Ask HN: How to stop using food delivery apps? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to stop using food delivery apps?

9 pointsacqbu41 comments

I have become addicted to/heavily reliant on food delivery apps throughout the pandemic as they are seemingly convenient. In reality, the food quality is subpar and seldom arrives on time. Also, these apps are money sinks, not to mention that the food is generally not the healthiest. Any tips/ideas on how to reduce or stop using them altogether? Thanks.

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Off Topic: I have mixed feelings on the recent Redditification of "Ask HN:" becoming a forum for almost exclusively self-help style posts.

Like, they're fine in moderation and no one person is being spammy so I have no idea how ask for moderation.

I agree with you, I've recently seen so many reddit style ask HNs that are basically just hypothetical question that teenagers think of in the shower. I actually thought this question was more relevant because I identify with it as someone who just sits at the computer and uber-eats' stuff, and so I see it as at least peripherally tech related, though i agree it's on the edge.

> no one person is being spammy

Not sure about that:

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=logicallee

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=amichail

Oh jeez. Good catch. Glad I'm not the only once concerned with this. @dang, mind weighing in?

"Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills."

From your very own guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ;-)

I have the same problem, I'm almost always disappointed and pay way too much, but I keep coming back to the romanticized version of the idea of getting tasty and convenient food without having to plan ahead. I try and remind myself of how unhappy I was with previous orders. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

If a service existed that could teleport me a just served restaurant meal at the same price as at the restaurant, with high accuracy and no wait, I'd be all over it. (Pizza hut delivery is actually the closest I've found to that and I order it a couple times a month)

For the health aspect, that takes a different kind of dedication and concentration on eating healthy, which is a imo a bigger commitment that there is lots of information around on.

Edit: I'm assuming you know you could cook yourself and don't like to or find it inconvenient. I'm definitely in that camp, I'm actually good at cooking, but unless I'm on a mission to cook something, I don't really like doing it (or planning groceries) and I do like eating tasty stuff. The concept of a delivery app addresses this well which is why I keep coming back to them.

Don't be a poor and hire yourself a live-in chef?

Easy peasy.

Follow me for more tips on how to live your best life.

> Follow me for more tips on how to live your best life.

link?

Oh you poor unfortunate soul, you have to do your own staff managment.

Time to learn to cook. Useful tip: most recipes you'll come across online are way overcomplicated. Get a cookbook from a real publisher. Preferably an nth edition of something your ancestors 100 years ago might have used. An actual paper, gets grease spots with age book. That way you know someone actually paid to put someone else's words together and tried the recipes out.

Highlight, like with a highlighter, any recipes you like. Bring those to a community (maybe this one!) and ask for tips on how to improve it once you have some experience.

Good advice. With a high-quality cookbook like that, you know the recipes have been tested before going to print. That makes them very useful.

If I may recommend a book: "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" by Samin Nosrat

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30753841-salt-fat-acid-h...

If you look for recipes, I'd recommend starting with Italian dishes. They usually combine few ingredients but the end-results are amazing. It's crazy what you can you can do with so little. Be prepared to buy lots of olive oil though - at least it has a good $ per kcal rate, compared to other stuff you buy.

If cooking seems too much of a waste of time, try listening to audiobooks or podcasts while you cook. Soon you'll be longing to get back into the kitchen.

For online recipes I find the BBC Good Food website [0] is pretty reliable, though I stick to the published recipes - it also has member submitted stuff which I suspect is much more variable. All the recipes are formatted sensibly, pretty much universally use metric measurements - which I find much easier, and normally pretty tasty.

[0] https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/

For the first steps, uninstall the app, make a list of grocery store items that you need, and go to the store

Learn how to cook yourself. Pick some recipe and fucking cook that shit.

Also, meal prep on Sunday.

https://reddit.com/r/MealPrepSunday/

https://reddit.com/r/MealPrepSunday/comments/2yqf61/original...

Just cook something instead, I guess? Helps to have some food at home ready to be cooked. Go for simple dishes like pancakes or fried eggs if your current skill level is kind of low.

Some things worked for me in various forms:

- Set a budget. It can be whatever you want, but less than you’re spending right now. That way you’ll be able to do a quick mental check for whether you’re spending “too much” (relative to what? The budget.) You’ll go over budget, but at least you’ll have a goal.

- Similarly, when you get your paycheck, immediately (or automatically) transfer more to a savings, retirement, or investment acct. you’ll have less cash on hand for eating out.

- If cooking is a drudgery, you may benefit from better quality cookware, such as knives. Decent knives (not the ones that come in a pack of 10) made chopping that was previously laborious much easier to handle.

- Similarly, cook with others. Turns it into a social activity to prepare meals for the week.

- there are a bunch of companies, such as freshly, which deliver pre made TV dinners. They are designed to be healthier. You could try out a few of those to see if there’s one you like.

- There are services, like Shef, that pair you with someone in the community (sometimes pro chefs) to made food for the week. Also “aunties” that do this from their home.

- Find recipes that are easy to make at home. Don’t use Gordon Ramsay coming videos. Chef John is my favorite, you’ll definitely find a recipe you like and it will be accessible to make.

- Keep snacks around the house. Fruit, nuts, trail mix, popcorn, for cravings.

Good luck!

also: meal kits (blue apron, hello fresh, etc), to remove the drudgery of meal planning and shopping. You still have to cook the food, but at least moves the meals to things you're making in your home, and substantially healthier, rather than take-out.

People often mention that half of exercising is finding something that’s the right fit for you. Or, something that’s easy to start doing and stay consistent with. I’m not expert, but I think home cooking is the same way.

I’d suggest finding simpler tools/techniques/recipes that aren’t straining to make at first but produce a lot of leftovers. Most restaurants use salt and oil to keep things tasty, and you can always add those yourself if you need comfort food.

You have to make it more convenient and faster to cook at home. For me these were a set of Healthy Choice dinners that I enjoy. On the laziest of nights, I can literally chuck the entire thing into the microwave, set it for 5 minutes, and have dinner which is about 5g net carbs. 5 minutes in the microwave beats 30+ minutes waiting for a driver.

Your complaints sound regional. Where I live it’s the same restaurants in the app as on the street with lots of healthy options.

Very very few restaurants actually have healthy options. Sadly many people now believe loading up on phytotoxins is eating healthy.

That is very, very true

Another regional claim. I don’t consider fresh salads and fresh sandwiches to fall under your criticism.

Fresh vegetables are often good. Raw vegetables rarely are. Some kind of cooking or fermentation or other preparation is necessary to make the nutrients bioavailable to genus homo, along with neutralizing the plants' chemical defense mechanisms on account of they do in fact prefer not to be eaten.

Lots of folks suggesting groceries and cooking, but I prefer the old "go to a restaurant and order and eat." It takes time, but so does cooking, and it's probably cheaper and hotter than delivery.

- Read Salt Fat Acid Heat end to end, you’ll learn how to make anything taste good _to you_

- Buy ready-made or 2 step process meals (eg add thing, put in oven) from the supermarket

- Try protein shakes or smoothies for breakfast or lunch

While you’re at it, also read Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss.

Have you considered ordering from healthier places? I'm not a big salad guy but I love Buddha bowls.

Also they can be good motivation. Sometimes I wake up around lunch time and as a student (it's always different when working FT) I lack the motivation to get out of bed until I see the delivery driver is ten minutes away. Then I speedrun a shower so I can go downstairs and meet them in the lobby of my high rise.

Delete the app from your phone.

Never install it again.

Switch to Lyft if you have issues with the Uber Eats app…

The next time you reach for your phone to order food, walk into your kitchen to eat the food you have at home.

If you do not have food at home, drive to the nearest grocery store and buy groceries. Do not buy anything premade or from the deli…

If you don’t know how to cook or are just starting out, buy ingredients to make sandwiches.

Problem Solved.

Delete the app from your phone and change the password to a random string then paste it with your eyes shut. Put up as many barriers as possible between you and the service so it is harder to use it.

You could even get a flip phone instead of a smartphone.

Get grocery delivery instead?

one of the issues we always have is trying to figure out what to cook, and if we have everything for it. So we just end up ordering something. We are now trying one of these meal services that give you chef prepped recipes and the items to cook it. That way we have to just choose one and cook it. I have been really happy with it so far.

Edit: I’m in Spain so the service we have won’t work for most people, but I hear good things about hellofresh for example.

If you cook a lot, after a while you'll get a feel for what works well together. So you can just make something arbitrary from whatever you have. But for the most part, you just need to combine some carbs, fat, and protein. So just make sure you have those on hand. I wouldn't follow recipes too much. Maybe to get some inspiration, but then make some adjustments to it - to make it interesting as well.

I see cooking as an iterative process. Each time you make a dish, find something to improve: its greatly motivating in trying again with a little variation, and seeing how that worked out. There will be times where the result is a bit disappointing, but it's really difficult to make something inedible - I think it usually happens due to inattention.

Make food yourself?

This. Investing in learning cooking will have a good RoI.

One trick I have used to keep my interest up is to go through various world cuisines and try to learn their styles.

Learn three or four things you can cook with little effort. Steak and mashed potatoes is gorgeous and dead, dead easy.

spaghetti and marinara sauce ( bottle ) is easy egg fried rice is same category

Delete the apps from your phone.

Call your bank and ask them to block transactions from these apps.

Yes… the solution is called “use your kitchen”!

Delete the apps and start holding yourself accountable for your decisions

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