Walmart has all three, but it doesn’t mean that every customer can afford it. If you are broke, you are going to skip out on some of the healthier stuff.
I do think that most poor people at Walmart are so worn down and tired that cooking a healthy meal can be difficult. Especially when there’s a box that only needs water and a few zaps from the microwave.
Meat and produce are very often cheaper than processed food.
I went on Walmart's website. Per ounce, name brand fish sticks were cheaper than the cheapest fresh fish, tilapia. Pre made, microwavable burgers were the same price as just 80/20 ground beef. Jurassic Park white meat dino nuggets are the same price as Perdue chicken breast.
Is this a rhetorical question? It costs the cost of labor multiplied by the time that they take to make? So obviously fresh food will always be more expensive, given you need to invest time into actually cooking it
The content of fish and beef in those fish sticks/burgers is relatively low, the rest is just fillers which I don't think you took into account at all..
All due respect I don't think you've been poor. They don't care if it has fillers. They want a full stomach. They're going to optimize for the cheapest ways to fill those calories. You know what's subsidized? It's not the fresh fruit or veggies. Even my middle class friends in sleepy Colorado Springs didn't know what a proper home cooked meal was until they came over to my house. Some were even astonished we ate meals together as a family consistently rather than send everyone to their own rooms with TV dinner trays.
Those kids that didn't grow up with cooked meals are very unlikely to cook for themselves or their own eventual children. They're going to stick to 90 second rice pouches, ramen packs, mac n cheese, "salad kits". I can tell you right now a Kraft Mac n cheese cup is cheaper than what I would spend on pasta & the cheeses to make a roux. Easier to prepare, too.
I don't see people in Walmart buying produce. If they wanted that they'd go to one of the Latino grocery stores or the farmer market. If they wanted pantry staples (flour, bread, eggs, milk) they generally go to Costco. Who goes to Walmart to buy anything fresh?
Complaining about mass produced garbage instead of fresh meat and produce is just silly. Walmart has plenty of all three.