lil brown bat

Well, it's neither, actually...because adjectives like "cheaper" and "more expensive" imply a comparison, and there's no comparison being made. Cheaper than what? More expensive than what? The answer is, it's cheaper than some things, and more expensive than others.

There are a lot of factors that tie low income to poor nutrition, and in the US today, "poor nutrition" often does not mean "low calorie". The book Fast Food Nation is a real eye-opener in this regard, if you want to get deep into it, but just walking into a fast food restaurant and really scrutinizing the menu will give you a good idea. It's typical for fast food restaurants to offer loss-leader "value menus" that allow someone to get some kind of food for about a buck. Not to pick on Taco Bell, but I just took a quick look at their "Why Pay More Value Menu" -- you can get ten different items for under a buck, including a cheese roll-up (flour tortilla plus cheese), a crispy potato soft taco (think taco shell full of tater tots), cinnamon twists, chicken burrito, etc. Lettuce is the only vegetable included in any of these items (oh wait, one has a little diced onion), only two items include corn rather than flour tortilla, and there's plenty of fat and salt and sugar.

Then, once you've done that, go into a grocery store and check out the price of a deli sandwich, a piece of fruit, and a can of vegetable juice or a single serving container of milk (if you can even find one). Think it's more than a buck? Yeah, probably four or five bucks at the very least -- and that's assuming that this hypothetical low-income person even has access to a decent grocery store, which is a big if.

The nutritious and low-cost alternative, as you've pointed out, is to live on a beans-and-rice-and-a-few-vegetables diet. It's doable, but it's more work, you need a kitchen and utensils and time to make it, and kids just don't go for it the way they go for the engineered-to-be-addictive tastes of fast food (never mind adults, we're really no different). So imagine yourself as someone who has just had a very hard day, on your feet, working a minimum wage job. You had to get up earlier than most people because you have to take three buses to get to work. You work all day, then you have to take more buses to pick up your kids. Everyone is tired and hungry and they want food now. Are you going to say, "No, we need to go home and you need to wait while I cook the rice and beans?" -- while there's a Taco Bell RIGHT THERE with a big huge sign about how they've got ten scrumptious dishes for under a buck?

A wise choice, no. An understandable choice, yes.