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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

So for a family of 4 you are talking about $6/day, which is $2,190/year. For a working class family with an income of $20,000-$40,000/year it represents roughly 5-10% of their total income for the year to eat healthy.

That's not a small chunk of change for families like that. Sure they'll almost certainly earn that back in lower medical costs in the long run, but in the short term it's a serious burden.

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>" a working class family with an income of $20,000-$40,000/year"

A "working class" family doesn't have an income of $20,000. That would put a family in the bottom 12% by income. Median family income was $67,000/year in 2014.

"Working class" is a common euphemism for "poor". Often implied is "very".

At least in chicago it just means you have to work for a living, in contrast to people who are wealthy enough that work is optional.

"Working class" is definitely much poorer than "middle class" no matter where you are, and middle class people still work for a living.

At least where I am from "Working Class" implies skilled labor like Electrician or Carpenter, and some white-collar jobs like realty agents, nurses and teachers. People who make $35k-$60k.

People making $20k, like landscapers, janitors, forklift operators, and loaders, are generally called "Unskilled Laborers", not working class.

By percentage of household spending, the US spends less on food than anyone else. There are several articles about this. This was the first search result for me:

http://www.ibtimes.com/us-spends-less-food-any-other-country...

That's fair. It's worth pointing out though that that particular comparison was between healthy and unhealthy food. There are various other studies out there that look at the cost of fast food vs. home-cooked healthy meals and things of that sort and found that the healthier meals were often cheaper. Of course, as others have pointed out there are other costs and other types of costs associated with food prep.

It's still about the same amount of money, if not less, than they probably spend on e.g. cigarettes, cable television, etc.

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