The Food of My Youth

One thing I have observed with simple staple dishes (like beans and rice) is that if you don't know how to add fat, salt, and spices in good proportion you can end up not liking the the result. You end up resorting to convenience foods instead and shoot yourself in the foot health-wise, as an unintuitive result of not using enough fat and salt in your cooking.

Culture definitely sounds like a component, I wouldn't be surprised to hear a crass criticism of your rice-and-beans meal as something eaten by "those starving children on TV."

There's also the issue that a lot of folks simply don't know how to cook. The benefit of a lot of those box meals is the hand-holding, instructions included nature. I buy a box, it tells me what I need to buy, and how and how long to cook each component.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit, but if you handed me a sack of rice and beans I'd have no idea how and for how long to cook it. I simply never learned those skills. In the past several months I've realized how poor my culinary skills are, and have been working to address that deficiency, but for many folks in the US we simply pick the path of least cost and effort.

Here's a study of how (among other things) longer-acculturated immigrants to the US shift their eating toward convenience foods:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3090681/

Study results corroborate previous research highlighting the negative impact of acculturation on diet of Latinos. Many mothers described ready access to fresh fruits and vegetables in their native countries, although availability of such foods decreased in the U.S.. Mothers further described how their lives had become increasingly busy and complex, leaving little time for preparing foods, thereby making the allure of convenience foods, often which are unhealthy, more appealing.

This study details the experiences of Latino families. A quick literature skim and anecdata from my own life indicate that it happens with other immigrant groups coming to the US.

Some low-income subgroups of the American population continue to prepare food from scratch. When I was growing up, some of my friends came from low-income fundamentalist Christian families. Fast/convenience foods were a rare treat; the typical meal plan was "find what ingredients are on sale or have good coupons this week, cook meals from them." (Also, stockpile ingredients that keep well at the lowest-cost times of the year. Buy 6 bargain turkeys around Thanksgiving.) This seems to hold regardless of specific belief; I've heard similar stories from friends who grew up in strict Mormon or Orthodox Jewish households.

Later in graduate school I noticed that students also did more of their own cooking than you might expect from their age and income level (ranging from "nonexistent" to "just above poverty line.") I certainly cooked. It would have torpedoed my budget to eat boxed dinners or fast food every day.

Maybe deep religious belief and extended education are also, in different ways, factors that make you less acculturated into the American mainstream. The irreligious recent immigrant from Belarus, the pious Catholic, and the chemistry postdoc may all be less likely to follow the American default dietary practices because they're living further from American defaults to begin with.

Another factor I've noticed is that these low-income households that cook their own meals (and otherwise make long term cost-effective decisions) tend to be low-income but stable-income. If you're on a graduate school stipend or have taken out loans, you don't have a lot of buying power but you're not juggling two jobs or wondering how many hours you'll be scheduled for this week. Likewise, in those low-income religious families where I saw meals planned around costs, they didn't have much buying power per household member but income was steady month-to-month. If you don't have a modicum of stability you can't be sure that "invest in a chest freezer, buy meat in bulk during the best sales" is actually a good financial optimization plan.

When I moved to the US, I was appealed by the price of vegetables. Carrots, beets, cabbage are all so expensive compared to Western/Eastern europe.

I know, because I cook/eat a lot of rice and beans. I have add a lot of fruits etc in between meals to feel good. The dirt cheap vegetarian foods people tend to suggest are not really foods you would eat long term without feeling hungry and tired a lot. With that in mind, I can see someone whose life generally sux to at least eat food that makes them less miserable.

Also, mac&cheese is quick cooking and beans are not when you cook them.

It's fresh fruit and veggies that you will tend to see the least of in c-stores.

No it doesn't. Be realistic. Beans are going to take about 90 minutes to cook tender. Soaking beans takes pre-planning the night before. It is not low-effort cooking.

You are probably right that there is a lack of planning, and probably poor decisions being made in these households, but I'd suggest volunteering your time to go teach these people how to sort their lives out, and perhaps you'll find it's not as simple as beans and rice.

One cannot merely put the ingredients of tomato sauce into a pot, heat it in some arbitrary way, and expect the result to be recognizable as tomato sauce.

I've had college graduate friends who didn't know how to make a basic (what we've got on-hand) stir fry.

Personally, I'm not even trying to deceive myself any longer - to me, fast food usually does taste better than most regular food. Based on taste alone, I'd much prefer to go to McDonalds than a typical restaurant. I don't do that because of a conscious choice based on health concerns.

Then convince someone that they need to spend an hour cooking healthier foods that requires more effort for most likely no benefit. Being in that position, I thought that a lot. It was easier to get McDonalds and then sit down in front of the TV/Computer and distract myself from the problems.

I think the problem isn't that people are lazy, that's a symptom of the real causes: anxiety, depression, and their ilk; from being in a situation that makes it all too easy to nest inside of and accept.

I didn't lack time to do cooking because I was working constantly. I lacked time to do cooking because my work schedule was all over the place and the buses in the DC metro area are never on time. Between working and trying to get classes in (or working a second job, or watching your kid) you don't really have time to watch rice cook for an hour.

I'm sorry my experience growing up poor as dirt doesn't align with your preference for eating shitty food. Obviously I'm the one in the wrong here.

The last time I had it done was a couple of years ago and it was noted that I had low hemoglobin as a result of low B12/Iron. My doc suggested I eat more red meat and take a supplement. I never used to be able to afford much in the way of beef so I got my protein through other means. Anemia runs in my family, so it may be related to that—though I'm not anemic myself.