fresh foodMany people have heard about the single mother on food stamps who goes out of her way to buy organic food, sometimes at Whole Foods. She might seem like an anomaly, but in some ways she is a harbinger of the future.

Low-income consumers aspire to eating fresh, healthy food. However, they tend to eat less healthfully than people who are well off, and to be sicker and die younger. That’s not because they live in so-called food deserts. Many live within easy driving or busing distance from large grocery stores and do not buy fresh food even when given the opportunity along with nutritional information and cooking lessons.

The reasons are embedded deep in our culture and reflect the eating dynamics of all consumers: Generations of people at all income levels have grown up not valuing fresh foods and not knowing how to cook. That is changing, and consumers now increasingly aspire to eat healthy, delicious food that tastes home-cooked—but low-income consumers face more constraints in getting there.

As competition for fresh, healthy food heats up, prices will fall—as they have with organic food—and low-income shoppers will buy more of it. The change will be gradual, even generational, but forward-thinking food retailers and manufacturers are already preparing for it by positioning themselves as the best, most affordable sources for healthy, delicious foods that are easy to prepare. Aldi, Winco and Food 4 Less are strong examples.

Here’s how low-income food choices look from a cultural point of view:

When people lived on farms—a past that might be last year for new immigrants and a decade, or even a century, ago for urban American families—they ate mostly produce and other fresh food, because it was affordable—sometimes free—and packaged foods were less available. Women or older children tended to stay home and cook, using recipes that had been handed down for generations.

Both of those factors changed with industrialization and city life. Fresh food is no longer the least expensive way to get calories, and cooking it can take more time than a single mother or parents working multiple jobs can afford.

For anyone on a tight schedule, prepared foods can become a regular choice—but income can be the difference between eating a rotisserie chicken from Costco Wholesale and stockpiling instant noodles and a freezer full of processed meats.

It’s not that low-income families can literally not afford the rotisserie chicken and broccoli, although that is sometimes true. It’s more often the case that they are conditioned by a mixture of tight budgets and family history to choose the same food they ate growing up: food with a lot of calories per dollar spent, although they might not put it that way.

Creating a sense of well-being, particularly for children, also plays into unhealthy food choices. Rather than buy broccoli and teach older children to cook it when they return home from school, as in the past, parents will opt for “affordable luxuries” (e.g., corn chips and cola) to demonstrate to their children that “we’re doing well enough that you can have this.”

That type of food, which used to be an occasional treat for rural children, becomes the norm for many families of all income levels. But low-income communities are particularly vulnerable, because they cannot as easily afford the time and money it takes to either buy high-quality prepared foods or learn how to prepare such meals themselves.

This dynamic is easiest to see in families that recently moved from rural areas—often immigrants. The first generation continues to value fresh foods and knows how to cook them, with Grandma even staying home to feed the family. Her children are less likely to have cooking skills, particularly if they were encouraged to get an education rather than learn to work in the kitchen. They also are the earliest generation to grow up around processed foods.

By the time families have lived in cities for several generations, some children do not even know that carrots grow in the ground and beans on vines and bushes.

The solution is already happening, as consumers turn toward fresh, healthy foods. It will just take longer in low-income communities, where it’s hard to come by the money and time it takes to experiment and change eating habits.

Successful discounters already know the shift is coming and are prepared to serve the low-income consumers of the future. More retailers and food manufacturers would be wise to follow their lead.