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I would have to imagine that a lot of poor people live in apartments and do not have access to land for gardening.

It's a tremendous issue. 80 percent of food dollars go to marketing, processing and packaging and much of the processed foods are made from artificially-cheap subsidized foods (corn syrup, grain, soy products). The roots of the issue go deep into the current Farm Bill debate, and anyone who is concerned should be watching the Senate debate on this issue and supporting change. Locally, you can support your family farms and farmers markets, but national action would certainly help the situation for all consumers, not just those of us who can afford better choices.

Those of us who work in public health have known this for a long time. It's a vicious cycle that is hard to break (poor health, poverty, lack of access to supermarkets/fresh food), but it can be done.

A few years back, The Food Trust undertook The Supermarket Campaign. in which supermarkets were built in Philadelphia’s underserved neighborhoods. The results were astounding – unemployment dropped (lots of jobs in a supermarket don’t require special skills), safety of the community went up (the large well-lit store deterred crime, and people felt safer walking around there), the economy of the area improved (other businesses moved in near the supermarket because they felt safe and knew that they would get traffic), and eating habits and health improved (for obvious reasons).

Breaking the cycle requires a significant financial commitment by an organization, but, in my opinion, it is totally worth it.

This story works in concert with one posted about a month or so ago here on SE, about why a salad costs more than a Big Mac: government grain subsidies.

Like das_umlaut, when I lived in Washington Heights, a predominantly Dominican neighborhood. My neighbors weren't necessarily at poverty level, but they weren't exactly middle class, either. There were fast food joints at every corner. The supermarkets sold wretched and limited amounts of fresh produce. The hallways in my building would be filled with the smells of frying pork chops (a lovely smell, but let's be serious), which would be served with rice, with plantains, with potatoes--but rarely with anything green. The children were HUGE--you'd see 13-year-old boys who looked like they could be star tackles in the NFL.

The food was cheap.

You can also compare this to the stories from a year or two ago about a handful of Congressmen who decided to see what it was like to live on food stamps for a month. They ended up living on peanut-butter sandwiches, pasta, potatoes...nothing but starch. They couldn't afford to eat vegetables. And even the peanut butter: the all-natural kind is expensive; the affordable sort is full of sugar and/or corn syrup and lord knows what else.

It is part of our government's lasting indifference to the poor (and I don't mean just this administration's) that there has never been a move to subsidize healthy foods for low-income families. Or even--heaven forfend!-- for the country as a whole.

There was another story in the last year, I think in The New Yorker, about attempts in various school systems--led by Alice Waters' efforts in California--to introduce healthy and inexpensive foods into the school lunch programs. But these kids, who've been conditioned to eat junk, aren't interested in it.

It's a national health crisis, that no one seems at all interested in addressing.

I think Michael Pollan would say that healthy food is in fact not cheaper, when you factor in the extra cost of health care created by eating more junk food.

I really question the cost per calorie comparison. Obesity is prevalent among the very poor specifically due to type of diet, not overeating per se. I understand that many urban poor do not have access to good grocery stores, and that time for meal prep is a major issue. But I've gone through times where I was working two full-time jobs and money was still so tight, I didn't know if I'd make the rent, much less have money for a lot of groceries. Yet, maintaining a nutritious diet was never a problem. I got sick of canned tuna, rice, bananas and cheap cheese, but I managed to eat well and get more than sufficient calories.

Lucky for me, we had little money growing up, but good nutrition determined nearly all grocery and meal choices. I was TAUGHT to do this, and I believe education is still the biggest issue here. If you interview poor moms, for instance, they almost all recognize that fast food or junk is bad for their families. They just don't know how to interpret labels well, and aren't very knowledgable about how to get the most NUTRITION per dollar (as opposed to the most calories per dollar). It's hard. It's confusing. It's easy to give in to convenience and marketing pressure.

Fruits and vegetables don't have to be fresh to be nutritious. Using beans, rice, pasta, etc., stretches a small amount of inexpensive meat a long way, and it doesn't even have to be part of every meal. Right now, regular non-sale prices at my local supermarket, in one of the highest cost of living areas in the nation, include $13 for 20 lbs of pinto beans, $1 ea for canned vegetables, $3 per lb for several cuts of beef, a 4# chicken for $6, tuna for $1 per can, 18 eggs for $3, about 5 bananas for $3, a 3# bag of apples for less than $4, a jar of PB for $3.

A nutritious, filling meal for a family of four can clearly be had for about $5 total. If I shop the sale prices, I can do even better, with meat often $1 per lb., and two cans of vegetables for $1. The same family will pay at least $8 for the cheapest fast food meal. A lot more calories, but a far less nutritious, less filling meal.

Ed: What do you think about the report? Possible corrective measures?

The NYTs brought up a significant point: it is doubtful that people with low incomes weigh the per-calorie costs of pears and a bag of potato chips and choose the latter since it costs less. No more than wealthy people do, I imagine, when skipping the farmers market where they sell ripe, local Magness and heading to Whole Foods, instead, for thick-cut slices of Fingerlings brushed with extra-virgin olive oil, coated with fleur de sel from off the coast of Brittany before baking.

However, the businesses that sell food to people with low incomes make conscious choices about cost and inventory.* It's more expensive to ship those pears from Washington across the country to New Jersey than it is to transport packaged food, even potentially fragile potato chips. They require extra work in the produce department, if not as much as a head of lettuce or tomatoes. Then there's the matter of shelf life.

Overall, it's a lot more expensive to sell raw, unpackaged ingredients than it is to sell processed foods. From what I understand, profit margins for major supermarket chains are bad enough as it is compared to other types of businesses; imagine what it is like for a small, independent grocer or the convenience store on the block that stocks milk, cans of soup, frozen pizza and Twinkies.

The marketing of processed foods is cited as a major issue by Expat Chef. Pepsi is familiar.** Last night I picked up some shallots and the cashier asked me if they were beets. Parents don't cook. Their parents didn't cook. Fewer people bother to prepare meals anymore or pass on the skills they do have to their children. Their repertoires are limited and often inspired by preferences shaped by fast food franchises. Grocery shopping and cooking are chores, not creative outlets nor adventures. It's like doing laundry.

Therefore, healthful raw ingredients are not necessarily on the shopping list. When they are, they are there out of a sense of duty and not because they're valued for their taste. Just one more thing you gotta do even though you'd rather eat gooey, hot pizza with cheese baked into the crust. How else could mealy, waxed Red Delicious apples be sold? The bargain bags of randomly selected winter fruits for 88 cents a pound? The stuff scientists at UC-Davis have bred to ship well and store long instead of taste good? If that's all you've known or had, how could you possibly care about the peaches whose producer Alice Waters has helped make famous among a certain set?

*In the early 1980s, a food co-op close to an Ivy league university took over a supermarket in the middle of a low-income neighborhood. They sold their usual inventory, lots of bulk items, but also Coke, ketchup and items they thought might attract nearby residents. Prices were set according to perceived nutritional value in hopes that they would get the Wonder Bread consumer to start baking whole wheat loaves himself. Not too effective.

**Another possible answer: marketing. Look at what POM has accomplished in selling young antioxidant-loving smokers on the pleasures of pomegranate juice so that the rest of us can now buy the fruit itself. Brand kale. Have some hot, unscrawny Hollywood vegan star in an ad campaign featuring a catchy song with lyrics that instruct you in its preparation and power as an aphrodisiac.

I dunno, this is like the same people that argue that people "have to" shop at Wal-mart because they can't afford not to. People managed to afford things before Wal-Mart came along, and at least the kids' toys were filled with lead.

There was a time when all these processed foods were not available, or at least when eating them was not the norm, and families went through very tough times and didn't starve and the kids didn't all look like linebackers. Are you going to tell me times are tougher now than in the Depression? Come ON. My grandmothers, both of them, could have given a lot of lessons about how to stretch food, buy dried beans and soak them, make "spaghetti sauce" out of ketchup, how cheap it is to make your own bread or yogurt or whatever. I work 2 jobs and it only takes a second to pour beans into a crockpot and cover with water and when I come home, voila, beans. Freeze half, eat half. I grew up very poor. We NEVER would have wasted money on pop and junk like that because my mother could figure out how expensive processed foods really are, and how much cheaper she could make things that were on the shelf that would produce 3-4x as many meals and without all the preservatives and chemicals.

Though I find the cost-per-calorie method suspect, the higher price of quality fresh food is a reality no matter what way you choose to look at it, and as others have mentioned, it's hugely in part to Farm subsidies for big corn, soy and grain. An older NYT article by Michael Pollan explains it simply and clearly.

I'm a bit shocked by the comments asserting that people could afford to eat better food if they'd just work a little hard, do a little gardening, sacrifice a little more. That's incredibly naive on so many levels. First, it assumes that everyone of a certain class isn't working their hardest already, that everyone is capable of gardening, and that they haven't already sacrificed all they could. Those are some pretty big assumptions. Then it fails to take into account that, sure, some do have the option to buy healthier foods at a greater price, but the fact is that a good deal of this nation is entirely ignorant about nutrition, so how would they know that there's any benefit to paying more when they can get their entire meal, already fixed for them, for a buck 99? You can't put the responsibility on those who don't have the knowledge to even be aware that they're making the wrong choice.

And then, socio-economic issues aside, it's just counter to logic that foods that require the least amount of cost add-ons, like processing and packaging would cost the most. It's an artificial economic system that not only hurts all of us, but also hurts developing countries who can't stay competitive with the US's subsidized pricing.

Sorry for the long winded rant, but this topic hit a person sore spot of mine...

I agree . . . government subsidies. Breathe. Breathe. Not going to get all worked up today . . .

OMG. i had to JOIN, JUST so i could comment on this! i'm always amazed at how television tells us how we should be eating "fresh, local, green, organic" or whatever the latest buzzword is that season, but they never mention how much more EXPENSIVE it is!!! OMG. i grew up on WIC, which is kind of a food-stamp program where you get vouchers for "essentials" which include dried cereal milk eggs and canned "juice". lately it's been reformed somewhat, but guess what? beggers CAN'T be choosers! you got to pick from LIST of items of things that WIC would cover! that's just ONE example, i'm sure others here have similar stories of their own. let's just say i had no IDEA cheese was NOT supposed to be ORANGE until i got to college! (God bless those boston hippies, lol)

on another note, we DID get fresh roadside peanuts, peaches and watermelon, corn and tomatoes it WAS GA afterall. that was the one time of year us city slickers could get fresh, good fruit and veg at rock bottom prices. =)