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Comment by MrEfficiency | Hacker News Reader

>A variety of healthier foods — especially fruits and vegetables — also need to be made more affordable and readily available to Americans.

I was looking for this uninformed and incorrect statement.

"Junk Food" and Fast food tends to be between 100-300 Calories Per Dollar. Fresh Fruit and Vegetables are in this same range.

This doesnt include that homecooked meals are 200-300% cheaper than junk food. A meal with Chicken Rice and Veggies are closer to 600-700 calories per dollar and have protein and nutrients.

There is obviously a time aspect, but that isnt what is discussed in the quote.

My expertise is food, source- http://efficiencyiseverything.com/food/

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> "Junk Food" and Fast food tends to be between 100-300 Calories Per Dollar. Fresh Fruit and Vegetables are in this same range.

Is that median or average? Because from my understanding, that may be true at a large supermarket in a wealthy suburb, but at a small corner market in a poor neighborhood, which is often the only market a poor person has access to, the veggies are far more expensive per calorie than junco food, if they even have the fresh fruits and veggies, which they often don’t.

Junk food ranges from 100 Calories per dollar to 300 calories per dollar.

There arent junk foods that score above 400 calories per dollar. They dont exist from 5 years of searching(and if they do, let me know, I would like to study it).

Those corner stores will have Apples, Oranges, and Bananas. There is a reason, they are cheap and similar cost to these junk foods.

> small corner market in a poor neighborhood, which is often the only market a poor person has access to, the veggies are far more expensive per calorie than junco food

This seems like an impossibility. Junk food requires a multiple stage manufacturing process, while vegetables only need to be shipped and sometimes refrigerated.

The big thing is to look at the price you pay. Paying 1 dollar for a bag of carrots is cheaper than a 15 dollar tray of mixed veggies.

As previously mentioned, if you have ideas for low cost foods, let me know, we study this for Efficiency Is Everything.

> There arent junk foods that score above 400 calories per dollar. They dont exist from 5 years of searching

Top Ramen chicken flavor is 190 calories per package, 48 packs look to be available at around $10 (the lowest I can find right now is actually $8.78, but $10 is a nice round figure.) So that's $10/9120 calories or 912 calories per dollar.

Slim Jim Smoked Snack Sticks I can find for $20 for 120. They are 160 calories each. That works out to $20/19200cal or 960cal/$.

That all took about 5 minutes of searching. Your five years of searching don't appear to have been spent very efficiently.

> Junk food requires a multiple stage manufacturing process, while vegetables only need to be shipped and sometimes refrigerated.

Shipping and refrigeration and allowances for damage and spoilage and paying for shelf space (raw veggies are bulky per calorie, which affects in-store or, for direct to consumer delivery, in a warehouse, inventory cost as well as shipping) are, altogether, huge costs; mitigating them is one of the big drivers for industrial food production.

Ramen can be found closer to 2,200 calories per dollar. At what point are we moving from Junk food to Soup?

I havent looked at Slim Jims in bulk, but usually dried meat is quite expensive. What store do you buy slim jims at? (I expect the protein per dollar to be less than chicken but on-par with yogurts/dollar fast food. 10-20g/$)

Also, none of those have calcium

https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food-nutrition-per-dollar...

I'm not sure what you are trying to point out since you mentioned soup. That you can drink flour cheaper than you can cook a well rounded meal? Flour isnt going to get you fiber.

Did you read the original source? Ramen and various junk food are all over that page.

> Ramen can be found closer to 2,200 calories per dollar. At what point are we moving from Junk food to Soup?

They are overlapping categories.

> Also, none of those have calcium

Well, yeah, they are junk food. Micronutrient (or even macro) completeness isn't really an expected feature. Your claim was that no junk food existed over 400cal/$. This is false. That junk food is, well, junk is not the claim I was addressing, nor one that seems to be in any kind of dispute.

Alrighty mister, you win ;)

Now where are you getting these slim jims?

Took me about five minutes to find. 8 pop tarts, 1600 calories, $2. 800 calories per dollar: https://www.target.com/p/pop-tarts-strawberry-milkshake-8ct-...

Poptarts are on the list too.

But poptarts are low protein per dollar and have limited nutrients.

Of course they have poor nutritional value. They’re junk food. But they provide 800 calories per dollar. And that’s the whole point — when you’re poor, you can survive on $3 of pop tarts per day, but not $3 of fruits and veggies.

I got one cheaper.

You could eat bread for 0.75$ a day until you get scurvy.

Poptarts are super expensive.

Maybe you’ve never been to a depressed area, but the reason veggies cost more in small stores is because of lack of turnover. Junk food can stay on the shelves for weeks to months. Veggies don’t last more than a few days and anything that isn’t purchased has to be thrown out. That cost of food waste is part of the price of the veggies at the small markets.

> There is obviously a time aspect

You're not comparing the cost of balanced vs. junk foods here, but rather the cost of eating out vs. home cooking (paying for someone else to cook your food).

You can make junk food at home quite easily for even less money. Consider for instance baking a cake, from cheap ingredients like oil, sugar and flour. Ingredients like potatoes and vegetable oil are literally cheap as chips.

>You can make junk food at home quite easily for even less money.

Sure you can get 2000 calories per dollar eating homemade sugar cookies, but you probably are going to get sick of it and grow unhealthy. Low protein per dollar, low fiber per dollar, all of these are important qualities you dont get in 'junk foods'.

A Chicken Rice Veggie dish like Fried Rice, Chicken Curry, Fajitas, etc... are closer to 700 calories per dollar(less than 20$/week), are around 40-50g protein per dollar, and have nutrients from various vegetables.

Junk food performs poorly in non-calorie metrics like Protein and micro nutrients.

>Ingredients like potatoes and vegetable oil are literally cheap as chips.

To clarify, potatoes and vegetable oil are significantly(~10x) cheaper than packaged chips.

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