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Comment by houseinthesky | Hacker News Reader

I don't think "feeding poor people food that gives them diseases and harms their quality of life" is success.

The US could feed people cheaply without using harmful additives. Instead of a $1 McBurger made possible through subsidies, environmental destruction and cancer-causing chemicals we could be eating $1 McChanaMasala or McDal or McLocalSeasonalVegetables.

Billions of people around the world eat rice, beans, legumes, root vegetables with small amounts of locally sourced cheese, meats, fruit, vegetables etc. America's poor eat high fructose corn syrup, highly processed wheat, vegetable oil and the meat from cows and chickens raised on unnatural diets in horribly unhealthy conditions. That's not an improvement.

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You don’t get it. If you didn’t have these processed foods burgers would cost $10 and millions even in the us wouldn’t eat them.

You might think that’s a good thing, but most people don’t actually want to subsist on rice and beans, otherwise that’s what McDonald’s would sell.

And I’m not just talking Ajtony the US. The same preservation technologies that allow $1 menus in the us also pulled almost a billion people out of starvation in the last 30 years.

Again, read my original post, I’m not saying this is ideal, and I’m rich enough to choose what to eat. But for many it’s a choice of eating things with bad chemicals or eating nothing. And that’s not because it’s a choice that evil capitalists make. If you can’t mass produce food it doesn’t just become more expensive, there’s less of it, and people starve. You’re basically saying it’s better if people starve than if they get cancer in 50 years.

Edit: see the sister comment: Definitely. In 1900, the typical American family spend 43% of its income on food. In 1950, it was 30%. By 2003, it had dropped to 13%

I completely understand the point you're arguing, I'm trying to articulate the problems inherent in the system and a way forward. Nobody would starve, they'd just switch to healthier foods. This would be a good thing.

America has a crisis of obesity. Our life expectancy is actually going down despite amazing medical advancements. Our food system today incentivizes horrible health outcomes, we should be looking at cheap soda, fries and burgers as akin to cheap cigarettes, cheap vodka and cheap opium have done to populations in the past.

This is parody or the perfect example of ivory tower.

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