Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017)

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I've been seeing a nutritionist to try to help with weight loss and his emphasis has been on a healthy plate, which is a plate that is half vegetables, a quarter protein, a quarter starch or grains. Even at nice restaurants, it is extremely difficult to order meals that fit these proportions, and, as you move down the quick service spectrum it gets harder and harder. By the time you arrive at fast food, its difficult to find a vegetable at all.

And, almost all the vegetables you find at quick service restaurants are lettuce or greens heavy salads, which are fine, but not ideal. Really, the only way to guarantee that you are getting a vegetable heavy diet is by cooking at home.

The less we cook at home and the more we eat out, the fatter we (as a society) will become.

Greens keep pretty well and have decent, smoothish availability year-round. I'd guess that's why they favor them at restaurants.

Sure, but they're perhaps the most unsatisfying foods of them all. They also have almost zero nutritional value and calories. A vegetarian Indian friend of mine lamented, "Americans think that a vegetarian meal means lettuce."

Nutritional value's decent, in terms of vitamins & minerals and such. Calories being near-zero is a huge bonus, for those on an American diet—lots of people would pay extra to eliminate the calories from some of their food, keeping all else the same.

But yes, I agree, I don't really want a greens-heavy salad as my main dish for my biggest meal of the day.

Also worth noting is that a lot of the vegetables you get in restaurant dishes have been buttered, salted, and/or sugared to hell to make them taste better in a short amount of time. This, of course, makes it even harder to actually get healthy food when eating out.

Butter and salt are not bad for you.

Butter is calorie dense which may make it harder to lower intake.

Is the government lying when they say you should keep your sodium intake below 2300mg per day?

Probably. You pretty much have to read the studies yourself, looking specifically for ways they are fucked up, to find out anything useful in the area of nutrition.

There is a major genetic component when it comes to handling sodium. Some people can eat a huge amount with no ill effects, others are much more sensitive. This is still an area of active research, so take any nutritional guidelines with a grain of salt.

That value could be too low, but keep mind that:

1. 30% of salt intake, according to WHO's reports, comes from bread

2. A lot of salt comes from junk food / ultra-processed food. This is because the brain is wired to seek salt and ultra-processed food is engineered for overconsumption.

Cut the bread and the junk food and you'll actually have a hard time eating enough salt ;-)

When I add salt on my plate, people give me funny looks as if I'm going to die tomorrow, but most of my food is cooked at home and by my own estimates in most days I don't go over 2 g of sodium.

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Most people probably overconsume salt, but that's because of the junk food.

We also have clues that what might matter more for heart health is actually the potassium:sodium ratio.

Whole foods (meat, vegetables, fruits) are high in potassium and junk food is low in potassium. And eating more whole plants can probably balance a higher sodium intake.

But that's the second problem with the junk food that people are eating.

So the dietary guidelines aren't lying... that's basically their way of saying to cut the junk food.

No food is good or bad, it’s just food. Dose makes the poison, yada yada. Please stop moralizing food choices. Is butter a calorie heavy food that is being overused in restaurants, leading to overeating? I’d say yes. Does that make butter “bad?” I’d say no, still just a food item. It’s amoral. Sodium is an even trickier thing, as overeating isn’t really a calorie thing but can have other adverse impacts.

Putting a little butter on your veggies isn't going to harm anything. Putting butter on some bread and downing 1000 calories of bread or potatoes...that's a different story, but it's not the butter that's causing the overconsumption...it's the carbs.

Boston Market is a classic example here. They make a big deal about offering vegetables, but all their vegetables taste to me like they've had corn syrup poured over them. Which they probably have.

Traditional American cooking seems to be a Protein + 2 sides. On the surface most vegetarian options become 1) replace meat with tofu or 2) a salad. Both of which get boring very quickly.

For vegetarian dishes it’s helpful to look at non European cuisines. Curries and soups both have a huge variety and don’t require a meat to be complete. Chickpeas also make a great protein substitute besides Tofu. Dumplings are other meat free food that are pretty good, but they tend to be carb and oil heavy so not necessarily healthy. Indian and Thai both have great vegetarian dishes that aren’t meat based dishes with the meat removed.

Finally, cooking with spices makes vegetables much more varied. Americans seem to think spices and rubs are only for meat and vegetables need to be plain. A well spiced vegetable dish is delicious.

Chickpeas are tasty but the protein quality as measured by DIAAS score is significantly worse than red meat. In particular they are deficient in tryptophan.

The ancient solution is to pair them with rice or wheat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan#Recommended_dietary...

  Soybeans: 0.59g/100g of food
  Beef: 0.23g/100g of food
  Chickpeas: 0.19g/100g of food

Doesn't look like a vegetarian or vegan diet would cause any sort of tryptophan deficiency.

According to your link, those are figures for raw (dried) beans. When water is added during cooking, concentrations will go down.

I don't think a majority of people are caring at all about the nutritional quality of their beef when they're eating a hamburger. I only see these arguments come into play as counters to vegan food. Everyone becomes a nutritional expert when vegan diets are mentioned.

Isn’t tryptophan the thing that makes you sleepy.

>Finally, cooking with spices makes vegetables much more varied. Americans seem to think spices and rubs are only for meat and vegetables need to be plain. A well spiced vegetable dish is delicious.

No, you are wrong. And that a pitfall that for some reason a lot of people fall into.

ALL dishes need spices to make food taste better. All meat is seasoned when cooked. Why people cook vegies without seasoning and complain its bland is strange to me.

You say "No, you are wrong" and then repeat the exact message of their comment?

The Instant Pot has been a godsend for me when it comes to making Indian dishes. Especially Chana Masala. Provided you have a pound of dried chickpeas (~$2-$3 a pound), some lemon, onion masala, and a few spices stashed away, it's really easy to make over and over. I can recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Instant-Pot%C2%AE-Cookbook-Tra...

A quarter protein? That's insane. You only need about 60 grammes of protein a day. Why are you eating a quarter of your food in protein?

I'm assuming they mean "a quarter protein heavy dish like a meat, etc"

weightlifting folklore says you should eat at least 1g of protein per kg of body weight to gain muscle efficiently

Depending on the research it is around 1.6 to 2.2 grams of protein per kg body weight. [1][2][3]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29497353 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22150425 [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19927027/

Nah. Insane is a really heavy word to use here. Everyone is different. And 60 is really low, insane even, for the average sized human regardless.

US RDA is 0.8 grams/day per kg of bodyweight. For a 150 pound / 68 kg person that’s around 55 grams.

Remember when the government told us that low-fat was the way to go?

That's like the bare minimum to avoid obvious nutritional deficiency. For optimal health and athletic performance most people can benefit from significantly more.

It's not the minimum it's the recommended.

The recommendation is the minimum. Most people can benefit from more.

As someone who doesn't enjoy cooking all that much, I've noticed this too and been distressed by it.

Restaurants, almost uniformly, serve unhealthy food. There are exceptions to this, but they don't seem to be all that popular. When I go out to eat with friends I am often stuck eating something heavier and less healthy than I would like.

Is there some good reason for this?

99% of my dinners' vegetables are pre-heating the oven to 350-400, putting aluminum foil on a cookie sheet, and coating Vegetable X in salt, oil, and pepper, and cooking for 15-20 minutes. It's basically 0 cleanup and you're eating whole, unprocessed vegetables. Our bodies are built for that sort of diet.

Brussels sprouts and cauliflower, to name just two, are outstanding when cooked this way.

If you want to bring your brussels sprouts to the next level, add bacon and maple syrup.

I'm amused that we're talking about recipes on HN but then after all recipes are algorithms.

Or saute them with a bit of butter, garlic, and balsamic.

or a little maple syrup plus goat cheese bits!

Yes; restaurants, especially nice restaurants, are in the business of selling food which people eat primarily for pleasure, not for nutrition. It's an indulgence, not sustenance.

Even those restaurants who want to appeal to a 'healthy eating' audience find that their less healthy items sell better; considering the difficulty of succeeding or even surviving in the restaurant business, they start to emphasize those items and eventually become a source of relatively unhealthy meals. It's the same phenomenon that caused all of the niche cable networks to fill their schedules with general-interest reality shows unrelated to their original programming over the last couple of decades.

tl;dr: Restaurants sell unhealthy food because people want to buy unhealthy food.

The misconception is tasty food and healthy food are orthogonal qualities; that's thankfully far from the case! For example, you could a make a restaurant quality chicken breast entree with a white wine reduction and heavy cream sauce, seasoned with Herbs de Provence. If you're a follower of Keto, you'd notice these ingredients are all low carbohydrate, and offer protein and fats. Pair with seasoned veggies and you've got yourself an entree, it's delicious, and it's far from consuming the "empty" calories of typical fast food.

Substitute thighs for the breast and you might have something. As has been noted, chicken breast is the skim milk of the meat world.

There's nothing wrong with chicken breast, especially if the skin is left on and crisped. It just lends itself to different applications than thigh.

Especially if you're using heavy cream, which is 36% fat. The sauce compensates for the breast's lack of fat (when compared to thighs). I like both, but as you say, they have different applications. For breast, just use extra olive oil/butter/heavy cream to balance the dish.

Thighs are less time and temperature sensitive. They're a bit more hardy if you're new to cooking. Chicken breast is easy to overcook because less fat makes it less forgiving.

Chicken breast is garbage. The magic is in the leg meat.

Healthy meals do not have to be flavorless. Of course if they are trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator then the menu will maybe start to look like McDonald’s, but even somewhere like chipotle you can buy a salad without the extra cheese and chips.

Along this same line, something I've been extremely surprised by every time I visit someone in the hospital is how unhealthy hospital dining options are.

What's even more depressing is that hospital meals are designed for healthy people. Most people recovering from a gastrointestinal disease or chemotherapy find most food unpalatable, and hospital food seems like straight up garbage to them. For example, there are few to no "light" tasting options. Everything is seasoned restaurant-style (pedal to the metal in the flavor department). Hospital food ought to have a bland option.

Hospitals are such stressful places to be in that they seem mandated to provide "comfort food" all around.

For about a year, Noodles & Company had an option to replace the noodles with spinach and double the veggies of any dish. It made a few of their menu items decently healthy. I was sad when it was discontinued shortly after I discovered it.

In my observation, most people don't want healthy food. They want to think they are eating healthy but when it comes down to it, they want the fat, sugar and salt that goes into restaurant food. They want to think they're healthy drinking their fruit smoothie but god forbid you leave out some of the sugar. They want to think they're healthy eating a salad but make sure it's got some fried chicken and plenty of salad dressing on it. It's healthy because it's salad, right?

I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule but restaurants typically have to cater to the lowest common denominator.

I never understood why vegetables are difficult to get as a "fast food" format. With salt pepper oil and heat, they can be very tasty. There has to be a huge market for Jack in the box equivalent for healthy eating. Most of the existing fast casual chains miss the mark. Chipotle comes to mind, but it's still mostly grains and protein and still lacking in vegetables, beyond the optional pico de gallo for your burrito.

Fast food is engineered to hit all the sweet spots that our primate brains desire. No matter how delicious my asparagus or salad can be it's difficult to compete with a Quarter Pounder.

My thought experiment of a chain wouldn't directly compete with people choose McDonald's every single time. It'd be for people who've seen the light, and know you can't eat McDonald's, sustainably, indefinitely. That population isn't everyone, but there's a sizable number of consumers who are diet conscious. That's the target market. While McDonald's food is designed to have a certain effect on your palette, you haven't appreciated a skilled cook's entrees if you think there's no realistic competition. Deep, rich, meaningful flavor could absolutely compete against the engineered taste of McDonalds.

There's an Australian chain that does vegetables in the "fast food" format (they have a presence at highway service centres, that sort of thing). So I think you might be right about there being an unserved market for this. ( https://www.oliversrealfood.com.au/pages/our-menu )

I find Cava's green and grains bowl to be pretty good for getting a decent serving of veggies. I usually skip the spreads and dressings and it basically turns into a tasty salad with rice.

They aren't impossible to find, there are loads takeaway sandwich stores as well as buritos. You just have to look a little further than takeaway that has a drive through.

You don't have to get a burrito at Chipotle. Try my salad recipe:

Salad with no dressing (you don't need their sugary dressing when you have salsa).

Black or pinto beans.

Optionally, a bit of brown rice, but they will give you too much unless you ask for only a sprinkle of it.

Onions and peppers.

Chicken or whatever meat you like.

Corn, pico de gallo, and medium salsa.

Guacamole. "I know it's extra."

And some of the chopped lettuce at the end of the line, especially if you're getting it to go. "So the guac doesn't stick to the lid."

Now you have mostly vegetables, some meat, some beans, and not much in the way of grains. And it makes two full meals!

The single most popular fast food in Berlin is Döner Kebab, which is about 40% fresh vegetables, 25% bread, 30% grilled meat and some sauce/spices.

It's not super unhealthy as fast foods go.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Doener_K...

Frozen dinners seem to have come a long way, even in the past 10 years. My father is on a diet plan and the way he does it is to have basically nothing in his house except "healthy" frozen meals and healthy-ish snacks like nut mixes and apple chips. The word healthy is in scare quotes but actually they seem relatively okay: a good amount of grains, usually enough veggies to satisfy a serving or two, and enough protein to feel sated. Just don't reach into the freezer aisle blindly and you can come out with something decent.

If you can't muster the energy at the end of your day to cook a meal, these are a pretty decent substitute.

Almost all foods seem to get destroyed in the freezing process and lose their texture. I have found that at my supermarket they sell refrigerated meals that just need to be microwaved and they taste outstanding. As long as you make sure to stir them half way through so they don't dry out at the top you could literally serve it at a restaurant and I don't think people would notice.

I have a feeling there are more than a few restaurants which do basically exactly this.

There are plenty of places in the UK where this is done. I'm sorry when visitors eat in these places, and either don't realise £6.50 for a meal means it can only be microwaved from a box, or get ripped off and pay £12 for it.

This is a major supplier.

https://www.brake.co.uk/meal-solutions/multi-portion-prepare...

For a while I was really good about taking 40-50% of restaurant meals home as leftovers. Then something changed and now I haven't done that in a while and have since gained 10lbs. Restaurant meals are "okay" portion if that's all you eat for half a day, but many of us can't help but snack, and the combination is no bueno.

Want a better ratio? Eat at asian places. Its incredibly hard to get well cooked vegetables at anything other than a fine dining restaurant (or hot food bar at a whole foods), but every asian place is gonna have some really good ratios.

> emphasis has been on a healthy plate, which is a plate that is half vegetables, a quarter protein, a quarter starch or grains.

a little off topic but emphasis should be on reducing the calories. eating healthily helps feeling full and thus can help achieve this but it's not the actual lever

A "demography is destiny" aspect to this: Since households are smaller (we marry later or not at all; have fewer children), those who do cook are cooking for fewer mouths, which leads to more time spent per meal consumed. 5 single people cooking and cleaning for themselves put in substantially more time than a one person cooking/cleaning for 5. Also there's some amount of waste from scaling down recipes originally written to serve some imagined nuclear family (what do I do with the rest of this can of tomato paste?).

I'm a single person, and I cook for myself, but it often feels like such a hassle for these reasons.

as a kid my parents would be home after five and fix up our dinner. today people seem to be working longer and less predictable hours. stagnant wages can't help much either. my partner and i would love to have time each day to cook and eat together, we just don't have any time. so along with your point i wonder if people really hate cooking or just can't afford to?

> what do I do with the rest of this can of tomato paste?

Portion it out into tablespoon sized lumps and freeze it.

silicone ice trays are your friend here. Once it's frozen, put it in a bag. Works with pesto, fresh herbs (frozen in water), coconut milk, etc.

Just put some cling film or foil over the top and refrigerate it; it'll keep long enough.

Cook for 2, and have the second portion be tomorrow's lunch. Cooking for 1 is possible but too much overhead.

Just my wife and I. She doesn't have good options for lunch and I do most of the cooking at home. I'll usually make 3 portions and package the third one for her lunch the next day.

On the other hand, if you have a ton of roommates, the chances you have the same schedule is quite low.

>what do I do with the rest of this can of tomato paste?

If you're cooking for one, I recommend buying tomato paste in toothpaste-style metal tubes, rather than cans. Keep the tube in the fridge and it lasts quite a long time (whereas tomato paste from opened cans goes bad quickly).

- People are working longer hours.

- People are getting married/having kids later in life.

- Both spouses are working in more and more households.

- More families are living in urban areas with smaller houses/apartments and less kitchen space.

It seems that most industries are unwilling to confront the fact that American society is fundamentally changing, and their decades-old business models will have to change as well. A perfect example of this is every product ad still depicting the middle class family as a working dad, stay-at-home mom, 2 kids+dog and a massive house in the suburbs.

I've taken up cooking the majority of our meals in the last couple years. Before that we ate out almost exclusively. It started as a goal to just eat healthier, to know more about what was in our food and to simply eat fewer unpronounceable chemicals.

I used to hate cooking, but now that I'm into it, I'm really enjoying the development of the various skills that come along with it: from picking fresh veggies to basic knife skills. I've slowly been ramping up the complexity of the kinds of meals I'm able to make. I'll spend a bit of time every week trolling various youtube cooking channels to find new menus I think I have the skill to make or have one or two new things that I can reasonably learn without introducing any "use only for this recipe" ingredients.

I don't think I'll ever get into meal prepping, I like too much variety in my diet. I've found a few channels that have meals at a variety of skill levels from "I can do that in my sleep" to "this is going to take some intense study to get right".

It's been an incredibly rewarding experience and we've gone from freezers full of microwave meals to empty freezers and a fridge packed to the gills with greens and other raw ingredients. I've come to feel a great sense of pride when hitting the checkout line at the grocery and every single ingredient in the cart is raw and unprocessed -- and most of the cart is full of veggies.

Bonus: since my wife is Korean, I'm also learning to cook stuff from her culture and it gives me two menus full of recipes I can draw from when making the week's meals.

I guess I’m crazy, but I enjoy the forced break from modern life that the ancient ritual of cooking dinner brings. That’s not to say that I’m always stoked to cook, but I don’t dislike it and am almost always happy with the results.

I’m all for new ingenious things, but I also like to be in touch with age old traditions.

Heh, I use vim too tho, so go figure.

I wonder how much of this is due to the proliferation of ridiculous recipes from the 70's and 80's. Like so much of that stuff is unhealthy as hell, takes FOREVER to make and involves a list of ingredients longer than my leg.

Meanwhile I can bang out a rosemary chicken that's low calorie and delicious in like 10 minutes of actual work and a half an hour playing games on my couch, and steam up some vegetables to go with it with 5 minutes on the microwave.

Cooking is not even remotely hard but if you tell my mom that she'll flip, but that's because she has whole cookbooks full of this stuff where the prep time is measured in HOURS. And it's just like, why are you making this so hard on yourself?

Throw in all those Food Network chefs whose recipe books are full of ingredients you're, realistically, only ever gonna use for that one recipe, and the leftovers of which'll—let's face it—just end up sitting around cluttering your pantry or fridge until they go bad.

That can go either way. The ones during the prime time hours like Alton Brown tend to be more practical recipes. It's the ones during like the 10am slot that do the complicated shit (which kinda makes sense since the people most likely to be watching those shows at that time are stay-at-home-moms).

Well modern America has no real food culture. Most countries combine the same 5 local staples like rice, vegetables meat, local seasonings etc so they always have it on hand and know how to easily make something. Here check an Nytimes recipe and it will have you doing hours of prep and ridiculous steps like getting one pan out and dirty just to slightly toast something to make it restaurant quality presentation. Don’t get me wrong I love that detailed stuff because cooking is an escape and relaxing for me but there is no easy first step for most people to acquire a few simple recipes and techniques that they can execute quickly here so they go for instant gratification frozen food boxes.

> Well modern America has no real food culture. Most countries combine the same 5 local staples like rice, vegetables meat, local seasonings etc so they always have it on hand and know how to easily make something.

Glad you threw in "modern". We do have regional food cultures but they're too boring for most people, especially if you do it right and shift the menu with the season ("Stew and cornbread? Again?" well yes, it's Winter, want a side of hardy greens to go with it? "ew, catfish! Gross!" yes, that's... what's around. What, you want mahi mahi?).

We want more variety and to eat all kinds of produce year-round. You can just pick any "ethnic" cuisine (especially if it has a similar climate to the one you're in) and get like results, but people in the US don't do that either, mostly, probably for the same reasons: that they'd start to find it too dull, or would prefer not to eat so many of the dishes for one reason or another that they'd have to sub in others from other cuisines to make up for it.

I guess there isn’t an absolute default culturally, but it’s not that hard to get started making basic food. I think most people are just lazy / get anxiety about things they don’t know how to start.

When I first started cooking I mostly just baked or pan fried meat, microwaves or sautéed vegetables, and made slow cooker chili / other soups. Maybe that doesn’t fit most people’s definition of cooking but IMO there is nothing wrong with a dinner of (seasoned) baked chicken thighs with some microwaved frozen broccoli. It takes like 5 minutes of actual work too.

That's absolutely my ideal dinner. I enjoy cooking but I don't want to spend a ton of time on it. Season a piece of chicken or maybe a steak if it's a treat night, sautee some veggies, warm up some pre-cooked rice, and eat. Whole process generally takes less time than running out for a takeout, and is of course WAY cheaper.

That's not say I NEVER eat out of course, just, I save a ton of money cooking at home.

NYT has a lot of beginner friendly recipes. Most of them, even.

Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce, namely. NYT’s recipe mailing list is surprisingly good for ideas and quicker recipes, it’s not all complex dishes.

You obviously haven't been to the southern portion of the country. Louisiana - Cajun country near Lafeyette, Creole in New Orleans, has a strong food culture. It is a sin down here not to be able to make your own roux.

I have been and the food is great but I think its thanks to French and Caribbean influences. Quebec also has good food for the same reason, but mainstream America does not.

Cajun food is unique to the region as it was developed when Acadian immigrants fled Canada while incorporating the cultures of the region at the time. If anything it is quintessentially American.

Wow an entire article that follows this shift:

> At the time, the sizes of the three respective groups were about 15% who love to cook, 50% who hate to cook, and 35% who are so-so on the idea.

> Nearly 15 years later I did a similar study for a different client. This time, the numbers had shifted: Only 10% of consumers now love to cook, while 45% hate it and 45% are lukewarm about it. That means that the percentage of Americans who really love to cook has dropped by about one-third in a fairly short period of time.

Doesn't that also mean that there is now a decent jump in people who cook more often (mixed group of outsourcing and cooking at home) and less people who absolutely hate it? That seems like an improvement.

I imagine it might be difficult to produce an non-boring article that starts with: "Only 45% now enjoy cooking some of the time"

Get kids introduced to Home Ec where they learn about food and cooking.

If you get into it early on, it may not be a thing you love to do, but you’re okay with doing.

Same with shop class. There are many people out there for whom fixing things around the house are a bit foreign because they’re not sure how to do it. YouTube does help full in some of that experience but it helps if people have been primed.

I have another statistic: 0% of Americans love doing laundry.

So why is Tide still in business?

My dependents (two small kittens) sure love when I do laundry though, don't know how that skews the numbers.

Aww. Yup, cats love laundry.

Because there hasn't been a simple-enough, cheap-enough outsourcing method developed. It's probably only a matter of time though.

Uber for laundry sounds like a business plan to me.

Already done (several times) and on the startup scrap heap.

What? There are already services that go around, pick up laundry, wash the stuff, and return it folded. It's expensive but this is not a new business.

That's the 'taxi' version, which one might 'Uber for' by appifying and raising several million dollars.

Since there aren't wash-and-fold medallions, and travelers can generally go without or get concierge service, this meets no actual need.

Thus, these startups have failed.

I’d think the Uber version would be your neighbor coming around to do your laundry.

It's expensive. About 2 years ago my girlfriend moved in with her service animal and my landlord forbid us from using the communal laundry machine due to allergies he said another tenant has. From that point forward, I took my laundry to one of those places that charge by the pound because there were no DIY laundromats nearby. I loved it. Super convenient. But the costs really added up.

raises hand meekly I like doing laundry. I find it relaxing/meditative.

Ah, the curse of not enough significant figures.

I like cooking but end up with a bunch of things to clean if I get creative.

The real revolution in Smart Homes will be a system that cleans and puts away dishes, wipes down counters, washes dries and folds laundry, puts away toys and cleans up messes without human intervention. I’m rooting for Roomba.

But they should name it 'Rosie' after a copy righted show about the future (from my childhood).

The most realistic part of that show was how all the time saving robots and gizmos would always have a ton of end user issues and George would not want to use them.

I like how George only has to work two hours a week, and all he has to do is push a button, but his boss is still a jerk.

Clean as you go. Plan your tasks before you begin cooking. If you spend 30 minutes cooking, you'll have maybe a handful of 2-3 minute breaks between steps.

That works as does the concept of mise en place for any meal that requires prep work even in a home kitchen. Have everything ready to go and clean as you go.

I hate cooking - but I come home for lunch almost everyday (live 2 blocks from office) and rush cook so I can eat healthy.

99% of food at restaurants is cooked in unhealthy oils like canola or soybean oil, has too much sugar, has fillers like corn-starch or other things that pack on pounds, and barely have any vegetables. (sure you can get salads, but I want cooked vegetables)

If I had a FANG salary I would have a personal chef by now. Only way to eat healthy is to cook for yourself so I reluctantly do it.

This is a shameless plug. But I just launched an app (www.getfoodville.com) last week to try to tackle this problem.

I am looking for those 10% home chefs that would like to cook for those 45% of people that hate cooking. Instead of ordering out from restaurants, they can order home cooked food from their neighbors.

There is already regulation in the US called Microentreprise Home Kitchen Operation, but I am finding out its an uphill battle. Its cost $600 per permit and you can only earn up to $50k per year.

If anyone here want this service, leave your email here: https://forms.gle/UfXLCEphvkvohiRa9. And if you are the 10% interested in cooking for the 45%, please send me an email at hello[at]getfoodville[dot]com.

The article mentions "microwave assisted thermal sterilization". That's useful. Most of the advantages of food irradiation without the PR problem. This apparently came from US military R&D, which is now able to get sandwiches and pizza into MREs. Most foods can now be packaged for a long shelf life.

True.

The real question is: why aren't we seeing products yet ?

One company has a patent monopoly, they're not a big company, and they're not licensing it to a big company. You have to use their equipment. Their last news update was in 2018, a bad sign.

Amazon Fresh was talking about it last year, but didn't go that route. Amazon/Whole Foods has been fooling around with meal kits, but meal kits turned out to be a dud business.[1] What people in the US seem to want is ready to eat delivery. And there's already frozen food, after all. There's interest in Asia and Australia, where the cold chain for frozen food is more of a problem.

The military thinks it's great, though. They can offer a lot more food variety to troops in the field. Not so much for preppers, though. Newer MRE products only have a useful life of 3 years. The military doesn't need to store them forever, after all; they just need something that can survive a long, slow supply chain.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-meal-kits-blue-apron-...

>> they're not a big company, and they're not licensing it to a big company. You have to use their equipment.

We're talking about 915 Labs , right ?

So where's the problem - just buy the system from them - as long as they price it fairly.

Heck it's even better - they have a monopoly on a key technology - they are an ideal partner/acquisition for someone who wants to roughly own the food business.

Also there's micvac, which does have some similar , microwave based food packaging technology, and they sell products in Sweden, South Africa, and probably Asia. And i believe they have US patents.

>> What people in the US seem to want is ready to eat delivery.

That's true for affluent customers. You can't beat the restaurant delivery brand, quality and selection.

But what about non-wealthy people - if it's cheap enough, chilled meals may be a better solution for them. But i'm not from the US so maybe i'm mistaken.

I like cooking well enough but not so much that I'd still do it if I could get the same results, at the same price, without doing it. Ditto house/construction stuff—I kinda like it but not enough that I'd keep doing it if there were no value in the work, i.e. I could wave a wand instead and the work would be done and I'm out the same amount of money as materials. Hell, in either case I'd pay a smallish premium—tens of a percent over the cost to DIY—to never do it again, all else (quality, selection, availability/timing of product) being equal, even. It's only because the activities provide tons of value that I do them myself, even though I "like" them.

Actually the more I think about it, that goes for lots and lots of things I do. Almost all of it, maybe. To "love" an activity must one love doing it even if it provides nothing of use, no desirable output? Hm. I mean, even games provide a goal, typically. People might just move pieces around on a board or hit a ball around aimlessly and enjoy it but that's not what gets people really going. You need rules, structure, a point to it.

Interesting argument but I think you’re overthinking it if you’re requiring people to only enjoy the performance of a task with zero expectation of reward. For example I deeply enjoy the process of soldering and assembling small electronic devices in itself as its a chance to slow down and focus on exercising logic and physical dexterity, but I can’t bring myself to make something I have zero need or plan to use without feeling guilty that I’m wasting time. Knowing a device will be useful allows me to stop worrying and just go into the process of making.

This is why we are obese. We eat ultra-processed crap designed for overconsumption.

Food cooked at home is made of fresh whole foods, meat and plants, high in protein, potassium and all things good for your health. Whether you prefer high or low carb doesn't even matter, what matters more is quality.

Also if you need a surrogate metric for whether you're eating a healthy diet, try to measure for a few days what you're eating via Cronometer. If you don't eat enough protein or you're having trouble meeting the recommended potassium intake (the one by WHO at a minimum, which is 3500 mg per day, ideal being the US one of 4700 mg / day) ... then your diet is crap.

Not that supplementing potassium will magically improve your diet, it won't, but this is the best surrogate marker I found for everything that's missing from the standard diet.

I'm not sure that I love cooking, but I haven't yet figured out how to stay healthy on prepared food. The things we cook at home tend to be pretty basic and quick, possibly monotonous if you care about variety.

I love homemade bread.

I am the same. I started eating extremely basic and lost nearly 50 pounds and save a ton of money -- rice, potatoes, peas, corn, lentils. I don't give a hoot about variety, so that helps.

I personally would love to see more grocery stores do culinary classes to show how to make simple dinners. The only grocery store near me that does it is $75 a person (granted, they are a gourmet grocery store, but that is still very much on the high side). This could be a break even or even loss leader, but I think being able to show someone how to make a simple meal would encourage them to cook more.

Personally, I have made it a point with my fiancee that we are going to make a new meal (i.e. something we have never tried making before) every week. Sometimes they are complicated meals, but sometimes they are simple. But that has encouraged us to learn more and actually enjoy it a lot.

For those that are on here who don't like or are on the fence for cooking, I would really encourage you to try it. One thing I have learned is that with a few high quality ingredients, you can make a meal that is as good or even better than all but the nicest restaurants in town.

I have made bread for friends with just flour, salt, water, and yeast that they thought came from an expensive bakery. Making a pasta with good pasta (or homemade), good tomatoes, salt, and basil has yielded me a meal that I would pay $25 at a nice restaurant for.

Even better, I can control exactly what is in it. I can make a meal for my vegan parents alongside a meat meal for me by only swapping one or two ingredients. I prefer to not have food products with preservatives in it (or heavily processed), so I can make my meals with that.

Really, my issue is the fact that I don't want to make several servings of the same thing and eat on it several days in a row (meal-prepping style). Yet, being single, I've rarely found smaller packaging sizes where I live, so that's kinda what I'm forced to do... I wish companies would package items where it can be used for a single serving; I'd cook a lot more, at least when I feel like it after my hour long commute...

Just wanted to put in a shameless plug for The Joy of Cooking. I first started with it in the 90's and it's been my "go-to" book ever since.

I remember when I first looked at it my reaction was, "Good it's like a reference manual for food." Just the index by itself is almost a work of art.

I personally think it peaked with the 1975 edition, that one had the most dense amount of background information.

https://www.villagevoice.com/2014/02/04/throwback-cookbook-w...

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/vintage-joy-of-cooking-cook...

How do other countries compare, specifically Asian, urban areas where street food is ubiquitous?

They cook a whole lot, for a variety of reasons. Many of these countries are less wealthy (can't speak to some of the wealthier countries like Singapore), and many have multigenerational households, where other generations help with household responsibilities, among other things.

As an aside, it's also interesting how big a difference the home-cuisine is versus what you may think of as that cuisine in many cases. I like to point at The Key to Chinese Cooking (https://www.amazon.com/Key-Chinese-Cooking-Irene-Kuo/dp/0394...) as a starting point for something more akin to Chinese home cuisine.

I can speak to South Korea a bit. There's basically a few things to consider about South Korean food culture:

1 - there's a phenomenally low female participation in the work-force (at least among OECD countries), which translates to a wife or mother doing most of the cooking at home. This is changing slowly, but still a dominant fact-of-life for most Koreans. So the default idea of a meal is "home cooking". Korean house-wives still maintain a broad set of cooking skills and can produce huge varieties of menus, often of healthy and filling meals. Soups of various kinds are among the most common type of meal, served with rice and sometimes noodles.

2 - for various historic, geographic, and cultural reasons, Koreans share of proteins has been lower than say, an American or European might expect in their diets. The bulk is made up of fresh and pickled vegetables, and rice as the main starch. Proteins are heavily sourced from the sea and come in a huge variety of critters, and are often supplemented or replaced with some kind of tofu. Of course Koreans eat beef, chicken, pork and so on. But it tends to be more expensive and less ubiquitous. You'll find some kind of sea creature in nearly everything you eat unless you're eating Buddhist temple food (which is also delicious and vegetarian). This is also changing, and as a result Koreans are getting taller and heavier. But there's a small cultural bias against very meat heavy meals and many South Koreans will describe the typical American-style meal as "greasy".

3 - somewhat paradoxically, restaurants are ubiquitous. In Seoul, you might find a dozen or more restaurants within an easy walk of where you live. They come in huge varieties, are often very narrowly focused in menu and offering, are intensely competitive, and are often not terribly expensive. Importantly, they frequently try to provide a "home-cooked" meal replacement and the kitchens will often be run by older women with not much more training than the average house-wife and will produce food that has similar flavor and nutritional characteristics. In market areas, you can find traditional styled soups with rice and unlimited basic side dishes (kimchi, etc.) for $5-7 and walk way stuffed.

4 - there is of course lots of street food in Seoul, but it tends to sit near very busy business districts or in markets. More importantly, there's a very big class of foods and restaurants that cater to "food you eat while you drink alcohol" and that tends to be fried, salty, meat or starch heavy, spicy, greasy and generally fairly unhealthy. It's also increasingly common to eat when not drinking and includes foods like fried chicken, instant noodles and so on. These are often upped with cheese and other such high-calorie add-ons. Most Koreans recognize this is trash food intended to be eaten while getting trashed, but to be honest, it's about as good for you as the average American diet is.

All that being said, the average Korean eats a much healthier diet than the average American. Most Koreans will have a well developed sense of taste for veggies and seafood and this starts very young. Here's a video of 30 days of school lunches https://youtu.be/0Kq_d0TUKS4

People fall into 3 categories is a pretty course classification. There are hot prepared meals, cut prepared meals you still need to cook, microwave meals, raw ingredients and everything in between. Meanwhile stores have been reducing waste. Someone is buying the stuff and it isn't accounted for by just the 10%. My guess is that the past decades economic windfall just means we are eating out more than the previous decade. Eventually economic downturn will make eating out prohibitively expensive for many, and they will rediscover their "love" or more likely somewhere on the spectrum of cooking appreciation.

I like cooking but not every night - so I just cook up a big batch of stuff and freeze it. Lots of recipes here for anyone so inclined - https://www.reddit.com/r/MealPrepSunday/

If you like salads I've found I can just slice up a big batch and it will keep for a few days in the fridge - just keep the dressing and sliced tomatoes off until you serve it.

Now I finally understand why Wegmans seems to be making such a big push into prepared food picks and Instacart. Assuming this article is correct, there's a decline of people who just go in and go shopping (though if there is I haven't seen it, my local store seems busy all the time). I guess it makes sense. More people eating out and getting food delivered from restaurants means fewer people going to Wegmans.

Wegmans has been doing prepared food since before any of those alternatives existed.

Doesn't matter if you love it or hate it -- realistically, most families simply don't have the money to do anything else. You may hate it, but you're still making dinner every night for the kids.

I think a big distinction needs to be made here between individual working professions (whether married or not), and families with kids. The ways in which they cook and consume food are miles apart.

It's because they hate doing the dishes.

Does US have some kind of Tiffin services, you get couple of fixed menu the day before. Since the chefs have to cook only few dishes by a fixed time, they can maintain quality at reasonable cost.

This is depressing... if the industry follows that advice consumers will lose a major outlet that helps reduce costs for them and the ability to customize healthier food as easily.

Forget Neuralink, I wish someone would pioneer a way for me to pour Soylent directly into my stomach. Eating is fun socially, but it's just another inconvenience otherwise.

There is. Nasogastric and percutaneous gastrostomy tubes are commonly used for various reasons in hospital settings.

Now ask your self, will you really get surgery for convenience and productivity sake only? Any sane person will say no.

> Now ask your self, will you really get surgery for convenience and productivity sake only? Any sane person will say no.

That's a bit of an unsubstantiated and far-reaching statement.

Why not? People get surgery literally for appearance sake only. A great deal of orthopedic treatments are for convenience and productivity only. You can make this argument for just about any elective procedure. Yes, some people have body dysmorphia, but not everyone that desires an rhinoplasty is insane.

Despite low risk, most cosmetic surgery is riskier than a PEG tube placement. In the US, PEG tubes are routinely placed by non-surgeons (GI docs) and doesn't require general anesthesia.

Current PEG tubes carry risks and day-to-day complications that make this a bad idea for other reasons, but that doesn't make elective procedures fundamentally insane.

There is an “ick” factor about having a medical device without necessity that requires occasional maintenance that cosmetic surgery does not. In a case of medical necessity, the “ick” factor is overridden by the individual desiring some degree of quality of life.

Taken to the extreme, the programmer truly devoted to coding productivity can equip themselves with a PEG, a feeding pump, a Foley catheter and a Dignicare device to manage all bodily functions.

I'm assuming you're joking. Otherwise, try chocolate or mint chocolate flavors.

Cooking from a box doesn't count if you're putting Rice-A-Roni in some water that's not cooking that's not healthy and it's not frugal at all

I'm part of the 10% but only when I'm not in a rush.

It's also becoming increasingly difficult.

Main supermarkets have semi-prepared stuff. And actual grocery shop is a massive detour and involves lots of peeling.

The actual cooking part doesn't bother me as much as the surrounding activities.

All those goddamn "hands on time: 15 minutes!" recipes where the ingredients list includes diced-this and peeled-that and chopped-whatever and shredded-other-thing and it's clear the 15 minutes doesn't include getting all the ingredients prepped & measured, which will easily take more than that 15 minutes all on its own.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen this comment yet, but anyone just saying, “fuck it” and eating Huel or Soylent plus multivitamin? My wife and I are experimenting with Huel starting Jan 1st.

Might as well giver up on life at that stage.

I have a long time ago.

Truly love? I'd say its even less than that, and of that 90% many of them cook for a living, for various reasons.

I'm one of the former, I've come out of retirement as a chef twice, I did Agriculture because I wanted to see it from its entire process, because I can't be happy (or at least not have a massive sense of wanting inside of me) not being around food in some capacity. I thought IBM's food safety would be a good compromise... but, then here we are.

I'd say the US as a whole has a consume-only relationship with food, which skews the entire paradigm and leads to a disastrous logistical nightmare that entails losing 50% of all food produced.

There are enclaves of Food hubs in the US, but its relationship is not one of wanting to create but to be served by those who do, and it ranges from: immediate gratification to being a status symbol. And most who do work in said Industry, and they may even have a culinary schooling background, don't love food but instead love the lifestyle it can offer--Bourdain sadly, but accurately, highlights this in Kitchen Confidential and several of his series' about the hard boozing, drug-addled 'chef life.' I'm glad to say I got over that very early on in my first phase back as a University student.

Whereas in much of Europe (excluding places like Germany and UK), and from what I've seen in parts of Asia outside of China as well, food is the basis for which to take a break and unwind and enjoy the simpler pleasures of Life. Sitting at a table with friends and family is the reward for a day's work, and justifies why you even get out of bed. Dinner lasts hours after the meal has taken place as you converse and entertain each other.

To my surprise Swiss cusinese is essentially just party food, meant to be shared and interacted with and if you are lucky to experience at someone's homes the norms of just feeding each other and pouring each other food is very apparent and intoxicating.

My favorite food cultures are reflected in my repertoire: Italian and Japanese.

Both take humble ingredients and have a long History if making something extra-ordinary. it comes from an affinity for food that goes beyond just loving to cook, but a deep relationship with how the Earth and how its grown and what grows around you. Most of the best stuff from both cuisines doesn't travel well, and forces you to eat locally and seasonally to really appreciate it. A

nd the painstaking elaboration that follows is incredibly time-consuming: think 80 hour work weeks in the heavy seasons as the norm, not the exception, this can only come from a deep love for food.

It is with this in mind that customer is and always will be secondary, regardless of whatever narrative is sold to clientele. Which is why I don't think it lends itself to the US' commodification and consumerist driven culture. They make like it in a hypothetical and abstract way, but they will seldom live it.

> Forget Neuralink, I wish someone would pioneer a way for me to pour Soylent directly into my stomach. Eating is fun socially, but it's just another inconvenience otherwise.

See what I mean.

Editorialized the title due to title length constraints when adding the 2017 tag -- would appreciate if the original title can be added

Since the article is from 2017, it would have been better to omit "Confronts a New Problem" in my opinion. There is a difference between "10% of Americans Cook" and the actual title, "10% of Americans Love Cooking".

Yeah that's fair, although I think then we'd lose the article's focus on the grocery business. Hopefully my most recent edit is a reasonable compromise

You did a professional job.

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