“His reply was something like for the price of a bag of potato chips, you could buy two dozen eggs, a bunch of veggies and so on.”
I have read (and from my own limited observation, I believe it to be true) that a lot of these inner city neighborhoods don’t have regular grocery stores where you can buy said eggs, veggies, etc., though there are 7-11’s and so forth where you can buy doughnuts and chips. Transportation is a big issue for a lot of poor people: it is difficult to buy a bunch of groceries at a regular store and then haul it all home on the bus. (When I was in grad school I had the same problem — there was no grocery store nearby and I didn’t have a car, so getting decent groceries back to my pad took some conniving.) I’m not saying that a lot of poor people could not make better choices, but sometimes it isn’t as simple as it looks.
I agree with that.