Saturday, January 04, 2020

Food nannies strike again

https://www.city-journal.org/banning-dollar-stores

The food nannies strike again. Don't you dare touch my dollar store. They have great deals on the things I want, and the only food items I've purchased are peanuts. That food desert hoax was disproven years ago. If someone is fat, sick or malnourished and they occasionally pick up frozen chicken or a loaf of bread at a fast food mart or dollar store because there's no super market near by, it's more likely the cigarettes and beer they are buying somewhere else. If momma didn't teach them to eat right, it's unlikely the mayor or governor is going to.

“Recent research undermines the argument that a lack of fresh, healthy food is to blame for unhealthy diets. In a paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, three economists chart grocery purchases in 10,000 households located in former food deserts, where new supermarkets have since opened. They found that people didn’t buy healthier food when they started shopping at a new local supermarket. “We can statistically conclude that the effect on healthy eating from opening new supermarkets was negligible at best,” they wrote. In other words, the food-desert narrative—which suggests that better food choices motivate people to eat better—is fundamentally incorrect. “In the modern economy, stores have become amazingly good at selling us exactly the kinds of things we want to buy,” the researchers write. In other words, “lower demand for healthy food is what causes the lack of supply.”” (from the above linked City Journal)

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