Comment by brodouevencode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brodouevencode | Hacker News Reader

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Here's an anecdote: where I live the closest gym is 19 miles away. The closest park that has walking trails is a little over 12 miles away. Walking/running/cycling on the county roads is not wise. There is a seasonal farmer's market in the closest city to us (~15 miles away), but it's only open one day a week for 4 hours. The closest "healthy" grocery store (like Sprouts, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's) is 32.9 miles away (just had to look this up). For the local grocery stores, the organic, health options are rather minimal compared to the rest of the store's footprint, if they even exist at all. Organic produce doesn't exactly fit Dollar General's target market. Delivery doesn't always come through: there are some parts of my county that do not even get Amazon deliveries. Delivery from other providers can tend towards cost prohibitive. Most of my neighbors are blue collar (trades, construction), so even if they wanted better health and food options they're not about to drive to get it after spending a good part of the day on the road traveling to/from work sites when there's a Walmart nearby with super cheap unhealthy food.

It's almost like the poor lifestyle choice they made was living in a rural area and not keeping a garden.

My perspective may be skewed by my relatives who live in rural Appalachia. They keep gardens, have physical jobs, and hunt for meat. They live a few miles outside of a small town whose hospital just closed - the only one in the county. They do have a proper emergency care center that's designed to be able to get you stabilized and then transfer you to a hospital outside of the county.

You're right though - the people that live "in town", population 6,000, tend to live like urban folk without the urban amenities like you mentioned. I have no idea why people choose to live like that.

> It's almost like the poor lifestyle choice they made was living in a rural area

It is more that the poor lifestyle choices were already made, so it is most convenient to live in a rural area where there isn't as much social pressure to change. You can easily hide when you live on a desolate backroad. It is hard to hide when stepping outside means immediately running into hundreds of people ready to judge your "undesirable" behaviour.

> population 6,000, tend to live like urban folk

The USA defines urban as a population of at least 2,000 people, so those in that place with 6,000 people don't just live like urban folk. They are urban folk!

> It's almost like the poor lifestyle choice they made was living in a rural area

> I have no idea why people choose to live like that.

Many, if not most, times it's not a choice. Limited skills, limited education, limited drive, and limited exposure leads you to stick around where you are because you don't know any better.

> and not keeping a garden

I'll give you this. It was a thing, a big thing, when I was younger. It makes me think people have honestly gotten lazier - there seems to be no drive or desire to do so.

This may vary by the particular store, but Walmart doesn't seem to be any worse than other grocery stores in terms of selling unhealthy food. There's little or no evidence that "organic" food is actually healthier.

And even if organic food is healthier, it's definitely better to eat non-organic vegetables over no vegetables.

I eat some meals that are healthy, and some that aren't. None of them are organic.

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