Is much of the criticism of cheap food actually class snobbery?

[happyuk]

I would like to start a discussion about whether much of the opprobrium afforded to so-called "junk", "fast" and "convenience" foods is based on grounded, rational, scientific observation (ie Mustachian) or is actually undisguised class snobbery.

Do please view the following YouTube video of the late great Dr Magnus Pyke, OBE, FRSE, FRIC, particularly between 04:50 and 07:31:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL1kT3-BPuo

A bit of background.  During the second world war Pyke was scientific advisor to the UK government's Ministry of Food.  Even at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Britain was already 60% reliant on imports for food supplies, and it was known (but deliberately under-reported) that a number of civil disturbances arose due to disrupted supplies.  Pyke's problem was how to feed a population of 50 million on an island already surrounded by U-boats.

Pyke formulated a whole range of strategies to make sure the country was kept adequately fed. 

One such tactic was in challenging many of the prevailing attitudes to food, such as because certain foods are CHEAP then they MUST be bad. 

Do people agree with Pykes simple advice then when it comes to getting an adequate diet we need only follow these 3 simple rules:

1. Don't eat too much.
2. Don't eat too little.
3. Keep it varied.

Look forward to hearing your opinions.

[nereo]

Semi-related: I get really irritated when commenters talk about eating rice & beans with obvious stigma attached.  I promise you, the wealthiest businessmen in Asia eat rice every day.  Carlos Slim eats beans and he's worth over $60B

ironically some foods we now cherish came about as 'poor people' food.  Others we still stigmatize as such.

[Adam Zapple]

It obviously depends on what type of food we are talking about.  I'm right in the middle of "How Not to Die" by Dr. Michael Greger which espouses a whole food, plant based diet which is going to heavily influence my answer.  I would argue, even before reading this book, that it is virtually impossible to eat a healthy meal from a drive through.  The cheapest foods I can think of are grains, which are not inherently unhealthy but become less healthy when they are loaded with sugar, salt, preservatives, gums etc and sold as convenience foods.

[Boofinator]

I would rephrase it as "health snobbery". There are many high-class famous people who regularly eat (or used to eat) fast food, including Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Warren Buffett.

Bottom line is that most people outgrow their fast food phase when they realize that despite it being inexpensive* and yummy, a meal consisting of a burger, fries, and a coke is awful for your health.

*Though not by Mustachian standards.

[thesis]

Interesting subject!

I remember, many years ago, wandering around a whole foods just to see what was in it, but I ended up only buying some organic cookies, just because they looked good. I figured the lady at the cash register must surely have thought I was one of those hopeless guys who thought buying organic cookies would help me lose weight or something XD

Yeah, health snobbery is definitely a thing, I can understand where class might come into the picture though, since "health food" has become its own industry of sorts, and charges a premium over "regular" groceries. The justification tends to be along the lines of the "extra care" required to bring the products to market, which may or may not be true depending on the product.

Every decade or so all sorts of sketchy research is released stating x or y is bad for you, or z and q are good for you. In my own uninformed opinion, I suspect there are too many grad students desperate for notoriety that they are willing to publish anything that causes a stir, not unlike journalism these days. As far as weight loss is concerned, I've found that eating less does the trick for me. As far as health, I'm not so sure, but regular exercise has kept me with a healthy blood pressure for the past decade. I'm not ignorant enough to say food doesn't also have an effect, but I'm curious whether a diet of kale is really as life changing as some people claim. Especially when you consider that the vast majority of foods that exist in the ecosystems across the world aren't really discussed because they are so difficult to mass produce. It's not like, 10000 years ago, you just put in an order for your top five super foods, sourced from across the world, but that's a bigger subject and I digress.

I don't like the unfamiliar chemicals in foods, and sometimes I pay a little extra to avoid those chemicals, but that's about as far as I go. I'm actually finding that the more heavily processed foods somehow cost me more than the basic ingredients I buy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  But none of that is "organic", etc.

[dougules]

I think there is some class snobbery there, but there is an epidemic of health problems, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc. that's diet related.  It's a problem on all economic levels, but it's definitely skewed towards low-income people. 

Everybody has their opinion on what people should be eating, but I think there is decent consensus on some things we shouldn't be eating.  Fast food and heavily processed foods are generally full of saturated fats, refined carbs, and salt.  I think most people would say those are going to cause problems if you base a diet on that. 

I eat way more of those kinds of foods than I should.  It's hard not to in our culture, but I do make an concerted effort to shift my habits towards healthier foods.  It's a lot of time and effort to cook healthy foods, and the bad stuff is addictive, possibly literally. 

I would rephrase it as "health snobbery". There are many high-class famous people who regularly eat (or used to eat) fast food, including Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Warren Buffett.

Bottom line is that most people outgrow their fast food phase when they realize that despite it being inexpensive* and yummy, a meal consisting of a burger, fries, and a coke is awful for your health.

*Though not by Mustachian standards.

*The real cost comparison comes when you factor in the cost of diet related diseases.  Diabetes and heart disease are really expensive. 

[Boofinator]

I would rephrase it as "health snobbery". There are many high-class famous people who regularly eat (or used to eat) fast food, including Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Warren Buffett.

Bottom line is that most people outgrow their fast food phase when they realize that despite it being inexpensive* and yummy, a meal consisting of a burger, fries, and a coke is awful for your health.

*Though not by Mustachian standards.

*The real cost comparison comes when you factor in the cost of diet related diseases.  Diabetes and heart disease are really expensive.

You're right, thanks for adding a footnote to the footnote to cover the second-order effects (à la DFW).

[Kyle Schuant]

I think there is some class snobbery there, but there is an epidemic of health problems, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc. that's diet related.  It's a problem on all economic levels, but it's definitely skewed towards low-income people. 

Agreed. However, given that close on two-thirds of Australians, Americans and British people are overweight or obese, it is obviously not an issue confined to the poor. Middle class people's food is still shit, it's just expensive shit instead of cheap shit.


Orwell comes to mind here, though.

“Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you.”
- The Road to Wigan Pier

The real cost comparison comes when you factor in the cost of diet related diseases.  Diabetes and heart disease are really expensive. 

Sadly, yes. But those costs usually come decades later. And this is our society: buy now, pay later. If we do it with SUVs then obviously we will do it with our health, too.

[Raenia]

There is also a huge difference between 'cheap' food and 'fast' food.  Potatoes, cabbage, carrots, rice, lentils, onions, etc are cheap but healthy.  A burger full of salt, saturated fat, over-processed white bread, and deep fried potatoes with sugary tomato paste is more expensive per calorie, while also being less healthy.  Free range organic chicken, organic kale, out of season blueberries, and quinoa is healthy and expensive, and arguable not much healthier than 'cheap' food.

ETA: I see Kyle addressed this as well.

[Christof]

I believe the question is misleading... Junk food isn't unhealthy because of certain ingredients, but because its consumption tends to correlate with other unhealthy factors such as stress, lack of excercise or inability to organize one's life which correlates with other factors we typically associate with junk food such as financial status or educational level.

The issue I see with most studies on food ingredients is that their quality is usually low or they are biased. I like using Cochrane's meta analysis to get a better and less biased picture. Most studies concerning food are not convincing once you look at many of them. When looking at certain goals, such as preventing diabetes, Cochrane finds that "combined dietary, physical activity and behavioural component appears effective". It's never one thing. You can't eat your way to health.

That's very much in line with many of the Mustachian principles. For instance, it's not like biking is a question of whether it's healthier than driving or whether the environmental impact is lower. Defaulting to biking also forces you to think local, limits your options for recreational activities and thereby reduces the stress to seek another adventure every day. It makes you conscious about the weather outside and either keeps you inside or forces you to deal with uncomfortable situations which increase your dopamine level which can make you more productive in other activities. Most of these principles interact so that one without the other doesn't have the same impact.

Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme had a post that I can't find right now where he outlined how all these choices interact and they are not a basket where you pick a few things you like and ignore the others.

Many people eat particular food for other reasons than their own health. I know many vegans who would continue to eat vegan even if studies would proof that it's less healthy than meat-based diets because concerns for animals and the environment are the actual drivers whereas health is a convenient and easy explanation, but not the primary reason.

[EricEng]

I think there is some class snobbery there, but there is an epidemic of health problems, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc. that's diet related.  It's a problem on all economic levels, but it's definitely skewed towards low-income people. 

That's actually a bit of a myth.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/24/18018544/fast-food-cdc-class-rich-people
What skews the numbers is there are more poor people, thus if you look at just raw customer counts then yeah it looks like the poor eat the most fast food.

What I'd be curious to see is a break out of how much of the richer people's "fast food" consumption is Starbucks/gourmet coffee.

[Zikoris]

I mean, criticism in what sense? Criticism as in "Eww, gross", maybe, because that's really more personal preference. But criticism as in "Eating a diet consisting of junk food, fast food, and convenience food will make you fat, cause a plethora of health problems, and lead you to an early grave" is basically just a statement of fact. Nutrition information is widely available for all types of foods these days. We know what types of diets lead to health, and what types of diets do the opposite.

[carolina822]

I think there is some class snobbery there, but there is an epidemic of health problems, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc. that's diet related.  It's a problem on all economic levels, but it's definitely skewed towards low-income people. 

That's actually a bit of a myth.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/24/18018544/fast-food-cdc-class-rich-people
What skews the numbers is there are more poor people, thus if you look at just raw customer counts then yeah it looks like the poor eat the most fast food.

What I'd be curious to see is a break out of how much of the richer people's "fast food" consumption is Starbucks/gourmet coffee.

That and Chick-fil-A.

[use2betrix]

I don’t understand people can claim it’s too expensive to eat healthy when it’s actually often more expensive to eat junk.

Our chicken is $2/lb. rice is cheap, oatmeal is cheap. Eggs are cheap.

Fast food is way more expensive than cheap healthy food. A frozen pizza is like $5. You could get two lbs of chicken and a lb of rice for the same cost.

A lot of people really just have no self control and they would rather lie to themselves and others that it costs too much to eat healthy instead of taking responsibility.

Not only this, even with junk food there’s no actual excuse to be overweight. Weight is determined by calories in vs calories out. A person can stay just as skinny on fast food burgers and shakes as they can on chicken and rice.

[Boofinator]

Not only this, even with junk food there’s no actual excuse to be overweight. Weight is determined by calories in vs calories out. A person can stay just as skinny on fast food burgers and shakes as they can on chicken and rice.

Calories in versus calories out doesn't account for the physiological and psychological effects associated with different kinds of foods. So yes, it is calories in calories out for weight gain, but no, it isn't that simple because mind and body respond differently to different foods.

[mountain mustache]

I don’t understand people can claim it’s too expensive to eat healthy when it’s actually often more expensive to eat junk.

Our chicken is $2/lb. rice is cheap, oatmeal is cheap. Eggs are cheap.

Fast food is way more expensive than cheap healthy food. A frozen pizza is like $5. You could get two lbs of chicken and a lb of rice for the same cost.

A lot of people really just have no self control and they would rather lie to themselves and others that it costs too much to eat healthy instead of taking responsibility.

Not only this, even with junk food there’s no actual excuse to be overweight. Weight is determined by calories in vs calories out. A person can stay just as skinny on fast food burgers and shakes as they can on chicken and rice.

not going to go into a huge rant about people in low income/rural areas and their access to food...but some people have convenience stores as their only option for food. In the south you'd be hard pressed to find many very healthy items on the shelves of a Circle K or 7 Eleven, and when there are things like eggs, rice, etc they are much more expensive than at a normal grocery store.

[use2betrix]

I don’t understand people can claim it’s too expensive to eat healthy when it’s actually often more expensive to eat junk.

Our chicken is $2/lb. rice is cheap, oatmeal is cheap. Eggs are cheap.

Fast food is way more expensive than cheap healthy food. A frozen pizza is like $5. You could get two lbs of chicken and a lb of rice for the same cost.

A lot of people really just have no self control and they would rather lie to themselves and others that it costs too much to eat healthy instead of taking responsibility.

Not only this, even with junk food there’s no actual excuse to be overweight. Weight is determined by calories in vs calories out. A person can stay just as skinny on fast food burgers and shakes as they can on chicken and rice.

not going to go into a huge rant about people in low income/rural areas and their access to food...but some people have convenience stores as their only option for food. In the south you'd be hard pressed to find many very healthy items on the shelves of a Circle K or 7 Eleven, and when there are things like eggs, rice, etc they are much more expensive than at a normal grocery store.

If these problems were even remotely segregated to rural areas with no grocery stores you’d have a point.

Unfortunately people with garbage diets and zero self control extend to people in every location at every income range. People making $250k often eat as poorly, if not worse, than people who make $30k.

Often people with food stamps have the exact same access to the healthy grocery store foods as anyone else. By so many statements here, you’d think that they all must make healthy, unprocessed choices.

That isn’t the case.

This is just another of many threads of people making excuses instead of taking accountability. I eat nearly the exact same making $300k a year as when I did making $40k. Even the same as when I was broke in college. It does not cost more.

Two of my wife’s good friends are single moms on food stamps. I’ve seen pictures of their groceries, they eat the really expensive versions of the food we buy.

[use2betrix]

Not only this, even with junk food there’s no actual excuse to be overweight. Weight is determined by calories in vs calories out. A person can stay just as skinny on fast food burgers and shakes as they can on chicken and rice.

Calories in versus calories out doesn't account for the physiological and psychological effects associated with different kinds of foods. So yes, it is calories in calories out for weight gain, but no, it isn't that simple because mind and body respond differently to different foods.

You’re 100% right. Unfortunately this is irrelevant because this issue is not isolated to the minimal people who are “only eating from gas stations.”

[Zikoris]

I think it's funny that there's a certain window of food prices (say, fast-food price levels) that gets criticized, but then you drop below that price range and all of a sudden your food is cool again. Notice how nobody is ever like "Oh look, curried chickpeas, you fucking peasant", even though it would cost like a fraction of the price of a burger. Maybe because so much of the food that's actually really cheap (as opposed to stuff like fast food) is also delicious and healthy?

[Kyle Schuant]

Calories in versus calories out doesn't account for the physiological and psychological effects associated with different kinds of foods. So yes, it is calories in calories out for weight gain, but no, it isn't that simple because mind and body respond differently to different foods.

Correct. I've been dieting recently. It's been meat, fish and vegies with some fruit and dairy. For example, when I cook my family bolognese with spaghetti, I just eat the sauce. I'm eating almost 2kg of food a day and getting under 2,000kCal. It's a bit of a chore, to be honest. It tastes good but there's a lot of chewing to do.


Bic Mac, fries and coke are 1,000kCal. I tell you, it'd be a lot easier eating 2 Big Mac Meals than 2kg of meat and vegies is. Which means it'd also be easy to eat three of them - and get 3,000kCal daily.


And of course Mars bars, for example, are ~250kCal and just 53g. So that eight Mars bars would be my calories for the day; easier to eat 400g of chocolate than 2,000g of meat and vegies.


As food is more processed, it becomes higher calorie per unit of weight, and lower nutrition (vitamins and minerals). It's also usually softer. This makes it easier to chew and quicker to digest.


When asked why they choose junk food, fairly universally people mention first "convenience." It's easier to walk up to the counter and be eating within 2 minutes than to chop meat and vegies and cook them, and boil some pasta or rice, or whatever. And of course the stuff does taste alright, if not great. And the large amount of calories gives you a good feeling. If humans didn't have an ancient instinct to gorge themselves then we would have died on the East African savannah the first time it was six weeks instead of two weeks between gazelles.


It's true that it's not only poorer people eating shit food, but it is universally upon the poor that moral opprobrium falls. The middle-class person wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars wags his finger at the lower-class person wasting hundreds of dollars. Well, such is life. So my reflex is to defend the poor: they can't afford many pleasures, why not some junk food? They're not the ones driving SUVs with bumper stickers about climate change.


Good and cheap fresh food is not universally available in the West. Look up "food deserts" and similar ideas. We're very lucky where I live, lots of Asians who demand it, so we have a good greengrocer, butcher and fishmonger within 1km of us, and the supermarkets keep their prices down in response. Other areas just have supermarkets where everything is crappy and overpriced, and $5/kg vs $2/kg makes a huge difference to some people. Rural areas everything's trucked in and there's just one shop so prices get jacked up further.


As a general rule, if your solution starts with, "it's easy, all you do is -" then you are probably wrong.

[DutchMustachian]

The Netherlands is about the second largest producer of a number of vegs (e.g tomatoes) in the world so very lucky and cheap vegs.

I don't understand how rural areas are so overpriced in the US? I would expect that the land and space are opportunities to grow yourself or other things that do well?

Verstuurd vanaf mijn F5321 met Tapatalk

[undercover]

I would rephrase it as "health snobbery". There are many high-class famous people who regularly eat (or used to eat) fast food, including Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Warren Buffett.

Bottom line is that most people outgrow their fast food phase when they realize that despite it being inexpensive* and yummy, a meal consisting of a burger, fries, and a coke is awful for your health.

*Though not by Mustachian standards.

Well Buffett is 88 and still "tap-dances" to work and has the diet of an eight year old. Maybe he has amazing genetics or maybe the effects of junk food are overblown.

I gotta say I'm somewhere in the middle. I do eat a lot of processed food but I also a lot of "real" food as well. But I weight train and exercise 4 days a week so maybe I have an excuse.

I have never had a specific diet that made me feel any better than just eating whatever the hell I want within reason. I'm of belief that it mostly doesn't matter what you eat - just how much of it you actually eat as long as you're getting proper nutrition overall. There's actually nothing inherently wrong with sugar or salt so long as you aren't consuming to extreme excess. Moderation in all things. There are all kinds of studies on how the recommended amount of salt per day is actually too low and we may be healthier if we ate more (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34S27FGwYr8) even though I don't think the average American has any problem with getting enough salt.

[Linea_Norway]

I did not watch the video.

Yes, I think there is a lot of food snobbery going on.
I know people who only buy the "fresh" orange juice in cartons, which are very expensive. I buy the cheapest brand or juice cartons, which is also pure orange juice, not not so fresh. I guess they are equally healthy. I even find that the cheap brand tastes well to my tastebuds.
Same with bread. I have noticed my colleagues buy bread that costs about 4 times as much as the cheap, but healthy bread that I buy. Yes, maybe there is even cheaper bread to be bought. For example here in Norway you can buy sausage bread for almost no money. But that is pure white bread without fibers and not very healthy. So I think you should at a minimum look at the ingredients and only eat foods that contain nutriciens.
I myself used to buy fresh spinach in large bags. When home, I stored it in the freezer so that it wouldn't expire so soon. When I found out that frozen spinach costs only 1/4 of the prize of fresh, I switched to that. No need to be snobbery and eat "fresh" stuff instead of frozen. The nutrients are practically the same.

Cooks are usually telling you that onion soup is such a brilliant dish, cheap and tasteful. In my family it was even considered a luxury/fancy dish. But the main ingredients are very cheap.

Fast food often contains too much salt and fat and too little nutriciens to be healthy.

[Western_sean]

I think there's a bit of comparing apples and oranges here. In Pykes time cheap food effectively meant recycling food to serve on a second occasion, off cuts of meat or directly sourced vegetables, dairy products and eggs. In general, it meant the kind of natural food that one can make a meal from with the addition of patience and some culinary skill - both of which were largely available in households or family run restaurants of the time. So while food was cheap it tended to be wholesome.

However, in our modern era cheap food tends to be synonymous with industrialised food production. This is an entirely different proposition from what Pyke considered cheap food since it is effectively food the equivalent of which would not have existed in Pyke's era. One might also argue that this type of food contains ingredients or is created using farming processes which in Pykes time either didn't exist or would not have been considered appropriate for introduction into the food chain.

Pyke is effectively arguing for the efficient use of food which exists when the methods of production are artisan in nature. With the industrialised means of production in use today cheap food is largely a way for industrial concerns to either get rid of what might otherwise be waste products or use chemical enhancements to tease out production gains with the related risk to the food chain.

If you break down the cost of this type of food you will frequently find that the retailer, processor, packaging supplier and haulier make more from the final consumer sale than the farmer.  This value judgement on food supply is having consequences detrimental to the preservation of the skills of food production and instrumental in increasing the levels of chemical enhancement required to make sudo food taste like the real thing.

In summary for me yes - modern junk food is just that. Pykes simple advice is valid but junk food today is a very different proposition from what it was when that advice was given.

[Freedomin5]

In China, there is a history of “cheap” foods having stuff like sawdust and other chemicals in them as fillers, to the extent that several babies died after drinking a cheaper brand of milk formula powder. So yes, I suppose food snobbery exists here, and I will continue to purchase certified fresh foods at three times the normal price. (Though granted, I can’t tell if the certification is real or fake, but it’s better than no certification at all.)

[BookLoverL]

I mean, all I know is that last time I had McDonalds (which was, IDK, 7 years ago now? I don't eat McDonalds often), the bread tasted like cardboard, the fries were WAY too salty, and the meat was unidentifiable. Not a satisfying meal for me at all, and the "salad" there is generally pathetic and also drenched in disgusting sauce too. But you can buy plenty of healthy food for cheap provided you're willing/able to spend a small amount of time on food prep. Bulk-buying your local most common variety of carbs is generally the cheapest thing there is per calorie, and if you add some seasonal veg, it's only the protein that has the potential to be more expensive.

[pbkmaine]

I think it’s the wrong conversation to be having. One of the healthiest populations in the world (the Seventh Day Adventists) eats a vegetarian diet low in processed food. Go into one of their hospital cafeterias and find a salad bar the size of a small city. That diet can be very cheap but is extremely healthy. Or you can eat off the dollar menu at McDonald’s.

[Maenad]

I think it's funny that there's a certain window of food prices (say, fast-food price levels) that gets criticized, but then you drop below that price range and all of a sudden your food is cool again. Notice how nobody is ever like "Oh look, curried chickpeas, you fucking peasant", even though it would cost like a fraction of the price of a burger. Maybe because so much of the food that's actually really cheap (as opposed to stuff like fast food) is also delicious and healthy?

I think it may be because the cheapest foods require the luxury of time to prepare. And it's not as simple as the minute it takes to start presoaking some beans and the (unattended) cook time, it's also the time and mental energy to learn a new skill. When you're already tired from your current job and your kids, learning to cook can feel like an insurmountable obstacle.

[Linea_Norway]

I think it's funny that there's a certain window of food prices (say, fast-food price levels) that gets criticized, but then you drop below that price range and all of a sudden your food is cool again. Notice how nobody is ever like "Oh look, curried chickpeas, you fucking peasant", even though it would cost like a fraction of the price of a burger. Maybe because so much of the food that's actually really cheap (as opposed to stuff like fast food) is also delicious and healthy?

I think it may be because the cheapest foods require the luxury of time to prepare. And it's not as simple as the minute it takes to start presoaking some beans and the (unattended) cook time, it's also the time and mental energy to learn a new skill. When you're already tired from your current job and your kids, learning to cook can feel like an insurmountable obstacle.

It is really worth the hassle of presoaking beans? I hate doing this and therefore buy beans in a can/pack that are already cooked. Eating more beans instead of meat already saves a lot of money.

[former player]

OP's reference (Dr Magnus Pike - nice to see footage of him again) was talking in the UK in 1980, and talking about effects based on the past not the future.  So basically right but talking about very different conditions.  In the UK in those days there just wasn't as much food available, it was (relatively) more expensive and "convenience foods" were a relatively recent and relatively scarce thing, certainly nothing like the recent poster here whose family lived on convenience foods 3 times a day and 7 days a week.

I do think the general message of "enough but not too much" and "variety" is right.

WW2 Rations 1940: per one person (adult)
Butter: 50g (2oz)
Bacon or ham: 100g (4oz)
Margarine: 100g (4oz)
Cooking fat/lard: 100g (4oz)
Sugar: 225g (8oz).
Meat: To the value of 1/2d and sometimes 1/10d – about 1lb (450g) to 12ozs (350g)
Milk: 3 pints (1800ml) occasionally dropping to 2 pints (1200ml).
Cheese: 2oz (50g) rising to 8oz (225g)
Eggs: 1 fresh egg a week.
Tea: 50g (2oz).
Jam: 450g (1lb) every two months.
Dried eggs: 1 packet (12 eggs) every four weeks.
Sweets & Chocolate: 350g (12oz) every four weeks
Fruit and vegetables: unrationed (but possibly scarce)

[Sailor Sam]

I think it's funny that there's a certain window of food prices (say, fast-food price levels) that gets criticized, but then you drop below that price range and all of a sudden your food is cool again. Notice how nobody is ever like "Oh look, curried chickpeas, you fucking peasant", even though it would cost like a fraction of the price of a burger. Maybe because so much of the food that's actually really cheap (as opposed to stuff like fast food) is also delicious and healthy?

I think it may be because the cheapest foods require the luxury of time to prepare. And it's not as simple as the minute it takes to start presoaking some beans and the (unattended) cook time, it's also the time and mental energy to learn a new skill. When you're already tired from your current job and your kids, learning to cook can feel like an insurmountable obstacle.

I think we're also witnessing differing internal biases guiding what individuals automatically recognized as 'food.'

Anecdata - I was born in 1980, and grew up in a small town of 6,000. This place had excellent Mexican restaurants, thanks to the ongoing legacy of migrant workers. The closest town was about 20 minutes away, and had a population of 30,000. "Town" had a couple Chinese restaurant, very americanized, and which we all called 'ethinic.'  I have a vivid memory of my first night in my college dorm, and my new acquaintances wanting to get Indian food. I spend the entire night slowly panicking. I had no idea what a chickpea was, let along if I would find it delicious.

I'm not a picky eater. I discovered a fondness for Indian food. And Ethiopian, sushi, bibimbap, delicious ramen. At 30 I developed a casine allergy, and that nudged me towards nutritional yeast, seitan, and nut milks. It's a whole cornucopia! Despite this cultural awakening, I will never automatically recognize chickpeas as 'mmmm, future dinner!' the way I automatically recognize noodles and ground beef as casserole in embryonic format.

Perhaps the upcoming generation is more multicultural in their broader recognition of what foods can cheaply and easily become dinner, but I suspect it's mostly the children of prosperous urban dwellers. Finding 'exotic' ingredients at the Piggly Wiggly down the street ain't gonna be particularly easy.

[horsepoor]

There is also a huge difference between 'cheap' food and 'fast' food.  Potatoes, cabbage, carrots, rice, lentils, onions, etc are cheap but healthy.  A burger full of salt, saturated fat, over-processed white bread, and deep fried potatoes with sugary tomato paste is more expensive per calorie, while also being less healthy.  Free range organic chicken, organic kale, out of season blueberries, and quinoa is healthy and expensive, and arguable not much healthier than 'cheap' food.

ETA: I see Kyle addressed this as well.

Pretty much this.  Not all junk food is cheap, but it just happens that at least in the US, a lot of wheat, corn and soy-based junk foods are cheap due to subsidies, so there is a conflation of "junk" and "cheap" and a corresponding perception that "healthy" must be expensive.

I don't generally perceive that people are looking askance at potatoes and cabbage as "bad" just because they are cheap, although some might turn up their noses at anything non-organic.

[Imma]

I don’t understand people can claim it’s too expensive to eat healthy when it’s actually often more expensive to eat junk.

Our chicken is $2/lb. rice is cheap, oatmeal is cheap. Eggs are cheap.

Fast food is way more expensive than cheap healthy food. A frozen pizza is like $5. You could get two lbs of chicken and a lb of rice for the same cost.

A lot of people really just have no self control and they would rather lie to themselves and others that it costs too much to eat healthy instead of taking responsibility.

Not only this, even with junk food there’s no actual excuse to be overweight. Weight is determined by calories in vs calories out. A person can stay just as skinny on fast food burgers and shakes as they can on chicken and rice.

It's not just the price that matters, it's also the time it takes to prepare the food and the mental and physical energy.

I work long days and am exhausted all the time. I love cooking and I try to plan ahead and I stick to the plan most of the time. But I'm not going to deny that it happens that I've been away for 12 to 14 hours and the best I can do is put a frozen pizza in the oven. Rice and beans is much cheaper and healthier, I don't just know how to prepare them but have them in the pantry already. I just can't manage preparing them sometimes. Just standing up in the kitchen is a struggle on those days.

Then there are the days that I spend all day at work, have a quick dinner and then have to attend an important course, without going home in between. I don't have access to a microwave, fridge or any healthy food for sale on those locations. I end up eating the least unhealthy option at any of the several fastfood places that I do have access to on those days.

Now, for some meals, it's easy: overnight oats have been my favourite breakfast for most of my life and they're quick, healthy and cheap.

[Boofinator]

I would rephrase it as "health snobbery". There are many high-class famous people who regularly eat (or used to eat) fast food, including Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Warren Buffett.

Bottom line is that most people outgrow their fast food phase when they realize that despite it being inexpensive* and yummy, a meal consisting of a burger, fries, and a coke is awful for your health.

*Though not by Mustachian standards.

Well Buffett is 88 and still "tap-dances" to work and has the diet of an eight year old. Maybe he has amazing genetics or maybe the effects of junk food are overblown.

There's something to be said about the positive health effects of doing what you love.

[RyanAtTanagra]

Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme had a post that I can't find right now where he outlined how all these choices interact and they are not a basket where you pick a few things you like and ignore the others.

Bit of a sidebar, but I think you're referring to this one, which is one of my favorite ERE posts:

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/the-forest-versus-the-trees.html

[Boofinator]

I did not watch the video.

Yes, I think there is a lot of food snobbery going on.
I know people who only buy the "fresh" orange juice in cartons, which are very expensive. I buy the cheapest brand or juice cartons, which is also pure orange juice, not not so fresh. I guess they are equally healthy. I even find that the cheap brand tastes well to my tastebuds.
Same with bread. I have noticed my colleagues buy bread that costs about 4 times as much as the cheap, but healthy bread that I buy. Yes, maybe there is even cheaper bread to be bought. For example here in Norway you can buy sausage bread for almost no money. But that is pure white bread without fibers and not very healthy. So I think you should at a minimum look at the ingredients and only eat foods that contain nutriciens.
I myself used to buy fresh spinach in large bags. When home, I stored it in the freezer so that it wouldn't expire so soon. When I found out that frozen spinach costs only 1/4 of the prize of fresh, I switched to that. No need to be snobbery and eat "fresh" stuff instead of frozen. The nutrients are practically the same.

Cooks are usually telling you that onion soup is such a brilliant dish, cheap and tasteful. In my family it was even considered a luxury/fancy dish. But the main ingredients are very cheap.

Fast food often contains too much salt and fat and too little nutriciens to be healthy.

I think there's some misunderstanding of the concept of food snobbery (or "class snobbery" as it was labeled by OP). Food snobbery is disliking something because it is cheap. This is a big difference from deciding to purchase more expensive foods because they taste better or have more nutritional value. I can testify that the more expensive orange juice tastes far superior to other brands (because it is made from more palatable (and expensive) oranges) (granted this is just my opinion). Similarly, more expensive bread is generally made from better ingredients than the cheap stuff, and raw spinach tastes better than frozen in most meals.

I do agree with you that we should regularly challenge assumptions about what exactly we are paying for and consider the alternatives, especially when it comes to our staple foods.

[Zikoris]

It's not just the price that matters, it's also the time it takes to prepare the food and the mental and physical energy.

I work long days and am exhausted all the time. I love cooking and I try to plan ahead and I stick to the plan most of the time. But I'm not going to deny that it happens that I've been away for 12 to 14 hours and the best I can do is put a frozen pizza in the oven. Rice and beans is much cheaper and healthier, I don't just know how to prepare them but have them in the pantry already. I just can't manage preparing them sometimes. Just standing up in the kitchen is a struggle on those days.

Then there are the days that I spend all day at work, have a quick dinner and then have to attend an important course, without going home in between. I don't have access to a microwave, fridge or any healthy food for sale on those locations. I end up eating the least unhealthy option at any of the several fastfood places that I do have access to on those days.

Now, for some meals, it's easy: overnight oats have been my favourite breakfast for most of my life and they're quick, healthy and cheap.

Working long days and then coming home to cook definitely sucks, but the good thing is, it's completely optional and you can plan your system in a way that it's 100% not required by doing things like crock pot meals, bulk cooking, and freezing meals when you do have time/energy. There's nothing wrong with saying "Hey, I came up with this system (coming home from work and cooking dinner every night), and it seemed to make sense at the time, but it's not working (because I'm too tired to cook on weeknights), so I'm going to crumple that system up, throw it in the garbage, and make a new one". No point trying to force a system to work that just doesn't.

[mm1970]

I think it's funny that there's a certain window of food prices (say, fast-food price levels) that gets criticized, but then you drop below that price range and all of a sudden your food is cool again. Notice how nobody is ever like "Oh look, curried chickpeas, you fucking peasant", even though it would cost like a fraction of the price of a burger. Maybe because so much of the food that's actually really cheap (as opposed to stuff like fast food) is also delicious and healthy?

I think it may be because the cheapest foods require the luxury of time to prepare. And it's not as simple as the minute it takes to start presoaking some beans and the (unattended) cook time, it's also the time and mental energy to learn a new skill. When you're already tired from your current job and your kids, learning to cook can feel like an insurmountable obstacle.

I think we're also witnessing differing internal biases guiding what individuals automatically recognized as 'food.'

Anecdata - I was born in 1980, and grew up in a small town of 6,000. This place had excellent Mexican restaurants, thanks to the ongoing legacy of migrant workers. The closest town was about 20 minutes away, and had a population of 30,000. "Town" had a couple Chinese restaurant, very americanized, and which we all called 'ethinic.'  I have a vivid memory of my first night in my college dorm, and my new acquaintances wanting to get Indian food. I spend the entire night slowly panicking. I had no idea what a chickpea was, let along if I would find it delicious.

I'm not a picky eater. I discovered a fondness for Indian food. And Ethiopian, sushi, bibimbap, delicious ramen. At 30 I developed a casine allergy, and that nudged me towards nutritional yeast, seitan, and nut milks. It's a whole cornucopia! Despite this cultural awakening, I will never automatically recognize chickpeas as 'mmmm, future dinner!' the way I automatically recognize noodles and ground beef as casserole in embryonic format.

Perhaps the upcoming generation is more multicultural in their broader recognition of what foods can cheaply and easily become dinner, but I suspect it's mostly the children of prosperous urban dwellers. Finding 'exotic' ingredients at the Piggly Wiggly down the street ain't gonna be particularly easy.

Very good point here that I hadn't thought about. 
Anecdata - I'm 10 years older than you are.
I grew up in a very rural area where people mostly gardened.
 
"Ethic" food was spaghetti and meatballs, and tacos made from the Ortega taco mix.
Nearest town of 6000 was 20 miles away.  They had McD's, Pizza, KFC, Burger king, Burger Chef! Rax.  Long John Silver's.
Long after I left, they got a Taco Bell.
Then later, a Chinese place and now a Mexican restaurant.  And an Applebees.

So "food" was always meat and potatoes or a grain.  I was 20 before I had Chinese food.

When we go visit family, it's still mostly that way.
In my house, I mostly cook other types of dishes.  We live in CA, so my kids like quesadillas, burritos, and tacos.
I'm more of a fan of curried chickpeas, or Thai dishes or Ethiopian.  I pretty much just wing it. 
But because: kids, a fair bit of pizza and chicken fingers too.

So I stress sometimes when my MIL comes to stay because: they mostly eat meat & potatoes (and plenty of veggies).  I dunno if she's gonna like Thai chicken curry, homemade veggie burgers, etc.  I know she can't eat pizza.  (Of course with my inability to eat wheat or bagged salad, I'm not the best house guest either.  My birthday dinner at her house last summer was a disaster taco dinner.  My husband cooked it, but the tortilla choices were...limited.)

[mm1970]

I think it's funny that there's a certain window of food prices (say, fast-food price levels) that gets criticized, but then you drop below that price range and all of a sudden your food is cool again. Notice how nobody is ever like "Oh look, curried chickpeas, you fucking peasant", even though it would cost like a fraction of the price of a burger. Maybe because so much of the food that's actually really cheap (as opposed to stuff like fast food) is also delicious and healthy?

I think it may be because the cheapest foods require the luxury of time to prepare. And it's not as simple as the minute it takes to start presoaking some beans and the (unattended) cook time, it's also the time and mental energy to learn a new skill. When you're already tired from your current job and your kids, learning to cook can feel like an insurmountable obstacle.

This is a good point, and the people saying "well, just find a different system" aren't really putting themselves in the place of others who have many more problems to face.

I am damned lucky that I learned to cook (because I was fat), and figured out how to do it reasonably cheaply (because I'm cheap) when I was 31-32 - which was, incidentally, 4+ years before I had my first child. 

So I had lots of time to learn to cook, get good at it, and come up with a system.  That gets completely fucked up and thrown out the window when you have a full time job and a baby.  And then gets re-jiggered when you have a second baby. Not to mention the changes you have to make when you suddenly can't eat what or bagged salad greens. Then gets altered YET AGAIN when you find yourself NOT the one getting home at 5:30 with the kids but getting home at 6:30.

Learning to cook is HARD yo.  I remember trying to learn to cook certain basic things (pizza dough and roast chicken) when I was in my late 20s and utterly failing.  4-5 times each.  That's a lot of wasted time and money, only to end up eating PB&J or dialing for pizza delivery.  With kids?  Ain't nobody got time for that.  Esp when the kids are younger.

I'm FINALLY feeling like my head is coming out of a fog and this week started making all other family members decide on meals also (and cook them).  Youngest is 6.  So, that's about...13 years of a fog.  When you get home from work, they are starving, you have to help them with your homework.  I mean, I can always throw together grilled cheese and raw vegetables (or quesadillas).  But that's because I know what I'm doing. 

[Just Joe]

DW and I watched this show. It was interesting from our POV (suburban American).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_in_Time_for...

[galliver]

I do think we as a society (esp industrialized/western) overthink this. But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

Freaking out over the words "processed" "GMO" and "organic", in the absence of other details, is getting pretty ridiculous. You have people foregoing food safety (pasteurization) because it's "processing." Or shelling out for organic with no understanding of what it means (not pesticide free!). Or the panic over GMOs because it's "playing God" to change the genome although we've been doing it for centuries through conventional breeding and have messed it up royally at times,. And now we can target specific traits more efficiently with modern technology, and quickly end up with crops that are more nutritious, more productive, and less susceptible to insects and disease. [Side note: regulation and inspection of the food industry and its innovations is important, but in many cases I think consumers don't have the specialized knowledge to make good choices/advocate good policy.]

On the other hand, overall nutrition matters. This doesn't require specialty food from around the world (although I do think it makes it more fun), but can be summed up in everyone's mother's refrain, "eat your veggies." No, one fast food burger or one SBUX latte will not kill anyone or their budget...but when small indulgences become one-DAILY affairs, great scrutiny is called for.

Every decade or so all sorts of sketchy research is released stating x or y is bad for you, or z and q are good for you. In my own uninformed opinion, I suspect there are too many grad students desperate for notoriety that they are willing to publish anything that causes a stir, not unlike journalism these days.

I don't think I've ever seen a scientific paper that claimed "chocolate cures cancer, eat 17lbs per day" or "chocolate is the deadliest carcinogen never eat chocolate again!" It's usually "this amount of this chemical found in trace amounts in chocolate slowed[/accelerated] the growth of [complicated identifier] cancer cells by 15% " It's very, VERY specific.

Unfortunately, science/health journalism sometimes sees this and runs with it...

And then other times you have "[Technique] applied to 20 college students created [result, e.g. weight loss], this might be interesting to study further with more money/resources/test subjects." But when someone does the bigger study, they find no effect and don't publish that (for various reasons). This is known as positive bias; if 100 studies are done on chocolate vs cancer and only 3 find a correlation, those 3 are disproportionately likely to be published. So someone looking for info will say "look! 3 papers say that is a link and only 1 paper says there isn't!"

Lest you lose faith completely, this has been recognized as a problem and people are working on changing the incentives (pre-registration of studies w/ committment to publish, special grants for replication efforts, etc). It's slow going, though...

[use2betrix]

I don’t understand people can claim it’s too expensive to eat healthy when it’s actually often more expensive to eat junk.

Our chicken is $2/lb. rice is cheap, oatmeal is cheap. Eggs are cheap.

Fast food is way more expensive than cheap healthy food. A frozen pizza is like $5. You could get two lbs of chicken and a lb of rice for the same cost.

A lot of people really just have no self control and they would rather lie to themselves and others that it costs too much to eat healthy instead of taking responsibility.

Not only this, even with junk food there’s no actual excuse to be overweight. Weight is determined by calories in vs calories out. A person can stay just as skinny on fast food burgers and shakes as they can on chicken and rice.

It's not just the price that matters, it's also the time it takes to prepare the food and the mental and physical energy.

I work long days and am exhausted all the time. I love cooking and I try to plan ahead and I stick to the plan most of the time. But I'm not going to deny that it happens that I've been away for 12 to 14 hours and the best I can do is put a frozen pizza in the oven. Rice and beans is much cheaper and healthier, I don't just know how to prepare them but have them in the pantry already. I just can't manage preparing them sometimes. Just standing up in the kitchen is a struggle on those days.

Then there are the days that I spend all day at work, have a quick dinner and then have to attend an important course, without going home in between. I don't have access to a microwave, fridge or any healthy food for sale on those locations. I end up eating the least unhealthy option at any of the several fastfood places that I do have access to on those days.

Now, for some meals, it's easy: overnight oats have been my favourite breakfast for most of my life and they're quick, healthy and cheap.

For the last decade I’ve worked 60+ hrs a week for probably 80% of those weeks. 70+ hours for probably 10% of those hours.

My wife does all the cooking now, but before her I worked these hours and did all my own cooking and ate just as well. It takes maybe 1 hour to cook 3 days worth of healthy meals, 3 meals a day. You can toss some hamburger on a pan, chicken breast in the over, potatoes, rice, etc. you can do most of this simultaneously.

Here’s an old picture of some meals I cooked. I’d do this every 3 days, then just microwave them as needed. Really not that hard...

[mm1970]

For the last decade I’ve worked 60+ hrs a week for probably 80% of those weeks. 70+ hours for probably 10% of those hours.

My wife does all the cooking now, but before her I worked these hours and did all my own cooking and ate just as well. It takes maybe 1 hour to cook 3 days worth of healthy meals, 3 meals a day. You can toss some hamburger on a pan, chicken breast in the over, potatoes, rice, etc. you can do most of this simultaneously.

Here’s an old picture of some meals I cooked. I’d do this every 3 days, then just microwave them as needed. Really not that hard...

Why can you not understand...

"It's really not that hard" because you knew how to do it.

If you don't know how to do it, and are starting from zero (as many people are) ... it's fucking hard.

It's not just spending 1-3 hours cooking.
It's learning how to cook.
It's figuring out what to make.
It's learning how to shop for what you want to make.
It's figuring out what is going to go bad first.
It's learning not to ruin that $10 pack of chicken breasts you just bought.

[Zikoris]

For the last decade I’ve worked 60+ hrs a week for probably 80% of those weeks. 70+ hours for probably 10% of those hours.

My wife does all the cooking now, but before her I worked these hours and did all my own cooking and ate just as well. It takes maybe 1 hour to cook 3 days worth of healthy meals, 3 meals a day. You can toss some hamburger on a pan, chicken breast in the over, potatoes, rice, etc. you can do most of this simultaneously.

Here’s an old picture of some meals I cooked. I’d do this every 3 days, then just microwave them as needed. Really not that hard...

Why can you not understand...

"It's really not that hard" because you knew how to do it.

If you don't know how to do it, and are starting from zero (as many people are) ... it's fucking hard.

It's not just spending 1-3 hours cooking.
It's learning how to cook.
It's figuring out what to make.
It's learning how to shop for what you want to make.
It's figuring out what is going to go bad first.
It's learning not to ruin that $10 pack of chicken breasts you just bought.

And all that information is readily available for free via the library, the internet, and the multitude of people who DO know how to cook and are generally more than happy to answer questions. ALL of us had to figure this stuff out. Surely you don't think those of us saying it's easy were somehow born with that knowledge?

When I first moved out on my own, my meals were generally rice with frozen veg and some kind of veggie meat, or pasta with veggie ground round, tomato sauce, and taco seasoning. I was able to make pizza because I learned how to work with yeast as a teenager when I had a part time job at a cafe that served pizza. Gradually I learned more over time with things like cookbooks, Youtube, and asking people who knew what they were doing questions.

If you can read at like a 5th grade level and follow basic instructions, simple cooking should really not be a problem.

[Boofinator]

For the last decade I’ve worked 60+ hrs a week for probably 80% of those weeks. 70+ hours for probably 10% of those hours.

My wife does all the cooking now, but before her I worked these hours and did all my own cooking and ate just as well. It takes maybe 1 hour to cook 3 days worth of healthy meals, 3 meals a day. You can toss some hamburger on a pan, chicken breast in the over, potatoes, rice, etc. you can do most of this simultaneously.

Here’s an old picture of some meals I cooked. I’d do this every 3 days, then just microwave them as needed. Really not that hard...

Why can you not understand...

"It's really not that hard" because you knew how to do it.

If you don't know how to do it, and are starting from zero (as many people are) ... it's fucking hard.

It's not just spending 1-3 hours cooking.
It's learning how to cook.
It's figuring out what to make.
It's learning how to shop for what you want to make.
It's figuring out what is going to go bad first.
It's learning not to ruin that $10 pack of chicken breasts you just bought.

I'm going to go with use2betrix, it's really not that hard to learn to cook the basics*. Granted, everybody makes mistakes, and granted it is a learning process, and granted it takes time and effort to plan, purchase, and prepare healthy meals, but it isn't harder than, say, the Mustachian way (not spending money on stupid shit and figuring out how to invest the rest). The important thing, like anything else in life, is to have an incentive to learn so that the cooking process isn't a chore, but more like a fulfilling hobby that has the added side benefit of making others you might be feeding happy.

By the way, I've fucked up many a meal in life, but I'm pretty sure I ate what I could of every single one and learned from my mistakes** to become a better cook.

*This is coming from someone who hadn't learned anything more than how to cook ramen when he began living on his own, and had never had any kind of culinary training.

**Like never leave chicken unattended on a propane grill. Fucked that up more than once....

[Christof]

Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme had a post that I can't find right now where he outlined how all these choices interact and they are not a basket where you pick a few things you like and ignore the others.

Bit of a sidebar, but I think you're referring to this one, which is one of my favorite ERE posts:

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/the-forest-versus-the-trees.html

It was five or six years ago that I read Jacob‘s post, so he must have had another one, but the content was definitely very much like the one you linked to. If you focus on individual aspects you miss the overall design. Thank you!

[Christof]

Nice. So it might be the one...

[SachaFiscal]

Beans and rice are cheap and healthy.  Most of my meals are some variant of rice with beans or other legumes.  I just bought a 20lb bag of rice at Walmart for 5 bucks!  However while beans and rice provide a good source of protein, carbs, and calories it doesn't provide the micronutrients that eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables does.  Vegetables are much more expensive and fruits even more so.  I'm finding myself rationing apples at the end of the month in order to meet my monthly grocery budget.   

[Kyle Schuant]

Well Buffett is 88 and still "tap-dances" to work and has the diet of an eight year old. Maybe he has amazing genetics or maybe the effects of junk food are overblown.

It's now understood that social connections and a sense of purpose and belonging are key elements to health and longevity. This is why when a person dies, their spouse may drop off within 6 months - particularly if the survivor is male, since males tend to have less people in their social circle. And of course we all know of the person who works 60 hours a week, then retires to idleness - and is gone within a year or two. It's also well-known that people's chances of surviving more than 12 months in a nursing home are proportional to how many visitors they get.


Health and longevity are about more than just your diet. Looking at the places in the world with the longest-lived people, we find some common elements. Basically, it's eating good food, being physically active and socially engaged with a sense of purpose. Buffet has at least two out of those three. But he also has some things from other areas, striving to be likeable and not working obscene hours, etc.


You don't have to do everything right, you just have to do more good things than bad.

[use2betrix]

For the last decade I’ve worked 60+ hrs a week for probably 80% of those weeks. 70+ hours for probably 10% of those hours.

My wife does all the cooking now, but before her I worked these hours and did all my own cooking and ate just as well. It takes maybe 1 hour to cook 3 days worth of healthy meals, 3 meals a day. You can toss some hamburger on a pan, chicken breast in the over, potatoes, rice, etc. you can do most of this simultaneously.

Here’s an old picture of some meals I cooked. I’d do this every 3 days, then just microwave them as needed. Really not that hard...

Why can you not understand...

"It's really not that hard" because you knew how to do it.

If you don't know how to do it, and are starting from zero (as many people are) ... it's fucking hard.

It's not just spending 1-3 hours cooking.
It's learning how to cook.
It's figuring out what to make.
It's learning how to shop for what you want to make.
It's figuring out what is going to go bad first.
It's learning not to ruin that $10 pack of chicken breasts you just bought.

I’m really surprised to see this post from you.

If someone wants to eat gas station food and weigh 350 lbs, good for them. Don’t expect me to feel some sort of vagrant sympathy that seems to be expected like it’s anything other than their CHOICE. 

I’m a 30 year old male. No one ever taught me how to cook. I never cooked with my mom growing up. I never used a grill. I do remember making some packaged stir fry meals growing up when *gasp* I read the directions on the back.

What’s the next excuse, people don’t know how to read?

Also - why in the hell are people buying $10 package of chicken breasts? We’re talking poor people here.. not soccer moms with their free range chicken from Whole Foods. Like I said, my wife buys chicken at $2/lb. of course, you can continue with your gross exaggerations of $10 packages of chicken. Not sure who would “learn to cook” with 5 lbs of chicken.

As others said. We have the internet. Libraries have internet. Apparently asking someone to bake chicken or make mashed potatoes is too unrealistic.

Sorry about the vent but your post just screams zero accountability. I make plenty of mistakes in my life and cut plenty of corners. I certainly can’t fathom blaming everyone else for those things though, but I suppose that’s what separates me from so many others.