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The strange effects of thinking healthy food is costlier

• lintiness 10y ago
  "There are certainly categories of food where healthy is more expensive, such as some organic and gluten-free products, Reczek said." there's basically zero evidence organic or gluten free are "healthier".
  • coldtea 10y ago
    If you have celiac disease, there is 100% evidence that gluten free is healthier.
    • lintiness 10y ago
      if you're allergic to pineapple, then not eating pineapples is healthier, but it says fuckall about the general "health" attributes of the "diet".
    • cujo 10y ago
      And people with celiac are benefiting enormously by the generic diet trend of eating low gluten/gluten free by the masses who have nothing wrong with them. A quick google search shows 86% of people who are think they're gluten sensitive, aren't. That's nearly 90% of the stuff in the "gluten free" section of your grocery that's being bought by people who are just wrong. So for 9/10 people buying gluten free food thinking it's healthier, there is no evidence. lintiness is speaking to that.
      • rhinoceraptor 10y ago
        Eating a gluten free diet often means avoiding junk foods such as bread, pasta, etc. So those people might be wrong in that they aren't gluten sensitive, but they're probably right that their diet improved their health.
        • hx87 10y ago
          Wouldn't, say, a Paleo or Atkins diet be even better for them if bread & pasta were the source of their problems?
          • DiabloD3 10y ago
            Atkins no, Paleo yes.
      • VLM 10y ago
        It being a spectrum disease, I'm rather mystified how someone thinks they're sensitive but someone else can declare they aren't. I mean from the outside looking in, the label matters to the outsiders, but from the inside looking out, the exploding bowels seem a far higher priority than label achievements. In my extensive experience with GF food if its naturally inherently GF its delicious, like a grilled steak or a fresh salad. I am hungry right now and I'm salivating eyeing a granny smith apple up and down right now, it is going to be so tart and juicy... If its artificially GF like a GF chocolate cake, its freaking disgusting like mashed potatoes mixed with shredded coconut levels of disgusting. The true irony of the "gluten free" aisle is its mostly inedible and the real "GF" aisles are the long existing produce and meat aisles. Aka the stuff that was "food" before there were food factories trying to convince us something more profitable is "food".
    • jimmywanger 10y ago
      > If you have celiac disease, Having a specific disease or intolerance doesn't mean anything about the general healthiness of a food. By your logic, if some people are lactose intolerant, then all lactose is unhealthy.
    • choward 10y ago
      If you're allergic to peanuts, then there is 100% evidence that eating a burger is healthier.
  • kuschku 10y ago
    > there's basically zero evidence organic or gluten free are "healthier". Depends on your definition of "organic". The US legal definition? True. The Demeter/Bioland/Naturland definition? Untrue. For example, they have far lower limits for antibiotics, and require more time for farm animals outside, on actual grass. Larger spaces for the animals is required, too. As a result, your meat will have higher quality, and you reduce antibiotics overuse. One could also make the argument that stricter regulations of pesticides/herbicides, or entirely banning them (as one of the mentioned groups requires), also reduces the amount of them left in the final product - as, in contrast to governmental inspections, these private groups inspect a lot more often, which helps ensure you don't end up buying a product with pesticide rates an order of magnitude over the legal limits. Regarding gluten free: That's for most people not helpful, but it helps people with celiac disease
  • erkkie 10y ago
    Gluten free is often a useful proxy (for the most parts of the world) for less processed foods. Doesn't apply to speciality "gluten free" items but chicken and rice and vegetables are also gluten free. Try it out when flying sometimes.
• the_gastropod 10y ago
  It's a little ridiculous that the "source" is just a link to the top-level domain for Ohio State University.
• CJefferson 10y ago
  Having lost about 50kg, I feel happy talking about this. It's much more expensive to eat healthily, and in general more expensive food is healthier, so people are just running in reality. To be exact, you can eat cheapily and healthily, but it is very boring. If you want an exciting and healthy diet, that gets expensive. No ready meals, and things like prawns and raspberries (two of my favourites) are great low cal options, but not cheap in quantity.
  • rublev 10y ago
    >To be exact, you can eat cheapily and healthily, but it is very boring. Not everything needs to be 24/7 exciting, least of all food. Figure out a few spices and you're good to go. What else is there? I too lost the same amount of weight and food to me now is just fuel organized in tupperware that I heat up and scoop down in a few minutes. Why? Now when I go out to eat I get to properly think and decide what to spend my money on, it's that much better. $50/week on food. Veggies, lean meats, rotate a source of carbs.
    • CJefferson 10y ago
      Certainly, I could eat more boringly, but I don't really want to. I enjoy food and I enjoy eating. I can get just as much enjoyment as I did from an unhealthy diet, but at quite a bit more cost.
      • rublev 10y ago
        >Certainly, I could eat more boringly, but I don't really want to. I enjoy food and I enjoy eating. Lean meats and spices. How is that boring? If I want lobster or steak I'll go out and have it properly done. At that point it's not boring, it's luxury. If you equate "not boring" with luxury then I'm not sure what to tell you.
        • nommm-nommm 10y ago
          Cooking a steak properly at home is not at all difficult.
• amelius 10y ago
  Interestingly, this also holds for cat food. People are often willing to pay a premium price for the food of their pets, while in the end they and their pets get to eat low quality processed stuff.
  • schreiaj 10y ago
    Ok, I'll bite. I hate giving my cats wet food because, frankly, it smells dreadful. But I know it's better than dry food for them. Any suggestions/links about how to prep food for cats? Bear in mind I actually have no idea how to prep meat as I don't eat it myself. Also, those people that try to feed their cats/dogs "vegan" or "vegetarian" are terrible human beings and don't deserve their furry friends.
    • halleym 10y ago
      I've usually heard that dry food is marginally better for cats, since it's better for their teeth. Otherwise, nutritional content is the same.
      • Sgt_Apone 10y ago
        My vet told us to alternate between wet and dry servings. Cats are designed to get water from their meals and it helps for cats that don't like to drink water on their own. Dry food helps with their dental hygiene like you said though. Nutritionally I think they're more or less the same.
  • iamskeptic 10y ago
    My cats hate wet food (of which I can only find 2-3 brands and I've tried them all). On the hand, they love their premium dry food so much that when I buy these small treats that we're are supposed to reward them with, they reject them. They want their dry food. I also make sure they always have fresh water available (and the litter box doesn't lie). If I were to cook for my cats, they would want meat, chicken and bacon every day.
  • Broken_Hippo 10y ago
• snarfy 10y ago
  A lot of people, myself included, equate healthy food with perishable goods. Perishable goods do cost more. Frozen or canned veggies are cheaper than fresh veggies.
  • astrange 10y ago
    Some frozen food (like peas) are fresher than "fresh veggies" because they were frozen earlier.
• maxerickson 10y ago
  Healthy food does cost a lot more. Fruits and vegetables cost much more per calorie than flour, oil and sugar. A $6 bag of apples has less calories in it than a loaf of Wonderbread. $2 of broccoli has less calories than a $0.30 can of soda.
  • lintiness 10y ago
    ... and a $2 bag of celery will consume your stored calories for you! edit: is hn the no joke zone?
    • pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      Re your edit - yes, pretty much. Some humour does win upvotes but it's rare.
  • tedajax 10y ago
    Not to mention the fact that most healthy food is much more perishable and needs to be replenished more frequently.
    • jcater 10y ago
      I think this is the bigger issue. I'd agree that buying healthy options at the grocery store does not have to be more expensive than junk food (or even cheaper), but that's assuming you can plan ahead well enough to not throw away the fresh food once it spoils. Granted, that's a matter of habit, but a hard habit to overcome if you're not used to it. I rarely shop in the middle of the grocery store, except for staples, but I still manage to throw a bit away a week later.
    • mrob 10y ago
      If you have access to a freezer this isn't a problem. Frozen vegetables are generally better than fresh, because they're picked in peak condition instead of early for better shelf life, and they come pre-cut so they save time. They're usually cheaper too. With the exception of onions which are cheap and have good shelf life fresh, almost all the vegetables I eat are frozen.
• gh1 10y ago
  When people have to judge something, but they have no expertise to actually judge it, then they use price as an indicator for quality. People use price as indicator when buying clothes, jewellery etc. all the time. Isn't this the same effect, but applied to food (where healthy is considered to be correlated with quality)?
  • vinhboy 10y ago
    Agreed... I feel like this study is going to be misused to mock people who choose healthy food. But the reality is, we all make those kind of decisions based on limited information. I can walk into a Best Buy right now and laugh at all the people wasting money on perceived better electronics because of price.
  • mc32 10y ago
    Perhaps there needs to be a greater focus on these home ec themes in school. The basics: finance, health choices, and so on so that even if people don't go beyond high school they would have some grounding in home ec. It would do many a child and adult good to have some kind of understanding of basic home ec issues.
• acslater00 10y ago
  This rings pretty true to me. I live in Manhattan, and my wife is a personal chef, so she has to be one of the world's foremost collectors of anecdotal grocery price data you'll ever meet. She's noticed a lot of weird dissonances in the way people think about grocery pricing over the years I've known her. For example, despite its reputation, Whole Foods has some of the cheapest prices on staple pantry items in the city. Things like flour, sugar, eggs, butter, olive oil, milk, and rice, as well as many of the "365" branded packaged products are actually much cheaper than "low end" grocery stores like Gristedes or Key Food. Trader Joe's has a reputation as a high end grocery as well, but they have incredibly cheap produce and other perishables. If you go to Gristedes and buy a box of corn flakes you're going to spend $4-6. For that price you can buy 24 eggs! At Key Food you can buy pork chops for $2 / pound. Canned beans and other non-perishables can also be incredibly cheap. With the exception of the corn flakes, which - while delicious - is actually loaded with corn syrup - everything I just listed is perfectly healthy when prepared at home. Anecdotally, my mother spends an absolute fortune on nasty weight watchers meals because she believes they are "healthier" than just cooking herself a piece of chicken and some broccoli. My sister will eat a $3 lara bar that is "made with real fruit!" instead of a 25c banana. It doesn't surprise me that within the universe of packaged foods, people think that the expensive ones are healthier than the cheap ones. But I just wish people would figure out that within the universe of foods, the packaged ones are both more expensive and typically less healthy than cooking your own food.
  • lintiness 10y ago
    people pay for weight watchers because it systematically manages their caloric intake, not because they believe the food is healthy.
    • WalterSear 10y ago
      Some people do.
    • crottypeter 10y ago
      citation needed. Maybe you mean people should ... I have had people hopefully ask me "It must be healthy because it's weight watchers, mustn't it?" when the food in question was a chocolate mouse.
• Tharre 10y ago
  The headline misrepresents the article completely. Eating healthy food _is_ costlier than not caring about what you eat. However, that does not mean that expensive equals healthy. It's basically the same old "everything that's good is (at least somewhat) expensive, but not everything that's expensive is good" applied to food. BTW: why the heck are both source and journal reference links to some top level domains?
  • Fnoord 10y ago
    > Eating healthy food _is_ costlier than not caring about what you eat. However, that does not mean that expensive equals healthy. > It's basically the same old "everything that's good is (at least somewhat) expensive, but not everything that's expensive is good" applied to food. Actually, that is false and contradicting. It is perfectly possible to eat healthy and cheap. Sure, if you limit your price you end up with less choice, but that does not mean the cheap choices are bad, or that you end up with expensive food if you want quality. An entire industry wants to make you think otherwise, but they're deceiving the customers. Take for example, from the article, the following: "The key was that for some participants the Chicken Balsamic Wrap was listed as more expensive, and for others the Roasted Chicken Wrap cost more.". The names of products should not be misleading, yet the industry gets away with it, 'as long as its in the product'. Sounds good? Well, if there are trace amounts in the product, it counts. This is just one example. Another one is right in the article: "“Rich in Vitamin A for eye health.”" this is a fraudulent statement, a propaganda lie which stems from WWII. The Brits used it as propaganda to convince the general public, including the Germans, that this was what allowed them to see German airplanes in advance (it was actually radar which did). It has long since been debunked. Our laws are failing us here. They are supposed to protect us, but companies work around them. Some very healthy foods which aren't that expensive (in my grocery store, in my country, YMMV (!!)): free range chicken eggs. Compared to a cereal, much more healthy, and filling. Yet a fraction of the price. Another example: an unripe banana is high on magnesium, yet doesn't contain a lot of sugar. You may find it between other bananas which are more ripe. Frozen raspberries and blueberries, cost about half of fresh ones, yet they'll stay well longer. You won't find the green friends on those berries while they're in the freezer. Another silly one is all those fruit juices. As if you need vitamin C if you simply eat green vegetables such as brocolli. There are countless of examples available. It does require some comparisons and it does depend on what you believe is healthy. People don't wanna make those comparisons at 5 PM after a long day of work, I get that. That is why I want governments to interfere. The industry is too selfish to manage this on their own (they're for profit, and enjoy a lack of regulations on it), and is confusing the general public with smoke screens on what is healthy and what isn't, or like this article explains with silly prices. It is actually quite a fallacy, and the opposite is suggesting: "because this is expensive, and we claim it is healthy, it is therefore more likely to be healthy than if it were cheap. Else we would sell it cheaper." it stems from the ridiculous assumption that expensive food means healthier food. As for your statement: "Eating healthy food _is_ costlier than not caring about what you eat." we are creature of habit. If your food habits are healthy as they are, and you have done your best to find cheap yet quality food in your grocery store then you'll be fine with doing groceries at 5 PM whilst being tired from work. You just mindlessly buy the things you always buy, you don't get distracted by offers, you don't have to do any research or comparisons. You already made up your mind. It is not equal to 'not caring' since you did once care, but it is 'careless' in a sense.
• threepipeproblm 10y ago
  Healthy prepared foods are, of course, more expensive than junk prepared foods. But healthy and less-processed foods can be cheaper than junky prepared foods. With Taco Bell being the notable exception.
• nimos 10y ago
  Time/ability is a big factor when it comes to what people eat. Throwing a frozen pizza in the oven is fast, easy and requires no extra dishes. You can even just use the box it came in is a plate, so I've heard. Being comfortable in the kitchen is important too. If you have to go looking up recipes and following them exactly that can make cooking at home a lot slower and tedious. It's easy to point out things like dried beans and cheap root vegetables but those only really compete on the cost perspective, convenience and ease are just as important IMO.
  • VLM 10y ago
    Consider that a banana is both easier to unwrap, faster to unwrap, cheaper, and healthier than a granola bar... So are carrots and they don't even need unwrapping (although I'd rinse off a carrot before eating it) Or at the very bottom of the hierarchy, below the bags of salad you dump in a bowl you provide, there are salads sold already in a plastic bowl, simply break the seal and eat them. Usually you have to tear open a plastic envelope of salad dressing but its not that hard. They're still cheaper and more filling than a big mac. Food is a multidimensional problem. The opposite of a big mac is probably not a Rutabaga or a cactus leaf or a bag of uncooked unseasoned rice.
    • ConceptJunkie 10y ago
      The opposite of a Big Mac is a Wendy's burger. I always used to joke that McDonald's sucked all the joy out of their burgers and sold it to Wendy's and other fast food places to keep their profits up. Of course, I haven't had a Big Mac in about 25 years... maybe they're better now.
      • Havoc 10y ago
        > I haven't had a Big Mac in about 25 years... maybe they're better now. 10/10 optimism
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • 10y ago
• jrs235 10y ago
  Isn't the largest expense of eating healthier related to the time to prep the food (and cognitive load to think about food prep) rather than the direct monetary cost?
  • humanrebar 10y ago
    Well, the money isn't nothing, but this is a huge cost that most of these comments are absolutely ignoring. People in poverty aren't typically brimming with time, energy, and structure.
• speeder 10y ago
  To keep myself healthy I need large quantities of protein. And it is ridiculously expensive, at least when compared to corn and mandioca that grows on my yard and potatoes that are very cheap. People tend to think that "healthy" food is just thr opposite of junk food. The problem is that potatoes can be infinitely cheap, but it won't be healthy to eat only potatoes. An actual healthy diet with all nutrients can easily be very expensive, even more so when corporations manage to distort prices (I once lived in a place where the cheapest source of clean water available was soda. When compared to juices or milk even Coca-Cola, that was the most expensive soda, looked like a great deal)
  • 3131s 10y ago
    I also eat an athlete's diet and when I lived in the US it was very expensive. Going to farmer's markets helps a lot, where I would buy cauliflower, sweet potatoes, beets, kale, carrots, squash, eggplant, and more. Since I try to get around 60% of my caloric intake from fat and protein, that's where most of the expense came from. For fat, there are a small number of fruits like avocados, durian, and coconuts and those tend to be more expensive / hard to find, most nuts are expensive, cow's milk isn't very healthy and never sat well with me before exercise, but the best and cheapest option is probably to just included some healthy oil in your cooking. For protein, chicken is good and not too pricey, fish is good but expensive, red meat should be avoided above all, legumes are cheap and great tasting if prepared well, tofu and eggs are cheap and high in protein but it's typically recommended to not consume them in large quantities, coagulated cow's blood is awesome but good luck finding it outside of Asia! I stand firmly on the side that it is expensive to eat truly healthy food, especially if you live in a food desert, and especially if you have specific nutritional requirements like that of an athlete. Plus, a huge factor is that to eat cheaply, you have to cook, and as the HN crowd should know, time is money. The time preparing, cleaning up, buying food, and actually learning how to cook is significant but worth it.
• skookum 10y ago
  Often the healthy versus unhealthy discussion reduces to a home-cooked-from-scratch versus processed/junk food discussion. Having seen how my North American-raised Gen X/Millennial peers shop for groceries, I'm not surprised at the perception that the healthy option is more expensive. The predominant approach to home-cooking I see these cohorts taking is: 1) Find recipe 2) Make shopping list 3) Go to preferred grocery store and fulfill shopping list This is a foolproof recipe for "more expensive". To eat healthy and maintain reasonable spending, grocery shopping needs to come _before_ recipe selection. One needs to go to the store, buy what's on sale (which is also frequently what's in season and thus probably more nutrient packed), and then build a recipe around that using non-perishable pantry ingredients. The cost difference between the two approaches will generally be at least 1.5X, and sometimes a lot more.
  • nradov 10y ago
    Is there a business opportunity? Someone could write an app that takes growing seasons and scraped grocery store price lists as input, and automatically generates shopping lists and recipes as output.
    • niftich 10y ago
      Before widespread urbanization, knowing growing seasons for specific produce used to be more common, but even today one can observe the way prices fluctuate at the grocery store -- despite extended growing seasons, other-hemisphere shipping, and greenhouses. For what you're suggesting, price alone would be sufficient, no?
    • jon_richards 10y ago
      I think the biggest opportunity is in finding a group of recipes that uses up all the ingredients you buy in a single grocery run. If you use half an onion for something, you need to use the other half before it goes bad. This is especially true for perishable herbs, which usually come in large bunches and end up only being used once.
      • nradov 10y ago
• SteveWatson 10y ago
  Why does HN link to so so many sites with popups?
• scythe 10y ago
  It doesn't help that people like to project their personal way of life onto what should be a generally mechanical question. Eat x and y and z, don't eat [meat/grains/something else], complete with extra-pompous "most people in the world eat..." (I assure you the speaker doesn't), when look, if you go to Popeye's, the cashier asks if you want French fries or onion rings or coleslaw or green beans, and you'll almost never see anyone get the last two. Coleslaw might have a bit of mayonnaise on it but it's a damn lot healthier than potatoes which have had their nutrients partially removed by soaking and are drenched in partially oxidized peanut oil. This is relevant because the healthy options are the same price and all you have to do is say the word. The culture of dieting is seriously broken. One of the only things worse than being fat is being openly trying to lose weight, because everyone knows how to help you (lol). The typical way a person responds in the above situation is "well, I'm already eating fried chicken" because we're either "being good" or "bad" and as we keep making it harder to be good we get a worse overall balance. People are unable to put one foot in front of the other because we always make it about running the whole race at once. A myopic and frankly wrong obsession with reducing the quantity of meat (irrespective of its preparation and toppings) doesn't help, because it ensures that "approved" diets are guaranteed to be unpleasant. So that's what they pay for: a certificate that says "your food is healthy", because either it's Mark's Daily Apple, or it's Popeye's. And this entire discussion is like that: many ways to 'reinvent' the way you cook food at home (yes, I can make a shitty curry with a can of coconut milk too), little recognition of the many small changes that can be made without reorganizing your entire life.
• tmg505 10y ago
  I recommend going vegan. Cheap an effective. Thug Kitchen is really good starting cookbook if you can ignore the language. Also you need to be okay with spending time on food preparation. I'm a reformed meat eater.
• whack 10y ago
  I think it goes beyond just food. People have it ingrained in their heads that "you get what you pay for." Which naturally leads them to the conclusion that "if something is cheaper, it must be worse." In a perfectly rational and perfectly informed utopia, this might be true, but certainly not in our world. There are plenty of companies that provide worse goods at higher prices, and they get by on the backs of marketing/brand-name/ignorance. I've often found that 10 minutes of googling can get you recommendations that are strictly superior to what the average guy ends up buying without thinking twice about.