I don’t have much in the way of fact to add to Jane Black’s summary of this interesting new study from UC-Davis researchers showing that it’s not America’s poor who are eating fast food, but our middle class. But I think this is interesting:
Figuring out how to make healthier food rival the drive-through for convenience and taste will be hard enough. Convincing people to choose it over the bad stuff they love will require a monumental cultural shift….
I would say that in most of my reporting in low-income communities, that ‘cultural’ shift isn’t all that big. Make eating well easy and affordable and, mostly, people will do it. And when we focus heavily on that cultural shift, it’s incredibly easy to come off as snobs lecturing the poor on their eating habits, instead of just making it easy for people to make smart choices.
I’d love to hear thoughts on this, of course.