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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

Watercress and cherries are relatively expensive but I think you'll find that onions, cabbage, and apples are all priced quite competitively with a lot of processed food.

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A single apple runs in the $0.30-$0.50 range where I'm at. It has 52 calories and 0.3 grams of protein. A mcdouble is $1 and it contains 390 calories and 22 grams of protein.

Eating fresh fruit is cheap, but it's still not as cost effective as some fast food, let alone processed food in the grocery store.

According to this study http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/healthy-vs-u... healthier diet patterns--fresh meat, vegetables, etc.--cost about $1.50 more per day. So, yes, there is some difference and meal prep etc. certainly takes longer. However, the processed food is so much cheaper argument can also be overstated.

It's not only meal prep (which I think you are understating the cost of), it's also having access to a kitchen and cooking supplies (knives, pans, bowls etc.) that allow you to easily cook, which is not cheap.

I actually agree that there are a lot of understandable reasons that people (perhaps especially Americans) eat crappy food rather than cooking something more nutritious--time, knowledge, living environment. I'm just arguing that, while the relative cost plays some role, it's not the overriding factor that it's sometimes made out to be.

See jandrese's response to your comment. It's not a trivial $6/day is not a trivial cost for even lower middle class people.

On the contrary: http://www.ibtimes.com/us-spends-less-food-any-other-country...

Don't forget, you also need to have some cooking skills, access to recipes, and time. Lots of time (relative to fast food.)

In Latin America 'fast food' like hotdogs and hamburgers is usually the slowest to get to the plate.

I can sit in a restaurant chair and be taking my soup within 60 seconds of sitting, in lots of places.

And it is usually (but not always) healthier than 'fast food'.

At a sit-down restaurant, yeah, a burger will often take longer than most other items. That's because it's being prepared fresh. A real "fast food" place doesn't prepare its food fresh like that. An actual fast food burger can be prepared and put into your hands in less than a minute if people aren't busy (and it's not held up by the rest of your order).

if you want cooking hardware cheap its fairly easy in the u.s. Thrift stores' more reliable items to find are always cooking hardware, all manner of containers, utensils. things like a large crockpot can be had for under $30 new. Also people state that fresh veggies are expensive, but frozen vegetables can be found for cheap. The practice now has been flash freezing for a lot of these I think so nutrients are preserved.

So for a family of 4 you are talking about $6/day, which is $2,190/year. For a working class family with an income of $20,000-$40,000/year it represents roughly 5-10% of their total income for the year to eat healthy.

That's not a small chunk of change for families like that. Sure they'll almost certainly earn that back in lower medical costs in the long run, but in the short term it's a serious burden.

By percentage of household spending, the US spends less on food than anyone else. There are several articles about this. This was the first search result for me:

http://www.ibtimes.com/us-spends-less-food-any-other-country...

That's fair. It's worth pointing out though that that particular comparison was between healthy and unhealthy food. There are various other studies out there that look at the cost of fast food vs. home-cooked healthy meals and things of that sort and found that the healthier meals were often cheaper. Of course, as others have pointed out there are other costs and other types of costs associated with food prep.

>" a working class family with an income of $20,000-$40,000/year"

A "working class" family doesn't have an income of $20,000. That would put a family in the bottom 12% by income. Median family income was $67,000/year in 2014.

"Working class" is a common euphemism for "poor". Often implied is "very".

At least in chicago it just means you have to work for a living, in contrast to people who are wealthy enough that work is optional.

"Working class" is definitely much poorer than "middle class" no matter where you are, and middle class people still work for a living.

At least where I am from "Working Class" implies skilled labor like Electrician or Carpenter, and some white-collar jobs like realty agents, nurses and teachers. People who make $35k-$60k.

People making $20k, like landscapers, janitors, forklift operators, and loaders, are generally called "Unskilled Laborers", not working class.

It's still about the same amount of money, if not less, than they probably spend on e.g. cigarettes, cable television, etc.

Supplement the fresh produce with lentils, beans, and other nutritionally dense items that store well and you'll be far more competitive. Beans are insanely cheap, $0.44 for a 200g serving with 650 calories and 39g of protein. So $0.25 matches the calories/protein of a MD and leaves you $0.75 for fresh produce.

I can live very cheaply on frozen mixed veggies, black beans and rice. Occasionally with some meat. Sometimes I use Mexican-style spicing. Sometimes Indian-style. Sometimes Chinese-style. I make huge batches, and freeze single servings. Plus spinach etc, and fruit and chocolate for desert.

Why not just soylent, at that point?

Eating tasteless frozen vegetables and starchy beans and rice, again and again day after day, sounds like hell to me. Eating is so effortful compared to soylent -- it's revolting to me how much chewing I would have to do to eat something like that.

You can just buy flavorings for soylent, or blend in some fruit, and it'll have a pleasant taste, and you won't spend time on it. Seems so much better than frozen anything.

> it's revolting to me how much chewing I would have to do

I have heard that argument several times when Soylent is mentioned. Don't dentists ever bring up the importance of chewing for gum and teeth health? I thought it's common knowledge.

Why do you think chewing is healthy at all? It allows organic matter to get into your teeth and physically wears them down. This is a hard question to google, because you get chewing tobacco and gum chewing results, but can you provide any evidence that chewing on its own is somehow healthy? What mechanism do you think it hits?

Frozen mixed veggies (carrots, peas, corn, green beans and lima beans) are far from tasteless. Also, they're frozen soon after picking, so nutritional content is higher than most market produce. And the combination of corn, beans and rice supplies complete protein. Plus there's plenty of fiber.

Here's my "Indian" spicing, with largest quantities first: cumin, granulated garlic, black pepper, coriander, cinnamon, turmeric. First I start microwaving the veggies in a large Pyrex bowl. Then I fry the spices lightly in ghee, add canned black beans. If I'm using meat, I add that first and brown. Then I mix it all in a large pot, and simmer for a while. Finally I adjust spicing, and let cool.

I freeze in single-portion containers. It takes me an hour or two to prepare ~20 servings. When I'm hungry, it takes about 10 minutes from freezer to microwaving to eating.

I totally don't get the thing about chewing. I like chewing. I enjoy the process as flavors from each component blend with each other and the spicing. I can't imagine feeling satisfied after just drinking a meal.

I have never found frozen vegetables to have any taste other than the faint suggestion of their natural taste in a sea of mushy blandness.

When I was on a DIY blend and mixed batches of powder weekly, it took 20-30 minutes (depending how much I concentrated on it) to prepare a week's worth of meals. It took ~2 minutes to pour the powder into a pitcher at the beginning of the day, so 40 seconds/meal prep time.

Not to mention the time saved shopping, planning for shopping, driving to the store, etc., Which almost certainly takes at least 90 minutes/trip, which let's say you make biweekly. comes to 105-155 minutes of weekly overhead plus 10 minutes a meal for 315-365 minutes of total time wasted by consuming solid food a week. In comparison, DIY soylent is 62-72 minutes a week. If you're buying powder, that drops to just the time required to mix a day's batch, dropping the total time cost to 42 minutes a week! If you buy Soylent 2.0, you spend ZERO minutes on food preparation and can ALWAYS consume nutrients concurrently with any other task.

That is HOURS a week you are literally stealing from yourself. You could use that to scale your startup that much quicker, or if you're a freelancer you could just convert it directly to billable hours! (If you're a wage slave, why are you on HN?)

By design Soylent has a complete nutritional profile, so you're getting everything you need, complete proteins, fiber, whatever, and far better than your vegetables, which have variance that can't be measured or controlled. This also means you're always satisfied while on Soylent ("drinking a meal" is possible, but quixotic... Soylent allows you to liberate yourself from the concept of meals, and just consume calories as you need to throughout the day, which has the added advantage of eliminating food coma and keeping energy release steady).

I usually drink my soylent unflavored, because I've long since stopped caring about things like taste. The ROI just isn't there. Taste sensations are a fleeting experience that rarely generates a lasting memory (how did your lunch taste yesterday? The day before? The month before?), whereas the tangible benefits you can attain from saving that time tend to be persistent long into the future and generally compound. But, if you want to add ~30 seconds to prep time, you could mix in cinnamon, MSG, blend in some fruit, whatever, and you'll have a taste experience that is almost certainly on the same tier as reheated frozen vegetables.

"Supplement the fresh produce with lentils, beans, and other nutritionally dense items that store well and you'll be far more competitive."

found an interesting example that matches this description, "‘cucina povera" (poor cuisine), yesterday ~ http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/17/rachel-r...

Interesting, my mother used to cook meals of a similar vein for us when I was little. She always just called it, "poor people workin' food."

Yes, exactly right. There are many foods that can give you inexpensive calories and protein. E.g. black beans and rice. Bags of rice and beans and potatoes and similar are so cheap that they are practically free.

It's the fresh fruit and produce that's expensive, relatively speaking. You have to keep an eye out for whats on sale or in season.

Where people often go wrong is in buying expensive junk food. Potato chips cost $3 a bag around here. Same with a package of Oreos. Ridiculous.

I've seen large gallon+ sized bags of fiji apples at Safeway for $1.99 (containing maybe 15 apples). At my local grocer, I've seen 'bruised' bags that contain about 10 apples for 99c (with only one or two actually really bruised).

The problem is that people assume that good food has to look good, and that fear of bruised/uncharismatic food is what drives prices of healthy base-ingredient foods up.

On a related note, tomatoes are a tragic victim of appearances. The "nice" looking tomatoes you can get in any grocery store here are really quite awful. They sacrificed taste and texture at the altar of appearances. In contrast, if you buy heirloom tomatoes, they look pretty bad, but they taste amazing.

Well if it's pure calories/macros, take the 40 cent apple, add some 30 cent protein powder and then 10-20 cents of oats and you've got similar calories and better macros for the same or cheaper if you go for a banana or find some deals on apples. Throw in half a bag of frozen veggies and you're a lot better off for a quarter more than the McDouble.

Easy and fast? No, there's opportunity cost there of course but that's just an example off the top of my head. Heck and apple and a can of tuna would come close in price.

You could eat three eggs ~150g for ~20g protein, ~200 cals and it would cost you about a dollar if you buy by the dozen. Going by UK prices, we pay <£3 for a dozen large eggs so 75 pence for 3.

If you fried them up as an omelette, you get a healthy breakfast with very few carbs. Chuck in a tablespoon of olive oil (again, we assume bought by the litre) and you've got another 100 calories.

Fruit is expensive because, per your locale, it's almost always out of season. Supermarket apples in particular are massively marked up; we pay £2 a bag here. Any orchard will sell you apples (seasonally) for much much less.

Wow, £3 is a lot for eggs. Over here, they used to be around $2/dozen (~£1.30), and then this happened,

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/04/21/401319019/5-m...

http://nypost.com/2015/06/07/eggs-prices-on-the-rise-due-to-...

All of a sudden, buying eggs isn't the cheapest way to eat animal protein

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/23/eggs-...

True, that's probably on the high side, I had a look on mySupermarket and it's around £2.00-2.50 depending whether you want factory/free range. Since all the supermarkets price match these days, they've settled on £2.25. Oraganic will set you back over £3.50. It seem the eggs I buy now from Morrisons are "Very Large" which have a slight premium for the size. If you shop at Waitrose then you're looking at £3-4.50.

When I can, I buy from farms which sell by the roadside and you can normally get a half-dozen for £1.30 or so.

> A single apple runs in the $0.30-$0.50 range where I'm at.

They're also free for a quarter of the year if god forbid you turn off the TV and walk outside. Same with cherries for that matter.

Somebody buy this guy a ticket to Detroit or something, jeese.

And yet Detroit has pretty much the perfect weather for growing apples. I'd imagine there have to be old trees all throughout the city from back when there was money, given that they can easily produce fruit for 100+ years and can go decades with little to no maintenance.

Absolutely right (to whoever downvoted you) - go explore! I've trekked with my bicycle to forgotten orchards and overgrown corners of parks and riverbanks, and found plenty.

Even roadsides are laden with wild produce. Some less-trafficked verges are quite OK for foraging.

I've found, in my temperate industrialized urban area, an astonishing amount of 'wild' food, all free for the taking: apple, pear, cherry, plum, berries, rose hips, hazelnut, walnut...

One fall I picked so many kilograms of apples that I still had a few wrinkled (but edible) left-overs by the following spring - all stored carefully, unrefrigerated, in a cellar. Other fruits are preserved as jellies, or in jars, or simply frozen.

It angered me last year to see a fully laden plum tree in a parking lot, with plums squished on the ground, and a row of terraced houses nearby, with kids playing outside... Their stupid parents had ignored the bounty literally on their doorstep.

By volume or mass yes, by calorie absolutely not.

Edit: I totally misunderstood the comment I was replying to and agree with it.

But that should even things out, right ?

Watercress is about $2.49 to $2.99 for a bag with four servings in it. That's not prohibitive. A real problem is it's hard to find watercress, and anecdotally I see it more in upscale stores than in regular supermarkets in poor areas.

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