The Money Mustache Community
Around the Internet => Antimustachian Wall of Shame and Comedy => Topic started by: KathrinS on November 19, 2020, 11:39:02 AM
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A fitness site I'm subscribed to just sent me a £50 ($66) off voucher for a week's worth of meal deliveries. Looks like you can now get healthy meals delivered to your door, at a cost of $30-57 PER DAY PER PERSON. That's more than my grocery budget for the entire week.
https://www.freshfitnessfood.com/pricing/
One of the testimonials: "It only took me a few seconds to consider the fact I was spending 2 hours a day on average sourcing quality protein and nutritious food, plus spending excessive cash on the high street to do this at breakfast, lunch and dinner."
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Dang! Seems like for that kind of money you'd have all sorts of healthy options.
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Food in England is generally cheaper than in the US, so a healthy home-cooked meal at £1 is quite easy to achieve. Also, salaries are a lot lower so £25 is a sizeable chunk of an average person's daily earning.
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The international perspective this forum offers is so interesting!
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These services, at various price points and twists on what they serve pop up everywhere.
My personal take: The target audience is the middle class, working parents families who feel they should know how to have a healthy and varied diet but don't actually know how to cook stuff from scratch or a lot about food foor that matter. So services like these become a way to live up to the social expectations to feed your family well without actually knowing how to do it. All the fluff about time (and money!) saved is just a distraction.
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I get a million of these ads on FB from _Factor, Tovala, and the like.
Its hilariously overpriced TV dinners, repackeged for millenials
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A fitness site I'm subscribed to just sent me a £50 ($66) off voucher for a week's worth of meal deliveries. Looks like you can now get healthy meals delivered to your door, at a cost of $30-57 PER DAY PER PERSON. That's more than my grocery budget for the entire week.
https://www.freshfitnessfood.com/pricing/
One of the testimonials: "It only took me a few seconds to consider the fact I was spending 2 hours a day on average sourcing quality protein and nutritious food, plus spending excessive cash on the high street to do this at breakfast, lunch and dinner."
Who in the world spends 2 hours a day getting food? I do maybe an hour of cooking and cleaning up after per day. And that's when we're not eating leftovers. Maybe an hour a week of grocery buying.
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The target audience is the middle class, working parents families who feel they should know how to have a healthy and varied diet but don't actually know how to cook stuff from scratch or a lot about food foor that matter. So services like these become a way to live up to the social expectations to feed your family well without actually knowing how to do it. All the fluff about time (and money!) saved is just a distraction.
This particular one seems targeted at fitness instructors and 'health nuts' who want to eat well/ eat a very specific diet, but not take the time to figure out how to do it on their own.
Who in the world spends 2 hours a day getting food? I do maybe an hour of cooking and cleaning up after per day. And that's when we're not eating leftovers. Maybe an hour a week of grocery buying.
Apparently, someone who gets all their meals, including breakfast, on the high street. That seems even more outlandish to me!
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This particular one seems targeted at fitness instructors and 'health nuts' who want to eat well/ eat a very specific diet, but not take the time to figure out how to do it on their own.
Yeah - agree on that as it was very targeted (and stupid expensive). I briefly met someone who worked for one of these services over here where they deliver a box with ingredients and instructions for a family once a week for a rather steep premium compared to the value of ingredients in the box and the dude said their target audience were folks who felt they should know how to cook, but didn't, so the box provided these families with a varied menu sans the skills required to do it on your own. The "time and money saved" gibberish was purely to justify it and had zero connect with reality.
I have discussed this topic with a few characters who eat out frequently 'cause they can afford it and can't be bothered to cook for themselves every day. One who really struck home was this dude who worked in London, he said he had made a really honest attempt at cooking himself. He read recipes, bought the stuff required and set off. But he realized he was completely clueless. He just didn't know how to do stuff. That was the first time I really understood how much "silent knowledge" is involved in cooking even fairly basic stuff to a decent result. Like I can easily throw together a perfectly fine soup off stuff in the veggie compartment in the fridge by using ingredients that are just about to die to avoid trashing them, but it does require some idea of how to actually do stuff. Ditto knowing how to cook say rice, some chicken, some veggies and make a sauce and make sure they all finish at roughly the same time and if not, how to deal with it while preventing something from getting seriously over- or undercooked.
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That's interesting - another large gap in education?
For me, it was a matter of starting small. When I got my own apartment, I started out semi-cooking for myself: I would buy the pasta, buy the sauce, and then just pour the sauce over the pasta. Same with salad, etc. Only since lockdown have I started making sauce, pastries, and even jam for myself. Cooking with pre-made ingredients like that is still better than not cooking at all, and it's potentially a starting point from which to slowly start making more things from scratch.
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That's interesting - another large gap in education?
For me, it was a matter of starting small. When I got my own apartment, I started out semi-cooking for myself: I would buy the pasta, buy the sauce, and then just pour the sauce over the pasta. Same with salad, etc. Only since lockdown have I started making sauce, pastries, and even jam for myself. Cooking with pre-made ingredients like that is still better than not cooking at all, and it's potentially a starting point from which to slowly start making more things from scratch.
That is how i learned to cook also. I find Trader Joe’s is a great place to shop for those entry-level cooks because they have pre-washed and chopped veggies, lots of tasty sauces, and don’t have an overwhelming number of ingredients. It is very approachable to buy a starch, some veggies, a meat/protein, and a jar of some sauce and throw it all together to make a meal with no real skill aside from heating and maybe boiling.
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I admit it’s face punch worthy but I have and continue to sporadically purchase meal boxes. I know they are not a good deal, and yes I can cook, but they do add a bit of variety to the meals I cook which makes me happy.
I have also considered getting meals delivered I’ve seen advertised from “health food” places, that I’ve gotten meals from on long term out of town work assignments but it’s never felt like it would work out because of group meals with co workers often doubling as casual meetings.
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This particular one seems targeted at fitness instructors and 'health nuts' who want to eat well/ eat a very specific diet, but not take the time to figure out how to do it on their own.
Yeah - agree on that as it was very targeted (and stupid expensive). I briefly met someone who worked for one of these services over here where they deliver a box with ingredients and instructions for a family once a week for a rather steep premium compared to the value of ingredients in the box and the dude said their target audience were folks who felt they should know how to cook, but didn't, so the box provided these families with a varied menu sans the skills required to do it on your own. The "time and money saved" gibberish was purely to justify it and had zero connect with reality.
I have discussed this topic with a few characters who eat out frequently 'cause they can afford it and can't be bothered to cook for themselves every day. One who really struck home was this dude who worked in London, he said he had made a really honest attempt at cooking himself. He read recipes, bought the stuff required and set off. But he realized he was completely clueless. He just didn't know how to do stuff. That was the first time I really understood how much "silent knowledge" is involved in cooking even fairly basic stuff to a decent result. Like I can easily throw together a perfectly fine soup off stuff in the veggie compartment in the fridge by using ingredients that are just about to die to avoid trashing them, but it does require some idea of how to actually do stuff. Ditto knowing how to cook say rice, some chicken, some veggies and make a sauce and make sure they all finish at roughly the same time and if not, how to deal with it while preventing something from getting seriously over- or undercooked.
I'm kind of agahst how someone becomes an adult without learning how to cook. But then I think for the 3 of the 4 years in college I was eating a no sugar diet and lived off campus, and was on a budget so I couldn't really eat out much at all even if I wanted to. so it was learn how to cook or starve. I was also lucky in that I knew people who were into healthy food (actually part of a co op) and knew people who baked their own sourdough, pickled foods, etc so really learned to first cook from scratch than use substitutions.
I do fit the demographic that these boxes are aimed for now actually. But they just seem like a lot of packaging and overpriced, for what you can get if you just pick out the ingredients yourself. Some things are definitely time savers, like canned beans of all kinds, canned tomatoes and tomato sauce, bags of frozen vegs like spinach, and already prepared indian sauces (though I also keep curry powder and coconut milk and can make it myself now if need be, just hard to get the exact right flavor). For example if you think shredded chicken is a time saver, just cook a whole chicken with bay leaf, peppercorn, etc. Shred, and bag up a couple bags for the freezer. Can use for tacos, enchiladas, soups, etc.
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I will admit to getting them.
I can cook and did for years. But I work FT now and it is a lot of mental energy and planning, plus the actual cook time. With getting a meal kit we can buy basically the same groceries every week with no planning (some fruit, salad stuff, and the things we keep on hand for non-meal-kit nights like pasta and taco supplies).
We come out WAY ahead financially with both working and hiring put some household tasks. Someday our kids will be grown or we'll retire. It's definitely about wanting to provide diverse homemade meals, but it isn't because we can't cook, it's because we have more money than time.
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I will admit to getting them.
I can cook and did for years. But I work FT now and it is a lot of mental energy and planning, plus the actual cook time. With getting a meal kit we can buy basically the same groceries every week with no planning (some fruit, salad stuff, and the things we keep on hand for non-meal-kit nights like pasta and taco supplies).
We come out WAY ahead financially with both working and hiring put some household tasks. Someday our kids will be grown or we'll retire. It's definitely about wanting to provide diverse homemade meals, but it isn't because we can't cook, it's because we have more money than time.
I get it. All of these great ideas I read on these forums for meal planning and grocery shopping with a list and cooking... I only now have time to do that now that I am FIREd.
I just didn’t have the mental bandwidth or energy to do it when we were both working full time with little kids. When I was working I dreaded the chore of packing my kindergartener’s lunch and she ended up buying something at school everyday (for $3/meal... whatever). Now I can pack a lunch the night before no problem because the isn’t such a mental burden.
Don’t get me wrong, staying home with little kids and “distance learning” and running a household is far from easy and I sort of suck at this role, but it still isn’t the mental burden of running a household and little kids and working.
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I think it's true for all mmm advice, you have to take the things that work for you, and leave the stuff that doesn't. Like batch cooking and freezing whole meals doesn't work for me. I see in freezer and mentally think, ugh leftovers and don't want to eat it. I'm ok with frozen ingredients I make or contribute to meal because it still feels like I'm making a fresh meal.