feynites:

illuminabi:

You can really tell who’s never experienced poverty and food insecurity when it comes to discussions around food costs and how unhealthy food is cheaper. Some fucker always comes in with the price of like… lettuce or… apples. And it’s like yeah bitch but can you work an 11 hour shift after eating some salad and an apple!?! Find me something cheaper, and more filling than the broke ass staples of boxed mac and cheese, hot dogs, noodles, bread, beans, and rice. I’ll wait.

It also ignores the mental toll that poverty takes like maybe your home made veggie filled recipe isn’t crazy expensive but it also involves prep time and cooking time and organization in terms of fresh food that a lotta poor people can’t manage.

Not to mention if you can only afford to get to the store once every couple weeks via bus or cab then you can’t keep fresh veg on deck.

But ya know.. poor people are just dumb and lazy.

One of the most telling conversations I ever had about food budgeting when you’re poor was with some dude in the comments section of an internet article, who within the span of a single conversation, insisted that people needed to buy shelf staples in bulk, and also that poor people should use public transportation to save money (ignoring, of course, that lots of rural places don’t have public transportation).

I had to point out to this guy that he was basically saying that poor people should be, somehow, transporting loads of bulk goods home with them on buses. Basically meaning you make multiple trips to carry home heavy shit, probably bringing it back with you to an apartment or house that doesn’t have a pantry, meaning your living space is gonna be cluttered with boxes of instant pot noodles or bags of flour/salt/sugar/etc, crates of canned goods and mega packs of things like ketchup or beans.

I was amazed that it had never occurred to this dude, that a lot of the things he was suggesting didn’t mesh well as a complete picture of how to live. Don’t have a big home or kitchen, but have enough storage space to stock a full pantry, don’t have your own vehicle, but buy your groceries in bulk, do your own cooking but work two or three jobs at a time, etc, etc. And you can bet that if he actually had to share a bus ride with someone sitting there with a gigantic sack of flour in the seat beside them, he’d probably complain about them.