6 ms·

It's cheaper to buy fresh food than junk food. If you're buying junk food it's because you don't have a place to cook or you're too lazy to cook.

HarryHirsch 9y ago
It could also be that you are too overworked to cook or that you are so illiquid that you cannot afford needed repairs.
- NikolaeVarius 9y ago
  You don't need to cook in order to eat well. Salads are a thing.
  - HarryHirsch 9y ago
    You need to do the dishes when done. I am familiar with people who are saving money in order to have the sewer lateral fixed.
    - overcast 9y ago
      We're talking a single bowl here, and fork. If you're that hard up that you can't even wash something out with water. Clean it out with a towel, and use it again. Shit, as a bachelor, I do that now, and I've got plenty of cash.
    - NikolaeVarius 9y ago
      Eat it out of the package that the stuff came in instead if cleaning is an issue Poor student tricks work past being a student.
    - CuriouslyC 9y ago
      I cook stews in a rice cooker w/ slow cook setting, and I eat the stew right out of the cooker pan. Cheap, healthy, quick and one (nonstick) dish to deal with.
pjmorris 9y ago
My metric for food price is calories per penny. For example, the 760 calorie slice of pizza for $1.99 at Costco works out to about 3.8 calories per penny, while the 500 calorie Caesar salad for $3.99 works out to about 1.3 calories per penny. In my worked example, the fresh food is more expensive than the junk food from the point of view of 'How much money do I need to spend to keep myself alive today?' Could you post some examples of the calories per penny of the fresh food and junk food costs you are referring to?
- gozur88 9y ago
  A pound of uncooked white rice is $0.69, and it has 1696 calories, which works out to 24.6 calories per penny. That's about 19x better by your metric.
  - morganvachon 9y ago
    Yep, and it doesn't take much to turn that rice into a full meal. If you've got a freezer and a microwave, fresh-frozen veggies are a good alternative to always buying fresh veggies for the time constrained. It's a little more expensive but you lose virtually none of the health benefits and gain ease of preparation. Throw some veggies in with the rice and some soy or teriyaki sauce, and you've got a healthy meal that is compatible with most diets. If you're a meat eater, you can cook some chicken breast to go with it; if not, some tofu for protein will help make it more filling.
    - sabujp 9y ago
      "fresh-frozen" lol
  - pjmorris 9y ago
    You have to factor in the time it takes to cook. Let's say you cook all the rice at once and it takes 20 minutes. At minimum wage of $7.25, that's $2.42 in addition to the 0.69 for the bag of rice, yielding 5.4 calories per penny, within the same order of magnitude as the prepared foods I gave as an example. I acknowledge that a person's time isn't always tradable for wages, and that home cooking is generally cheaper and more satisfying.
xzel 9y ago
I'm not sure why you're being down voted here but you're pretty close to correct. There have been many recent studies showing fast food really isn't cheaper than buying other types of healthier food. It is pretty close because there are an incredible amount of low cost high calorie foods like beans, nuts, rice, cheap cuts of meat, the list goes on. Here is one from the UK Economic Affairs: https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Cheap-as-Chips-PDF.pdf https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Cheap-as-Chips... The conclusion to save you a click: Food in the UK has never been more affordable and healthy food is generally cheaper than unhealthy food. A day’s diet that meets the requirements of the Eatwell Guide can be purchased for less than the price of two cheap supermarket ready-meals and for much less than a single meal at a fast food chain. Switching to healthier versions of many staple products can be achieved at no extra cost, and a wide range of fruit, vegetables and carbohydrates can be bought in supermarkets for less than £1 per kilogram. Five portions of fruit and vegetables can be purchased for as little as 30p. Some studies that have come to the opposite conclusion have used a cost-per-calorie measure of food pricing which makes high-energy food appear expensive regardless of the cost of a meal. Others have compared a small selection of food products which are classified as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ on the basis of relatively minor differences. By looking at the cost by edible weight and studying the price of typical food portions, this report has been able to make better comparisons between the cost of healthy and unhealthy diets in Britain today. We conclude that the real question is not why unhealthy food is so cheap but why people consume unhealthy food despite it being more expensive. The answer, we suggest, is that taste and convenience often play a larger role in people’s food choices than price or nutritional quality.
- StanislavPetrov 9y ago
  >We conclude that the real question is not why unhealthy food is so cheap but why people consume unhealthy food despite it being more expensive. The answer, we suggest, is that taste and convenience often play a larger role in people’s food choices than price or nutritional quality. I suggest you consider the fact that many people in the US, especially in poor, urban areas live in "food deserts" where there are no supermarkets close by that sell healthy food at reasonable costs. http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/usda-defines-food-deserts http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/usda-defi... If you are poor and have no vehicle you depend on mass transit. This costs both money and time. If you are poor and lucky enough to have a job, its likely to be a low-paying job with a lengthy commute (in terms of time, bus and train transfers, if not in distance). This leaves you very little free time to spend half of a day for a lengthy trip outside of your food desert to get some fresh food. There is also the issue of bringing your groceries home. Have you ever tried to ride the bus or the train while carrying a bunch of packages, especially when it is crowded? How about transferring buses and trains while trying to carrying several packages? Do you have a proper kitchen? Many poor people don't. Proper storage facilities and equipment? Most poor people have roaches. These are just some of the collective obstacles faced by many poor people in terms of their access to fresh food.
s73ver_ 9y ago
Or have the time to cook. Which is a very important criteria, as someone who works two jobs likely does not have the luxury of that amount of time.

HarryHirsch 9y ago

It could also be that you are too overworked to cook or that you are so illiquid that you cannot afford needed repairs.

NikolaeVarius 9y ago
You don't need to cook in order to eat well. Salads are a thing.
- HarryHirsch 9y ago
  You need to do the dishes when done. I am familiar with people who are saving money in order to have the sewer lateral fixed.
  - overcast 9y ago
    We're talking a single bowl here, and fork. If you're that hard up that you can't even wash something out with water. Clean it out with a towel, and use it again. Shit, as a bachelor, I do that now, and I've got plenty of cash.
  - NikolaeVarius 9y ago
    Eat it out of the package that the stuff came in instead if cleaning is an issue Poor student tricks work past being a student.
  - CuriouslyC 9y ago
    I cook stews in a rice cooker w/ slow cook setting, and I eat the stew right out of the cooker pan. Cheap, healthy, quick and one (nonstick) dish to deal with.

pjmorris 9y ago

My metric for food price is calories per penny. For example, the 760 calorie slice of pizza for $1.99 at Costco works out to about 3.8 calories per penny, while the 500 calorie Caesar salad for $3.99 works out to about 1.3 calories per penny. In my worked example, the fresh food is more expensive than the junk food from the point of view of 'How much money do I need to spend to keep myself alive today?' Could you post some examples of the calories per penny of the fresh food and junk food costs you are referring to?

gozur88 9y ago
A pound of uncooked white rice is $0.69, and it has 1696 calories, which works out to 24.6 calories per penny. That's about 19x better by your metric.
- morganvachon 9y ago
  Yep, and it doesn't take much to turn that rice into a full meal. If you've got a freezer and a microwave, fresh-frozen veggies are a good alternative to always buying fresh veggies for the time constrained. It's a little more expensive but you lose virtually none of the health benefits and gain ease of preparation. Throw some veggies in with the rice and some soy or teriyaki sauce, and you've got a healthy meal that is compatible with most diets. If you're a meat eater, you can cook some chicken breast to go with it; if not, some tofu for protein will help make it more filling.
  - sabujp 9y ago
    "fresh-frozen" lol
- pjmorris 9y ago
  You have to factor in the time it takes to cook. Let's say you cook all the rice at once and it takes 20 minutes. At minimum wage of $7.25, that's $2.42 in addition to the 0.69 for the bag of rice, yielding 5.4 calories per penny, within the same order of magnitude as the prepared foods I gave as an example. I acknowledge that a person's time isn't always tradable for wages, and that home cooking is generally cheaper and more satisfying.

xzel 9y ago

I'm not sure why you're being down voted here but you're pretty close to correct. There have been many recent studies showing fast food really isn't cheaper than buying other types of healthier food. It is pretty close because there are an incredible amount of low cost high calorie foods like beans, nuts, rice, cheap cuts of meat, the list goes on. Here is one from the UK Economic Affairs: https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Cheap-as-Chips-PDF.pdf https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Cheap-as-Chips... The conclusion to save you a click: Food in the UK has never been more affordable and healthy food is generally cheaper than unhealthy food. A day’s diet that meets the requirements of the Eatwell Guide can be purchased for less than the price of two cheap supermarket ready-meals and for much less than a single meal at a fast food chain. Switching to healthier versions of many staple products can be achieved at no extra cost, and a wide range of fruit, vegetables and carbohydrates can be bought in supermarkets for less than £1 per kilogram. Five portions of fruit and vegetables can be purchased for as little as 30p. Some studies that have come to the opposite conclusion have used a cost-per-calorie measure of food pricing which makes high-energy food appear expensive regardless of the cost of a meal. Others have compared a small selection of food products which are classified as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ on the basis of relatively minor differences. By looking at the cost by edible weight and studying the price of typical food portions, this report has been able to make better comparisons between the cost of healthy and unhealthy diets in Britain today. We conclude that the real question is not why unhealthy food is so cheap but why people consume unhealthy food despite it being more expensive. The answer, we suggest, is that taste and convenience often play a larger role in people’s food choices than price or nutritional quality.

StanislavPetrov 9y ago
>We conclude that the real question is not why unhealthy food is so cheap but why people consume unhealthy food despite it being more expensive. The answer, we suggest, is that taste and convenience often play a larger role in people’s food choices than price or nutritional quality. I suggest you consider the fact that many people in the US, especially in poor, urban areas live in "food deserts" where there are no supermarkets close by that sell healthy food at reasonable costs. http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/usda-defines-food-deserts http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/usda-defi... If you are poor and have no vehicle you depend on mass transit. This costs both money and time. If you are poor and lucky enough to have a job, its likely to be a low-paying job with a lengthy commute (in terms of time, bus and train transfers, if not in distance). This leaves you very little free time to spend half of a day for a lengthy trip outside of your food desert to get some fresh food. There is also the issue of bringing your groceries home. Have you ever tried to ride the bus or the train while carrying a bunch of packages, especially when it is crowded? How about transferring buses and trains while trying to carrying several packages? Do you have a proper kitchen? Many poor people don't. Proper storage facilities and equipment? Most poor people have roaches. These are just some of the collective obstacles faced by many poor people in terms of their access to fresh food.

s73ver_ 9y ago

Or have the time to cook. Which is a very important criteria, as someone who works two jobs likely does not have the luxury of that amount of time.