Put the salad in ice cold water for a while and it will freshen. Also, don't buy mixed bags since they sadden faster.Please solve this issue because my $8 bagged salad from Whole Foods turns sad after 2 days.
Put the salad in ice cold water for a while and it will freshen. Also, don't buy mixed bags since they sadden faster.Please solve this issue because my $8 bagged salad from Whole Foods turns sad after 2 days.
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.Please solve this issue because my $8 bagged salad from Whole Foods turns sad after 2 days.
I used to use soylent by the bag and it came down to under $2 per serving. You could add things to it that made it taste like a milkshake. Although its now sold in stores, it never really caught on like I always imagined it would. Hopefully we find more ways to diversify those soylent-type offerings. I've seen soylent-style ice cream, ramen, and cookie dough. I'd love for it to catch on and drive prices even further south.
I'm in Australia, I probably should have made that clear. But the use of Kg probably tipped you off that I'm not American. So comparing veg to veg cost isn't a one to one due to transport and exchange rates.
However comparing my veg costs to my processed food costs are applicable when the argument is that fresh veg is objectively cheaper than processed.
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.
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.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.
They call this time poverty.Another issue tied to this is how healthy food takes more work to make (prep, cook, clean, etc), whereas unhealthy shit just comes in a bag for you to heat up quick and easy.
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.Also, and I feel like I should point this out because it keeps happening, there's a lot of people in here making the wrong comparisons. Eating healthy while making your meals at home is more expensive than buying processed foods and making your meals at home. Eating healthy while eating out is generally more expensive than eating unhealthy while eating out (and this is especially true when it comes to fast food and many fast casual restaurants). Crossing streams and comparing eating out (and eating unhealthy) vs. eating in (and eating healthy) is kind of besides the point.
Trust me, I'm an expert; I've been grocery shopping for decades. Lmao. Who would've known this thread would be unintentionally hilarious.Why would I give that information out over the internet just to prove a point?
Also, not only have I been grocery shopping for decades, I've been working at them for decades too. My first job was in 1999 as a bagger at a grocery store, and I've more or less worked at them ever since.
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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. :PNobody 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.
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.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.
Stop making lasagna or whatever every day that takes a ton of time to prepare.
2 hours I was including dishes/cleanup, which is usually an hour for me. Then an hour for the actual prep and cooking.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?
Fruits and vegatables?
Hell yes.
I only feed myself and spend way too much on food because of fruits and veggies.
If only ate chicken and rice, it would be much cheaper.
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.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.
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.
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.Trust me, I'm an expert; I've been grocery shopping for decades. Lmao. Who would've known this thread would be unintentionally hilarious.
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?
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.
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.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.
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.It's a lie, unless you live in a food desert. Healthy food is inexpensive. Produce, especially that which is in season, is relatively cheap. So are bags of brown rice and beans along with other staples.
Fast food is way more expensive than making a healthy meal from scratch. So is all the frozen food crap at the grocery stores. And so on.
Healthy food doesn't equal 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.
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.
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.
You made me figure this out.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.
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.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.
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.
Excellent post. All of this, especially the bolded points, strongly resonate with me.Looking at a lot of the replies to this thread, I feel like I can finally offload some things.
Unhealthy food is not cheap. Cooking unhealthy food is easy and fast and doesn't require lessons on how to use a kitchen or a sharp knife/grater I don't have.
- 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.
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.I can only imagine how much harder it would be coordinating, getting everyone on the same page, and executing the meal with kids involved.
Seasonal vegetables are usually rather cheap (leaks right now, for example). Some are generally cheap all year (potatoes, onions, carrots etc.).Fruits and vegatables?
Hell yes.
I only feed myself and spend way too much on food because of fruits and veggies.
If only ate chicken and rice, it would be much cheaper.
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.
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
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.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 ÂŁ1. So like $1.30 or so depending on how the currency changes.
Same with chips (crisps). Big bag of Doritos or lays for ÂŁ1 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.
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.