Put the salad in ice cold water for a while and it will freshen. Also, don't buy mixed bags since they sadden faster.
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Why is unhealthy food so cheap/How can healthy food be made cheaper?
- Thread starter John Doe
- Start date
I used to believe, as others do, that healthy food is cheaper than processed food. But the fact is there are many, many reasons why this isn't true for a lot of the poorest people.
I was approaching it from a personal angle i.e. I'm a decent cook, I can afford these things, my job and health are stable and that just skewed my view on the subject. Having looked into it further after being rightly criticised by others I found that just judging it from my own life gives very skewed results.
I was approaching it from a personal angle i.e. I'm a decent cook, I can afford these things, my job and health are stable and that just skewed my view on the subject. Having looked into it further after being rightly criticised by others I found that just judging it from my own life gives very skewed results.
Recently I bought one of these as it's small enough to throw into a kitchen drawer and I was fed up with things like strawberries turning to mush after a couple of days. I now put them in the tub provided and suck the air out each time I take some out. They now pretty much last a week. It also comes with 10 vacuum sealable freezer back which are very handy for storing stuff for even longer than they'd normally last in there.
Yeah that definitely makes sense, I figured that it must have been an issue of transportation costs. I was genuinely curious, hopefully I didn't come across as being disbelieving or anything.
And you're right, the comparison to processed food in the same store is the one that is meaningful. Almost the entire middle of the grocery store is just horrible, cheap subsidized calories. I recognize that I'm more extreme than most on this but I personally wouldn't be opposed outright bans on some of those foods, and certainly pulling off the subsidies on the worst ingredients in them.
It's not that healthy food is more expensive it's just that you won't find many places that serve healthy food regardless of price. Restaurants and chains are more concerned about the taste and they cater to the general public. Americans love salty and greasy food so they cater to that audience. I mean if a big chain switches to smoothies instead of milkshakes, and suddenly now serve whole grain buns burger with grilled protein and veges with no sauces they will go of business.
Pretty much. If you want truly healthy food, you have to eat at home. Even a smoothie from some restaurant will be loaded with sugars, and that whole grain bun which sounds healthy will be actually be saturated with butter and oil.
Yeah they even manage to make the healthy option unhealthy lol. Again, it's because people won't eat it otherwise. If you make your own food you get to decide that.
Healthy food isn't really expensive as long as you're not insisting on organics and heirloom cultivars and all that at a Whole Foods or whatever. Target and Walmart and traditional grocery chains have loads of cheap fruit and vegetables. Yes, the government subsidizes grain specifically, which it should stop, but even if it weren't, people would still eat lots of cheap grain, just like they always have. Even if you drop subsidies, grain is still going to be the cheapest food source. It's literally why humans started farming so much of it in the first place.
The real issue is way harder to solve, because it's just that fresh fruits and vegetables require prep time and spoil, and the industrialized processes to produce food that avoids those problems and save people time and money are very cheap, because industrialized processes are inherently cheaper and more efficient than hand prep of food at home.
Selling cheap, healthy ingredients is easy, the education people need to know how to prepare those ingredients, how to use them efficiently to avoid loss due to spoilage, and the commitment to a daily chore of cooking is way harder when there's a cheap alternative out there, which no one really wants to get rid of because even the healthiest still want the ability to occasionally do a quick and easy premade meal.
Plus, adding sugar to everything processed ends up saving money because it lets them salvage otherwise unpalatable ingredients. You can make a perfectly healthy, ready-to-eat jarred tomato sauce, but the other company using the cheapest, most flavorless tomatoes will be able to sell a cheaper one that people will still like if they load it with sugar to cover the poorer quality of their other ingredients. The health difference between the $2 jar and the $8 jar is pretty wide, and it's not really a result of any particular policy, so much as it is that sugar is inherently pretty cheap. A sugar/HFCS/any other caloric sweetener you can come up with tax really seems like a necessary fix to that particular problem, but it's not going to get the rest of it.
The real issue is way harder to solve, because it's just that fresh fruits and vegetables require prep time and spoil, and the industrialized processes to produce food that avoids those problems and save people time and money are very cheap, because industrialized processes are inherently cheaper and more efficient than hand prep of food at home.
Selling cheap, healthy ingredients is easy, the education people need to know how to prepare those ingredients, how to use them efficiently to avoid loss due to spoilage, and the commitment to a daily chore of cooking is way harder when there's a cheap alternative out there, which no one really wants to get rid of because even the healthiest still want the ability to occasionally do a quick and easy premade meal.
Plus, adding sugar to everything processed ends up saving money because it lets them salvage otherwise unpalatable ingredients. You can make a perfectly healthy, ready-to-eat jarred tomato sauce, but the other company using the cheapest, most flavorless tomatoes will be able to sell a cheaper one that people will still like if they load it with sugar to cover the poorer quality of their other ingredients. The health difference between the $2 jar and the $8 jar is pretty wide, and it's not really a result of any particular policy, so much as it is that sugar is inherently pretty cheap. A sugar/HFCS/any other caloric sweetener you can come up with tax really seems like a necessary fix to that particular problem, but it's not going to get the rest of it.
If you have access to any sort of wildly available chain grocery store, frozen vegetables (even the ones you can just throw in a microwave) are just as cheap as or cheaper than junk food. Same with canned vegetables, etc.
Dollar General even sells bags of frozen vegetables.
If you combine any of that with a cheap packet of Ramen - you can at least have some semblance of a healthy meal that's also filling. The prep time is basically the same as with processed food.
Dollar General even sells bags of frozen vegetables.
If you combine any of that with a cheap packet of Ramen - you can at least have some semblance of a healthy meal that's also filling. The prep time is basically the same as with processed food.
If studies prove healthier diets are more expensive, I'm not gonna argue with that.
That said, of course it's easy to eat healthy while on a budget. Even it's slightly cheaper to eat garbage, Dollar Tree and Dollar General - both of which are easy to find in food deserts across the US - sell frozen and canned produce for dirt cheap. You don't have to just eat rice and beans.
That said, of course it's easy to eat healthy while on a budget. Even it's slightly cheaper to eat garbage, Dollar Tree and Dollar General - both of which are easy to find in food deserts across the US - sell frozen and canned produce for dirt cheap. You don't have to just eat rice and beans.
The way I see it, there are multiple issues at play here:
1. Corn subsidies make unhealthy foods very inexpensive.
2. People don't know how to cook many/any healthy meals (I include myself here to. Even when I try to make something other than the small handful of meals I know, it gets hugely fucked up every single time. No matter how closely I try to follow the recipe. As a result, I've been discouraged from even trying to learn to cook because there's a great chance I'll just fuck it up somehow and waste all the money spent on ingredients. On top of that I just fucking loathe cooking/cleaning a kitchen. It's my most hated chore by far).
3. While buying healthy food isn't always drastically more expensive in upfront cost, a lot of it goes bad very quickly so it usually gets thrown own before even half of it has been used. A lot of shit goes bad after just 3 or 4 days. And if you fuck up a meal, that's money completely wasted so experimenting/trying to learn can be pricey.
4. If you want to avoid food going bad by purchasing smaller amounts, you'll have to make multiple trips to the grocery store every week. Which leads into...
5. TIME! By FAR the biggest issue preventing more healthy diets is time constraints. Making multiple trips each week to the grocery for fresh produce and spending 2+ hours every single day with prep/cooking/cleanup is just a fuckton of time and energy that many don't have. People saying unhealthy foods aren't any cheaper are completely ignoring the cost of time involved as well.
1. Corn subsidies make unhealthy foods very inexpensive.
2. People don't know how to cook many/any healthy meals (I include myself here to. Even when I try to make something other than the small handful of meals I know, it gets hugely fucked up every single time. No matter how closely I try to follow the recipe. As a result, I've been discouraged from even trying to learn to cook because there's a great chance I'll just fuck it up somehow and waste all the money spent on ingredients. On top of that I just fucking loathe cooking/cleaning a kitchen. It's my most hated chore by far).
3. While buying healthy food isn't always drastically more expensive in upfront cost, a lot of it goes bad very quickly so it usually gets thrown own before even half of it has been used. A lot of shit goes bad after just 3 or 4 days. And if you fuck up a meal, that's money completely wasted so experimenting/trying to learn can be pricey.
4. If you want to avoid food going bad by purchasing smaller amounts, you'll have to make multiple trips to the grocery store every week. Which leads into...
5. TIME! By FAR the biggest issue preventing more healthy diets is time constraints. Making multiple trips each week to the grocery for fresh produce and spending 2+ hours every single day with prep/cooking/cleanup is just a fuckton of time and energy that many don't have. People saying unhealthy foods aren't any cheaper are completely ignoring the cost of time involved as well.
They call this time poverty.
Which poor people are also poor in as many work long shift or multiple jobs.
I found that's it's cheaper to eat healthy food. Buying food to cook vs fast food/take out/eating out has always saved me money. Cooking healthy is cheaper too. With produce you just eat what's in season. Cut back on red meat or meat in general and there is plenty left to spend on more produce.
That's what I did when I made way less money than I do now. It helped me manage my money debt better. It takes more time to prep the food so I imagine it's harder to do if you have a family to take care of.
That's what I did when I made way less money than I do now. It helped me manage my money debt better. It takes more time to prep the food so I imagine it's harder to do if you have a family to take care of.
Not necessarily the case. I make healthy meals and it can be cheaper than processed stuff at the grocery store. Obviously there are cheap processed foods like ramen or those Michelina's frozen dinners that are like $1.
A lot of processed food is expensive, including almost all the frozen dinners. I recently saw some Martha Stewart garbage frozen meal that has the absurd price of $10.49 for a single serving; fuck off Martha. Dinty Moore Beef Stew is $3.29. I can make less expensive soup than the $1.89 Campbell's red labels, and especially their ,more expensive Chunky ones. Hamburger Helper at $1.67 is pretty pricey considering it's mostly just pasta and the box weighs around 6 ounces, and you've got to buy ground hamburger or whatever on top of that.
Processed food doesn't always equal cheap. Yes, if you just buy only the least expensive processed food it would be cheaper than healthy stuff.
Also, there are few healthy options when eating out. I don't care if it's fast food or a fancy restaurant, they all add stupid amounts of sodium to nearly everything, not to mention sugar and fat. Just because some of these restaurants (Sweetgreen) claim to be healthy doesn't make it so.
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Trust me, I'm an expert; I've been grocery shopping for decades. Lmao. Who would've known this thread would be unintentionally hilarious.
Nobody is spending 2 hour or more a day cooking at home unless they're insane. Basic dishes just don't take that long in regards to prep. Most of the meals I cook I spend about 5 minutes of actually doing anything, with many less than that. You can't count the time you're not doing anything, like while something cooks in the stove. Cleanup also doesn't take much time or effort, assuming you use a dishwasher.
It's only elaborate dishes like lasagna that require a large amount of effort and time.
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This is a great post. Many people stating how cheap healthy food is are speaking from a environment where they have a number of factors in their favor. They have a kitchen with the tools needed to prepare food as well as the time required to prepare it. They have the stores available nearby that stock these foods and the transportation required to reach them.
Many families don't have these luxuries. Their only options are a gas station and a minimally stocked local grocer at best. They don't have the time or money to stock their home with fresh fruits and vegetables and prepare them before they spoil. They don't have the knowledge or experience of creating their own meals. You can feed a family much more easily and cheaply by shopping off the dollar menu at a fast food place or boiling ramen. Too many people dismiss poor eating habits as a choice and not as a symptom of a larger socioeconomic problem.
Healthy food is not expensive. This is a lie. The truth is that healthy food requires knowledge of cooking. Learn to cook simple, healthy meals and you will find it's not expensive to buy the ingredients.
Why are people cooking for 2+ hours every day? You're doing it wrong. Build a menu and go shopping for the week on Saturday. Then cook Sunday for the week. Tons of meals can be made to last throughout the week. This is what my family does. We cook on Sunday, and that menu lasts until Thursday. Then on Thursday we cook something simple with the ingredients we still have, make a homemade pizza on Friday night, and start over on Saturday.
You don't have to cook every day. It's totally inefficient.
How do people think Indians eat dinner? Our family chicken curry recipe takes 4+ hours to cook. Do you really think we're going to make that EVERY DAY? No, we make a shitload on Sunday, and stretch it out over the week.
The bolded right here is exactly the root of the problem. Why are there so many people who don't know how to cook in America? Are parents not teaching their children how to cook stuff? What is going on here?
Why are people cooking for 2+ hours every day? You're doing it wrong. Build a menu and go shopping for the week on Saturday. Then cook Sunday for the week. Tons of meals can be made to last throughout the week. This is what my family does. We cook on Sunday, and that menu lasts until Thursday. Then on Thursday we cook something simple with the ingredients we still have, make a homemade pizza on Friday night, and start over on Saturday.
You don't have to cook every day. It's totally inefficient.
How do people think Indians eat dinner? Our family chicken curry recipe takes 4+ hours to cook. Do you really think we're going to make that EVERY DAY? No, we make a shitload on Sunday, and stretch it out over the week.
The bolded right here is exactly the root of the problem. Why are there so many people who don't know how to cook in America? Are parents not teaching their children how to cook stuff? What is going on here?
And even in the case of lasagna, you're potentially making it on sunday, and then eating it over several days...not making a new lasagna every night. :P
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Dishes/cleanup alone usually takes me an hour every day. What kind of healthy dishes do you make that only take 5 minutes of work? Genuinely curious because I'm a terrible cook and get completely overwhelmed and frustrated every single time I try to look up new healthy/simple meals. I end up somehow ruining whatever I'm trying to make half the time anyway no matter how much I try to follow instructions.
Food cost is crazy. Wife and I have a 4 year old, I have some health issues so we try to eat lots of fresh food, chicken and I try to eat mostly vegan food when I can. We normally never eat out, we cook almost all our meals. Its been harder and harder to do so the last few years. Our grocery bill has doubled if we wanted to eat what is good for you. Because of cost we find ourselves eating more and more junk cause its what we can afford. Sucks.
2 hours I was including dishes/cleanup, which is usually an hour for me. Then an hour for the actual prep and cooking.
How does that work cooking for almost a whole week in one day? Don't the leftovers just taste like shit when you microwave it?
What fruit and veggies? Bananas range from 40 to 70cents per lb. Bags of Broccoli, Corn, Mixed Veggies, are a 1 to 2 dollars in the frozen island. Onions, Green Onions, Spinach, Kale, Sweet Potatoes, Cucumbers, and more are plenty cheap. The only ones I come across that seem to get expense are the berries, tomatoes, and avocados.
Lots of them. Chicken breast, brown rice and a vegetable, for example. For breakfast I often scramble some egg whites and have that with a piece of toast and a banana. Last night I had a salmon burger, which I fried on one side and used a spatula to flip it once, so that was about 5 seconds of effort. Had it with a salad from a kit I bought because it was on sale for like $1.99 (2 1/2 servings in the bag). I use my Instant Pot quite a bit, and you just throw stuff in there and let it do its thing.
I do use a dishwasher. Cleaning dishes and all that would be a time consuming pain in the ass. I had to do that for a few weeks once when my dishwasher broke and it was godawful.
I never have understood this. McDonalds meal is gonna be at least 5 bucks right? Meanwhile an apple and a protein bar will total 2 dollars. There are tons of other cheap and health foods besides those. Healthy food is super cheap, it's just that no one wants to eat it.
Depending on what I'm making (and the rare cases I'm cooking for other people), two hours isn't insane at all. Especially if you're also factoring in prep and cleanup.
Anybody that regularly grocery shops and has any basic level of awareness becomes an expert in the prices of things. It just takes a bare level of competency and having a memory longer than that of a gnat. Unless they're a person that thinks a banana costs $10 and don't care what anything costs.
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Some children live in a home with parents working multiple jobs, with a kitchen that has little more than a microwave and a stovetop. They may not have the tools necessary to cook, or as stated, the ingredients needed to do so.
The ability to cook a full, diverse meal is a privilege not shared by all.
Things like this.
And all of that affects the cost of a tomato at a grocery store how? What's holding these people back isn't the cost of produce at a grocery store versus processed food. Just because some people don't know how to cook or don't have the means to do so means zucchini costs more.
And yes, as I pointed out in my first post there are food deserts where getting fresh produce is next to impossible and probably rather expensive.
Focusing on cost of ingredients and meal prep strategies or whatever seems like an oversimplification of the larger problem, and just becomes a way to write it off as an issue of personal effort and responsibility.
It seems clear that the whole equation of "cost" input (money + time + knowledge + accessibility) to benefit output (in calories, convenience, enjoyment, etc.) is what favors unhealthy eating, and you have to address the whole thing if you actually want to make progress.
Teaching people how to cook and meal prep and choose cheap, healthy options is all well and good and can be part of a solution, but I expect things like paying people more and giving them healthcare would do more to move the needle.
It seems clear that the whole equation of "cost" input (money + time + knowledge + accessibility) to benefit output (in calories, convenience, enjoyment, etc.) is what favors unhealthy eating, and you have to address the whole thing if you actually want to make progress.
Teaching people how to cook and meal prep and choose cheap, healthy options is all well and good and can be part of a solution, but I expect things like paying people more and giving them healthcare would do more to move the needle.
Honestly this. Healthy food =/= organic/farmer's market etc (even if that's something I might prefer). You can make a healthy meal from very inexpensive and available grocery items. I think the bigger issue is healthy food requires more work, not necessarily more money.
While these are all good solutions, the Healthcare argument, applied to this debate, seems kind of after-the-fact ("here's some Healthcare for when you junk food your way into poor health!"). And not so much based on addressing why it's become so difficult for Americans to eat less healthy in the first place.
Looking at a lot of the replies to this thread, I feel like I can finally offload some things.
I'm convinced that kitchen equipment manufacturers are in the business of selling garbage to poorer customers because they think that poorer people just don't know better. Banking on people's ignorance. This should not be a thing, but it is and it is infuriating.
- Kitchen equipment is expensive and finicky
- Non-stick equipment wears out fast and requires constant replacement every 6-12mo, yet it's always the cheapest option. Basically buying a hardware subscription. Steel is more expensive. Carbon steel, more expensive. Aluminium/copper, easily in the $50-100+ range. Cast iron cookware is cheap but notoriously difficult.
- I see a lot of silicone equipment being sold cheap, but they also wear out fast. A $3 silicone spatula is not the same as a $3 wood or bamboo spatula. A lot of tools also don't work on non-stick surfaces.
- Cheap kitchen knives don't come with a whetstone or a lesson on sharpening. The modern trend of japanese knives doesn't help this, since japanese knives are difficult to sharpen correctly.
- A lot of dodgy kitchen equipment is sold cheap but don't use food grade materials. For example, cheap strainers have a chrome plating and will rust fast. Noone should need to cook with rusty tools.
- Cheap bowls/plates are shit, heavy (stoneware being trendy is truly horrid), hard to hand wash, and have very thin coatings. Prone to cracking and chipping too.
- Cheap dutch pots are some of the worst equipment I've had the pleasure of using. Good heavy pots have frightening price tags.
- A shit oven is worse than not having an oven. Everything coming out either burnt or under=cooked with severe cold/hot spots can seriously turn off an amateur cook.
- A kitchen scale isn't a necessity until it becomes one, and inaccurate kitchen scales are way too common. A good kitchen scale is, again, very easily $50+
- Dessert-making/baking is a serious flex on what tools you have on hand. An electric hand mixer, whisks and scrapers and correctly sized baking/setting dishes. A $2 bag of fruit and some flour/butter/sugar is nothing compared to the $100+ worth of equipment I need to use to turn that fruit into tart filling.
- Culinary education not being a priority in schools.
- Steel (especially carbon steel) equipment is finicky to use, requires a surprising amount of cooking oil, and can warp at high temperatures. But free pot-and-pan handling instructions are mostly limited to youtube videos.
- A $15 nonstick pan doesn't come with a lesson on how to care for that very delicate non-stick surface.
- Sharpening knives requires experience and patience and a whetstone. And a good whetstone can run $30-50+.. more costs.
- Ingredient substitutions and replacements are hardly a priority in most recipes. It's assumed knowledge, but it really isn't.
- Most online recipes are shit. Wrong temperatures, vague instructions, wrong measurements, weirdly specific ingredients.
I'm convinced that kitchen equipment manufacturers are in the business of selling garbage to poorer customers because they think that poorer people just don't know better. Banking on people's ignorance. This should not be a thing, but it is and it is infuriating.
As I said in the other thread healthy food is cheaper in a lot of places outside the USA. When I visit there it's mind blowing how much more expensive basic vegetables and fruits are than the UK when we have a 20% VAT on top as well.
Yes the usa is subsidising bad food because of corn subsidies and corn syrup is really really fucking bad, yet is basically in everything it can be in the usa to take advantage of that.
As I said in the other thread, I can buy
10 whole fresh carrots
1 red onion
3 Bell peppers
1 cucumber
2 lettuces
1 whole red cabbage
6 tomatoes
1 bunch of 6 spring/green onions
40 slices of thin ham
1 bottle of salad dressing
That comes to $10.22 with the 20% VAT included, of that $10.22 the ham and dressing takes up $3.58 of it and that will make me salads for 3-5 days......I know it varies from state to state and stuff but whenever I am in Houston and go to walmart with my in laws the prices for vegetables are way more than that. It's pretty ridiculous just how expensive fresh healthy food is in the usa.
Yes the usa is subsidising bad food because of corn subsidies and corn syrup is really really fucking bad, yet is basically in everything it can be in the usa to take advantage of that.
As I said in the other thread, I can buy
10 whole fresh carrots
1 red onion
3 Bell peppers
1 cucumber
2 lettuces
1 whole red cabbage
6 tomatoes
1 bunch of 6 spring/green onions
40 slices of thin ham
1 bottle of salad dressing
That comes to $10.22 with the 20% VAT included, of that $10.22 the ham and dressing takes up $3.58 of it and that will make me salads for 3-5 days......I know it varies from state to state and stuff but whenever I am in Houston and go to walmart with my in laws the prices for vegetables are way more than that. It's pretty ridiculous just how expensive fresh healthy food is in the usa.
When I cite healthcare as part of the solution, I don't really mean it in terms of directly addressing the consequences of unhealthy eating. I mean it as part of alleviating the broader socioeconomic pressures that contribute to unhealthy eating in the first place—a healthier population is better able to support themselves in general, through greater ability to work and earn money, or devote more energy to household work that effects diet (e.g. cooking), etc.
Having some experience with fasting now, I think most people could live healthy lives on 1, sometimes 2, low-carb meals a day, full of vegetables and protein. Eliminating breads and other high carb foods has done amazing things for me.
I feel full for longer, don't have any cravings, my bloating is gone, I have more energy, no longer tired, and I've lost 30+ pounds since starting low carb one meal a day.
And if you only eat once a day, your grocery bills will go way down. The only downside as far as I can tell is dealing with skeptical people who have been told their whole lives to eat 3 or more times a day, with lots of carbs. They need to do a major rethink of that teaching in schools.
I feel full for longer, don't have any cravings, my bloating is gone, I have more energy, no longer tired, and I've lost 30+ pounds since starting low carb one meal a day.
And if you only eat once a day, your grocery bills will go way down. The only downside as far as I can tell is dealing with skeptical people who have been told their whole lives to eat 3 or more times a day, with lots of carbs. They need to do a major rethink of that teaching in schools.
Again, your response is defensive, there is no attack happening, were not judging anybody for being obese, the majority of Americans are obese, were not arguing the fact that our society is built to make people obese because theres nobody in their right mind that can argue against it.
All were saying is that it IS possible to eat healthier, but everytime we do people respond acting like everyone in america is in a food desert and it takes 2 hours a day to cook a proper meal, thats not based on reality.
You seem to want people to know its ok to be obese because its out of their control, and the notion that it isnt out of their control is some kind of attack on them, it isnt.
Telling people that you have no choice but to be obese is incredibly unhelpful and will do nothing but discourage people from even trying.If you see someone fat shaming i will be right there with you telling that person to piss off, i have no tolerance for that behavior.
You made me figure this out.
I'm coming up with $31.83 for that. I did have to take some liberties with the ham and salad dressing. The ham is $7 and I think it if were thin cut it would be about 50 servings, but I'm not certain on that. I'm probably over-estimating the cost of the ham. I chose a $2.79 salad dressing.
Yeah, brown rice and frozen veggies are basically my only go-to healthy meal that I don't fuck up lol. I do make eggs and toast for egg sandwiches a lot too I guess. So I suppose I do have a small handful of relatively "healthy" stuff that I make. And when I lived alone I didn't mind just having really basic shit like that all the time (which is probably why I was much more healthy then, although I'm still a healthy weight today), because I have a rather plain pallet and don't actually "love" food the way most people do lol. I'm fine with just eating plain tasting food that makes me not hungry anymore and rarely get strong food cravings.
Dishes/cleanup are definitely the most time consuming and irritating part though. I often just don't have the energy after a long day to not only spend the time prepping food, waiting for it to finish, and then spending another hour on dishes. By the time that process is over, I don't actually have much uninterrupted free time left, so the temptation to just get takeout that I can buy, eat, and be done with in 20 minutes with no cleanup is often strong.
And I will say I've gotten much worse about eating healthy since my gf and I moved in together. She can hardly ever just "settle" with a basic meal using what we already have in the house. It's impossible to plan a meal a day in advance because if she's not in the mood for that food at the time, then she won't want it. If she's craving something that we don't have and/or don't know how to make, we pretty much have to get takeout. Social media has just completely ruined her expectations too lol. She's always showing me these extravagant tiktok or Instagram meals people make and saying "we should try that!" And I'm like, I can barely manage to properly cook a plain ass chicken breast lol. Her perception for home cooked meals we could realistically make on a regular basis just seems very warped. So half the time when we spend money on healthy ingredients, it just goes to waste either due to me fucking up an attempt at a new recipe, or her not being in the mood/not having energy to try making the new recipe until later in the week when the food's already gone bad. It's kinda just jaded me against trying to make new things, and heaven forbid we just have rice and veggies and tilapia (or any basic meal) more than once in a week. Struggling to get on the same page about this stuff just makes the logistics even more challenging and provide further incentive to just say fuck it and just get cheap takeout somewhere.
I can only imagine how much harder it would be coordinating, getting everyone on the same page, and executing the meal with kids involved.
Rough estimate based on the usual prices I pay. I generally am picking out the monster sized vegetables.
10 carrots - 1.50
Red onion - 0.75
3 green bell peppers - 1.75
1 cucumber - 1
2 lettuces - 1.50 (iceberg)
cabbage - 1.50
6 tomatoes (roma?) - $1.40
green onions - 0.75
bag o' ham - $5 (I don't know what 30 slices entails, but this is what I'm getting)
salad dressing - $2.5
Total: 17.65
Excellent post. All of this, especially the bolded points, strongly resonate with me.
I trained my kids early on that this is what I'm cooking and you can eat it or not but this is it. I certainly cater to their tastes, but the meal is what it is and I'm not going to cosplay short order cook.
Trying to make something both my kids want at the same time would lead to madness, dogs and cats living together, human sacrifice and all that.
Seasonal vegetables are usually rather cheap (leaks right now, for example). Some are generally cheap all year (potatoes, onions, carrots etc.).
Decent meat and chicken is definitely more expensive (adjusted by weight/calories/nutrients).
Yeah so it does vary wildly in the usa as I knew but it's still pretty ridiculous that it can cost so much more for basic healthy food. To be fair it isn't even just healthy stuff, a lot of unhealthy stuff is just as ridiculously overpriced too. Chocolate in walmart is way overpriced in a lot of cases. You know those nestle crunch bars? My wife loves that Chocolate as does her family, whenever I go to see my in laws I end up taking like 30 bars of them from the UK because the UK ones are twice a thick as the usa bars and the same length, but they cost £1. So like $1.30 or so depending on how the currency changes.
Same with chips (crisps). Big bag of Doritos or lays for £1 is pretty common, I may be misremembering usa prices on those because I honestly don't like the limited flavours america has but I don't think they were $1.30 in walmarts in Houston. I honestly don't understand why stuff can cost so much more there even the heavily subsidised bad food.
A 9.25 ounce bag of Doritos is usually $3.49, but I just bought some where if I bought 5 bags it was $1.67 each. I've got way too many Doritos now.
The "family-sized" 14.5 ounce bags are $4.49.
Yeah I actually think when it comes to vegetables one of the biggest problems is actually portion size in the usa. If someone buys a giant lettuce for example, they basically have to eat it pretty quickly or take steps to stop it going bad and wasting a bunch of it.
Everything seems to have to be over the top big from healthy stuff all the way to sizes of chip bags etc, and it's a weird thing for me as an outsider because it seems like the price is being raised for a bigger amount of stuff but in the end if people aren't actually eating it before it goes bad then no wonder people can't afford to eat that stuff. It's a lot easier to keep a bunch of bad food in the house that lasts months or years than to be buying huge ass vegetables and the like that just ends up being wasted money
Hell even when I go to restaurants with the in laws and my wife when I visit I usually end up ordering a child's portion for meals because I'd rather have 1/2 or 1/3rd the portion at a place and pay a price thats actually suitable for the amount I'm going to eat than buy a huge meal that's way too much food for me to eat in one sitting and end up taking it home with us. I don't generally reheat meals from places we've eaten at anyway so it's just a waste.
Hahaha the American dream.......seriously it's cool seeing the size of stuff at first as an outsider when you visit, my mum went out there 2 years after I first visited to meet my now wife, she said the same thing I did when I first went and saw the size of stuff at Walmart "wow those onions are huge!" Etc ......but once you actually live there even just for 3-5 months like I did a few times you really notice how much of a waste a lot of stuff is due to the sheer size that don't seem deigned for smaller or single households haha.
I don't think eating healthy is any more expensive than eating garbage as long as you prepare it yourself. If you're going out for fast food or think cooking involves putting fish sticks or frozen pizza in the oven then you may have some sticker shock.
Also one thing a lot of people don't realize is YOU DO NOT HAVE TO EAT MEAT WITH EVERY MEAL. I grew up in a midwest household where we ate meat for breakfast lunch and dinner. I continued doing this until 2 or three years ago. I no longer eat meat at breakfast or lunch and only do chicken or fish during some dinners. Once I learned how to make food without meat my meals got much healthier and much cheaper. Also, my meals started tasting better too because I learned to put flavors together instead of just seasoning meat. If I don't buy meat when I get groceries my cost is cut 40% or so.
Also one thing a lot of people don't realize is YOU DO NOT HAVE TO EAT MEAT WITH EVERY MEAL. I grew up in a midwest household where we ate meat for breakfast lunch and dinner. I continued doing this until 2 or three years ago. I no longer eat meat at breakfast or lunch and only do chicken or fish during some dinners. Once I learned how to make food without meat my meals got much healthier and much cheaper. Also, my meals started tasting better too because I learned to put flavors together instead of just seasoning meat. If I don't buy meat when I get groceries my cost is cut 40% or so.