You sound out of touch with society. Many poor people don't have time to cook. They might have multiple jobs that take up all of their time. Transportation is a big issue as well. And any disability they may have.
Most of America has horrible public transit. I don't know if it would even be possible for me to get onto a bus from my house to the nearest grocery store without first walking a mile. Some of the bus routes in this town turn what would be a 15min trip in a car to a ~2hr trip with a transfer in the middle.
In 2011, I briefly lived in a house in Northeast Tacoma, right by Dash Point State Park. Beautiful area. No buses. There wasn't even a sidewalk on the road I had to walk along to get to the bus. It was a mile walk from my house to a bus stop in Federal Way. From there I could get to a hub and get on another bus to anywhere I wanted. It was awful.
>You sound out of touch with society. Many poor people don't have time to cook. They might have multiple jobs that take up all of their time. Transportation is a big issue as well. And any disability they may have.
This is not been my experience. Poor people having too many jobs to cook just isn't a thing that I saw growing up as a migrant worker (and with, very, very unstable housing, no hot water, abject poverty, etc.) If anything, most of the poor people I knew had no job or a side hustle under the table for cash because any income would reduce their benefits. Regarding transportation, again, people usually go with someone that has a car and pay in foodstamps or buy them somthing at the store or give a little for gas. Or walked if it was close enough. Granted, I did not grow up in giant metropolises, so it might be different there. Regarding disability, nearly every poor person I knew was trying to get disability classification, because it meant constant stable income. If you are disable and can't cook for yourself, in the US, you can get people that will come to your house and help you for free (paid by the government, I know many people that do this as a job).
It’s hard for me to feel bad when everything possible is in front of you and you still make a poor life decision. You can be poor and still be willfully unhealthy, same as the rich.
I think that is a specious argument that is unrelated to the larger point - in 2022 SNAP benefits provide poor people with enough free food to eat healthy, if they choose to.
