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I think it is mainly doomed because it starts with a bad analysis of "the problem".
There are things called food deserts, sure, but why? New York is one of the wealthiest cities in the world, even the poor are extremely wealthy by global standards. Go to just about any Asian city and you don't have to look hard for fresh anything, cooked anything, etc. There are markets all over.
New York doesn't allow open air markets, so that doesn't help. But there are still plenty of shops everywhere. Why aren't the shops selling a bunch of fresh ingredients?
Put yourself in the mind of a poor New Yorker. You've just acquired a bunch of fresh ingredients for cooking. Now take them back to your apartment. Your tiny, shitty apartment, with multi decade old cooking appliances, lack of cookware, and then when you finish out how to microwave the meal to completion you can serve them on your non-existent dishes and wash those non-existent dishes by hand in your sink because you don't have a working dish washer. Do we all see the problem? You have to be rich to afford a nice enough place to cook for yourself in New York. Even giving away food for free will not solve this problem.
The food deserts exist because of a lack of demand. And even giving away free food won't be enough to get poor New Yorkers cooking their own healthy food.
They buy snacks, easy microwave meals, and takeout food. If you can make all of those things more healthy without increasing their price you might be able to get more New Yorkers actually eating healthy.
But why do you even want them eating healthy? Is it because you want them to be less obese and more healthy? Well good news, we have a solution for that, they are called GLP-1s. Just subsidize them and hand em out like candy to New Yorkers. Or have bodegas sell them.
In conclusion Mamdani's end goals are attainable. He has just chosen to go about it in a roundabout and silly way that will accomplish nothing.
I've lived in a large city pretty much my entire adult life so far (mercifully I'm moving out in a couple of months), one that is not unlike NYC in a lot of ways. I don't think this is that much of a real problem. Most apartments in those cities have at least a stove/oven. In most of those cities, old unkillable appliances that are decades old but still very functional are in circulation and if you know a few people you can generally get one for free (if you supply the labor of moving it) or very cheap. If not, you can get a cheap single burner resistive cooktop, I see one for 15$CAD on walmart from a brand (not a good brand, but a brand). You can probably get one cheaper in a pawn shop, or if you take a trip to chinatown and look around the stores there. The small, cramped, cluttered stores especially. Pots, pans, utensils, plates, again go to Chinatown and check the stores there. I'd bet for 10$ you can leave with a pot and a pan and at least one plate and one set of utensils. Or a dollar store will have some. If you want better quality, head to a thrift store and get a second hand one. As for doing dishes, I've lived 20 years without a dishwasher, it's fine really. My guess is that the entire set of what you need to cook a basic meal can be had for under 50$. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get all of it under 40$. A cooktop (portable if need be), one pot, one pan, a stirring spoon, a spatula, a cooking knife (doesn't need to be chef's knife), a plate, a bowl, a fork, knife and spoon.
The problem, and I agree there is a problem and it's not the availability of fresh food, is motivation management. Ultimately cooking is, most days for most people, not motivating. There's other things they would rather be doing, and if there isn't they likely have little energy left after their day to put into it. I don't want to say the poor are uniquely lazy, it's not that simple. I'm pretty lazy quite often too. But poor people live in an environment that doesn't help them be very motivated either. Some people are uniquely self-motivated; great for those people, even if they start at the very bottom of the economic ladder, they tend to be able to climb up a few rungs over their lifetime and that's great. Most people aren't like that. They need to have grown up in a good nurturing environment that kept them focused on doing annoying things even if they are annoying to do to keep doing it as an adult. If when you were young your parents (if you're lucky enough to have grown up with both of them) worked double-shifts at the depression and alcoholism factory, your chances aren't great.
I guess mileage may vary. I have not lived in a large city like that. The friends that I had who lived there had all those complaints. And maybe yes it doesn't take much to do a setup to allow for cooking. But it is a one time hurdle that still has to be jumped over, so I'd at least add it to the behavior stack.
I had been about to write a whole thing about the hassle of cooking. I ran out of time and wrapped up the comment. So I heavily agree with you. I have a family of 5 and I am the primary cook in the house. We still end up eating out 2 to 7 times a week (I know that is a big variance, but lots of variance in my life right now). The home cooked meals are as simple and time saving as I can make them. I'm throwing pasta in a big pot, putting pre-breaded frozen chicken in an air fryer, and using microwave ready vegetable packs. And sometimes I'm skipping those second two things. On the harder side sometimes I am making meal kits from hello fresh that take like 1.5 hours. I'm trying to make this as easy on myself as possible and it is still a huge mental strain and stressor all week every week. At this moment I am typing this comment rather than figuring out what I'm gonna do for dinner tonight since the fridge is barren. I do actually enjoy cooking and making things, but that is something i want to do once or twice a week when I have lots of spare time.
My brother in Christ, you need to embrace crock-pots.
My oldest daughter has the most annoying preference where she doesn't like different kinds of food items touching each other on her plate.
By making five fully separate food items I can usually satisfy all the kid preferences and still make something a little different for the adults.
My wife and I certainly love crockpot items, and I use them all the time for making host size meals
Is she picky otherwise? I've wondered about this preference and how it relates to a desire for order versus a meme picked up. Because the meme is out there, it is not uncommon.
Also, come on. Gumbo is clearly one ingredient with rice as the other. Be reasonable!
My wife is German and had the same preference when she was young, she still sort of has the preference, but can get over it mostly.
And yes my daughter is very picky otherwise. Mostly she judges with her eyes a lot, but if we can convince her to try a thing there is more chance of her liking it. Hilariously got her to try my medium rare steak at a restaurant one time, and now she loves steak. Anything vaguely "spicy" is a hard no. I'm not like a huge spice freak. Jalepenos are generally spicy but not too spicy to me. But she considers things spicy that I can't taste any spiciness in. Any hint of pepper (as in salt and pepper) is too spicy.
If it was up to her I'm sure she'd be happy to eat the same thing day in and day out. I've made her a PB&J for lunch at camp every day this summer, no sign of her getting sick of it. She'd happily eat pasta (with butter), chicken nuggets (with ketchup), and (cooked) broccoli every day for dinner. Or at least she did it for a week before I gave up the experiment and thought I should maybe feed her different things for her own health.
One thing to keep in mind is that kids are typically much more sensitive to food than adults are, due to a combination of more taste buds, thinner and more delicate membranes, and lack of desensitization from exposure. Spiciness in particular is quite literally a measure of how much of a chemical irritant a food is and while tolerance can be trained, children raised in milder food cultures usually don't get enough exposure to develop a tolerance for quite some time.
Ya I don't mind catering to her preference here, it just feels strange because her younger sister has way more spice tolerance and I don't feel like we fed them that different.
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