alt Hacker NewsWhen you think of it in the context of a person with not much cash or time to work with, there's other advantages Little Debbie brings...
- It's extremely unlikely that any of the snack cakes in a particular box on the shelf have gone bad or have rotten areas. They must carefully inspect a bag of apples for brown spots or risk getting less usable product than they paid for.
- The snack cakes can sit at home for a really long time and still be usable. The apples have a much shorter shelf life. This makes bulk pricing more attractive for the snack cakes as there's a better chance all of the product can be used before it goes bad.
- The apples require more preparation, dependent on preferences. Yes, you can grab an apple out of the bag and chow down. A lot of folks will want to wash it first. Some will want to cut it into pieces, or peel it, or do some other prep to it before eating. Snack cakes are pretty much always eaten as they are.
Add it all up and it starts to become clearer why a lot of economically disadvantaged folks end up making "bad" choices around food. All of these points could be mitigated in various ways, but generally they would increase the financial and/or time costs.
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Yep, totally agree. Point 3 is probably a bit moot with apples but applies to almost every vegetable out there. But IMO the best selling point for unhealthy, sugar-rich snacks is easy of storage. You go to the supermarket and can buy 1 month of snacks easily, you cannot do it with fruits.
Now I'm picturing someone peeling their Zebra Cakes and cutting it into slices.
If you're going to use those excuses, don't forget to add that economically disadvantage folks can't buy in bulk because they don't have enough money, and live in food deserts where people can't buy in bulk, and they don't have anywhere to store those items.