How Much Sugar Can You Avoid
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It's easy to avoid added sugar if you make your own food: just don't dump sugar in while you cook.
I think the bigger story here is that for most of human history, every single household cooked because it was the only economical way to feed yourself (restaurants have always been a luxury good). In the US, we've recently had this weird economic inversion where it's become cheaper to feed yourself off of junk food, so now cooking has become some sort of luxury good.
Come to think of it, exercise has followed the same path. In the past, only the rich could avoid physical activity. Nowadays, it's rich people who can afford pricey gym passes and personal trainers while their poorer compatriots also work in a call center or some other sedentary setting.
Dried beans and dried rice are ~$1/lb purchased in bulk in Seattle. Fresh produce is available cheaply year round at every grocery store. The same goes for salt, black pepper, bulk spices.
All of these except the fresh produce and the bacon can be purchased literally months in advance, and are available online. The fresh produce and the bacon are a once-per-week affair, (which might be a genuine accessibility issue for some). The prep time is literally less than 5 minutes for the whole dish once you have it memorized and can cut a vegetable.
Source: I cook for myself every day. I prefer big cheap one-pot slow cooker dishes.
If you can't find a way to exercise for free or at extremely low cost, you're not trying hard enough.
Unfortunately the US is awful about free outdoor fitness equipment--I wish that changed.
In many countries you can easily find outdoor gyms, but in the US a playground or even a combination of park benches, a tree, and some railings will do.
For the record 99% of the time I've only received positive attention from this, but sometimes there are haters (usually either homeless people or overweight women in SUVs--just being honest).
The only weights I might buy are a couple of 10 litre water containers -- usually a few bucks at a supermarket -- for shoulder exercises.
Has it really though, or are people just drawn to the convenience?
A lot of working poor juggle multiple part-time jobs or the like (in families, sometimes both adults), so there's no stable schedule and no guarantee you'll have the time or energy to cook on any given day.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/archive/a-profi...
The less money you have, the more leisure time you have. That leisure time is just spent in front of the TV rather than working out in a park.
If you only look at the cost of the raw ingredients, then cooking yourself is tough to compete with. Then again, if you only look at the price of lumber, building your own furniture is pretty tough to compete with too. Is that a good way to look at it? I'm not sure.
Either way, for myself, I would quickly grow frustrated by a diet of junk food and/or eating at restraints frequently. I'll gladly take the time and pay a premium to have my own kitchen.
Also, junk food was generally much cheaper, usually for the reasons it is junk in first place (example: "chicken" junk food is usually made with ground leftovers of chicken, after the more expensive parts are sold separetely).
Assuming Oreos are $2.50 a box, they work out to 840 or so calories per dollar. Russet potatoes at 50 cents a pound work out to 880 or so calories per dollar. And that's using a fairly high price for the russets - in larger bags they can be found for 20 or even 10 cents a pound. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which of the two will leave one feeling more satiated after eating O(2000) calories thereof.
It's very hard to compete with the local burger chain which is within walking distance and where you can get a burger, chips, a drink, and desert for only a few dollars.
You can go to the grocery store once a week, cook a few meals to last through the week, and eat for $3 a meal without trying hard. Frugal people can eat for $1 a meal easily.
To be fair, you also pay heavily for the luxury of having the means of production (i.e. a kitchen) at your disposal.
Some back of the napkin calculations show that simply allocating a small area to a kitchen in San Francisco costs you $6-10 per day. That's not even including the opportunity cost and operating cost of having the tools found within the space, or the many other costs of operating a kitchen beyond raw food ingredients. And that alone can buy you an entire meal per day at some restaurants, prepared by someone else.
When you factor in all of the costs of cooking for yourself, I don't think there is any way you can complete with restaurants. They have economies of scale on their side. But it is easy to ignore many of the costs of cooking for yourself.
Specifically, I'm sure there are folks that spend more than I do. In either category. Numbers would be interesting to see, and I'm sure someone has them.
You just have to compare the price of a soda, ~$3 and up (usually $5), to its price at the supermarket and you'll have your answer. Wine is also an easy one, with at least 300% markup even on cheap bottles. Everything is marked up like that (maybe calling it 'markup' is not really fair as they provide other things and not just a meal, but you get what I mean.)
I've been cooking for years and not even trying to save money meals are less expensive.
Still, I feel it is impossible to list ingredients and recipes without building a straw man. Research on average amount spent eating out and eating in would be nice to see.
My point is it is easy to save money doing either. It is equally easy to spend more than makes sense doing either. My gut would be that eating in is cheaper. My gut is also that it is easier to waste food at home. Is amazing how many times we let something ruin in the fridge.
And again, neither of those gut checks are data.
That is, since most eating out is at fast food locations, wine and beer are irrelevant.
Consider, many people buy dollar beers at the bar. What I buy at the grocery isn't even that cheap. So, again, straw man.
I'm not asking what people could spend. But what they do spend.
$5 for a good McDonald's meal (fries, drink and burger).
Or spend $3 on a loaf of bread, and $5 on enough meat to make 4 sandwiches or so, and $5 for a 3lb bag of potatoes (which can be cooked rather easily: from baking, to boiling, to whatever).
Basically, the $15 equivalent of grocery store food can get you far more meals than three $5 meals from McDonalds.
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Eggs are also like $3 per dozen.
Also, "buying what's in season" is easy as all hell. Just buy what is on sale. Done... and done. If you don't know how to cook, lemme teach it to you.
The cheapest way to cook would be to buy whatever meats on special, a bag of frozen vegetables, some rice, and some sort of sauce, it won't be particularly nice but it would be fairly nutritious and only cost a few dollars.
For that $10NZD I could buy a decent amount of ingredients from the supermarket for healthy meat+veges meals at home. I guess maybe fresh produce is cheaper here since this country basically runs on agriculture.
But really the cheapest meal if you have no money and need to fill the stomach of your family is a $2 scoop of chips from the local fish and chips shop, every suburb has them and not every suburb has a supermarket.
Here, in NZ, some food is actually ridiculously expensive compared to overseas so I can only think the economics are even worse elsewhere.
The point that people seem to be missing is that food is only cheaper if you can get to a large supermarket, which many poor people cannot. They have a choice between convenience stores / mini marts and fast food.
Planet Fitness is $10/month
Like, if you live in a good neighborhood, you just go out for a run. If you can afford a bad neighborhood, that's no longer a very safe option.
Normal gyms are ~$30/mo and not uncommonly subsidized by health insurance.
Blink also lacks the 15 minute wait for a squat rack.
This article is a pointless straw man, unless the point is a covert attempt at making the reader realize they should skip the food with the brand names on it and eat real food instead... but that seems way too nuanced for the NY Times.
Recently I had a friend complain about his weight so we went shopping for groceries together. After he loaded his cart with the usual stuff we went through the labels and he was shocked at bow many empty carbs and sugar he was eating (he had plenty of canned fruits, instant oatmeal, apple sauce, bananas and grapes, all stuff that's usually considered "healthy").
Helped him pick out some chicken, fish, vegetables, nuts and real cheese instead.
Junk food is a fraction of the price, and it's everywhere. In my home town I used to make my own lunch and eating out was a luxury, because I felt it was too expensive.
Here, as a software engineer I make roughly 3x my old salary for the same job (not representative, but it's my current situation either way), and junk food is 50% cheaper or more. I used to have to take a bus to go to an ice cream shop. Here they're at every street corner. There was only sit down restaurant everywhere I used to work aside the occasional McD and Tim Horton (I didn't work downtown). I work in an equivalent area now, and there's like 40 takeout restaurants within walking distance.
And then you have Foodlers, Grubhub, etc, that are far, far more popular and "accepted". Those things exist up there, but not nearly as many people use them.
So I got into bad habits. Only cooking a few times a week. Eating out is so cheap in proportion to my salary it's a no brainer compared to the time saving.
That's until my health started to suffer, that is!
I don't eat any of the foods on the "breakfast" or "lunch" tabs, and only 1 from the "snack" tab (apples). I make up for all that deficit by consuming a copious quantity of ice cream.
It's still cheaper than an equivalent amount of beef jerky though. Speaking of jerky, I've noticed that cheaper brands are actually pork jerky.
If you're looking to improve your health/diet then don't buy in to "good food", "bad food", "sugar is evil", etc mumbo-jumbo. Count your calories. Health articles usually make me really angry, and this one is no exception. I totally agree with what it says, though "that still lets you make good decisions".