>>>>>Jake,
>>>>>I think you missed my point entirely.
>>>>
>>>>Perhaps.
>>>>
>>>>>I never said the government should dictate food choices. I said eating healthy is expensive and eating processed food-crap is cheap. A lot of families eat poorly not because they want to, but because it's cheaper to do so.
>>>>
>>>>I disagree with this. People eat "crap" because they want to. Be it taste or habit or whatever, when given healthy choices, even at greater convienience and cheaper (or free) they will go out of their way to spend more on "crap".
>>>
>>>One of the big issues is that in many poorer neighborhoods, there are no supermarkets, only "corner stores," which tend to be more expensive to start with, and often have little or no selection of fresh produce.
>>>
>>>I haven't read all of this (in fact, only skimmed some of it), but it seems to address this issue fairly thoroughly:
>>>
>>>http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/foodenvironment.pdf
>>>
>>>Tamar
>>
>>There were a series of stories a couple years back (I may have posted them but don't have time to track them down) regarding attempting to get people to eat healthy food by making it cheaper and more convienient. One was offering free fruit at a nearby stand, and more people went out of their way to a fast food joint rather than accept the free food. Another involved forcing convienience stores to carry fruit and how they were throwing the vast majority of it away because people would not buy it even though it was cheaper than junk food and in the same location. The third was in NYC where it was mandated that fast food restaurants display calories on the menus. The result was that after the calorie counts went up, the higher calorie food sold even more.
>>
>>People will eat what tastes good to them and they will go out of their way for it.
>
>Except, of course, that if you give people an opportunity to make a good choice, they just might do so:
>
>http://www.news-journalonline.com/lifestyle/health/2012/02/21/right-sizing-with-half-orders-plate-colors.html
>
>Also, from the document I linked in the last message (and footnoted as to source):
>
>"A landmark 2002 study by Morland et al. based on more than 10,000 residents in 221 census tracts (from Maryland, North Carolina, Mississippi and Minnesota) shows a link between where people live and what they eat. The authors found that African-American residents increased their fruit and vegetable consumption by an average of 32 percent for each supermarket in their census tract."
>
>If the stores you can easily get to don't offer nutritious choices, it's hard to make them.
>
>Tamar

As far too often seems to be the case, when a study "reveals" a new truth, just wait because another one is coming right around the corner to demonstrate the opposite.

Right on the heals of our discussion comes the following:

It has become an article of faith among some policy makers and advocates, including Michelle Obama, that poor urban neighborhoods are food deserts, bereft of fresh fruits and vegetables.

But two new studies have found something unexpected. Such neighborhoods not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too. And there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of-food-deserts-and-obesity-challenged-in-studies.html?_r=3

This is precisely why I always include my two favorites as a self imposed disclaimer.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118972683557627104.html