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I work in healthcare and this is my understanding from the responses of patients that I encounter - fast food is cheap. One of the families I work with, both parents are diabetic and the children are all overweight. I asked them about their eating habit and the answer was : McDonalds for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Why? Because it's cheap to eat at McDonalds for a family of 4 than it is to buy vegetables at the market....for 3 bucks, you get a whole meal for one person. $3 at Safeway, you only get..a cabbage and some tomatoes?

They didn't understand that their eating habit is going to cost them much more in health expenses

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I've heard this before, but it isn't true. I make one cup of Quaker oatmeal most mornings - cost is around 11 cents. I buy tea and coffee in bulk - another 11 to 25 cents or so. My entire breakfast costs less than 50 cents, and all it requires is boiling water or 3 minutes in the microwave. It's faster than a drivethrough.

Rice and beans are practically free they're so cheap. I buy turkey or chicken cold cuts, again very cheap. I buy "turkey dogs" (hot dogs, but made of turkey) when they're on sale for something like $2 per six. 3 of them is 210 calories, almost all protein, for about $1. I buy whatever fruit is on sale, fruit isn't so expensive either. I don't like bread, but wheat bread is cheap. My girlfriend sometimes cooks a huge pot of stew that sits on the stove for 3-4 days and serves 10+ meals for under $10.

I'm not sure how much eggs are per dozen - maybe a dollar or two?

It's possible to eat very quickly and inexpensively. The problem isn't cost, it's a mix of education and being willing to forsake convenience/delay gratification. Our culture is decent at the former, but quite bad at the latter.

I agree, I find that going to the grocery store and paying upfront for my meals to come is more cost effective than constantly buying fast food. Fast food is not very cheap at all actually. Unless you're buying from the dollar menu, in which case it's $3... for your kids. It's hard to get full on 99c fries and a mini burger.

To provide a single anecdote, I am able to get full on two dollar menu items. You don't have to stick to what they define as a "meal" (i.e. burger, fries, soda). If I'm short on time or cash, I can get two double cheeseburgers, or a chicken sandwich plus a salad, for less than $3, drink a glass and a half of water with it, and be full until the next meal. Whether just anyone can do that is another question.

I agree. Though with your stew boiling for 3 days you should begin to factor in energy costs.

You probably should add some more vegetables by the sounds of it.

The big problem is farm subsidies for corn and soybeans. If they transferred those subsidies to produce we could make it significantly cheaper to eat healthy.

However, if you are smart it's possible to eat much cheaper than McDonalds and almost infinitely healthier. The secret is just eat like they do in poor countries. Start with bulk quantities of some basic staples. I'm Brazilian, so for me it's rice and beans. Then buy veggies and meat that are on sale. Of course if you want it to taste good you have to learn to season and cook it properly, which takes time.

I admit that corn syrup drinks, processed carbs and extremely fatty/salty/msg-y food tastes great and can be quite addictive. I sympathize with people who are stuck in that cycle. However I've found that how I feel from eating healthy and getting a reasonable amount of exercise is far more significant to me than something that tastes good for 5 mins while I eat it. I'm convinced if people were more in touch with their own bodies it wouldn't be hard to convince them to eat healthier. Unfortunately American culture itself is a huge impediment to this, which is why I'm so happy to see Michelle Obama planting a garden. Cultural change is what we need.

(OT, but your profile info does not have an email.)

From reading that, it seems that you are living in the US for quite some time. As a Brazilian living in Cambridge, MA, may I ask you where do you live now? There are lots of Brazilians in Mass, but I'm yet to find a fellow Brazilian hacker.

Actually only half-brazilian. Born and raised here in Minneapolis, MN then moved to Santa Fe, NM and now Mountain View, CA, mas também passo bastante tempo em Brasília.

This seems to come up every couple of weeks, and is invariably followed with a whole bunch of recipes for rice and beans.

But the thing is that eating at McDonald's for three meals a day is both dumb and expensive. It isn't just expensive compared to rice and beans, it's expensive compared to regular-person food. A meal at McDonald's doesn't cost $3, it generally winds up more like $6... but even if you could find a way to eat at McDonald's for $9 per person per day, that's still a helluva lot of money compared to a sensible diet of breakfast cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and meat + veges + rice/whatever for dinner.

My suspicion is that their struggle is more about the perceived cost and time. My wife and I are able to eat most of our meals at $2-3 per person. We have found that to get the cost low, you need to seek out cheaper produce (usually not safeway) and cut way back on meat consumption. Making your own cereal also helps as well as only buying things on sale. You also need a little more time to prepare the raw ingredients.

> both parents are diabetic and the children are all overweight

As an interesting factoid:

Pre-late 1800s per-capita Sugar consumption: 1 lb/person

Today: 150+ lb/person

The paradigm-busting, pivotal event in the late 1800s: the invention and introduction of Coca-Cola. Once Coca-Cola started putting sugar into American diets, the door was opened for sweeteners.

"According to health officials at this ancient pueblo, where the Zuni have hunted and farmed for perhaps 800 years, diabetes is now the single leading reason for Indians to seek hospital treatment."

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/18/us/surge-in-indians-diabet...

Don't agree! I've cracked down on eating out for a month and lived off pasta and vegetables. You can't get a meal for $3 at McD. but you can eat for $ 1 for the day making your own food. It's an interesting experiment!

This excludes meat and dairy products though.

exactly. The true costs of each burger are deferred from the McDonald's counter and amortized over a lifetime and a population in the form of Medicare deductions on your paycheck. This article is timely as I had written this blog post last week suggesting a fast food tax: http://www.scrollinondubs.com/2009/09/01/fast-food-tax/

It wasn't an optimal solution but it at least attempted to redirect the costs of poor eating choices to the people who make the bad decisions. The proposal from the NYT article is way simpler and more effective:

yank the "preexisting condition" defense from insurance companies and they become instantly incented to encourage healthy eating. Current advocates of proper eating habits gain a powerful ally at that point.

sean

Part of the problem is likely that some menu items are simply far worse for you than you'd guess, if you don't check the nutrition information.

As an example, I was on the road recently and I stopped by a Burger King drive-thru to get a quick lunch. I knew that a Spicy Chicken Sandwich is 450 calories, which isn't wholly unreasonable.

Sadly, they were out of those, but they asked if I'd like an "angry tendercrisp sandwich' instead. It sounded similar, so I said yes.

The angry tendercrisp sandwich: 1030 calories, 61g of fat, 15g of fat, and 2670mg of sodium.

But I'm sure there are some people who order them, thinking they're healthier than a burger.

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