[zcid]

Can you show me some examples of cheap junk food? A bag of chips and a soda costs about the same here as a pound of chicken or pork and any one vegetable side.

Go down the frozen meal aisle where I'm assuming most unhealthy people shop and it's far more expensive than buying the raw ingredients. Sure it requires more effort to cook from scratch, but you can't throw money at people not willing to put in the work and expect better results.

[burkaman]

Please factor the following into your cost comparison:

- Extra time required to cook

- A home with a functional refrigerator, oven, stove, etc.

- Time and transportation costs to and from a grocery store. Remember that poor people tend to live much further from a grocery store than you're used to.

- More money required up front. If you have literally $20 in your bank account, are you gonna spend some of it on bus fare to get to the grocery store an hour away, buy $10 of food, and come home, or are you gonna get a $1 hot dog from the 7/11 down the street?

[crooked-v]

The operative word is "here". If you live in a food desert, it can be an endeavor just to get to stores with actual meat and veggie selections. Even if you do live somewhere with good food access, fresh food in big cities just plain costs more than food elsewhere [1] in a way that doesn't happen as much with manufactured food because of manufacturer-influenced pricing.

[1]: https://patch.com/new-york/new-york-city/nyc-groceries-are-m...

[Karunamon]

Any fast food place that has a value menu (so, most of them). A double cheeseburger at the local McDonalds can be had for around $1.30, and this is both tasty and filling (440cal), if terribly unhealthy.

Something that I think gets missed in this is time value. If you're poorer, you likely have less free time, and that cuts into things like shopping for groceries (doubly if you're one of the 23.5 million that live in a "food desert" [1]) and meal prep.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

[08-15]

How is the cheeseburger unhealthy?

[Karunamon]

More than half your RDA saturated fat, almost half of your sodium, and a decent carb spike in the buns. 437cal (almost a quarter of your RDA there), and it's almost always paired with a soda and/or fries.