That’s where it gets beyond me. The projects that I worked on were subsidized. In a conversation with the owner/developer he explained some kind of deal wherein he builds and owns the place but it is managed and he is compensated through some other entity. It was a quick “while we’re taking a break” type of conversation though and I didn’t get any real gist of the plan.
It must work out somehow though, because the guy owns like 30 some of these markets through out the tri-state area. All within the same demographic- run down, poverty level areas that bigger places really don’t want to bother with.
This is what I don’t really get though. Urban areas are the most dense population centers. It seems like more customers should equal more grocery sales. Right?
In the context of extreme poverty and food insecurity, the SNAP program needs an overhaul. You shouldn’t be able to buy Pepsi and chips with SNAP. I’m not saying go back to “government cheese” but something more responsible than junk food.
From a 50,000 foot perspective, if you have someone locked in generational poverty: The SNAP benefits keep them from starving which is a worthy goal for sure… But then it gives them type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Not particularly helpful.
I have a pretty small brain, but that’s what I would have thought as well. I can only guess that a combination of “high crime makes it unattractive to shop here” and “the people who live around here don’t want to spend money on fresh blueberries at a grocery store when they can buy chips at the convenience store for a buck-forty-nine” (hold this thought) and other reasons I may not smart enough to think of have made it so grocery stores in low-income urban centers are not very profitable.
Hey, now we’re getting somewhere with this thread. I would be fine with SNAP restrictions that allowed recipients to spend on meat, fruit, vegetables, rice, potatoes, and directed their dollars away from sugar-sweetened beverages and junk food.
I haven’t read much on the subject, but I have a faint recollection of pushback against attempts to do this, though - basically, the “gubmint shouldn’t be telling poor folks how to spend their welfare handouts” line of thinking.
The industry does not spend the amount of money they do if this doesn’t work. They are helping people to become less healthy all to increase the bottom line. How honorable.
True. I never suggested (or meant to suggest) that ‘food engineering’ didn’t increase its attractiveness, just that it didn’t render the food literally addictive.
So are the foods you cook engineered for that particular reaction to physiologically become addictive? And I want to congratulate you on a post that doesn’t poke fun at David Wolfe.
To my knowledge, the American Psychiatric Association does not recognize food as an addictive substance. The class of pathology known as Eating Disorders does not include addiction. Further (and again, to my knowledge) the _DSM-_V does not include food addictions.
