Ditching processed foods won’t be easy – The barriers to cooking from scratch

You spend more if you buy and cook fresh produce. You spend less if you only cook rice and beans. The latter is less healthy than the former.

> What major grocery chain doesn't carry everything needed to make dinner?

Not every store with food is a grocery store. Dollar stores and corner stores do not stock an abundance of fresh produce, beans, flour, etc. People may have to go to multiple stores to find the items they need.

> I thought we were talking about food cooking barriers?

Yes. Not having child care is a food cooking barrier. Not having money or the time to prepare school lunch is a food cooking barrier. Not having access to grocery stores or a car is a food cooking barrier. As is access to food assistance programs, not being paid enough, not having access to good public transit, insecure or unaffordable housing, etc.

In 2009, over 2% of the US population lived in a food desert, and in 2017, 11.8% of US households were food-insecure. Of that 11.8%, 4.5% had very low food security.

I can cook food for a whole day for about €1. It will mostly be potatoes and lack any nutrients, but it will be a lot cheaper than any processed food I could buy. Or I can cook something with fresh ingredients and lots of fiber and nutrients, but those ingredients are expensive to buy in part because handling time sensitive squishy stuff makes every step of the supply chain more expensive.

Plus, benefiting a majority of people is worthwhile even if those at the periphery are not helped.

They might be "cooking" every night, but they're not necessarily cooking from scratch. A pack of ramen boiled on the stove with a flavor packet added is technically cooked by their definition of "cooking", but it's still ultra-processed: the amount of sodium added by the flavor packet is nearly an order of magnitude greater than if they had simply boiled some rice noodles from scratch and added their own seasonings of salt, soy sauce, etc. Not to mention any of the vegetables the package provided are freeze dried, and likely coated with stabilizers and preservatives. A "from scratch" version of ramen that paired the noodles with freshly chopped peas, carrots, or spring onions would be significantly healthier.

This is really the heart of NPR's argument, I think: there is a substantial hump that people must get over to think about leaving the can of marinara sauce on the shelf and buying canned tomatoes, an onion, and garlic instead. There's a time and labor investment, not to mention an initial loss of satisfaction when the recipe fails to come out properly the first few times.

Just to answer this one part - the cooking itself is generally cheaper than eating out constantly.

But that's after you jump over the barrier to entry of pots, pans, utensils, stove, cleaning supplies, and materials in bulk. And once you've learned how to cook. The only thing worse than wasting money on a poorly prepared meal is knowing that you can't afford to not eat the garbage.

> > Lots of families in our study cooked almost every night, in part because it was the cheapest option

> So wait, hold on, is cooking more expensive or not? What are they eating that's supposedly healthier but significantly more expensive?

The next sentence is: "But when their cupboards ran bare, they ate ramen and hot dogs, not a pan of roast chicken and vegetables, as food gurus recommend."

> > This means making healthy food more affordable, but it also means addressing the other challenges families face: for example, by guaranteeing workers a living wage and fair working conditions and by investing in families through universal free school lunch and subsidized child care, so that parents don't feel like they're doing it all on their own.

> Wait, hold on, what? I thought we were talking about food cooking barriers? I can understand the connection to free school lunch (make sure kids get one solid meal in them a day, if you can call government supplied cafeteria materials food), but, what?

All of these have fairly obvious connections to food preparation time. If you do backbreaking labor all day, or work two or three jobs because none of them individually pay enough to support you, you won't have much time or energy to spend on food preparation.

And there are the sentences just a few paragraphs earlier: "At a minimum, it requires a working stove and enough money to pay the electric bill to run the stove. One family in our book experienced homelessness during the time we spent with the family. Patricia Washington, her daughter and her two grandchildren moved into a hotel room after being evicted when they couldn't keep up with both the rent and the heating bill." Point being, economic barriers are food preparation barriers.

Cooking unprocessed meals is more expensive than cooking ultra-processed meals. Cooking at home, however, is less expensive than eating out, which appears to be the reference they are making in the second quote.

> What major grocery chain doesn't carry everything needed to make dinner?

For those shopping on a budget, going to multiple stores may be necessary based on pricing differences between stores (including consideration of sales or coupons for different products).

I agree, I am in support of reducing income inequality etc but I feel like it is a bit dishonest to link these two issues so directly.

The low-income people I know cook at home more, not less. It's cheaper than processed junk if done correctly.

Salads don't make themselves. Veggies don't remove skin and wooden parts on their own.

You could eat many of the vegetables whole.

The best light processing that allows some of this to be offloaded and batched is freezing...

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preparing a healthy lunch every day for your kid is difficult and time consuming and uses up family food budget

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You can get an entire frozen pizza for about $1, a box of mac & cheese for about $1, etc

That's processed food. Perhaps healthier than other processed food, but not the same as cooking beans from scratch.

https://www.superfoodly.com/are-canned-beans-healthy/

And cooking beans from scratch involves about 5 minutes of labor, including soaking them overnight, throwing them in a pot, and setting an alarm for when they are done cooking.

the trick is that you have to accept eating repetitive meals that aren’t the most exciting thing.

IMO some good chicken (there are varying levels of processing and quality out there so let's assume it's good), potatoes, and veggies can be done relatively quickly.

It still takes work to some extent but I'm not at all sure exactly what that article means by "from scratch". This article kinda sucks as it isn't at all clear what they're talking about.

So poor people should live like medieval serfs?

Chicken, veggies and potatoes, as well as the grill, all cost money. The grill especially. That's a large initial investment - yes, you can buy a cheap grill, but then you have to buy the propane, and the food that comes off it going to be much harder to get palatable.

It always surprises me when people say cooking is time consuming and expensive.

Fine, I get it, making venison stuffed artichokes with truffle sauce would be indeed difficult and pricey. But that's not what most people eat every day.

Take a cabbage head. Cut it. Add a spoon of lemon juice, two spoons of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Here's two out of five-a-day for a family of four. Price: under 3 dollars. Effort: 10 minutes. Skill: none required.

Boil potato (peeling is optional). Sprinkle with parmesan. Cheap. Tasty. Reasonably healthy. Under 5 minutes of active effort.

NPR do seem to think that every one should be cooking the traditional European roast dinner here - there are other ways of cooking from scratch that are much faster.

School for kids. After school if grades are struggling. Or after school if you're in an 'at-risk' category (see single parent or low income)

Formalized, scheduled, regimented sports/activities after school.

Formalized 'family bonding' events at schools or community centers that are, for all intents and purposes, required by societal pressures.

All of these things take time. Pre-made meals are an easy, convenient way to save time.

Two reasons from my point of view: The decline in stay-at-home parents I feel would be a big one. With both parents working, the ability to cook 'from scratch' (for some definition of 'from scratch') 3 meals a day is greatly diminished. Especially with modern parenting responsibilities - try cooking that meal as a single parent with a young child underfoot.

Also, cooking requires practice and intuition, which can't come from reading a book or following online guides. These skills were generally practiced and honed in families. Once a generation forgets how to cook, that knowledge cannot be passed on and must be re-learned from the beginning. This is exacerbated with family members moving away for economic reasons.

The learning part takes a lot of time and some bad meals to start to get right.

Two working parents and non-multi-generational homes.

IMO, the most valuable cooking tool is the microwave oven. You can cook grains (pasta, rice, oatmeal etc.) and frozen vegetables, and you can reheat canned beans. It's fast and flexible, and much cheaper and smaller than a regular oven.

Second most valuable cooking tool is an electric pressure cooker. This lets you cook dry beans (cheaper than canned), and some have a saute mode for when you're making something fancy. It's better than the microwave for cooking large quantities of food, because you don't need to stir it for even heat distribution. And you can even cook bread in a pressure cooker if you don't mind a soft crust.

An easy meal is to cut various vegetables up, season, and bake. Potato, green beans, onion, bell pepper, broccoli, whatever they have on sale. Of course the potato has to be e cut smaller than the broccoli or the broccoli will be disintegrated or incinerated by the time the potato is done cooking.

An oven doesn't make anything apparent and a lot of ovens are terrible with hot and cold spots and just suck at being ovens in general.

Look into herbs and other seasonings, and different cooking methods. Chinese cooking for example makes excellent use of them to make very different dishes from the same raw ingredients. A little bit of soy, Chinese cooking wine, and spring onions added to scrambled eggs is very different from steamed eggs for example.

The cost of "cooking fresh" is incredibly exaggerated, as if to create this boogie monster that people can use not to do so. All the prices you've listed are actually on the high end of what I see in the U.S. A 10lb (5kilo ish) bag of potatoes is regularly less than $3, and a lot of the other vegetables (celery, onions, carrots) are a $1 a bag, of whatever that respective size is.

And with Chicken breast regularly being <$2/lb, you can make countless dishes for a $1 a meal when served over rice. And if you don't want fresh produce, frozen vegetables are perfectly fine alternative, often for the same price.

So poor people should live like it's 19th century Ireland? I'm sure that will catch on.

That's more difficult than you think:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

>In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that 23.5 million Americans live in a food desert, meaning that they live more than one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas, and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas.[7] Food deserts lack whole food providers who supply fresh protein sources (such as poultry, fish and meats) along with whole food such as fresh fruits and vegetables, and instead provide processed and sugar- and fat-laden foods in convenience stores.

I hate the "Ditching processed foods won't be easy" article as it doesn't define anything.

Lots of thing are possible, there is information out there, but still might not be "easy".

As a counter data point, I started down an "eat no processed foods" diet about four years ago and I'm the heaviest I've ever been. But to blame the diet would ignore more obvious possibilities like my metabolism slowing down as I hit 30, and not going to the gym as often as I used to.

Preheat oven to 400. Toss chicken breasts in oil and seasoning of choice. Put in baking dish and bake for ~18-20 minutes.

Serve with some shredded cabbage (my personal choice) or any other veggies. Heck, buy a bag of frozen broccoli and just microwaves small amounts at a time.