When you think of a healthy, balanced diet, “junk” food isn’t the first thing that comes to mind — in fact, it probably doesn’t come to mind at all. Junk food is more of a snack that you should, ideally, eat once in a while instead of all the time.
But for a lot of people, eating whole, clean foods all the time isn’t always an option, and this is especially true for lower-income families.
Still, that hasn’t stopped many people from throwing their two cents in on how to make junk food “go away.” For example, in May, lawmakers in Texas proposed a new bill that would prohibit people who use food stamps from buying junk food items like energy drinks, sodas, cookies, chips, and candies.
It’s also hard to ignore the connection between urban areas with high levels of socioeconomic distress tending to gravitate toward these options high in fat, salt, and sugar, and low in nutritional value.
Many people have witnessed this unequal access to healthy foods, and in 2017, Vice reported that growing up poor makes you more likely to be addicted to junk food.
Albert Santos wrote an article called, “Growing Up Poor Means Getting Addicted to Junk Food,” and shared his story about eating these foods as a “forced everyday reality.”
Like you’re about to hear from a woman whose story went wild, Santos’s parents purchased fast food because it was cheap and it was all they could afford.
While these struggles are very real and widespread, some people like, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, want to encourage a government tax on sugar in order to make junk food more expensive and, thus, less available and accessible.
Maybe some of the people who agree with these kinds of laws have good intentions behind their thoughts — they might think that if junk food is more expensive or less accessible, people won’t eat it and will be forced to eat healthier foods.
But money isn’t the only reason why low-income families purchase junk food.
One woman took to Twitter to share the truth about why so many low-income families buy junk food, and her reasoning shines a new light on the issue.
Her Twitter thread was in response to Oliver’s #AdEnough campaign to increase the tax on sugar.
The woman, Twitter user @sibylpain, who seems to go by “Kat,” started a long thread on Twitter about the issue. If you are fortunate enough to have never been on any sort of food stamp program, it is incredibly enlightening (and upsetting).
She wanted to discuss exactly why poor families rely on junk food based on her perspective of growing up in a poor family.
She explained that growing up, she had a tough family life that included very little money.
Even her own birthday money as a kid had to go towards food. She didn’t have any extended family that could help her out, either. Can you imagine going through this as a six-year-old child?
She said that with such little money, they had to buy whatever they could afford.
For them, that meant that healthy options like fresh fruits and vegetables, quinoa, and couscous were often out of their price range.
And before you ask why they didn’t buy canned vegetables and fruits, she explains that her dad, who was supporting their household in the midst of a family crisis, simply didn’t have the energy or the time to put together any semblance of a healthy meal for himself or his kids.
She also defended her dad. She pointed out that her and her brother are healthy, and he tried his hardest.
So why do poor families buy junk food? According to Kat, it’s because not only is it all they can afford — it’s all they have time for.
She said that if the prices had been raised on junk food, there wouldn’t have been much they could have afforded at all.
Which makes sense — a price raise on junk food doesn’t equal a price decrease on healthy food. Not to mention, many poorer neighborhoods are in the middle of food deserts, which means they would have to travel farther to purchase these goods. This is not always an option for folks who do not have a car or have unreliable public transit.
She also had her own ideas for how to make poor families healthier, rather than increasing prices on things.
She concluded with the fact that if poor families had more access to education, jobs, and care, they would probably have more time to dedicate to cooking healthy meals.
Time is a valuable resource, and it is often not included in the discussion around healthy food.
Kat definitely made a point that a lot of people agreed with.
Raising the prices on junk food or making it inaccessible to poor families isn’t the right way to go about making them healthier. Yes, from a strictly financial perspective, it could be cheaper to buy healthy foods, but when you factor in time, travel, and prep, it turns out healthy food is inaccessible to lower-income populations.
It’s just restricting more things for them and making their lives harder.
Others on Twitter have pointed out that, oftentimes, buying junk food is the only way they can manage to buy enough food to feel full.
They’ve shared their stories as well:
And they all really make you think.
Others have noted that unhealthy food is often easier and faster to prepare.
This means that if kids are in charge of their own meals, like if their parents are working hard to make ends meet, they can do so easily. This means microwave meals, pizza, and other easy-and-quick to make meals are the primary meal options.
‘Unhealthy food’ is also easier for kids to cook themselves. Illness/disability/working hours often mean kids make their own tea, & freezer/microwaveable food/instant noodles are SO much easier than cooking from scratch. Longer shelf life = less reliant on adults shopping too
— Abbi Brown (@AbbiBrown92) May 17, 2018
Some have said that if people really wanted poor families to eat better, they should lower the price of healthy food, not jack up the price of junk food. Who knows if that will ever happen?
At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that we shouldn’t be judging others so harshly based on their choices of what they’re eating.
You never know what’s really going on until you make an effort to listen.
And how about the fact that there’s rarely, if ever, a discount on fresh produce?
This Twitter user has a really good point, explaining why her family had to focus on “buying frozen meals and unhealthy snacks” because they simply kept her relatives fed longer.
In all honesty, junk food is sometimes the only counterpart to fresh food.
So why is it less expensive to order a hamburger and fries at McDonald’s than buy some strawberries?
Some believe it is because of the Farm Bill, which gives significantly better subsidies to sugar from corn, oil from soy, and flour from wheat, than fruits and vegetables.
The Washington Post, however, argues the issue is more complex.
The newspaper gives the example of Michael Pollan, a leader in the sustainable food movement, when he held up a package of Twinkies (which cost 99 cents) and a bunch of carrots ($2.99,) and asked a simple question:
“The Twinkies are a complex food with 39 ingredients, and the carrots are a very simple bunch of roots,” he said at a D.C. Farm Bill forum hosted by Rep. Earl Blumenauer. “So why do the carrots cost so much more?”
The author of Cooked and The Omnivore’s Dilemma explained it takes more money to grow them.
While Kat touched on so many issues poor communities face, we’re surprised she didn’t mention that junk food is the closest, or only, nearby option.
If you’ve noticed an influx of fast food chains in lower-income neighborhoods, you would be right.
Many inner-city neighborhoods are swarmed with franchises of McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Popeyes. And despite their unique and large menus, Big Macs and Whoppers remain the option, with salads rivaling milkshakes in terms of calories.
But let’s be real, fast food didn’t just find its way into poorer neighborhoods.
Unequal access to healthier foods is a very real reason parents raising their kids in poverty are less likely to be able to provide better options.
This goes so beyond food deserts, which largely contributes to nutritional disparities among the affluent and poor.
Food deserts are so real, and so unfair, that certain companies, like Lyft, are trying to find solutions.
The ride-sharing app has experimented with discounted trips on the Lyft ride-share service to connect low-income communities with healthy food.
Unfortunately the option has only been available to 1,700 residents in North Philadelphia, and is simply a Band-Aid to a bullet hole.
The Los Angeles Times went through study after study, before one reporter interviewed 73 California families.
She studied 150 parents and kids, and spent more than 100 hours observing their daily dietary habits, following them to grocery stores and drive-thrus.
One of her findings was pretty surprising.
Kids, whose homes were surrounded by fast food chains, were constantly bombarding their parents with requests.
“They wanted Cheetos and Dr. Pepper, not broccoli and sweet potatoes,” the reporter wrote.
While she found wealthier parents were more likely to deny these requests, poorer families had trouble saying no and wanted to be able to “nourish them emotionally, not harm their health.”
Still others, like the Twitter user above, are hoping fast and healthy food can find a middle ground at a fair price.
Of course these meals aren’t the healthiest, since they’re typically high in fat and salt, but the assumption that the poor people eat more fast food than other socioeconomic groups is due to the price — not the taste.
This Twitter user sums it up pretty well, writing, “A food budget is more flexible than rent, it’s often the first place a family looks when trying to save money. Junk food is cheap, it doesn’t spoil quickly, and it’s easy to prepare.”
