[flexblue]

> Healthy food is typically less expensive than junk food.

This isn't true, at least in the US. Or maybe we have a very different idea about what "healthy" food is.

Rice, beans and starchy vegetables are problematic for various (different) reasons and non-starchy vegetables generally aren't very nutritious from a macro perspective, which makes them relatively expensive.

[pengaru]

It is true, the produce department has some of the cheapest food in the store. How much is a bundle of bananas? That's a week's breakfast.

Unless you only buy organic, then you might go broke while hungry.

[flexblue]

Bananas by themselves are not healthy food, they're very high in sugar and have little else to offer.

Produce may look cheap, but if you add up the macros (and also some of the micros), it doesn't look cheap at all.

[bsanr2]

Also, the time cost of preparation.

I don't think there's a common understanding of how much time working class people have to spend on work. It's frequently on the order of 50-60 hours across more than one job, plus the attendant transit and pre-work chores. Your job doesn't provide you with cheap, healthy food on-site. You frequently can't eat on the way to or from work, per transit rules or enhanced police presence on your route. Lunch breaks are a strict 30 minutes, and being late can get you fired (hope whatever you're eating doesn't have too much fiber). You may have to go out of your way to shop, if you live in a food desert, and apartment fridges preclude buying in bulk. Oh, and for a racial angle, produce in cities (and, not uncommonly, in majority-minority suburbs) costs more than in white suburbs and rural areas.

We have so many UX experts on here, is it really that difficult to think of this problem as an experiential narrative instead of an engineering problem that can be solved by tweaking a few variables?

[pengaru]

> Bananas by themselves are not healthy food, they're very high in sugar and have little else to offer.

That depends on ripeness [0], I eat a mostly green banana every morning and it doesn't have much sugar at all while keeping my bowels very regular.

It's been my breakfast for decades, I'm quite healthy, and eat a diet almost entirely composed of raw produce. The rest is nuts/seeds/legumes and canned fish. I rarely ever cook, and if I didn't go for organic produce this would be a very cheap diet except for the nuts.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistant_starch#Nutritional_i...

[flexblue]

> It's been my breakfast for decades, I'm quite healthy, and eat a diet almost entirely composed of raw produce. The rest is nuts/seeds/legumes and canned fish.

You get virtually all of your macronutrients from the nuts, seeds, legumes and the fish - not the produce.

> I rarely ever cook, and if I didn't go for organic produce this would be a very cheap diet except for the nuts.

So it would be cheap if it was something else, but it's not.

In any event, I consider any diet high in grains/legumes a science experient which may or may not work out. I don't consider it a healthy diet.

[pengaru]

> So it would be cheap if it was something else, but it's not.

By volume most of the "nuts" are roasted unsalted peanuts, which are very cheap, and as you know actually legumes.

I just have a taste for expensive walnuts and cashews, and like organic produce, but I'm not poor.

Everyone can afford peanuts, or peanut butter. I prefer roasted intact peanuts since there's less opportunity for fuckery like replacing peanut oil with palm oil and adding sugar.

[jfritsch1984]

People eat beans for decades. Why should this be an experiment? Because people like Dr. Gundry want to sell books? He‘s even admitted on TV that cooking mitigates the whole problem. And who eats raw beans? I think it‘s pure hysteria. In observational studies „anti-nutrients“ are mostly associated with better health outcomes.

[flexblue]

> People eat beans for decades. Why should this be an experiment?

People also eat donuts for decades, that means nothing.

People didn't eat beans for hundreds of thousands of years. They're not a "natural" part of the diet. They contain poorly researched plant toxins and anti-nutrients, which can are known to cause issues in sensitive people.

Can you "mitigate" the problem with proper preparation? Apparently, but that doesn't mean we know they are actually healthy as opposed to "sustainable". Populations across the world which have no choice but to rely on grains and legumes as a staple do suffer from malnutrition.

> In observational studies „anti-nutrients“ are mostly associated with better health outcomes.

Observational studies are mostly useless, because anybody who buys into "legumes are healthy" will focus on living a healthy life in other aspects as well. As I said, swapping in legumes in place of donuts is going to be a benefit. That doesn't mean it's optimal.

[jfritsch1984]

Bananas are high in potassium. And for a healthy individual fruit consumption has never been a problem. Please show me a study that fruit consumption is linked with higher rates of disease in healthy individuals.

[jfritsch1984]

Could you tell me why rice and beans are problematic? The studies I know are typically in favor of these kinds of food. Bean consumption is typically a good predictor for survival in elderly people. Is this some kind of carb-phobia?

[flexblue]

In the context of T2 diabetes, white rice is a high GI food. Brown rice, legumes and grains contain plant toxins and antinutrients which are poorly researched, but at least anecdotally can cause all kinds of issues especially in sensitive people.

Also, in the west, a lot of the culture of preparing these foods (such as fermenting or vigorous soaking) is bypassed.

> Bean consumption is typically a good predictor for survival in elderly people.

That data suffers from the usual issues related to nutritional studies. Consuming beans in place of donuts may be a good predictor of health, that doesn't mean that beans themselves are healthy relative to other healthy foods.

[read_if_gay_]

Rice may be relatively high GI but it and similar foods do not usually give you type 2 diabetes. Junk food does. Rice is far cheaper than that. I don’t really think you can make the case that T2 diabetes is a poor man’s sickness.

[friendlybus]

White rice is linked with 10% increased chance of t2 with each serving per day(1).

I don't know if poor Americans are doomed to diabetes, but it is certainly orders of magnitude easier for the poor to eat poorly compared to the rich. Boosting morale in the poor is difficult without cheap fatty/sweet food and drugs, other poor people have nearly nothing else to get by excessive stressors except exercise. Running a perfectly clean life is admirable and very difficult with limited resources, social standing and spare time.

(1)https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/news/20120315/white-rice-link...

[jfritsch1984]

I‘m pretty sure that that‘s a reverse causation. People who eat very high amounts of rice are the poor who can not afford a better mix of food. They are then malnourished as rice is not providing all needed nutrients. Also being poor means often no health care. Controlling for these socioeconomic factors is very difficult.

Rice in itself is a healthy food, especially when it is brown. I read a study some years ago where a doctor even cured mild forms of diabetes with high loads of rice instead of junk food. Don‘t have a link handy though.

Americans are not doomed to diabetes. Diabetes T2 is one of the easiest diseases to prevent. Vegans for example have 60-70% less diabetes according to observational studies like Adventist Health II.

[jfritsch1984]

Your beanphobia is even addressed by the Huffington Post: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/beans-calmin-the-fears_b_6464...