Reply #34: You're assuming

[wickerwoman]

a.) she lives in housing with a working kitchen. Many of the working poor live in motels because they can't afford the down-payment on an apartment. She may very well not have a freezer or anything bigger than a mini-fridge. And cooking burgers on a hotplate and then washing greasy pans by hand in the bathroom sink really sucks. Trust me, I've done it.

b.) that she has access to a grocery store where she can buy hamburger, edible vegetables and non-moldy buns. When I lived in New Jersey and didn't have a car, the closest grocery store was a 30-50 minute bus ride each way. It was a ghetto grocery store too where all of the produce was spoiled, the meat and dairy had to be used almost the same day and the cans were covered in dust and rat tracks. If she's lucky she lives near a convenience store that also sells meat, but at the prices she's paying there, she might as well just pick up a whole sandwich from the deli counter and be done with it.

So in addition to the 19 minutes at the stove, add three hours for grocery shopping, half an hour or washing dishes, and at least an hour of extra work to pay for the price difference between her burger and the McDonalds one. That's five hours of a working person's very packed schedule for a burger.

The government does distribute menu ideas for lower income people. The problem is that they don't have cooking facilities, don't have access to the ingredients and are completely exhausted from working two jobs and negotiating the local bus system's slashed service.