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Comment by newsclues | Hacker News Reader

Depends on your income, and many low income people find food (especially healthy food) to be expensive.

One of the best "simple cooking healthier" tips I've ever received is to cut up onion, bell pepper, etc. and then freeze majority for sparing use in other dishes. After becoming college poor, this began my exploration into healthier eating. I now add onions/peppers to every hot dish.

The additional flavor makes food seem more filling, and isn't expensive. Also: potatoes.

I hear this repeated all the time, but it rings false.

Convenient junk food is quite expensive compared to “real food” like meat, uncooked pasta, fruits, vegetable, etc which are healthy but require some preparation.

The argument then goes: “well, ok, but poor people don’t have time to cook”. Which again rings false. The poor people I’ve known have an abundance of time and are not working 3-4 jobs to make ends meet.

"Real food" has gone up considerably.

The 'no time to cook' stuff is also plainly false because of handy inventions like pressure cookers. Spend 10 minutes prepping the ingredients, toss them in, do whatever, when you're ready to eat - the food's ready to go. And it's not like roughing it or whatever - you can make some hella delicious meals with precious cookers, and you can get a reasonable one for about a day of minimum wage work.

I agree, thats why chose to put PRICE PER NUTRITION in all caps because there is a huge difference when someone spends $4 for a carton of eggs vs $4 for a bag of potato chips for example. Everyone seems to complain about food prices but everytime Im at the grocery store I see carts filled to the brin with nutritionally worthless processed foods.

And prep is easy, I guess my tastes are simple - beef, eggs, salt maybe a litle hot sauce. I can cook 3 pounds of ground beef and add about 10-12 eggs in a 12" fry pan and have 3-6 meals in containers in about 45 minutes.

It can be expensive but it’s also pretty cheap.

I have some food allergies and cook everything from scratch at home so I know it can be cheap to cook yourself but there are some processed foods that are just cheap for the calories especially things on sale.

Other factors like limited transportation and space in a backpack or bag to carry home can make bulk savings harder.

Yeah you can eat rice and beans for cheap, but that’s not really a completely nutritious diet. I’ve eaten it a lot!

Cooking for yourself is cultural. If it's not in your culture you won't do it. Price controls won't fix food prices. Good luck having the government fix culture.

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