The strange effects of thinking healthy food is costlier
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1) Find recipe 2) Make shopping list 3) Go to preferred grocery store and fulfill shopping list
This is a foolproof recipe for "more expensive". To eat healthy and maintain reasonable spending, grocery shopping needs to come _before_ recipe selection. One needs to go to the store, buy what's on sale (which is also frequently what's in season and thus probably more nutrient packed), and then build a recipe around that using non-perishable pantry ingredients. The cost difference between the two approaches will generally be at least 1.5X, and sometimes a lot more.
For what you're suggesting, price alone would be sufficient, no?
http://www.thegivinggardensproject.com/
These projects are attempting something along those lines. They're local to Davis CA, home of the UC which was once a dedicated agricultural school.
Something like Google Glass, scanning in real-time the food at a grocery store, identifying it (deep learning), and finding you recipes.
In our home, we've learned to combine these approaches: use seasonal recipes as a general shopping list (you can "borrow" ones from Blue Apron, for example), then make substitutions as we're shopping based on what's fresh/available. Moreover, shopping for multiple meals at once allows for sharing ingredients between meals. Everything in the fridge "belongs" to a particular meal, so by the time we're done cooking them we usually have close to zero arbitrary perishables.
By cooking more and improving technique, you'll also get a sense of how to make sensible changes on the fly and be able to deviate further from recipes while still making a good meal, so there are further efficiency gains available.
As long as you don't buy anything really unusual, you can throw it all in a stir fry once a week.
I do make most of my own broths/stocks when I can... sometimes cravings for mushroom broth can be more expensive. There is definitely a taste difference between made at home and packaged broths... I'll use packaged, but not always a preference.
I also tend to taste the differences in meats more than veggies though... what they're fed seems to make some serious differences in flavor (wish they'd label that on chicken eggs)... I happen to like grain fed cows more than grass fed. It's pretty subjective though.
I do wish I was more of an early morning person, in order to hit up some of the farmers markets. Would be nice to find better connections for certain things I use more of.
Lettuce + jalapeno + banana
Banana + spinach + jalapeno + cilantro
Banana is a bit of an odd ingredient here, but the key would be to cook it separately and very lightly, so it's more like a plantain.
A good technique while you're learning how to cook is if some combination of ingredients sounds dodgy, cook them separately first, then put small amounts together and see if it works as a dish. Sometimes it helps to adjust the ratio or add some seasoning.
Here's my followup to this approach:
- make whatever meals - chuck leftovers in bucket, put in freezer as they occur - make soup once a week using bucket and mixing in whatever broth you bought on sale last week
Sometimes it rocks, other times not so much. But it's always a good, hearty meal.
Can you tell why I never got married (walked once, stood up once)? :-)
Not really. But it sounds like an interesting story if you care to share the gist of it.
Things got better when we tried a farm-to-table service that would deliver a box of veggies every week. That was essentially the first trip. Then we could plan out our meals and take one trip to the store.
We stopped the service because the quality of what was delivered...... varied. Greatly.
Not to mention the actual effect on taste. For instance, butter can be substituted for olive oil in many dishes, but the end result will taste very different.
It's all experience... Also, watching a few youtube videos on sauce basics doesn't hurt, and will carry you a long way in terms of "fixing up" what you make to a level beyond steamed broccoli and baked chicken and potato. Again, it does take some practice, but not that hard really.
Well that doesn't sound delicious at all.
As far as what is in season, I'd suggest simply checking the ads. In the US, a lot of foods get cheap when they are in season. Here in Norway, the prices go up (Paying more for better quality due to it being in season). If you simply pay attention to this sort of thing for a while, you get the hang of it. Another method is to check traditional foods for the different holidays and seasons, as they are often centered around seasonal foods.
I keep most of the staples that don't go bad on hand, but there are plenty of recipes I want to make that don't have adequate substitutes because something I'm missing is a key ingredient.
/me takes on a dramatic tone
"Taco night was never the same after Shaftway tried substituting pumpkin for the tomatoes in the salsa..."
When you go to the grocery store, you buy as if you're planning on being lazy all week, and envision yourself opening the fridge thinking "Hmmmm, how am I going to do the protein/veggie/starch combo tonight?" Things "belonging to one meal" lead to food waste. You just need general patterns for whipping dinners together based on what you have, and what's going bad soon.
Vegetables: Frozen/canned veggies that you like, bag salads, a bundle of asparagus (just remember to actually cook it in the next few days!)
Starches: Potatoes, rice, (or potato flakes, and pre-boiled rice if you need something fast), mac and cheese in a box, a box of pre-mixed couscous, some frozen side dish you microwave -- whatever.
Protein: Meat, obviously. Chicken's easy to freeze and easy to roast. Steak when it's on sale, pork chops. Sausages if you're in a German mood. If you want to be a little more heart healthy, you can mix this up with some Eggplant parmesan, or... I don't know. I was raised by a Texan, so my powers are useless here.
Just buy everything in relatively equal numbers, buy groceries so they're half and half "eat right away -- will go bad" and "can stay in the freezer/pantry forever" so that your stock of food is never too badly out of balance.
I rarely ever shop with a "complete grocery list," just like my parents didn't (we need paper towels, eggs, bread, and... uh, food, I guess). I use recipes only on special occasions (You need an instruction guide to tell you how to roast a chicken?), and you just manage somehow. You don't need an app, you don't need someone to decide what your groceries are for you, you don't need to break out the recipe book every night -- you just freaking make dinner. Just like you take out the trash, you do the dishes, you vacuum, you make dinner. It's not hard, it just takes practice.
Meal planning is just like a lot of things: When you learn to do it growing up, it _is_ obvious. When you don't, it isn't.
The idea of mixing-and-matching and making ad hoc meals never occurred to me, and I'm STILL not good at it. It's usually my wife who is able to throw things together off-script, and it typically works. My mind is much more recipe- or routine- oriented -- which I suspect I share with much of the HN crowd.
Home cooking can be costly in non-monetary ways: time, skills, variety (if you're on a really low budget). But my eyes roll pretty violently if I hear anyone opining that poor Americans have to eat potato chips because they're cheaper than raw ingredients. It's like they've never experienced or known even secondhand what food actually costs at Walmart. (Compare chips with a bag of actual raw potatoes, for example -- trivial prep (microwave whole after poking holes in the skin), less expensive to purchase by any measure, at least slightly more nutrition and roughage when you eat the skin.)
Where I see people argue this, the measure usually includes time and convenience of getting to the store, ability to store the food, etc. Have you heard the term 'food desert'?
I find the intermediate cases interesting. Food deserts and/or dire poverty (they overlap!) can narrate why large numbers of Americans eat poorly. They aren't a satisfying explanation for why many people with cars and refrigerators choose to buy frozen TV dinners instead of frozen ingredients one aisle over (or potato chips instead of potatoes, soda instead of black coffee...). I don't have a complete answer, but I'm trying to preempt an incorrect answer ("ingredients for home cooked meals cost more than processed food") by way of counterexample.
This study made quite an impression on me when it came out: http://www.academia.edu/454540/Dinner_Preparation_In_the_Mod...
Working class families that make heavy use of pre-packaged foods do not save money on meals or save meal prep time overall (though they reduced the "hands on" phase of prep). Pre-packaged foods did simplify shopping.
This points to a different set of drivers for processed foods than low sticker price. Making Hot Pockets relatively more expensive and fresh leafy greens less expensive isn't going to improve eating patterns much if (e.g.) people are eschewing home cooking to reduce cognitive overhead rather than to minimize the weekly food budget.
There's also a secondary explanation that not everyone has access to a stove / hot plate and pots + pans (college students are a particularly salient example of this, especially when living in dorms). You could also attribute part of the preference for easy-to-prepare foods to lack of know-how (or even just perceived difficulty of prep) -- you'd be surprised how many people don't know how to do something as simple as fry an egg.
Agreed.
But this a complex problem.
First, we need the ability to scan food quickly, and know what it is. The Swiss have https://www.openfood.ch which is awesome, but that is just the Swiss. Alternatively, we could use our bonus card of the grocery store, or use OCR on the receipt. This'd give us the names of the ingredients at the very least.
Next, at a minimum, we need a way to detect and read the expiration date, allow to sort on this, and have some red/yellow/green markers for warning. On food, there is no standard for this as of yet. We'd need standards for perishable food like bananas and tomatoes. How long do those last? Perhaps ML/AI would be of help here.
I'd also argue we need food allergy warnings, but that'd be a feature for after 1.0 (just add a temporary warning).
We also need to store these ingredients in a database which is accessibly to the customers. I know some are thinking SaaS, cloud, etc but I prefer privacy TYVM. We need to be able to modify this database, and use say cron jobs for the expire date.
Next, we need the ability to connect this personal data -while containing privacy- with recipe databases (for which there is no open standard, and is pested with copyright), which would be used to match the ingredients which A) user has, and are to expire B) user prefers to use C) user doesn't mind buying. The suggestions to the user are based on ML/AI, but the user can set a day they want to 'experiment'; then a cuisine is selected the user normally does not follow (this last feature not for 1.0).
A later feature would give accurate feedback to the user how long the cooking is going to take based on ML/AI.
Finally, a backend with grocery store DBs is used, to order new ingredients/foods. This has support for price, brands, S&H, food allergies, shop opening time. Backorder support, suggestion support (together w/recipe backend).
(I ignored drones delivering the orders.)
Ambitious perhaps. Does any of this exist?
In fact, if you look at a typical village in India, the housewife isn't going to have the time or means to "visit a preferred grocery store after making a shopping list" - the stores come to you! People live in narrow streets. On a given day, only 4-5 pushcarts can ply a given street. So the pushcart vendors decide among themselves which streets they will ply. Say you live in Street A. On a Monday, the carrot, tomato, potato, peas and beans pushcarts will visit your street. The housewife is now constrained by her daily shopping budget. The pushcart vendor is constrained by how much produce he can physically push on his cart. They are both constrained by the number of people living on the street & the haggling capacity of each person.
All of these constraints then resolve into which produce gets bought & in what quantity. Say the housewife ends up with half a kilo of beans and some tomatoes -> that day the family eats beans curry and some warm tomato soup for dinner. This is how we ate for decades back in India.
Once my mom came to the US on a vacation and I introduced to her the concept of eating-what-you-want and going to a Safeway and buying-tomatoes-in-winter-just-because ...all of that was pretty foreign & mind-blowing to her.
What are the best solutions for this currently? And are you working on a new solution?
I also show the nutrients for an entire recipe and nutrients per ingredient. I use the USDA nutrition database for this.
I hope to have time next year to both rewrite the web UI and improve the recipe knowledge base part of cookingspace.
She's noticed a lot of weird dissonances in the way people think about grocery pricing over the years I've known her. For example, despite its reputation, Whole Foods has some of the cheapest prices on staple pantry items in the city. Things like flour, sugar, eggs, butter, olive oil, milk, and rice, as well as many of the "365" branded packaged products are actually much cheaper than "low end" grocery stores like Gristedes or Key Food. Trader Joe's has a reputation as a high end grocery as well, but they have incredibly cheap produce and other perishables. If you go to Gristedes and buy a box of corn flakes you're going to spend $4-6. For that price you can buy 24 eggs! At Key Food you can buy pork chops for $2 / pound. Canned beans and other non-perishables can also be incredibly cheap. With the exception of the corn flakes, which - while delicious - is actually loaded with corn syrup - everything I just listed is perfectly healthy when prepared at home.
Anecdotally, my mother spends an absolute fortune on nasty weight watchers meals because she believes they are "healthier" than just cooking herself a piece of chicken and some broccoli. My sister will eat a $3 lara bar that is "made with real fruit!" instead of a 25c banana.
It doesn't surprise me that within the universe of packaged foods, people think that the expensive ones are healthier than the cheap ones. But I just wish people would figure out that within the universe of foods, the packaged ones are both more expensive and typically less healthy than cooking your own food.
Maybe you mean people should ...
I have had people hopefully ask me "It must be healthy because it's weight watchers, mustn't it?" when the food in question was a chocolate mouse.
Founded by two brothers, the ALDI chains have the concept of insanely cheap products, but no rebates, no coupons, no extra - usually saving money by just rolling the entire pallet directly into the store from the truck, having no storage space, nor having to pay anyone to unload it.
I've also found fresh foods, cheeses, some wines to be of really good quality. And if something's bad, they have a "replace+money back" guarantee - as in, 'were sorry you had to come back, here's your money and the goods for your hassle'.
But if you want to buy local beer and local socks and support local jobs in other ways with the extra $, coolio.
You may be thinking of somewhere else.
The workers at this location are numerous, cheery and helpful; the store is well-put together, with large displays. Some items are cheaper, but mostly it just seems like boxed/frozen "health" food, that doesn't seem all that frugal to buy, so I pass on it.
Before this location was built, my friends would go to New Mexico to do Trader Joes runs, so I do believe other locations must be economically attractive enough to spend that sort of time/gas to get there.
It's just the local market I guess: there's many local boutique grocery brands in the area: Whole Foods, Vitamin Cottage, Sprouts, Luckys... It's either TJ is competing with them on price (they can be quite expensive...), or their competing on the much larger super markets, who are also raising their prices and bringing in luxury items, like pour-your-own-growler Kombucha.
It's sort of madne$$.
The most expensive food I've ever bought were in small bodega stores (unhealthy food), or like the pantry of a camping place (where else am I going to?)
Your post piqued my interest with your price of 2 dozen eggss: $4-$6 seems on the steep end. Lots of prior HN discussion on chicken egg economics ;)
It wasn't an exact comparison, as they don't always have the same products/weights, etc. But it was indicative of how I would buy at each store.
But they price gouge you if you don't stick to these items. I am eating their small soup atm, which I bought at outrageous price of $8 . You have to put on blinders and stick to the script if you go to whole foods, there is a reason this place is mockingly called 'whole paycheck' .
This is pretty much any grocery store. Margins in grocery are incredibly thin so they have to sell some things near cost to get people in, and then selling other things above to make some money.
There are full time moms who comparison shop at WholePaycheck, and they know it.
The major supermarkets in the UK did something like this (they might still do it). If you shopped online, after your order had been delivered you would receive an email telling you whether your shop would have been cheaper or more expensive at their biggest competitor and by how much. If your shop in Tesco for example worked out £3 more expensive than if you'd done the shop in ASDA they would refund you the difference or give you a coupon. The limitation was that it did not apply to own-brand items I believe.
The problem I think with a third party doing something like this is that it'll just lead to a price war. Supermarkets are able to squeeze their suppliers pretty hard and while you might save 10p on your milk some local farmer ends up totally screwed with no bargaining position.
Anyhow, there is another app that has come out since (Basket), that is very similar to what we wanted to build. They seem to have done better on the incentivization front.
Might check Basket out and see if it does what you want. (I have no relationship with them).
Incidentally, our data suggested that if you were willing to shop at 3 or more stores you could save on average more than 85% on your grocery bills... the savings are potentially huge.
Here is a link to Basket. My partner and I were simultaneously super bummed but also excited to see the idea realized: https://basketsavings.com/
Right now, my most cost effective yet high quality ingredient shopping trip consists of going to Walmart for anything in a package and WF for produce/fresh things.
Are there any YouTube videos of paranoid cooking? ie they'd teach where to look to see if you've screwed up etc.
Asking for a friend.
(I honestly used to avoid cooking because I wasn't good at it -- the only thing to "fix" that was to start cooking, and now I feel comfortable with it and cook all the time)
I'll never be a great cook, and I occasionally overcook something -- which is in my opinion the number one sin -- when I'm not paying attention, but I manage. Cooking doesn't scare me anymore.
I've been cooking in one way or another since I was about 10 years old and this perspective has simply never occurred to me. And for the life of me I could never understand why people thought cooking was so difficult.
Suddenly a lot of that makes sense now :-)
a fellow programmer shared that not everybody understands cooking like that, that the causal relationships, understanding of temperatures, or additions of flavors.
He was reading this book. "The Science of Cooking" https://www.amazon.com/Science-Cooking-Peter-Barham/dp/35406...
In a way, cooking is like coding; we can all learn through a bootcamp or tutorial, but for some of us it clicks really quickly.
I started cooking relatively late in my life, and the lesson is: unless you're doing something strange, it's really hard to poison yourself by cooking. Also: real cooks improvise, they don't follow a recipe set in stone.
You can always screwup and cook something that doesn't taste nice (especially by overcooking), but if you mix and cook random vegetables, chicken, rice, etc, you'll generally have something edible and non-poisonous. If you follow an actual recipe it's even better, of course. Eventually you'll learn some tricks (e.g. sautéed onions go with everything and smell nice).
I suppose stay away from seafood or anything you're unsure of how (long) to cook.
-If you use dried beans, soak them overnight and boil them for an hour. Discard the water. You'll save yourself stomach pains this way.
-Do not eat uncooked wheat. Your stomach will thank you.
-Do not eat potatoes with green bits. They're a bit toxic.
-If the vacuum-sealed packaging meat comes in is starting to bulge, pick another package. The meat is releasing gases in the initial stages of spoiling. (Probably still fine to eat,cooked)
-Wash your vegetables. Soil bacteria can give you a bad time, although the risk isn't terribly high. In some countries, human excrement is still used for fertilization - this carries a risk of Hepatitis C and you want to heat the produce properly before consumption.
-If it smells off or tastes bad, don't eat it!
I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. This list is already full of "very unlikely to give you trouble" items as is. Have fun cooking!
- Wash your hands.
- Wash your tools.
- Wash fruits and vegetables before chopping.
- Don't let meat other than whole beef sit at room temperature.
- Cook meat other than whole beef all the way through. Use a thermometer, not a rule of thumb.
- If in doubt, cook it another five minutes.
- Wash anything that touches raw meat other than whole beef before it touches anything else. This includes your hands.
- If in doubt, wash it again.
http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/homehygiene/Pages/washing-chicken...
And learn the statistics on them as well, so that you have a logical way to dismiss the fear.
Then start cooking simple things and work your way up.
I used to think cooking was this sort of mysterious voodoo with arbitrary rules, and could not (and still cannot) memorize a recipe to save my life. Good Eats changed everything.
Alton Brown had a background in children's television, and decided to apply that approach to a cooking show.* Instead of simply saying "this meal will taste great, here's how to make it," he goes into weird Sesame Street-style digressions into the science behind things like the "Mailard Reaction" (how the browned crust on a burger or steak happens and why it's delicious) or why different oils get used for different things.
Once the science, chemistry and physics of cooking started making sense to me, I quickly became a pretty goddamned good chef (if I do say so myself). I think this will have a similar effect on your fears — once you get how it all works you won't be afraid of fucking up.
After you've covered the basics with Alton, try http://www.cookingforengineers.com and Modernist Cuisine
* In fact, he didn't even know how to cook; he had the idea, took two years of classes, then made the pitch to the networks.
A book that we've used a lot for ideas on cooking healthy and cheap meals is "Good and Cheap" by Leanne Brown. You can download the PDF for free from her site, or buy a hardcopy from several sites (I have no affiliation, just a happy buyer/reader/cook):
https://www.leannebrown.com/cookbooks/
It's based on trying to counter this very idea ... and has a lot of great ideas for what feels like "fancy" meals, but with pretty simple ingredients/instructions. Highly recommended if you are interested in expanding your kitchen repertoire (whether you're a cooking newbie or an experienced "foodie").
Also experiment with roasting things in the oven because with a cooking thermometer that's pretty much fool proof in terms of safety.
Finally consider a slow cooker/Instapot. Cook things for 8 hours and everything is safe to eat if it ever will be.
Other than that, be paranoid about raw meat and its juices. Use disinfecting spray and paper towels to clean up any drips or spills. Don't set meat wrappers on the counter - send them straight into the trash. Immediately wash any utensils or plates that touched the meat, then wash your hands.
Wash your veggies; wash them well. Be sure to get leftovers into the fridge as soon as they're reasonably cool. To be on the safe side, throw away leftovers that have been out for more than 2 hours.
In the case of these new brands, they probably meet the same sanitary standards most of the time, and may be more healthy or better for the environment a lot of the time. However, I am convinced that their biggest feature is being that it lets Whole Foods feel like it is as big as Walmart when its purchasing managers negotiate with their suppliers.
--
On another subject, while it may not help, Wolfram|Alpha lets you quickly approximate a consolidated "nutrition facts" for any recipe. It could be easy to compare to the weight watchers meal. For example:
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F4+lb+chicken+breas...
Eating healthy food _is_ costlier than not caring about what you eat. However, that does not mean that expensive equals healthy.
It's basically the same old "everything that's good is (at least somewhat) expensive, but not everything that's expensive is good" applied to food.
BTW: why the heck are both source and journal reference links to some top level domains?
Actually, that is false and contradicting. It is perfectly possible to eat healthy and cheap. Sure, if you limit your price you end up with less choice, but that does not mean the cheap choices are bad, or that you end up with expensive food if you want quality. An entire industry wants to make you think otherwise, but they're deceiving the customers. Take for example, from the article, the following: "The key was that for some participants the Chicken Balsamic Wrap was listed as more expensive, and for others the Roasted Chicken Wrap cost more.". The names of products should not be misleading, yet the industry gets away with it, 'as long as its in the product'. Sounds good? Well, if there are trace amounts in the product, it counts. This is just one example. Another one is right in the article: "“Rich in Vitamin A for eye health.”" this is a fraudulent statement, a propaganda lie which stems from WWII. The Brits used it as propaganda to convince the general public, including the Germans, that this was what allowed them to see German airplanes in advance (it was actually radar which did). It has long since been debunked. Our laws are failing us here. They are supposed to protect us, but companies work around them.
Some very healthy foods which aren't that expensive (in my grocery store, in my country, YMMV (!!)): free range chicken eggs. Compared to a cereal, much more healthy, and filling. Yet a fraction of the price. Another example: an unripe banana is high on magnesium, yet doesn't contain a lot of sugar. You may find it between other bananas which are more ripe. Frozen raspberries and blueberries, cost about half of fresh ones, yet they'll stay well longer. You won't find the green friends on those berries while they're in the freezer. Another silly one is all those fruit juices. As if you need vitamin C if you simply eat green vegetables such as brocolli. There are countless of examples available. It does require some comparisons and it does depend on what you believe is healthy. People don't wanna make those comparisons at 5 PM after a long day of work, I get that. That is why I want governments to interfere. The industry is too selfish to manage this on their own (they're for profit, and enjoy a lack of regulations on it), and is confusing the general public with smoke screens on what is healthy and what isn't, or like this article explains with silly prices.
It is actually quite a fallacy, and the opposite is suggesting: "because this is expensive, and we claim it is healthy, it is therefore more likely to be healthy than if it were cheap. Else we would sell it cheaper." it stems from the ridiculous assumption that expensive food means healthier food.
As for your statement: "Eating healthy food _is_ costlier than not caring about what you eat." we are creature of habit. If your food habits are healthy as they are, and you have done your best to find cheap yet quality food in your grocery store then you'll be fine with doing groceries at 5 PM whilst being tired from work. You just mindlessly buy the things you always buy, you don't get distracted by offers, you don't have to do any research or comparisons. You already made up your mind. It is not equal to 'not caring' since you did once care, but it is 'careless' in a sense.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-c...
> Vitamin A helps the eye convert light into a signal that can be transmitted to the brain, allowing people to see under conditions of low light. In addition, the cornea (the clear front of the eye) can literally disappear if the body does not get enough vitamin A. Every year an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 children become blind as a result of vitamin A deficiency. In settings where undernourished people suffer from extreme vitamin A deficiencies, such as Nepal or India, supplements of the vitamin or beta-carotene have been shown to improve night vision
So the notion that someone in the West (who I assume is the reader of this website, and not a malnourished person from Africa) needs to focus on vitamin A, or has to care about such statements, is false. They get their vitamin A, they are not deficient, and the statement that one needs to eat something rich in vitamin A for eye health is very likely to be false; therefore unnecessary, and also fraudulent. Such statements are akin to a statement such as "rich in NaCl for survival". Sure, one needs NaCl, but we already get far too much of it anyway; the average West civilian does not have to focus on more NaCl. If anything, less. I admit a major difference is that it is harder to overdose on vitamin A, than NaCl, but the former is still inaccurate and makes people feel well that they treat themselves with healthy foods which are in fact nothing but needless quackery.
You seem to have missed my point entirely, so let me elaborate a bit more. I do not claim that it's impossible to eat healthy and cheap. However, everything else being equal, healthy food has to be costlier than the cheapest food, because otherwise those two would be the same.
For example you named free range chicken eggs as being healthy and cheap. And while that's probably true, eggs from egg factories will still be cheaper. So the healthy option is also the costlier one.
> It is not equal to 'not caring' since you did once care, but it is 'careless' in a sense.
It's probably poorly phrased, but I meant not caring literally, as in the only thing that matters is nutritional value per dollar spent. Thought the same thing applies if you factor in flavor.
Why can they not be the same? Why can something not be healthiest and cheapest? And, if we ban all unhealthy food, or tax it, it is going to be not the cheapest.
> And while that's probably true, eggs from egg factories will still be cheaper.
Glad you used that example! I don't know about the USA, but those eggs are becoming more rare in grocery stores here due to pressure from consumer right and animal right organisations.
The reverse (ie. your statement) can also be true. Whole wheat bread is more rare (and if they even do have it, more expensive). Meanwhile, white bread is being made as if it looks like whole wheat (brown), and as if it contains whole wheat (either none, or barely). In this example, you are absolutely correct (at least, here, I don't know about US for example). But, that reverse is not true by definition. It is not a law. I would agree with you, if you'd argue that it is more likely. IMO, that is due to lack of regulations which stems from lack of political willpower to bother.
Having really discriminating consumers is probably the one way to make sure stores stop selling unhealthy things. Regarding laws though -- consumers and voters are largely the same group of people. If they're not discriminating enough to care about not buying something, it's unlikely they'll vote on those preferences too.
Would be interesting to look into the why and/or how come.
> Having really discriminating consumers is probably the one way to make sure stores stop selling unhealthy things. Regarding laws though -- consumers and voters are largely the same group of people. If they're not discriminating enough to care about not buying something, it's unlikely they'll vote on those preferences too.
It is difficult to change a habit for an individual, and the same is true for a society, but if we can change the habit of some individuals we can change enough momentum to change society for the better. Its not that nobody cares; consumer right movement does care, for example. My point is that we don't have to change the habit of every single individual. We need enough people who do care. At the very worst, we'd need 51% of the population, but likely much lower will do.
First we must understand the why and how come though. I think there are solid reasons for that being how it is though. They're kinda intertwined/related to each other.
1a) Brand loyalty. People don't like change, they like to stick to what they know. This creates easy brand loyalty. This also has the disadvantage that newcomers [in the food business] have a harder time to achieve market share.
1b) Abundance of choice. Choice is great, too much choice is not. Clear choices, with clear pros and cons are informational . This also affects #1, and once again means even less space for newcomers.
2) Contradicting information / lack of consensus. For one, we still haven't reached a consensus of how something like diabetes is developed, we still as a society fail to combat obesity.
3) Time constraints. You can' expect hard working people who spend their free time to construct a diet for them.
4a) Lack of stimulus for the industry. For a variety of reasons the industry gets away with serving & selling low quality food. While becoming ill from food is short-term, ill from diet is long term. The blame is shifted towards the lifestyle choice of the people. Some self responsibility is fair, but not all.
4b) Lack of direct feedback. As briefly explained in 4a the user does not receive direct feedback over the cause and effect of their lifestyle choices. Some food choices do give direct feedback, but the user has learned to ignore.
4c) Addiction. Adding to 1a and 4a/b, there is a clear benefit to having people becoming addicting to your food, so that they keep coming back. This also makes it difficult for newcomers, since people tend to get back to their product. Even if yours is better. Note, I'm a former cigarette addict, so I know how difficult it is to overcome an addiction.
How can we solve such a complex issue? Well not overnight, but for starters:
Re 1) These cannot be easily solved. Or at least, I don't see how. As long as these exist this gives us a disadvantage. However, globalisation has given us even more food choice, including some healthy ones, and something like drones allows us to order less common but healthy foods more easily (even though the local grocery store may not carry it).
Re 2, 4) This can be solved with legislation, but also with proof hunting. This phenomenon has some momentum due to the fake news debacle in US election. Computers can aid us here.
Re 3) Here, too, computers can aid us. I have some ideas on software which could aid us specifically with this aspect of the problem, see [1].
What's the alternative? To spend your entire life researching which nutrients justify a higher price and which are just marketing gimmicks? Then spend even more time figuring out if "enriched" foods are sufficient or if there's no substitute for the real deal? Then research suppliers for individual brands and see if their production process is up to snuff?
Then you get into the whole organic debate, the GMO debate, and other things like fresh vs. frozen. Did you know that most vegetables are just as healthy frozen but broccoli is better fresh? And who knows the best way to prepare each vegetable to maximize the bioavailability of each nutrient? I know I can't keep track of it all... and that's without taking into account the ever-changing science of nutrition.
The real failure here is our food labeling system. It's not our fault that we have to rely on an unreliable signal (price) as an indicator of a product's nutritional value.
We would prefer to believe that nutrition is immensely complex, for the same reason that those "One Weird Tip For a Flat Belly" banner ads work. We know the blindingly obvious truth, but we don't like it very much. Pretending that nutrition is difficult is a cognitive defence against eating the things that all of us know to be healthy - fresh vegetables and whole grains. It gives us an excuse for eating foods that are obviously enormously salty, fatty and sugary.
In essence, we are addicts in denial. We are hooked on foods that we know to be bad for us. We are hooked on excessively large portions. We are hooked on fat, hooked on salt, hooked on sugar. We will invent any fiction we need to avoid facing the reality of that addiction.
But this isn't about that. This is about comparing the relative nutritional value of foods that aren't as easy to categorize.
Like trainers always say, the best workout plan is the one you'll do, and the same is true of diet. Most people won't be happy very long eating "Mainly plants. Not too much." They will inevitably deviate from that diet. That doesn't mean they'll have to eat unhealthy foods, but they will need a way to judge the relative nutritional value of foods that aren't "mainly plants" in order to make good choices. At that point, nutrition does become fairly complex.
That means most of the complexity gets elided -- just eat and cook however all your neighbors/family eat, and you'll be fine, because other people have done all the hard work of figuring out what works well.
The most striking thing about America is how absent traditional food culture is -- how it's been progressively supplanted by industrialized food to the point where people are afraid to cook.
One way to fix this is to pick a reasonably close cuisine and just implement it. E.g. decide that you really like to eat Italian, buy an (authentic) Italian home cooking recipe book. It will be more expensive, because we're not in Italy, but the combinations will probably be healthy.
The "it's cheaper to eat fresh" people don't really address that use case. Historically, the mother would be the homemaker, probably live in a multi-generational home (or neighborhood), and have many children so there would help with food prep and chores. Most people were in agriculture, so many fresh ingredients were literally right there. Also, homes used to be simpler and less immaculate.
Skipping dessert is free. Not snacking between meals is free. Serving smaller portions is free. Apples are cheaper than candy bars, carrots are cheaper than meat. Whole grains and pulses are the basic sustenance for most of the poorest people on earth.
The problem is simply too much food, available too cheaply. There is an abundance of tempting, calorie-dense foods. Given the choice between spending $0.25 on a banana and $1 on a candy bar, most people choose the candy bar. This is why we're seeing increasing mortality in middle-income countries - when you overcome the diseases of poverty, you quickly start developing the diseases of wealth.
A balanced diet containing a mix of vegetables, meat or meat substitute, and carbohydrates will provide this satiety and the necessary nutrients. And it will taste good.
A blame-centric approach only works on an individual basis. Using a blame-centric model is unlikely to be productive when addressing groups.
I think he makes an excellent point that most of society isn't suffering illness from a lack of micronutrients but instead excess calories and I think it's worth mentioning because so much worry and over optimisation in people trying to eat healthier involves trying to maximise micronutrients.
Yes, swapping from a calorie dense diet to a not so dense one is mentally difficult. That's a point for why we need less focus on a vague "heathy" label that makes the task out to not just be a difficult exercise of willpower but complex as well.
Can you point to some examples of unhealthy food that's actually cheap, in terms of price per weight unit?
I simply cannot think of anything from that category that rivals basic rice, veggies, sale-price meat, etc. If you're going solely on cheap, you will generally end up in these "healthier" categories. If you're going on "don't care", you'll not stick in the cheap and be more pricey, plus more likely in convenience items of questionable to poor healthiness.
It's funny how often I see some tempting convenience food or treat or whatever, and notice that its price per weight is more expensive than a quality steak.
As far as spoilage goes, that's just purchasing what you'll assume to eat. And having a few vegetables go off at the end after you've already eaten many of them doesn't even double the price per unit, while convenience food ranges tend to be many times the price.
I don't believe this is true. I've never been able to eat out as cheaply as I can cook healthy food.
False. I started preparing pretty much all of my meals for health reasons and spend much less than I ever did before. When I didn't care and I bought what I craved or sounded good when I was hungry, I was spending close to 50%-60% more at the store. Prepared or processed foods are generally more expensive than others. Packaging, marketing etc are used to influence your purchasing decisions.
Example:
frozen sauteed broccoli: 2 servings -> $3.49
14oz frozen broccoli: ~5 servings -> $1.09
Still, a lot of processed foods at Whole Foods et al are still not 'good' for you. Organic carbs and Himalayan salt are still carbs and sodium.
Being comfortable in the kitchen is important too. If you have to go looking up recipes and following them exactly that can make cooking at home a lot slower and tedious.
It's easy to point out things like dried beans and cheap root vegetables but those only really compete on the cost perspective, convenience and ease are just as important IMO.
Or at the very bottom of the hierarchy, below the bags of salad you dump in a bowl you provide, there are salads sold already in a plastic bowl, simply break the seal and eat them. Usually you have to tear open a plastic envelope of salad dressing but its not that hard. They're still cheaper and more filling than a big mac.
Food is a multidimensional problem. The opposite of a big mac is probably not a Rutabaga or a cactus leaf or a bag of uncooked unseasoned rice.
Of course, I haven't had a Big Mac in about 25 years... maybe they're better now.
10/10 optimism
Having seen one recently after a few decades, I think it should be renamed "Mac" to keep in line with truth in advertising laws. I've seen currency larger in diameter than a "Big" Mac.
I can keep a granola bar in my desk for a month though....Bananas I have to get every week.
Where do you live such that a premade salad in a bowl is cheaper than a Big Mac? I'd argue that a bagged salad with multiple servings without the dressing (in same cases, with the dressing) would be as much or cheaper. I don't think I'd be able to find an open-and-eat salad under ~$4. Not at a grocer and certainly not at a convenience store nor restaurant. Bagged salads are definitely cheaper per server by a wide margin though.
In UK a Big Mac is £2.99 [1] (ie ~$3.75), [2] says it's ~214g and 500kcal. Apparently it has 42g of salad in it [4].
Tesco, one of the biggest UK supermarkets, sell bowled salads at around the £1 mark, [3]; that's for 100g and about 100kcal.
Per kcal the Big Mac is cheaper. Assuming you need food to meet a particular energy intake per day then eating _these_ salads will be ~60% more expensive than eating Big Macs.
[1] Google.co.uk [2] http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/calories/calorie_counte... [3] http://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/search/default.aspx?s... [4] http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ukhome/whatmakesmcdonalds/questio...
If you care even a bit about health, it's a no-brainer to acquire some basic kitchen skills. People have been doing such things for thousands of years; 20xx first-worlders living with sanitation and kitchen conveniences should have no problem.
It's much more expensive to eat healthily, and in general more expensive food is healthier, so people are just running in reality.
To be exact, you can eat cheapily and healthily, but it is very boring. If you want an exciting and healthy diet, that gets expensive. No ready meals, and things like prawns and raspberries (two of my favourites) are great low cal options, but not cheap in quantity.
Not everything needs to be 24/7 exciting, least of all food. Figure out a few spices and you're good to go. What else is there?
I too lost the same amount of weight and food to me now is just fuel organized in tupperware that I heat up and scoop down in a few minutes. Why? Now when I go out to eat I get to properly think and decide what to spend my money on, it's that much better.
$50/week on food. Veggies, lean meats, rotate a source of carbs.
I can get just as much enjoyment as I did from an unhealthy diet, but at quite a bit more cost.
Lean meats and spices. How is that boring? If I want lobster or steak I'll go out and have it properly done. At that point it's not boring, it's luxury. If you equate "not boring" with luxury then I'm not sure what to tell you.
[0]: http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-cook-perfect-steak-in-the-ov...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2014/01/07/the-new-...
(I think steak is easier to cook than chicken)
If you pay a lot more as a single-person household, you have an excellent opportunity for improvement on your hands.
They can develop mold, which sometimes is not noticeable, but will attract booklice. I have had that happen to a bag of rice. There are also rice weevils.
Thinking back to my bachelor pad days you are correct for processed stuff like making your own PB&J sandwich from bottled peanut butter and jam and purchased sliced bread. I'd end up throwing out moldy bread and jelly and rancid old peanut butter. Ironically to save money I had to cook healthier, stir fries of frozen veg and deli meat, salads I could eat in a day or two, fruits and veggies, stuff like that.
I could buy a hot dog from a hot dog stand or make my own at seemingly lower expense, but if I made my own hot dog there is no way I could gulp down a whole package of hot dogs and bag of buns at once, and of course the package sizes are different and the LCD is quite large, so I'd toss an opened package of hot dogs after some days of it looking or smelling questionable, or toss moldy hot dog buns, and swear off "cooking".
But boiling a wiener and putting it in a bun is not what most people mean by home cooking, nor assembling a PB and J sandwich.
Generally speaking you can save money by cooking at home, but not by assembling processed components at home. Or at least its much harder. I don't think I can run a net profit off homemade pizza if its made with pre-made store bought crusts.
Only things I've ever had to throw out have been things that come in really large packages, like lettuce (extremely cheap and not the main part of a diet anyway, so it doesn't matter if half of it goes to waste) and other big leafy vegetables that are very cheap, like Kale or other non-essentials.
Most meats come in package sizes well suited for individual consumption:
1. Sirloin Steak = 2 portions
2. Package of turkey/chicken breasts = 2 portions
3. Rotisserie chicken = 2 meals/portions
4. Fish filet (salmon, tilapia, etc.) = various packaging, but easy enough to pick for 1 or 2 portions with no leftovers.
If you're a single person household and you buy a 20lb turkey for yourself...well that's on you for not being able to do basic arithmetic.
This already makes eating healthy costlier (if, of course, we don't count medical costs from not eating healthy), as this "considerable more time" is an opportunity cost.
We have been restricting cost in this discussion to monetary cost, not opportunity cost. Why bring in this separate definition just to muddy the waters, when in the parent comments we're just talking about dollars and cents?
Cooking is a rare hobby where the result of the recreation displaces a cost. I've never made anything in my carpentry shop or electronic lab that I couldn't live without or I'd just have to pay someone else to do, those hobbies are 100% financial loss, whereas every meal a hobbyist makes displaces filler material they'd have to have otherwise purchased from someone, and often enough the financial loss of the cooking hobby is negative, or rephrased a net financial gain.
Hobbies, like everything else, have opportunity costs attached, which even applies just between hobbies (e.g. practicing your X more happens to the detriment of Y, your other hobby), but obviously also between hobbies and work or other lifestyle choices.
There are tons of people whose hobbies have run afoul of their work, or family relations, or health, etc, as the effort, time, etc, for doing a hobby could apply to any of those other things.
I feel a good rule (I should have said this in my original post) is : "cheap, tasty, healthy, fast" -- pick at most 3.
At the moment I alternate between dumping 'cheap' and 'tasty' most of the time, with the occasional 'fast' when I have the time.
One of the things you have to realize is that if you're trying to save money, you don't get to eat what you want to eat all the time.
That's like saying "It's much more expensive to eat fresh produce, my two favorite are foie gras and truffles, and those are fresh, but not cheap."
Most people (in the world) eat a diet of starches and pulses with some spices. Considering how cheap beans, rice, and vegetables are at ethnic markets and farmers's markets, eating healthier is more time consuming, not more expensive than eating crappy food.
Of course, you'll have to give up on the fact that you can have raspberries year round. Raspberries are a seasonal fruit, and in season, they are cheap as heck, are as all produce.
I've found that, to a certain degree, "cheap, healthy, tasty, fast -- pick at most three" seems to (often) be the situation I find myself in.
Well, that's sort of to be expected. :-( All the foods you've mentioned are highly processed, and engineered to be shelf-stable, tasty, and use cheap, good tasting ingredients. I wouldn't even consider them food anymore, more like highly engineering edible dopamine stimulators.
Opposed to that, a grapefruit does not stand much of a chance. But if you kick processed sugars for a few weeks, things start slowly tasting better, or so I hear. I've been trying to do that, but sugar is in almost everything these days
If it isn't convenient (timely and open at desired times), tasty, and inexpensive it won't compete on the three metrics that the actual competition is winning on.
I'll agree they're abundant, but are they actually cheap? How much money in those products do you have to eat to feel full, vs healthier food?
It's easy to pound down snack foods and desserts but still feel snacky, and that's just flushing money down the toilet while adding to your personal carry-on burden.
Eating healthy, cheap, easy is easy if you put even 4 hours of thought into it and are willing to learn. I'm in Toronto Canada, so these might not be tailored to you, but you can get the general idea.
1. Eat things in season. Squash, carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, corn are just unbelievably cheap in the autumn. Use garlic, onion, bay leaf, oil, a couple thai chili peppers fry them in the bottom of a pot with some coconut oil. Put the cubed squash (skins and all!) in the pot with a lid and some stock (veggie or chicken) until soft. Smush down add other veggies and add a half can of coconut milk and you have 8 or 10 meals at around a $1 CAD per meal. Easy to heat up, bring to work, lasts a while in the fridge.
2. Eat better, cheaper animal protein. Mussels are very cheap and very delicious. Canned clams are easy too. Sardines on toast are easy and delicious. Eggs. If you're adventurous get the butcher to grind beef heart with chuck and make much healthier beef heart burgers.
3. Figure out the cost of things per calorie, but be careful to restrict what you buy to just within the set of healthy foods. For example, whole milk is pretty cheap per calorie and still pretty healthy if you're of European ancestry. Nuts look completely overpriced until you realize that they are 1/5th the cost per calorie of carrots. I know it seems counter intuitive to try to find calorie rich foods, but if you're poor you do need to pay attention to this. Avocados, olive oil, granola, almond butter.
4. If it is dry, canned, or otherwise keeps, buy in bulk. Brown rice, steel cut oats, flour, cans of tomatoes, bags of onions, carrots, everything.
5. Slow cookers make things easy, pressure cookers make things fast. I own one that does both and if you want fast, healthy, cheap, delicious: one chicken leg, some stock, veggies, some dry spices + pressure cooker = perfect meal in 10 mins with very little cleanup.
I bet I could eat an entire box of hamburger helper. I know I could eat three cheezeburgers at a sitting. Once in a rare while I indulge in junk food like that. But beef tenderloin costing maybe $25/lb naturally tends to take care of the whole "technically you only need 2 oz protein per day" or whatever it is exactly.
Yes Chinese restaurants are famous for using interesting (gross) parts of the chicken to increase profits, but for how little chicken I use in a family sized stir fry I can afford a clean probably not salmonella infected boneless skinless organic chicken breast.
I mean, sure, for $10 I could eat hot dogs until I puke and/or gain two pounds of fat, but I'd rather eat a nice small grilled steak.
As a rough guess the more you use your grill and wok and the less you use your oven, toaster, and microwave, the healthier you're probably eating. Also a wok looks expensive as an experiment, like a couple meals worth of food, but unless you do something crazy it never wears out and its cheap compared to something like a complete all-clad stainless steel cooktop set. Also if you're trying to learn how to cook, most vegetables will not kill you with food poisoning no matter how hard you try, so some vegetarian stir fries are a delicious place to start.
This a thousand times. My wife and I cook most of our meals at home and whenever someone asks me how to get started I always recommend a good quality (read $20-30) carbon steel wok that will last for decades if cared for properly. The ease/flexibility of cooking in it is amazing and healthy stir fries are close to idiot proof for beginners so long as they follow a couple of simple rules.
EDIT: the other tip I generally give is learn the base of a vinaigrette (one part vinegar to two/three parts oil) and it will absolutely slash the amount of worthless calories and sugar you consume. When trying to eat healthy so many people will prepare a salad (good) but then drench it in store bought salad dressing without reading the label (bad). With the base recipe you can experiment with different vinegars and acids (e.g. lemon juice) plus flavor boosters like garlic and shallots which will produce a super tasty and healthy dressing at a fraction of the cost of buying something at the store.
Then one day, my wife had prepared salad fixings for dinner and I assembled a bowl with lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber, topped with a small handful of peanuts and sesame seeds and a little cheese... not a bad meal, but I needed a little dressing. I enjoy dressing as much as the next guy, but I do try to use as little as possible.
Anyway, the lettuce was pretty wet and I had a flash of insight... I just sprinkled the ranch dressing powder directly on the salad and it worked great. You get the tang and savor, without all the fat and sugar.
A more useful discussion revolves around time. In order to eat cheap and healthy food you must cook everything yourself! Preferably in larger batches; things like slow cooking a whole chicken in water to not only prepare meat but to make chicken broth as well, then using that meat and broth later in other dishes and soups. All of this takes planning and time.
Buying frozen meals or going to McDonalds is vastly more expensive, dollar wise, than preparing your own food. But they also require zero planning and minimal effort -- those are the real "savings" provided by junk food.
I can walk into a Best Buy right now and laugh at all the people wasting money on perceived better electronics because of price.
And it is ridiculously expensive, at least when compared to corn and mandioca that grows on my yard and potatoes that are very cheap.
People tend to think that "healthy" food is just thr opposite of junk food. The problem is that potatoes can be infinitely cheap, but it won't be healthy to eat only potatoes. An actual healthy diet with all nutrients can easily be very expensive, even more so when corporations manage to distort prices (I once lived in a place where the cheapest source of clean water available was soda. When compared to juices or milk even Coca-Cola, that was the most expensive soda, looked like a great deal)
Since I try to get around 60% of my caloric intake from fat and protein, that's where most of the expense came from. For fat, there are a small number of fruits like avocados, durian, and coconuts and those tend to be more expensive / hard to find, most nuts are expensive, cow's milk isn't very healthy and never sat well with me before exercise, but the best and cheapest option is probably to just included some healthy oil in your cooking. For protein, chicken is good and not too pricey, fish is good but expensive, red meat should be avoided above all, legumes are cheap and great tasting if prepared well, tofu and eggs are cheap and high in protein but it's typically recommended to not consume them in large quantities, coagulated cow's blood is awesome but good luck finding it outside of Asia!
I stand firmly on the side that it is expensive to eat truly healthy food, especially if you live in a food desert, and especially if you have specific nutritional requirements like that of an athlete. Plus, a huge factor is that to eat cheaply, you have to cook, and as the HN crowd should know, time is money. The time preparing, cleaning up, buying food, and actually learning how to cook is significant but worth it.
Also, those people that try to feed their cats/dogs "vegan" or "vegetarian" are terrible human beings and don't deserve their furry friends.
If I were to cook for my cats, they would want meat, chicken and bacon every day.
Nearly all of the good foods had premium pricing, but not all of the premium priced foods were good quality. On the other hand, few to none of the mid to low priced foods actually were 'good'.
there's basically zero evidence organic or gluten free are "healthier".
A quick google search shows 86% of people who are think they're gluten sensitive, aren't. That's nearly 90% of the stuff in the "gluten free" section of your grocery that's being bought by people who are just wrong.
So for 9/10 people buying gluten free food thinking it's healthier, there is no evidence. lintiness is speaking to that.
In my extensive experience with GF food if its naturally inherently GF its delicious, like a grilled steak or a fresh salad. I am hungry right now and I'm salivating eyeing a granny smith apple up and down right now, it is going to be so tart and juicy... If its artificially GF like a GF chocolate cake, its freaking disgusting like mashed potatoes mixed with shredded coconut levels of disgusting. The true irony of the "gluten free" aisle is its mostly inedible and the real "GF" aisles are the long existing produce and meat aisles. Aka the stuff that was "food" before there were food factories trying to convince us something more profitable is "food".
Having a specific disease or intolerance doesn't mean anything about the general healthiness of a food.
By your logic, if some people are lactose intolerant, then all lactose is unhealthy.
Depends on your definition of "organic". The US legal definition? True.
The Demeter/Bioland/Naturland definition? Untrue. For example, they have far lower limits for antibiotics, and require more time for farm animals outside, on actual grass. Larger spaces for the animals is required, too.
As a result, your meat will have higher quality, and you reduce antibiotics overuse.
One could also make the argument that stricter regulations of pesticides/herbicides, or entirely banning them (as one of the mentioned groups requires), also reduces the amount of them left in the final product - as, in contrast to governmental inspections, these private groups inspect a lot more often, which helps ensure you don't end up buying a product with pesticide rates an order of magnitude over the legal limits.
Regarding gluten free: That's for most people not helpful, but it helps people with celiac disease
A $6 bag of apples has less calories in it than a loaf of Wonderbread.
$2 of broccoli has less calories than a $0.30 can of soda.
edit: is hn the no joke zone?
I'd agree that buying healthy options at the grocery store does not have to be more expensive than junk food (or even cheaper), but that's assuming you can plan ahead well enough to not throw away the fresh food once it spoils. Granted, that's a matter of habit, but a hard habit to overcome if you're not used to it. I rarely shop in the middle of the grocery store, except for staples, but I still manage to throw a bit away a week later.
If you use the satiety factor, it is possible to eat healthy and spend less. For example, eat oatmeal instead of sugary cereals for breakfast, eat bananas as snacks instead of chips or others, eat beans or brown rice instead of hamburgers for lunches and dinners. Drink water instead of buying diet or sugar beverages. All these (oatmeal, bananas, beans) are healthier and not necessarily more expensive.
"I'm hungry. The bananas are black and we ran out of oatmeal Tuesday. Do I want to do some chores (cook) and then eat rice and beans in an hour or do I want to get a double cheeseburger on sale?"
Drinking water and eating less is (for most Americans) much healthier and much cheaper, though.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Coca-Cola-Cola-12-fl-oz-24-pack/2...
Faygo or their store brand will be all the much cheaper.
Generic soda is obviously much cheaper.
You may notice that the poor eating those foods, and not dramatically more expensive items like soda, aren't getting fat.
From my experience, the significant cost in healthy foods is the time to prep and cook them. I keep it simple by steaming frozen veggies and can eat that repeatedly, but most people prefer a lot more variety in their diet at least in respect to healthy foods.
i grocery shop for a family of four. my experience is i can buy as much as i like in the produce section without having much of an effect on the bill, but i have to be careful with meat. i used to be more fretful with fresh fruit, thinking it was really expensive, but the more of that i buy the less of the more expensive stuff i need, and no one's going hungry around here.
you're right that bread and the like are cheap, but there's only so much of that a person can eat. when you're talking about the cost of food, that's a fact that needs to be accounted for.
$1.87 Chicken breast or thighs and some spices and vinegar is MUCH cheaper then any pre-processed crap. Take Hamburger Helper you pay $2 for the box and $4.5 for the ground beef your at $6.50. I can cook something with rice a ton cheaper.
Chicken breast has about 500 calories per pound.
So it's 5x the cost per calorie of the price someone would pay if they were shopping price hard. Meat is basically off the table entirely if you are working on keeping price low.
Bananas are super cheap though.
The culture of dieting is seriously broken. One of the only things worse than being fat is being openly trying to lose weight, because everyone knows how to help you (lol). The typical way a person responds in the above situation is "well, I'm already eating fried chicken" because we're either "being good" or "bad" and as we keep making it harder to be good we get a worse overall balance. People are unable to put one foot in front of the other because we always make it about running the whole race at once. A myopic and frankly wrong obsession with reducing the quantity of meat (irrespective of its preparation and toppings) doesn't help, because it ensures that "approved" diets are guaranteed to be unpleasant.
So that's what they pay for: a certificate that says "your food is healthy", because either it's Mark's Daily Apple, or it's Popeye's. And this entire discussion is like that: many ways to 'reinvent' the way you cook food at home (yes, I can make a shitty curry with a can of coconut milk too), little recognition of the many small changes that can be made without reorganizing your entire life.
I'm a reformed meat eater.