Hacker News Reader

Comment by bsaul | Hacker News Reader

Recently spent a month in SF after having spent a month in japan : US needs to restart its food habits from scratch. yes, you can eat very healthily if you’re ready to spend 40$ per meal ( either in restaurants or buying in organic groceries), but anything under that price will get you fat, sweeten,artifically flavored, huge piles of sh*t.

And this was SF. I can’t even imagine how it’s like in the average US city.

View on HN

> if you’re ready to spend 40$ per meal ( either in restaurants or buying in organic groceries), but anything under that price will get you fat, sweeten,artifically flavored, huge piles of sh*t.

This is really exaggerated. I lived in SF, and would easily prepare healthy meals for ~$6-8 per meal ($2-3 for some proteins, $1 or less for some portion of rice or some bread, and the rest for vegetables). Maybe $10 max if I felt like eating avocado :)

For one thing, healthy != organic. As much as pesticides are harmful on the long run, the biggest health hazard is the type of food you consume, not its provenance. Eating bananas or some oatmeal instead of pop tarts and Oreos saves you money.

You used the word prepare. Plenty of people do not have that option, either because they're in a hurry or they don't live nearby or, like in my case, they're tourists. Though I agree that SF is better than other places, having more health-ish food shops, overall US-wise it's not easy to avoid sugars.

GP spent a month in SF so I assumed they weren't a tourist. They also mentioned organic groceries so they included cooked meals in this. Even if you eat out, you won't have to pay $40 for a healthy meal. You can get something good for $15-20, which is still pretty expensive... but not $40, and not significantly more expensive than comparable unhealthy foods; of course McDonalds is cheaper, but then again unless we're talking about people that have no money to spare, it's more likely they're choosing unhealthy food rather than being forced to buy it.

It's really easy to avoid sugars and when not in SF its even cheaper. In Ohio a healthy meal for 2 would be ~$5. $0.50 for rice, $0.50 for beans, 2 peppers for $1.50, pound of chicken for $1.50.

That's strange, I spent a month in Japan this past winter and had the opposite experience. My diet in America consists mainly of lean meats and veggies. It's nearly impossible to find veggies in the amounts that I want to eat in Japanese restaurants. All meals come with a large portion of rice - in fact the primary source of calories seems to be rice, with small side dishes for flavor. To contrast, in NYC you can find tons of meals for under 15 dollars with a lot of veggies and good proteins.

Japanese restaurant are indeed pretty heavy on proteins and don’t serve a lot of vegetables ( except rice), but the ingredients in meals are much less processed ( chicken look like chicken, and meat like meat), and probably contains less additives. Another big difference is also quantities ( largest japan size = smallest US size) and sweet. And then home-made family style japaneese meals are also very different from restaurants, with a lot more vegetables.

I went to new york a long time ago, but i believe you’re right in that it’s probably one of the few places where you can eat correctly for a normal price in the US.

The loss of food culture in the US is partly to blame. All of the loopy fad diets people are describing here are a symptom of the same larger problem that has caused the obesity epidemic. There is no shortage of intact culinary cultures in the world that include wonderful, healthy, inexpensive things that anybody can prepare with a little time and love. Accordingly, your best bet for good, cheap produce and healthy stuff in a big city is any immigrant/ethnic market. These usually depend on parallel supply chains that allow them to undercut and outperform mainstream supermarkets.

The loss of culinary traditions I mentioned also includes the age-old habit of creatively re-using leftovers to make new things. Cook potatoes one day, grate the leftovers and make potato pancakes the next. In so many ways the vast generational shifts in food culture in countries like the US over the last century or so are a direct reflection of a dozen or more other social, cultural, and economic processes that have taken place in tandem.

Haha, and coming from a large midwestern city, I look around SF in wonderment as to how fit and in shape most people are. If you really want to see a different perspective, go to the rural Midwest, where it is downright standard to be obese.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com