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Again, all anecdotal, but here goes... Yes, it's nuanced, because poverty and decision making is a complex issue :) It's opportunity cost - you have the choice between eating fresh food, with the risk that it will spoil, or the choice of eating lower cost and frequently processed foods that have a longer shelf life. There are also alot of factors to this - in a given week of budget the price difference between a processed product and fresh product might be radically different, but fresh food is almost always available throughout much of the developed world. There is another hidden cost here - when I see something I haven't tried before I will buy it and learn how to prepare it, but when I was poor, I didn't - it wasn't worth the risk that I would ruin the food, or that I wouldn't like it, and throwing away even a small amount of food was an intolerable waste. Less of a risk these days when even most people living at or below the poverty line have the ability to access the internet to learn, but in the late 90s, I was loathe to take those chances. There may be nutritionally rich, low cost options, but if people are too poor to have had regular exposure, or come from a culture unfamiliar with the foods available at reasonable prices locally, then poor eating choices will continue to be propagated. The decision is not always a choice to eat the less healthy food over the more healthy food, it is a choice to marginally increase the level of food security you have by choosing less "healthy" options that have a longer shelf-life and offer a discount in bulk. |