I don't believe the choice of eating greasy, low quality food is only due to poverty, it's a factor but education and habits are IMO as important factors as money. I don't know about the situation in the USA, but in France you can buy several type of vegetables for a low price. And I remember, three years ago, when I teached for a few weeks at uni, I ate more than once at the universitarian restaurant; for the same price you could have saussages or burger with fried chips or a relatively balanced meal with salad and vegetables, but the great majority of the students went for the greasy anyway.
True. But here, as I was explaining below...it is more expensive to buy fresh vegetables and meats than processed foods. Part of it is economic, actually a great deal of it is due to economic conditions. Stores such as Costco and Walmart and Sams Club specialize in providing discounts for processed items or non-fresh items which you can buy in "bulk". They don't tend to carry the fresher items or if they do, they tend to be more expensive.
You can get a bag of lettuce - but it is ice-burg lettuce, which has the nutritional value of water - not bad, but not as good as spinach or argula or raddachio or mesculain or romain. Same deal with green beans - you can get canned or frozen for half the price as fresh.
We are a consumer driven economy.
So, while it is partly habit, it does not help that the cheaper items are also the items that we've been taught to prefer. They are faster to prepare, and comfort us.
Changing that pattern of behavior for people is difficult - if you can't get the economic portion of the equation taken care of first. And I'm not sure how we can do that - how we can make french fries more expensive than salad or fresh vegetables. I tend to buy the more expensive fresh vegetables, but I can afford to do that now, and I also haven't taken a serious vacation in ten years or own a home. ;-)
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True. But here, as I was explaining below...it is more expensive to buy fresh vegetables and meats than processed foods. Part of it is economic, actually a great deal of it is due to economic conditions. Stores such as Costco and Walmart and Sams Club specialize in providing discounts for processed items or non-fresh items which you can buy in "bulk".
They don't tend to carry the fresher items or if they do, they tend to be more expensive.
You can get a bag of lettuce - but it is ice-burg lettuce, which has the nutritional value of water - not bad, but not as good as spinach or argula or raddachio or mesculain or romain. Same deal with green beans - you can get canned or frozen for half the price as fresh.
We are a consumer driven economy.
So, while it is partly habit, it does not help that the cheaper items are also the items that we've been taught to prefer. They are faster to prepare, and comfort us.
Changing that pattern of behavior for people is difficult - if you can't get the economic portion of the equation taken care of first. And I'm not sure how we can do that - how we can make french fries more expensive than salad or fresh vegetables. I tend to buy the more expensive fresh vegetables, but I can afford to do that now, and I also haven't taken a serious vacation in ten years or own a home. ;-)