parameters, because the parameters will be very different in every part of North America, and they all have an impact on the reasons why inequal access change the true cost.

100

I s the solution: it was mine, when I was a poor grad student. What you do is: buy beans and lentils in bulk (cheap), and boil them-throw in a bone or two for flavor. Add some spices (cumin, bay leaves, etc.). Next: buy cheap vegetables at a farmer’s market-or marked down produce-you can use anything-onions, squash, green beans, cabbacge- chop them up, and add to the soup-simmer till tender. Supplement this with some day-old bread, and you have an excellent, nutritious meal. Plus, you can make a large quantity of soup, and keep it for a week. You may not like it, but you will not starve-and if you get the right combination, you will have excellent soups! :smiley: