Hacker News Reader

Comment by king_jester | Hacker News Reader

Eating cheaply is really difficult to do for the folks with the least amount of money to spend on food, as working is counter to the things that make eating cheaper: cooking your own meals, shopping or growing cheaper foodstuffs, having appliances to store items for longer periods or cook dried items, being able to plan meals out in advance, etc. That is the reason why convenience foods are popular. A lot of advice stories about eating cheaply often fail to achieve that goal because it is hard to do and requires a lot of effort.

View on HN

A lot of advice stories about eating cheaply often fail to achieve that goal because it is hard to do and requires a lot of effort.

This is a recurring sentiment which speaks volumes about our culture. Complaints of "hard" and "a lot of effort" belies how incredibly rich this society is, that the notion of just making pasta or growing vegetables is somehow prohibitively difficult - not because it's inherently so hard, but because we're so used to "swipe a card, get a meal" at all levels of society. Even if you're officially "poor", just be at WalMart at midnight on EBT recharge day and walk out with convenience foods. For most of humanity through most of history, what so many today belittle as "hard" was "normal" on a daily basis.

On my "A Buck A Plate" blog I've addressed various forms of this complaint. Difficulty? boil some water, open a few cans, spaghetti dinner done. Cost of cooking system (stove, gas, etc.)? grandma's ancient cast-iron frying pan over burning wood scraps in the back yard, make a nice veggies-and-shrimp stir fry. No cooking space indoors or out? $4 crock-pot and an electrical outlet. Cooking your own meals? c'mon, it's not that hard, really. Shopping for inexpensive? look at every price tag in the store (Walmart, Aldi) and discount everything over $1 per pound. Appliances? thrift shops overflow with them dirt cheap. Dried items? throw 'em in water before going to work, ready to cook when you return. Planning meals in advance? you really have an issue with this?

Sure convenience foods are popular. You also pay for that convenience: instead of doing the work yourself, you work doing other things then exchange the money earned there. Do more yourself, and there's less need to be out doing other things.

Don't confuse "you have to do something" with "hard to do and requires a lot of effort". If you watch TV at all you have no excuse.

I think as software developers, many of us are very disconnected with the lives of the very poor in our society. There are people out there working multiple full time jobs, or working full-time while raising young kids by themselves. It boggles my mind that you would consider these people lazy because they're dead on their feet when they arrive home... probably even software developers can think of days when they're too tired to cook, is it really so hard to imagine having to work so hard that those days are every day?

I know it boggles your mind. I too shared the mindset susceptible to "I can't". Amazing how being dead for a few hours can change your perspective on such things.

It must be done. Do it. Eradicate "I can't" from your vocabulary. Cut out all superfluous activity & costs. Unless you're in fact passing out onto the floor, you have the energy and time to do it. Yes, every day. I'm so far past tired and overwhelmed that they're just not excuses any more - it all still needs doing, and the alternative is being where I've been and I'm not keen on going back there.

You're relying very heavily on this "well it's physically possible, that means if someone doesn't do it they don't really want to" trope.

It's pretty lazy, I've got to say. Stop using it like a sledgehammer. No, don't say "I can't help but use it like a sledgehammer": try to make a new, novel suggestion beyond "just try harder!"

Evidence that it's pretty damn lazy: you can use it anywhere. A Roman slave, upset about being worked really hard? "Well, other slaves have worked hard enough to buy their own freedom. Why don't you?" A poor person in rural India? "Well, at least one multibillionaire started out in the same position as you, and that was a couple decades ago in worse conditions. Try harder!"

Defacto it's a crutch to shift responsibility away from the social structures we live in.

Again, I'll acknowledge some people truly can't. I've found they're a fairly small subset of those claiming/imputed "can't".

We're not talking Roman slaves here. "Work 'til you drop or we'll kill you" isn't at issue.

A poor person in rural India really is poor. Under $2/day income (world median) is poor. My sympathies and help.

Blaming the social structures WE live in, no. Assistance, tools, opportunities, etc are prolific; if you're not using them, it's not because they're not available to you.

Yes I'm leaning on the "if someone doesn't do it they don't really want to" trope. That's largely the POINT in this thread, as pointed out by others too. I just see far too much "golly, going to Walmart and buying beef/beans/sauce/seasoning for $5 and cooking it for 10 minutes to feed 4 is just too hard", which a poor rural Indian or a Roman slave would look on at with sheer astonishment.

Required to make your own food everyday are both physical and mental abilities. Low-income Americans are certainly more than physically capable of putting together three meals per day, but they may lack the motivation, inspiration, knowledge, or skill required to do so. I certainly needed my sous-chef best friend living with me and teaching me the virtues of cooking for 3 months to really get the skills and habits down.

This is not something to argue about. The best you can do is empower people, so stop arguing on discussion forums – go forth and empower!

Do you know what happens when you break your leg but keep walking on it without going to a doctor? It keeps causing damage, until that damage is irreparable and there's a bone hanging out of your useless leg. That's pretty easy to visualize, yeah? It's harder to imagine the same thing going on but mentally. It's hard to see the true damage that repeated exposure to stressful situations causes to your mind and psyche. Sure, sugar bombs do damage. So does working until you're in fact passing out on the floor.

Your rah-rah attitude might work for you, and I'm glad for that. But before you go all motivational speaker on everyone else, maybe consider that other people aren't as mentally strong as you seem to be. Some people can't carry a 50lb weight 24x7 for days on end. Likewise some people can't carry the mental weight of two jobs, a family, and bills still being unpaid plus the thought of working for hours when they get home to make a meal.

I just got here in passing, and I have to admit I'm kind on the side of ctdonath here. Currently, I'm working 3 jobs (one is 6 hours a day, the other two are two projects I'm working on that are 2-4 hours a day, total.) In addition to this, I'm finishing my PhD (or trying, time is scarce lately) but I still find the 10-15 minutes it takes to open the gas stove and prepare some sauteed vegetables, the 10 minutes it takes to prepare a lettuce and lots-o-more-things salad, or the 5 minutes it takes to prepare crispy bacon.

The "cooking for hours" mentality is bullshit. With the rest of your points I can agree (as well as I agree with ctdonath's points,) since there is no universal truth in what people are doing with their time, and how much they can endure. But with the waste of time cooking takes, I just can't. It's false. I've cooked 3 course meals for 8 people on special occasions (so it's more elaborate than usual) and only in this case it took me more than 30 minutes to do it. It was 1h30. Of course this may seem like a lot, but I don't do custard everyday and it takes quite a long time.

*Edit: misspelled OP's name (sorry)

Well it's kind of a false equivalency to try to say that 30 minutes cooking dinner is the same as 30 minutes preparing convenience food. Cooking meat, cooking beans, cooking rice, sauteing veggies, preparing a salad, whatever, is not the same as putting a frozen lasagna in the oven for 30 minutes while you veg out on the couch and unwind.

Sure, it's 30 minutes, but what really counts is what you're doing in that 30 minutes. If you're watching your food, you're working. If you're watching TV while your food cooks to the tune of the prepared directions, that's completely different. That doesn't even take into account the time spent at the store picking out individual ingredients vs just grabbing a frozen meal and running out the door.

I'm not defending poor eating habits, at least I'm not trying to. The point of my post was to point out how self-righteous ctdonath is being in the majority of his posts in this topic. "You're not tired unless you're passing out standing up" is just bullshit. Mental stress is a real thing, and it cannot be discounted. I don't know you, but I can guess that if you're doing a PhD, you have what it takes to handle significant amounts of mental stress. You have to, or you wouldn't have even gotten through undergrad with the will to pursue two more difficult degrees. Your single parent dual factory worker who grew up in a blue collar family and sees no prospect for future success might not have that same level of motivation, which is why I called out ctdonath for being a motivational speaker.

What works for you will not work for everyone. It's difficult to see mental injury and duress. Stress is not as visible as a broken leg, nor as easy to treat. People should eat proper, yes, but telling them "it's not hard, you're just lazy" is by far not the proper way to get them motivated.

I don't think 30 minutes preparing a meal is the same as having it done. It's really completely different... I'm not perfect at this either, and sometimes the tradeoff of 30 minutes to prepare something is too big and I just do something quicker (rarely prepared food, but I love bread with olive oil and cheese, so it feels great for me when I'm not in the mood for cooking.)

It all depends on how you value those 30 minutes. If there's something in TV you want to watch and will make you happier/more energetic, it probably is worth the extra cost prepared food has. If you are just watching some nonsense to disconnect your brain... Well, stirring a pot is also quite a zen experience, far better than most TV programs :D

I was a poor kid too. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is great if you can do it, but it's not a sustainable, universal solution. Whether you recognize it or not, we've had advantages that other poor kids didn't -- even if that just means a lack of disadvantages. Let's not pull up the ladder behind us.

check your privilege

This is the most useless comment you can possibly post. If your only contribution is "check your privilege" then your contribution is worthless and you shouldn't even bother.

It's playground sarcasm and offers nothing.

Of course people used to work much harder to prepare their food. We've replaced harvesting your own food with working to pay for your food. The complaints of preparing a full meal being difficult are coming from a context of somebody who already spent 8+ hours working for their food that day, not somebody who is just being lazy.

From a book called Rework [1]:

"When you want something bad enough, you make the time - regardless of your other obligations. The truth is most people just don't want it bad enough. Then they protect their ego with the excuse of time."

I think virtually everyone in the UK has the means to eat healthy if they really want to.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Rework-Jason-Fried/dp/0307463745

37Signals also sprinkle their stuff with "this works for us, we're not saying it's for everyone". They are outliers, and much as I love and am inspired by them, if what they said was so easy, why aren't we all working four day weeks from home, whilst racing multi-million pound sports cars?

king_jester was talking about the poor. I doubt telling poor people to want it more badly is going to have a huge positive effect.

Many poor are content with their condition, unwilling to take even basic steps to improve. Harsh as this sounds, and downvote-bait it seems, I've worked at helping the poor and found (to my dismay) most of them are in that condition because they refuse to choose to do better. Yes, they don't want it badly enough.

And there are many that aren't. Don't make the mistake of assuming that just because a few are content that everyone in that position is.

Make sure you're not confusing resignation with contentment.

I've seen lots of people complaining about not having money to pay the rent (or mortgage)/food/textbooks for kids but going on holidays (or skiing, or binge drinking) every possible moment. It's not general, there are lots of people making as best as they can with the resources they have. But there are also a lot of people who don't even try and just say they can't.

The idea that everyone has time to do 'X' if they only wanted it bad enough is complete BS.

For people that work two jobs, have a family to take care of, commute several hours, have a sick spouse and sleep there is no more time in the day. No matter how badly you want it.

Unless you or the author of Rework know of a magical formula to make the day longer than 24 hours or how to operate on little to no sleep.

If surviving on that arrangement doesn't work, change the arrangement.

Move somewhere with a cheaper standard of living. Reduce expenses to where one spouse can stay home. Find another job closer. Unplug the TV already. Seriously.

Yes, if you want it badly enough you'll do it. I moved 1000 miles, changed jobs twice, worked 2 jobs at once for years, have a family to care for, cut the commute from 2 hours to 15 minutes, and operate on limited sleep. TV? about 4 hours a month. Every time I thought "I can't do this but I have to" I found a way. Now I work a dream job at a startup, support a family of 4, and live in a nice area.

Yes, we know of the "magical formula": use your brain and make it happen; you're the only one stopping you.

I'm not sure if you are just naive or intentionally contrary.

Please, explain to me how a family that can barely afford rent and meals can move 1000 miles away and find work. It's not really that easy to find a new job in a town you've never been to.

Or a couple in which one is handicapped or seriously ill can 'change the arrangement'

You made your situation better. Congratulations. I mean that. But assuming everyone can do it because you did is borderline arrogant.

There is no silver bullet solution and saying that anyone can do it if they want to bad enough is just stupid and ignorant.

Intentionally contrary, as I see a glaring over-application of "poor" and "can't".

This country was founded on people having very little walking very long distances to build homesteads from nothing.

I'll agree there are some people who truly can't make the changes I indicated; we have a social safety net for them, and I do put in a weekly effort to help them. Most who whine "I can't" can, they just won't.

Obviously there are exceptions, and a short aphorism of "you'll do it if you want it bad enough" is not expected to have encyclopedic thoroughness covering those few genuine cases who really, truly, can't; it's directed at the other 99.99% whose only real barriers to success is themselves.

My point is making declarative statements like "If you want to you can" isn't helping because it feeds into the perception that everyone is just being lazy and not trying hard enough.

Because sadly, that is the thought process of a vast majority of people. That poor people are poor because they want to be.

> This country was founded on people having very little walking very long distances to build homesteads from nothing.

You mean all those homesteaders that killed native people and stole their land with the backing the government?

> I'll agree there are some people who truly can't make the changes I indicated; we have a social safety net for them, and I do put in a weekly effort to help them. Most who whine "I can't" can, they just won't.

The social safety net is far from adequate enough to negate these problems, assuming one is even able to qualify and access those programs.

> Obviously there are exceptions, and a short aphorism of "you'll do it if you want it bad enough" is not expected to have encyclopedic thoroughness covering those few genuine cases who really, truly, can't; it's directed at the other 99.99% whose only real barriers to success is themselves.

Do you really believe that 99.99% of folks who have a shitty situation just can't muster the effort to change things? Do you really believe that people WANT to live that way? To constantly be uncertain if they are going to be able to work, to be able to get health care, to eat, to have a home, to not face imminent violence? Western society is not organized for the welfare of the people in it and there are social and institutional forces that actively keep people from the things we have been talking about.

Do you have a five step plan?

Christ. Everyone in this entire argument sucks. You're trying to yell over each other and nobody can acknowledge that the other guy has a point.

There are millions of people in this country who are in a shitty situation and could do better. There are people who could do more to better themselves, but instead dick around on the Internet or watching TV and don't. They make excuses for why they can't do more to better themselves, but at the end they're a victim of their own rationalizations and justifications.

There are also people who might get up off the couch and improve their situation, except they simply don't know how to go about it. They've never cooked before, they don't know the first thing about gardening, and they aren't proficient enough with the Internet or learning in general to figure these things out from themselves except by expensive trial-and-error.

And finally, there are people who are right and truly fucked. They got stuck in a declining area of the country and there's nobody interested in buying their home at any price. Moving would be prohibitively expensive and disruptive to children and a spouse. They may even have to care for sick family members, completely eliminating the possibility of moving. They have crappy job skills, but are working 30 hours a week to make ends meet and have no time to learn new skills (which might not even be in demand in the area they live). They might live far enough away from job centers that the cost of the commuting farther would cost more than would be gained.

The fact that one of these groups exists does not disprove the existence of any other. There are hundreds of millions of people in this country, and they exist in a continuum in virtually every life circumstance one could imagine. To some of them, cbdonath's advice and stance could be absolutely spot-on. To many others, the advice is completely impractical and impossible to achieve.

cbdonath's main point seems to be that there are a ton of people who use their crappy situation to rationalize a mindset that keeps them where they are. This is true.

Everyone else's point seems to be that there are millions of people in this country who are so far beyond fucked, that no advice is enough to pull them out of the crapfest of a situation they're in. This is also true.

So congratulations. Everybody's right. Now stop fighting like children.

That kind of comment can only be excused by lack of experience.

Try "making time" when, for example, you've got a job where you can't bring your food with you (and would have nowhere to heat it up even if you were permitted to bring it), a long commute and a family to spend time with.

And I'm talking about a middle-class example. Now add being poor on top of that.

What job is this that you can't bring your food with you? I've worked in some pretty remote places in some pretty shitty environments all the way to middle of a metropolis with a bunch of suits and I've been able to always plan ahead and bring something to eat if I can't go out.

If you can't heat your food up then don't pack something you need to heat up. If your food needs to be warm to eat and it doesn't go inside a Thermos then don't bring it or learn to eat it cold.

Life's hard. Deal with it.

There seems to be a strange subconscious myth, in the US anyway, that you must have a "hot meal" every day or you are being nutritionally deprived somehow. I say subconscious because no one ever defends the point directly or explains what the benefit is.

This comes up a lot in political discussions of child hunger and school lunch programs. "X millions of children don't get even one hot meal a day!"

It's more about what cold meals stereotypically are--some processed cereal, two slices of wonderbread with some bread and ham in them--that drive that rhetoric. Sure, a cold corn and arugula quinoa salad is certainly much healthier than the vast majority of meals, hot or cold. But on average hot meals are likely slightly better.

The eating at work part doesn't need to be a factor. Just eat dinner. You don't really need 3 meals a day.

You got me - I have never been poor and have always found time to eat healthily. But let me explain my thinking:

If I wanted to make more time -

- I would give up all TV.

- I would give up all internet, magazines and newspapers, except when commuting.

- I would approach all my neighbours to see if I could car pool to get to work quicker, or if my kids could car pool with theirs to get to and from school without needing me.

- I would try to move into a smaller, cheaper house that has a quicker route to work.

- I would try to move into a smaller, cheaper house that takes a little longer to get to work then cut down the hours I work.

- I would try to switch jobs to reduce my commute time.

- I would try to spend less money on clothes, kids toys, holidays, movies, furniture, TVs, etc and cut down the hours I work.

I think the vast majority of people in the UK - even poor people - have at least one of the above options available to them.

Have you ever tried to feed kids brussel sprouts? That alone would require more effort than it was worth to cook them.

I'm not poor, but I've definitely gone through a rough period or two in my past. During those periods I managed to eat pretty healthy, but it required a fairly decent amount of planning, and there were days when I had to make due with a cup of rice or nothing at all to make the budget work. I am talking about situations where I did not have enough money in the bank account on the day rent was due, and the credit cards were already maxed out. I was working, but the work was intermittent and unreliable (and very labor intensive). So I had time to ride my bike to multiple stores and get the cheapest food, and I had time to cook meals. I lived in a single room, shared house, so couldn't 'downsize' my living any more than it already was.

Once I got a 'real' job, things obviously improved dramatically, but keep in mind I had a college degree, so that was an easy transition to make. I look back fondly on that period, but have the luxury to do so because I always knew that it would be a temporary situation.

For the 'real' poor, they often live in areas where riding a bike to multiple stores to get the best deals is impossible. They often have to settle for fast food because their kids are hungry now, and they don't have enough money in the bank account to invest in groceries (i.e. spending $100 on groceries isn't possible, while spending $10 on fast food is, even if groceries are the better long term investment). Their employment situation tends to be fairly unstable, i.e. they work a lot some days/weeks, and little to no work on others. This means that they have to spend a LOT of effort trying to find work (and obviously, they are not getting paid while they do this).

Just to go through your points: - TV is often the cheapest form of entertainment for their kids. So if they get rid of the TV, then what? Take the kids to Laser Tag? - I didn't have internet when I was poor, somehow I have a feeling a lot of poor people are in the same boat. -From my experience, almost every one is using public transportation. Cars are a huge risk and require significant financial overhead. One mechanical issue could break the budget. Carpooling is very much a middle class luxury. - They probably live in subsidized housing already, so moving is not really something they can control. - They also probably have very limited employment options, which is part of the reason they are poor to begin with. Also see my previous comment on unstable work situations. -I think one of the biggest misconceptions about the poor, is that people see that they have a TV or an xbox or some kids toys and assume that because they can afford those 'luxury' items, that they must be able to afford other things. But the fact is, these durable consumer goods are fairly cheap when compared to the ongoing costs of shelter, food, insurance, etc.. But more importantly, credit companies and payday companies and financing schemes are overwhelmingly targeting the poor. They do this because they know they can get away with charging unreasonable rates. Often this results in a poor person making a few bad financial decisions, and subsequently getting trapped under the weight of the consequences (maxed out credit cards, debt collectors, etc..)

The fact is, on a micro level, any individual is capable of escaping poverty. If they work hard and make good financial decisions, and don't run into any bad luck, they can do it. But on a macro level, the poor as a whole face systematic pressures that make it very difficult to escape poverty. One or two financial missteps can put them in a hole that is nearly impossible to recover from. Telling people to 'work hard' or 'eat healthy' or 'be financially responsible' ignores the systematic pressures that they face that make all of these things extremely difficult if not impossible.

"I think virtually everyone in the UK has the means to eat healthy if they really want to."

For too many people this is simply not true.

People living in poverty face a number of challenges to eating healthily. For example:

- Cost. Fresh healthy food is becoming more costly due to exchange rate commodity price fluctuations. See [1][2].

- Access. If there are no shops nearby that sell fresh food (and this is becoming increasing common in some areas of the UK, see [3] or google "food desert") then time and/or transport need to be expended to get the food home. A person working 12+ hours a day on a couple of low paying jobs (say, factory work and then office cleaning)may not have the time to walk miles to a supermarket and do child care.

- Fuel. Gas and electricity are expensive in the UK. Cooking veg, pulses, grains, etc. requires fuel. Batch cooking to use-up cheap bulk-bought food also requires a freezer to store it, which in turn uses electricity that might not be affordable. Some people lack the resources to be able to afford a cooker and/or freezer.

A useful but rather depressing read on the situation in the UK is "Food Poverty and Health" from the Royal Colleges of Physicians Faculty of Public Health [4].

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/datablog/intera...

[2] http://www.which.co.uk/documents/pdf/the-impact-of-rising-fo...

[3] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/food-deserts-...

[4] http://www.fph.org.uk/uploads/bs_food_poverty.pdf

Cost: you're setting the standard of "fresh healthy" too high. I've got a can of assorted seeds, enough to sow an acre of all the veggies you need - $40, get busy. Assorted frozen veggies (flash-frozen minutes after picking, so yes they're fresh) are $1/pound; canned works too, and actual fresh is also available if you look with care.

Access: you can arrange transport a couple times a month to someplace selling healthy/cheap/durable food. If you truly are in a "food desert" (a wildly over-applied term), do what you would do if in a real desert: MOVE.

Fuel: canned & dried foods don't need refrigeration. Scrap wood burns. Yes I cook over a scrap fire on occasion. Electricity is cheap for a $4 crock-pot.

> I've got a can of assorted seeds, enough to sow an acre of all the veggies you need - $40, get busy.

Now all I need is an acre of land and time to tend it. Don't you think that's a bit ingenuous? It's like saying the parts for a laptop only cost $200. Now get them and start soldering.

Didn't continue reading I see. Frozen & canned foods are not bad alternatives. Market fresh is more available than you think. Drop the "getting optimal food isn't trivial so it's impossible so give up" mindset.

Don't have an acre? Start with one square foot. Seed packets are $0.10 at The Dollar Store this time of year. Grow a month's worth of carrots in a box. Add 1' boxes for lettuce, broccoli, cucumbers, beets, etc as time & space permit.

And yes, I've built computers from scratch. That's an option too, but you can buy a refurbished one complete for $190 at Best Buy.

> Didn't continue reading I see.

I did -- your thoughts are incongruent. If you're trying to improve health and food costs "in general", "generally applicable" ideas ought to be presented. If I said you can cut your power bill and improve your health by installing bicycle-generators in your house, it glosses over the facts

  1) you're going to need a battery array

  2) a collection of bicycles and the requisite generator equipment

  3) ability and time to run the generator

  4) can deal with the inconvenience of perhaps not having "instant-on" power

  5) live in any place where this is both practical and desirable, for some definitions of "practical" and "desirable"

It's a throw-away "solution" that really doesn't practically add to the conversation.

> And yes, I've built computers from scratch

On HN this probably isn't so surprising, but in the general populace, I think this sort of thing is considered wizardry. It's not practical for most people.

> but you can buy a refurbished one complete for $190 at Best Buy

I agree enthusiastically. (though I'd personally hit up Craigslist for an old Thinkpad). I think this (and your above points) touch on something I'm passionate about too: I see what I think is a lot of entitlement and laziness in the world I live in. People want too much, and don't want to "work" for it -- not that they don't have jobs, but that they expect needs to be fulfilled by passing a credit card over the counter.

I think we may not be too different: My car is a 40 year old Volkswagen that I got for a fraction of the $$ that my friends pay for their autos. I happen to familiar with the air-cooled VW quirks and limitations and live within them. I also do my own engine work and maintenance. I feel good about keeping another car out of the landfill. The $$ cost, though, is a fraction of what I pay. Other costs include

1) Occasional valve adjustment, points/timing adjustment, etc

2) Driving in a constant state of awareness wrt the machine that I'm operating; I listen to the engine, transmission, wheel hubs, and monitor my gauges more than any typical driver I know.

3) My car is slow. My trips take longer. I have to drop to second gear on steep hills.

4) I sometime have real mechanical issues. I've repaired a fuel injector on a road trip. On another, I ran on 3 cylinders until I found a garage and then helped the mechanic work on it, scavenging parts from an old Beetle behind the garage.

I happen to be pretty happy with my automobile situation, but would I recommend Joe Commuter do it to save $$ on the up-front purchase of an automobile? Never. I think it'd be insulting. It's overwhelming for the problem, and therefore doesn't really advance anything. It doesn't help Joe Commuter. Like when people discuss the cost of food and you suggest "Here's $40 worth of seeds. With this you've got vegetables for a year -- get to work."

That said, again, I think we're appreciating the same things.

Seed packets are $0.10 at The Dollar Store this time of year.

Yeah, that's a really easy mistake to make. Happened to me too, last year. "Zuchini seeds ten plants for ten cents? I'm going to save SO MUCH MONEY!" I thought. Then I realized: A box big enough to grow a single zucchini plant in: €7. Yep, big planters are crazy expensive. Enough soil to grow a healthy zucchini plant: €5. Yep, you do need the entire bag if you want actual fruits instead of a pretty but useless flower.

Time to drive to the garden market, buy planters, plant them, and water the plants: Maybe two hours altogether.

So now you're at €12,10 for, IDK, maybe a dozen zucchini over the season. Not really a steal, but hey, organic food! Still worth it, right?

Then my zucchini got bugs and died. €12,10 and two hours of effort wasted.

"Yep, that happens when you grow vegetables inside. Should have put them on the balcony", my gardener friends said, nodding wisely. Know many poor people with nice big south-facing balconies?

I've in the past also failed miserably at sunflowers, and let's not even talk about the slow miserable death of my tragic attempt at salad. Now, I keep trying to grow food because I have the time and money to waste, and a shed to store all those big planters in during the winter. But if I were trying to cheaply feed my family, this sure as hell isn't a hobby I could afford.

I also need a tractor or an ox and a yolk with a plow. I also need the permit to farm on my acre lot (many towns/cities won't allow it without one). I can also only grow the things that will grow in my area (which might not be a lot).

Yes, buy an acre of land and start farming, problem solved. Quit your jobs and move to a more expensive area, problem solved. Cook over an open fire made from scrap wood in your apartment, problem solved.

An acre of land, a scrap wood fire.... Are you for real? We're talking about poverty in the UK here, not your frontier life fantasy.

A freezer, if you have one is likely to be running regardless of how much food you have in it... it runs more effectively when full, less air to seep out and replace with chilled air when you open the door, so a bit of a misnomer. For that matter, even if you cannot afford to fill your freezer with food at first, it may be worthwhile to fill the space with containers of water (for ice) which again will help offset open/close costs... This doesn't even compare to the fridge portion which tends to have much more open/close time than a freezer, and more likely to not be full. ymmv of course.

Personally, I find it very hard to eat healthy for under $10/day USD, I am full on insulin resistant so am taking in far fewer carbs with a fairly high fiber:carb ratio (well under 100g of net carbs a day), this means more green veg. and a few pieces of fruit a day. It also means I need to get more fat in my diet, which mostly comes from animal fat/protien (about 1/4-1/2 lb a day).. this gets pricey fast.

I can't imagine what I'd have to do if I didn't have a decent income with my dietary needs. I tend to average my intakes over the course of a 2-3 day sweep, some days will be more veg, some more meat... shifting my daily diet seems to work better for me losing weight consistently. In a solid week without bread/pasta/rice/potato I lose about 4#. I'm down about 45# from 8 months ago, with about a 5-10# daily variance (water weight).

In the U.S. a lot of the most calorie dense high glycemic index foods are what is subsidized.

Also, and this is true for many things, the poor are less capable of spending more money now to save money over the long term. E.g., if a pair of boots that will last 3 years is $150 and a pair of boots that will last 6 months is $30, the $150 pair of boots is a better deal because you'd have to buy $180 dollars worth of cheap boots to last 3 years. But if you only have $50 available to spend and you need new boots now, you have to choose the cheap boots.

So, forget buying everything in bulk, or buying a membership to a warehouse club.

Oh hi, fellow Discworld fan.

I didn't intentionally reference Discworld so I'm gonna assume I'm just doing it subconsciously now. Yeah, I love Discworld. Hi, fellow Discworld fan!

I hear this alot, and it's bunk. Shopping at an overpriced bodega is still cheaper than eating out.

It takes 20 minutes to cook a hamburger or piece of chicken, pasta/potato and heat up a bag of green beans. There are very few people in the United States that lack the means to own a refrigerator and some sort of stove -- most localities codes require both for an apartment to be code compliant.

So these people have no free time whatsoever?

On weekdays? Long job, long commute, children, sleep - yes, it is easy to have pretty much no free time for most of the week.

Then plan the meals, do the shopping, prepare and cook the food on weekends and stick it in the fridge/freezer for the coming week. Would reduce food preparation time to around 15 mins on a weekday.

Ridiculous. The average American watches hours of TV a day. Prepping a simple rice or potato based meal takes ten minutes; less time than the drive-thru. We have to stop pretending that the obesity epidemic is about something more than poor self control.

The total time it takes to start the rice cooker, slice a chicken breast (it can even be frozen, just slice it small), and give the chicken a quick fry in my cast iron pan (which I then rinse out and wipe clean, 10 seconds cleanup) is probably less time than you'll spend sitting in the drivethrough of McDonalds.

While you're waiting for the rice to cook, you can spend some time with your kids or watch the expensive cable service every "too poor to cook" person I've ever know has had.

Ricer cookers are magic.

One of my favorite "I'm too tire too cook" meals is to just chop up whatever veggies I have laying around or picked up at the corner store on my way home, and toss the whole mess along with some rice into a rice cooker. I usually include some other random other miscellaneous dried grains/seeds/beans I have in bags to add some taste variety (red lentils = incredible, they're like a spice and a staple at the same time!). You don't need to pay any attention to the actual cooking, because the rice cooker will do it perfectly every time, without attention or care.

Press the button, veg in front of the computer for a while, rice cooker beeps, and ... dinner! :D

Cleanup is just a 2 second wash of the the non-stick pot...

It's a bit more expensive, but I also like taking Zatarain's boxed black beans and rice ($2), getting it started, then tossing in some chunks of raw chicken as soon as it starts boiling. It's quick, you basically mix the ingredients together and stir occasionally until it's done. For about $3-4 (once you buy a chicken breast) you get a tasty dish with rice, beans, and chicken that'll serve two.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes are very cheap and you can practically live on them, in perfect health. Generations of Irishmen, Kitavans, and Peruvians have. This claim that you can't eat healthy on the cheap is silly. Eating just potatoes & butter & a few eggs a day and you could probably go years before having problems. The prep time argument is also silly. A sack of potatoes will keep for a month and you can boil or nuke a potato in minutes.

The "convenience" foods are about the taste and pleasure. It's not cost or convenience. Junk food and fast food are very tasty and offer variety, unlike plain potato, or some other reasonably nutritious gruel.

Indeed, the old Irish diet of milk and potatoes was pretty darn healthy. If you're trying to eat healthily, cheaply, and with a reasonable cognitive load, it's hard to go wrong with eggs, milk, and potatoes. Poor people can do this. Eggs and milk get you all the important macrominerals and fat soluble vitamins and potatoes are nature's multivitamin/multimineral. Nothing else can really touch these for depth and breadth of essential nutrients:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2864450/2

They scale well, so even if they're not the only things you eat, you're at least assured of not being acutely deficient of anything. Plus, it's easy to prepare lots of yummy things from them.

Now, if you're concerned with maximum longevity, you should try to add as many fruits and vegetables a day as you can to suck up phytonutrients/antioxidants.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com