Nutritional inequality: 91% due to demand, only 9% due to availability (food deserts)

[Axulus]

What are criminals? People.

- - - Updated - - -


So if you demand the punishment of someone who mugged you, does that means that you are a helpless victim who refuses to take responsibility for having enabled your mugger?

The problem is that he places 100% of responsibility on "business"--never mind that businesses are made of people.

And those businesses cater to the desires of their customers: want they actually want to buy at the prices the products cost to produce. He is essentially complaining that people don't make the choices be wishes they would make.

The only exception to this is the distortions caused by farm subsidies, especially corn, making corn products cheaper than the cost to produce them. This is definitely a distortion I oppose.

 

[untermensche]

When people deliberately put things into poor quality food that makes it addictive it is total insanity to not hold them liable for their malfeasance.

The profit motive pollutes all things if it is allowed to operate unchecked.

 

[Axulus]

When people deliberately put things into poor quality food that makes it addictive it is total insanity to not hold them liable for their malfeasance.

The profit motive pollutes all things if it is allowed to operate unchecked.

In what sense are you using the term "addictive"?

The stuff that is put into food tends to be whatever it takes so that customers will make the decision to buy it, so long as it is not toxic. It is ultimately done due to consumer preferences for low prices, taste, texture, health, etc. In other words, they have to best balance the mix of consumer desires.

It clearly isn't allowed to run unchecked in this case since most toxic substances are banned from food (alcohol being one notable exception).

The only other area I wouldn't allow to run unchecked would be regarding animal welfare since it deals with sentient beings. Standards in this area can be improved.

 

[Axulus]

If someone is presented with a snack table containing donuts, a fruit tray, and a veggie tray, at zero cost, and goes for the donuts, who is responsible? The person who went for the donuts or the person who put the donuts on the table?

What if there were multiple tables each set up by a different person. The table that gets the most food eaten off of it gets a big prize. The table that doesn't offer the donuts will lose out if it is the case that a significant number of people who are invited to snack would prefer the donuts.

 

[untermensche]

When people deliberately put things into poor quality food that makes it addictive it is total insanity to not hold them liable for their malfeasance.

The profit motive pollutes all things if it is allowed to operate unchecked.

In what sense are you using the term "addictive"?

That features are deliberately added like sugar and salt to increase craving.

That the foods are eaten daily with little variety which is abnormal.

A conditioned reflex is deliberately enhanced to get people to choose a certain food.

There is still the ability to make a choice, a person does not lose that, even a heroin addict, but after a short time the craving is rarely overcome if the food is available.

The food supply has been deliberately poisoned to increase market share.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When people deliberately put things into poor quality food that makes it addictive it is total insanity to not hold them liable for their malfeasance.

The profit motive pollutes all things if it is allowed to operate unchecked.

Nobody puts things into food to make it addictive.

They put things into food that causes sales to go up.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If someone is presented with a snack table containing donuts, a fruit tray, and a veggie tray, at zero cost, and goes for the donuts, who is responsible? The person who went for the donuts or the person who put the donuts on the table?

What if there were multiple tables each set up by a different person. The table that gets the most food eaten off of it gets a big prize. The table that doesn't offer the donuts will lose out if it is the case that a significant number of people who are invited to snack would prefer the donuts.

Yup. We were in Costco yesterday. I saw one woman there--mobility-scooter level fat. Everything edible in her cart stuff like donuts and other such collections of nothing but calories. I didn't see anyone else with a cart remotely so unhealthy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When people deliberately put things into poor quality food that makes it addictive it is total insanity to not hold them liable for their malfeasance.

The profit motive pollutes all things if it is allowed to operate unchecked.

In what sense are you using the term "addictive"?

That features are deliberately added like sugar and salt to increase craving.

That the foods are eaten daily with little variety which is abnormal.

A conditioned reflex is deliberately enhanced to get people to choose a certain food.

There is still the ability to make a choice, a person does not lose that, even a heroin addict, but after a short time the craving is rarely overcome if the food is available.

The food supply has been deliberately poisoned to increase market share.

Most people resist what you consider irresistible. I guess you're just weak.

 

[thebeave]

That features are deliberately added like sugar and salt to increase craving.

That the foods are eaten daily with little variety which is abnormal.

A conditioned reflex is deliberately enhanced to get people to choose a certain food.

There is still the ability to make a choice, a person does not lose that, even a heroin addict, but after a short time the craving is rarely overcome if the food is available.

The food supply has been deliberately poisoned to increase market share.

Most people resist what you consider irresistible. I guess you're just weak.

Yep. It sounds like you're having a debate with Homer Simpson. Mmmmmmm....donuts.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

That features are deliberately added like sugar and salt to increase craving.

That the foods are eaten daily with little variety which is abnormal.

A conditioned reflex is deliberately enhanced to get people to choose a certain food.

There is still the ability to make a choice, a person does not lose that, even a heroin addict, but after a short time the craving is rarely overcome if the food is available.

The food supply has been deliberately poisoned to increase market share.

Most people resist what you consider irresistible. I guess you're just weak.

I don't observe this at all. I find that most people eat shit diets, even people with decent incomes.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Google food science mouthfeel obesity and pick your poison.
Google salt sugar fat.

This crap is engineered to be addictive. When you're born into an environment of salt, sugar, and fat, this is what you're used to. A person can not, will not start eating fresh fruits and vegetables after a life time of eating nothing but energy dense junk.

Jason, Jolly Penguin, and Toni are correct in their statements and I'll take it one step further in stating that at the lowest end, when there is no functioning stove or frig or more likely mom has but a couple hours with the kids between her day time bullshit job and her night time bullshit job, supper is an extra value meal from McDonald's most days of the week. Mom might know it's bad for the kids and some day I'm sure she hopes to change the situation but for now it keeps them from complaining about being hungry.

We train our brains to like or at least become accustom to certain foods, good or bad. This is as much about nutritional education as it is wealth.
It doesn't have to be bad food, but it takes some time to switch over. Some might see a person's station in life, the choices they make, the food they eat as their own damn fault. It's not, not wholly, not by a long shot. When a chemist specializing in food science instead of a person trained in the culinary arts is preparing your meal, you should have some concern or at least be inquisitive as to whether or not the food you are eating is nutritional or maybe, just maybe it's that the major players in the food industry are fighting for stomach share.

You can learn a lot being a vegan for six months. That is if you have the willpower these poor people making bad choices obviously lack. Go ahead. Do it. Then at the end of the six months, treat yourself to your favorite unhealthy meal. You deserve it.

I sense that we live in a society that enjoys health shaming. What the exact reasons are for that phenomenon are many and varied.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That features are deliberately added like sugar and salt to increase craving.

That the foods are eaten daily with little variety which is abnormal.

A conditioned reflex is deliberately enhanced to get people to choose a certain food.

There is still the ability to make a choice, a person does not lose that, even a heroin addict, but after a short time the craving is rarely overcome if the food is available.

The food supply has been deliberately poisoned to increase market share.

Most people resist what you consider irresistible. I guess you're just weak.

I don't observe this at all. I find that most people eat shit diets, even people with decent incomes.

There's a range--most people eat things that are far from perfect, but few simply eat the stuff he's talking about.

 

[lpetrich]

Loren Pechtel, Axulus, ..., so those commie greenie left-wing granola health-food nuts are right? Does that mean that we ought to eat tofu and bean sprouts and arugula and other such un-American foods?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Loren Pechtel, Axulus, ..., so those commie greenie left-wing granola health-food nuts are right? Does that mean that we ought to eat tofu and bean sprouts and arugula and other such un-American foods?

The health food nuts have a bunch of good ideas about food, but they also have a bunch of nutty ideas about food. For example, organic.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Organic is better than inorganic.

 

[Eldarion Lathria]

Organic is better than inorganic.

Inorganic is better than organic. Food is better if it's mined.

Eldarion Lathria

 

[thebeave]

Organic is better than inorganic.

Inorganic is better than organic. Food is better if it's mined.

Eldarion Lathria

Heh.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y1y9zp-zck[/YOUTUBE]

 

[untermensche]

I don't observe this at all. I find that most people eat shit diets, even people with decent incomes.

There's a range--most people eat things that are far from perfect, but few simply eat the stuff he's talking about.

Millions and millions are addicted to food that is killing them.

Your complete blindness and loyalty to the scum that have deliberately poisoned the food supply is not surprising. You tend to side with despotic malfeasance every time.

 

[humbleman]

Most -if not all- the messages are right, even when they themselves contradict one to another in several occasions.

The reason is because the nutrition in people is not regulated in their income but it is also according to their culture.

Having Mexican neighbors, when I am invited for diner, beans, rice, avocado in the salad, beer Modelo, etc, is what I have mostly, when the neighbor is Philippine, there is soup and other Philippine dishes with lots of vegetables, and the best BBQ chicken comes from a black neighbor who's wife knows how to prepare it... it is heaven. Lots of "greens" sweet potato, delicious food.

I have even tested from a very old black woman from the South, who in her 100s she still used to cook, and one day she put two marmalade glasses filled with "sha sha", over the table, one was spicy, the another sweet. Lots of black people, co-workers, co-students, neighbors, asked me how in the world I tested such recipe which is practically lost in Soul Food, at least in this area of DC. and I was so happy I knew that old lady. She died taking her recipe with her. And lots of recipes are not about "ingredients" alone but also of how you prepare them.

When I visited a Japanese/Chinese Buffet some weekends, I had the opportunity to observe that the bus with Chinese girls who play soccer used to choose plates with lots of fruits and vegetables, water and tea for drinks. Buses delivering black teenager players filled the tables with fried chicken, french fries, corn bread, no salad, no juice but sodas.

A neighbor who is in charge of a Church activities to help poor people, asked for collaboration with food to take orphans to a museum. The list was full of the worst snacks and drinks available in the markets. I asked her why she selected those meals when those children can eat better from donations. She explained me that she tried it lots of times before, but the children used to receive the food and drinks and throw them in trash cans and used their own money to buy the snacks they wanted to eat.

Then it was not how fresh the food is, how organic or artificial, but was in many cases of what by "cultural reasons" people choose to eat.

Of course, I won't criticize negatively the choices, but surely I don't agree with extremism like saying "never ever drink a single soda in my life" and stuff like that.

I do support to encourage people to recognize and choose what is healthy, that because the box label says "Real Cheese" in great letters it might mean the name of the product, not so that it contains real cheese but a product made with oil that looks and tastes like cheese.

About prices. Surely good food will cost more. This is a monetary sacrifice that makes sense, to invest well in what we eat. Perhaps we don't see the effects immediately but years later our health will pay hard the price of a bad diet when we were young.

 

[ronburgundy]

Imagine, our premier neoliberal on this site admitting that supply side economics is a failure.

You aren't making any sense. This paper is essentially reporting findings that food deserts exist because of the lack of demand in those areas.

This proves you created a thread about a paper you either didn't bother to read and/or are not capable of comprehending.
None of the analyses support any such in conclusion.
In fact, none of the analyses support the thread title or any of the pseudoscience causal conclusions that the authors make.

No causal conclusions can be made, because the data is purely correlational.

They take 2 uncontrolled events (a new store entering a neighborhood, and families moving to another neighborhood), and look at change in grocery purchases from just prior to the event to about a year afterward (few people are in the study more than a couple years and many drop out in less than 1).

Eating habits are the result of a lifetime, with childhood and early adulthood years being most critical. Thus, any effects of "supply" are not merely on immediate purchases, but all future purchases. 20 years of living in a low-supply area will alter eating habits until one's death. For the same reason, any change in that supply will have a very slow delayed impact that is reduced depending on how many years the purchaser has lived in a low supply environment.

IOW, what the article is calling "preferences" and "demand" are the eating and buying habits created by a lifetime of living in one' environment, with the supply of food types being a key aspect of that environment.
The data do not allow them to test "supply" explanations against "demand" explanations. Rather they are pitting short-term effects of immediate supply against the cumulative long-term effects of a lifetime of supply + any possible demand differences. Plus, unless your going to make the assumption that poor people are born with different taste receptors, most of the "demand" differences are the direct and indirect result of income differences (including whether mom is home to cook meals).

A side note, they only studied groceries with UPC codes on the packaging, and thus did not include fresh produce or other items bought in bulk like grains, etc.. Fresh produce is healthiest and most expensive of food items and the least available type of food in poor areas.