7 ms·

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

• 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.
        • rublev 10y ago
          Yeah you're right, but I'd never be able to properly make a kobe steak at home so I'd rather go out. Chicken and most fish is hard to mess up so I keep that at home.
          • rjeli 10y ago
            Really, this recipe[0] takes <15 minutes and tastes better than any steak I've ever had in a restaurant. I use butter instead of oil. All you need is a cast iron skillet. [0]: http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-cook-perfect-steak-in-the-oven-108490 http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-cook-perfect-steak-in-the-ov...
            • nommm-nommm 10y ago
              You don't even need cast iron, I use stainless steel just fine.
            • deleted 10y ago
              [deleted]
          • nommm-nommm 10y ago
            Most "Kobe steak" sold outside of Japan is a scam. It's extremely likely you aren't getting the real thing and before 2013 all "Kobe beef" sold in the US was a scam. http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2014/01/07/the-new-truth-about-kobe-beef-2/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2014/01/07/the-new-... (I think steak is easier to cook than chicken)
  • cobalt 10y ago
    well some people like enjoying and even spending money on food...
• arkitaip 10y ago
  For single-person households, cooking becomes even more expensive because you're buying these fairly large food packages and have to throw some of it away because it goes bad.
  • kaybe 10y ago
    If this is an issue, you can buy frozen vegetables (unprepared) which can be as good as fresh if the fresh stuff is not very fresh. Those last forever, and you can reseal the bag easily. Flour, rice, noodles only go bad if you get moths. Spices can lose some taste, but you can just use a little bit more. If you pay a lot more as a single-person household, you have an excellent opportunity for improvement on your hands.
    • nommm-nommm 10y ago
      I thought flour rice and noodles were unhealthy now?
    • sedachv 10y ago
      > Flour, rice, noodles only go bad if you get moths. They can develop mold, which sometimes is not noticeable, but will attract booklice. I have had that happen to a bag of rice. There are also rice weevils.
      • kaybe 10y ago
        Oh, and I didn't consider climate. In a region with high humidity and temperature this might be a bit more difficult.
  • stonecodegump 10y ago
    The freezer is your friend.
  • VLM 10y ago
    Provide some examples. Thinking back to my bachelor pad days you are correct for processed stuff like making your own PB&J sandwich from bottled peanut butter and jam and purchased sliced bread. I'd end up throwing out moldy bread and jelly and rancid old peanut butter. Ironically to save money I had to cook healthier, stir fries of frozen veg and deli meat, salads I could eat in a day or two, fruits and veggies, stuff like that. I could buy a hot dog from a hot dog stand or make my own at seemingly lower expense, but if I made my own hot dog there is no way I could gulp down a whole package of hot dogs and bag of buns at once, and of course the package sizes are different and the LCD is quite large, so I'd toss an opened package of hot dogs after some days of it looking or smelling questionable, or toss moldy hot dog buns, and swear off "cooking". But boiling a wiener and putting it in a bun is not what most people mean by home cooking, nor assembling a PB and J sandwich. Generally speaking you can save money by cooking at home, but not by assembling processed components at home. Or at least its much harder. I don't think I can run a net profit off homemade pizza if its made with pre-made store bought crusts.
• mtreis86 10y ago
  Where do you live? I am in Vermont. There is an abundance of farm stands and greenhouses nearby, and my food budget is lower than when I frequented supermarkets. I can buy 30lbs of fresh veggies for $20. It does cost considerably more time to prepare and cook fresh food. But I enjoy cooking, so it isn't much of a chore for me.
  • coldtea 10y ago
    >Where do you live? I am in Vermont. There is an abundance of farm stands and greenhouses nearby, and my food budget is lower than when I frequented supermarkets. I can buy 30lbs of fresh veggies for $20. It does cost considerably more time to prepare and cook fresh food. But I enjoy cooking, so it isn't much of a chore for me. This already makes eating healthy costlier (if, of course, we don't count medical costs from not eating healthy), as this "considerable more time" is an opportunity cost.
    • candu 10y ago
      True, but then you also have to counterbalance that cost with the value of the skills gained by preparing food. It's really, really difficult to evaluate this value, but it does exist, much as if you spent that same time learning to do basic home repairs, vehicle maintenance, woodworking, etc.
    • jimmywanger 10y ago
      > as this "considerable more time" is an opportunity cost. We have been restricting cost in this discussion to monetary cost, not opportunity cost. Why bring in this separate definition just to muddy the waters, when in the parent comments we're just talking about dollars and cents?
    • endless1234 10y ago
      If you count "lost time" as an opportunity cost, IMO you should also count "lost health".
    • VLM 10y ago
      Op claims to like cooking; hobbies inherently don't have opportunity costs. Cooking is a rare hobby where the result of the recreation displaces a cost. I've never made anything in my carpentry shop or electronic lab that I couldn't live without or I'd just have to pay someone else to do, those hobbies are 100% financial loss, whereas every meal a hobbyist makes displaces filler material they'd have to have otherwise purchased from someone, and often enough the financial loss of the cooking hobby is negative, or rephrased a net financial gain.
• jimmywanger 10y ago
  >things like prawns and raspberries (two of my favourites) are great low cal options, but not cheap in quantity. One of the things you have to realize is that if you're trying to save money, you don't get to eat what you want to eat all the time. That's like saying "It's much more expensive to eat fresh produce, my two favorite are foie gras and truffles, and those are fresh, but not cheap." Most people (in the world) eat a diet of starches and pulses with some spices. Considering how cheap beans, rice, and vegetables are at ethnic markets and farmers's markets, eating healthier is more time consuming, not more expensive than eating crappy food. Of course, you'll have to give up on the fact that you can have raspberries year round. Raspberries are a seasonal fruit, and in season, they are cheap as heck, are as all produce.
  • CJefferson 10y ago
    The problem is that foods I enjoy, which are unhealthy (cake, crisps, chocolate, pie) are cheap and abundant all year around. I've found that, to a certain degree, "cheap, healthy, tasty, fast -- pick at most three" seems to (often) be the situation I find myself in.
    • jimmywanger 10y ago
      > The problem is that foods I enjoy, which are unhealthy (cake, crisps, chocolate, pie) are cheap and abundant all year around. Well, that's sort of to be expected. :-( All the foods you've mentioned are highly processed, and engineered to be shelf-stable, tasty, and use cheap, good tasting ingredients. I wouldn't even consider them food anymore, more like highly engineering edible dopamine stimulators. Opposed to that, a grapefruit does not stand much of a chance. But if you kick processed sugars for a few weeks, things start slowly tasting better, or so I hear. I've been trying to do that, but sugar is in almost everything these days
      • mjevans 10y ago
        What we need are community restaurants that are serious about inexpensive healthy single servings to take care of this for us (the market does not seem to support this; maybe some sort of space/location subsidy is necessary). If it isn't convenient (timely and open at desired times), tasty, and inexpensive it won't compete on the three metrics that the actual competition is winning on.
• 3pt14159 10y ago
  I completely disagree. Eating healthy, cheap, easy is easy if you put even 4 hours of thought into it and are willing to learn. I'm in Toronto Canada, so these might not be tailored to you, but you can get the general idea. 1. Eat things in season. Squash, carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, corn are just unbelievably cheap in the autumn. Use garlic, onion, bay leaf, oil, a couple thai chili peppers fry them in the bottom of a pot with some coconut oil. Put the cubed squash (skins and all!) in the pot with a lid and some stock (veggie or chicken) until soft. Smush down add other veggies and add a half can of coconut milk and you have 8 or 10 meals at around a $1 CAD per meal. Easy to heat up, bring to work, lasts a while in the fridge. 2. Eat better, cheaper animal protein. Mussels are very cheap and very delicious. Canned clams are easy too. Sardines on toast are easy and delicious. Eggs. If you're adventurous get the butcher to grind beef heart with chuck and make much healthier beef heart burgers. 3. Figure out the cost of things per calorie, but be careful to restrict what you buy to just within the set of healthy foods. For example, whole milk is pretty cheap per calorie and still pretty healthy if you're of European ancestry. Nuts look completely overpriced until you realize that they are 1/5th the cost per calorie of carrots. I know it seems counter intuitive to try to find calorie rich foods, but if you're poor you do need to pay attention to this. Avocados, olive oil, granola, almond butter. 4. If it is dry, canned, or otherwise keeps, buy in bulk. Brown rice, steel cut oats, flour, cans of tomatoes, bags of onions, carrots, everything. 5. Slow cookers make things easy, pressure cookers make things fast. I own one that does both and if you want fast, healthy, cheap, delicious: one chicken leg, some stock, veggies, some dry spices + pressure cooker = perfect meal in 10 mins with very little cleanup.
  • stonecodegump 10y ago
    I would love to work out a way of making sardines more palatable. I do force myself to eat them, but it is a real struggle.
    • 3pt14159 10y ago
      I find that the secret is to try different cans of sardines until you find one you like. Also, what I do is I heat up sardines in the can they came in but I drain a bit of the oil and I add some cilantro, lime juice, thai peppers, and/or garlic. That way they can come out of the oven warm and go right on toast.
• dxhdr 10y ago
  Having never had to lose weight, I also feel happy talking about this. You are conflating healthy with boring, which is an opinion but not a helpful one; I happen to disagree with it. A more useful discussion revolves around time. In order to eat cheap and healthy food you must cook everything yourself! Preferably in larger batches; things like slow cooking a whole chicken in water to not only prepare meat but to make chicken broth as well, then using that meat and broth later in other dishes and soups. All of this takes planning and time. Buying frozen meals or going to McDonalds is vastly more expensive, dollar wise, than preparing your own food. But they also require zero planning and minimal effort -- those are the real "savings" provided by junk food.