pinkcoffeefrog:

absinthenoir:

theacenightwatch:

alithea:

canisfamiliaris:

Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?

The answer is NO.

The “fact” that junk food is cheaper than real food has become a reflexive part of how we explain why so many Americans are overweight, particularly those with lower incomes. I frequently read confident statements like, “when a bag of chips is cheaper than a head of broccoli …” or “it’s more affordable to feed a family of four at McDonald’s than to cook a healthy meal for them at home.”

(via sunfoundation)

this bullshit fills me with a very specific kind of rage. so, TIME TO DEBUNK!

1. that meal from mcdonalds takes virtually no time to acquire AND is available almost anywhere.
2. the second meal? that “salad” is lettuce … with nothing else, not even dressing unless its just olive oil or some milk i guess? gross.
3. also thats the price of each serving, not an entire loaf of bread, a bottle of olive oil, etc. that stuff adds up which means you have to have a lot of money at one time to buy it all.
4. that meal probably took an hour and a half to make, which is a long fucking time when you work multiple jobs or are caring for a lot of people or dont have help! seriously, if you are a single parent of three who works, is spending an hour and a half every night preparing a meal a likely option?
5. same with beans and rice! also, you know whats a fucking bummer? eating beans and rice every night because you are poor. ask any person who has done it and they will tell you (you can start with me).
6. there is a “nutrition” argument here that lacks a follow up: poor people are more likely to be doing physical labor and need more than 571 calories per meal.
7. you know who is less likely to know how to bake or prepare a chicken? people without access to the internet, or libraries, or who werent taught how to by their parents because their parents worked all the time. access to healthy foods is a classist issue and classism is cyclical, you fucking morons.
8. seriously, these sorts of infographics make me want to fucking flip tables. do you know why people don’t eat more fresh fruits and vegetables? because fresh fruits and vegetables are expensive, because they take a long time to prepare, because they dont live near a grocery store that has a decent produce section, because they dont have reliable transportation to get groceries to and from the grocery store, because they dont have the energy to plan all of the shit that is involved in making healthy, intentional, filling, balanced meals. basically: poor people get fucked, and then we get BLAMED for being lazy.
9. eating “healthy”, aka access to fresh fruits and vegetables, is a privilege, first, foremost, always. so fuck you new york times and your ignorant goddamn infographic.
10. there are SYSTEMATIC REASONS that we do not have equal access to fresh fruits and vegetables. they are very REAL problems. besides, you know, systematic poverty in america, the total mis-distribution of farm subsidies is a perfect place to start. read about that, then either get bent or start working on the actual problem.

In which fad dieters forget about the dollar menu

Also I just added it up and this is wrong for the mcdonalds prices?? Unless you’re ordering each item separately or some bullshit like that, maybe. I actually looked up the US prices for this too – a big mac meal is $5.99, and a Happy meal (which is what you should be ordering if you want a kid-size fucking meal as shown above) is $2.79 for a cheeseburger meal and $3.29 for a Mcnugget meal. That is $18.06 not $27 you absolute plums

There’s another side to these infographics that pisses me off as well. In addition to the very well explained points above, there’s the insistence that poor people just don’t know that fast food is expensive. Hint, we do.

Hi! My name is Pink. I’m poor. November and December have been particularly shitty months for us for a few reasons, so we’ll make it, but our grocery list has to be scaled back. We’re too poor for McDonald’s right now, and are lucky enough not to live in a food desert.

I just went grocery shopping for my family of four for a week and we’re under $5/meal. However, we bought 1 (one) fruit item for the kids to take to school in their lunches. Because fresh produce is fucking expensive.

We haven’t had bacon in months (since November, when it was a special treat for Thanksgiving, and then for months before that) because it’s fucking expensive. A whole chicken? Is too expensive for one meal. Think tinned tuna, hot dogs. Those are cheap. Peanut butter is a bit more expensive, but you can use it in basically every meal, so worth it.

IT IS TOO EXPENSIVE TO EAT HEALTHY. While it’s cheaper to eat at home than eating fast food (if you don’t live in a food desert), you end up going to bed at night feeling guilty about the amount of crap you’re making for your kids to eat because there’s still nutritional value in it somewhere. 

Leave your classist bullshit at the door about how it’s cheaper to prepare your own food. WE KNOW. Either we can’t (because of the awesome points listed above) or we’re still feeding our kids nutritionally garbage shit at home because yeah, it is cheaper.