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Because processed foods are made in a factory. Two things this affords. 1. Massive automation, so more profits can flow to less people 2. Far more calories can

Because processed foods are made in a factory. Two things this affords. 1. Massive automation, so more profits can flow to less people 2. Far more calories can be packed into processed food than what is natural. But it's far less nutritious. Your body can't handle it and that's why there's so many fat kids and fat Americans.

m_ke 8y ago
3. Shelf life, which means no spoiled food and lost revenue for the stores. 4. Marketing / Branding, you can market packaged food and build a valuable brand. Hard to do that with fresh produce since you can't really control the supply.
nitwit005 8y ago
The staples are effectively made in a factory as well, or at least industrially processed. You don't just hand people a bunch of wheat. While it's true that a lot of processed food is sweetened, if you look at the caloric density of traditional staples, it's usually pretty high. No one would have planted those crops otherwise.
- CompelTechnic 8y ago
  Yeah the replies to GGP do not actually answer the question. Learning to cook from staples is very financially and nutritionally rewarding and more people should do it. I am not sure where the disconnect is. One thing I have observed with simple staple dishes (like beans and rice) is that if you don't know how to add fat, salt, and spices in good proportion you can end up not liking the the result. You end up resorting to convenience foods instead and shoot yourself in the foot health-wise, as an unintuitive result of not using enough fat and salt in your cooking.
  - dbcurtis 8y ago
    Because it isn't taught any more? Not by parents, not by schools. My upbringing would be considered strangely quaint by most here on HN, I believe. When I was in high school, there was still a home economics teacher. The class was elective. The school also had a very formidable wrestling team, and the home ec teacher was the mother of a former student that had gone to a Big 10 university on a wrestling scholarship, so she new the life, and the health impacts of the constant struggle to make weight while doing strenuous physical activity. She went out of her way to recruit wrestlers to her food & nutrition class. Argument 1: I promise cooking labs will be on meet days (you weighed in at 7:00 AM and could eat all you wanted the rest of meet day). Argument 2: Lots of girls in class. (She was a natural salesperson, this pitch was a great closer). Along the way she taught a lot about nutrition, health, and meal planning. The homeworks were hard and meaningful -- I remember these half-starved guys obsessing over their menus, calorie counts, and nutrition analysis when by rights they should have been doing algebra. She was a wise and wonderful teacher. Where do kids learn to cook and meal plan any more? From parents who don't know how to cook or meal plan? There are certainly foodies around, but obsessing over baking your home-made biscotti is not the same as managing the family's daily nutrition on a budget.
    - moate 8y ago
      This is a worthwhile point. Eating is just as cultural as the food itself. Rice and pork are both staples in Asian and Mexico, but the way the meals are prepared and served are so completely different because of a range of influences. Why do people in the US eat the way we do? A combination of having a massive number of people living in our country, the ability to produce an enormous amount of food (especially meat), a larger GDP than anywhere else and a culture that's always trying to do things quickly/while on the go. The culture is complex and the reasons are many, but people not learning to cook while also having specific expectations of what food should be is definitely a large part of the equation here.
moate 8y ago
Fat is just calories. Fat doesn't care about vitamins, or minerals. It doesn't care about anything but calories in vs calories out. Your body can absolutely handle calorie dense, low vitamin/mineral foods and not get fat, but there's a whole bunch of other factors that play into it. Lower income obesity can be linked to the quality of the food, but OP asking why the US seems more interested in processed packaged food vs "simple staples" that other countries cook. The answer there is availability and cultural perceptions (both of what the people should be eating, and of what the observer thinks the people in that culture are eating)

m_ke 8y ago

3. Shelf life, which means no spoiled food and lost revenue for the stores. 4. Marketing / Branding, you can market packaged food and build a valuable brand. Hard to do that with fresh produce since you can't really control the supply.

nitwit005 8y ago

The staples are effectively made in a factory as well, or at least industrially processed. You don't just hand people a bunch of wheat. While it's true that a lot of processed food is sweetened, if you look at the caloric density of traditional staples, it's usually pretty high. No one would have planted those crops otherwise.

CompelTechnic 8y ago
Yeah the replies to GGP do not actually answer the question. Learning to cook from staples is very financially and nutritionally rewarding and more people should do it. I am not sure where the disconnect is. One thing I have observed with simple staple dishes (like beans and rice) is that if you don't know how to add fat, salt, and spices in good proportion you can end up not liking the the result. You end up resorting to convenience foods instead and shoot yourself in the foot health-wise, as an unintuitive result of not using enough fat and salt in your cooking.
- dbcurtis 8y ago
  Because it isn't taught any more? Not by parents, not by schools. My upbringing would be considered strangely quaint by most here on HN, I believe. When I was in high school, there was still a home economics teacher. The class was elective. The school also had a very formidable wrestling team, and the home ec teacher was the mother of a former student that had gone to a Big 10 university on a wrestling scholarship, so she new the life, and the health impacts of the constant struggle to make weight while doing strenuous physical activity. She went out of her way to recruit wrestlers to her food & nutrition class. Argument 1: I promise cooking labs will be on meet days (you weighed in at 7:00 AM and could eat all you wanted the rest of meet day). Argument 2: Lots of girls in class. (She was a natural salesperson, this pitch was a great closer). Along the way she taught a lot about nutrition, health, and meal planning. The homeworks were hard and meaningful -- I remember these half-starved guys obsessing over their menus, calorie counts, and nutrition analysis when by rights they should have been doing algebra. She was a wise and wonderful teacher. Where do kids learn to cook and meal plan any more? From parents who don't know how to cook or meal plan? There are certainly foodies around, but obsessing over baking your home-made biscotti is not the same as managing the family's daily nutrition on a budget.
  - moate 8y ago
    This is a worthwhile point. Eating is just as cultural as the food itself. Rice and pork are both staples in Asian and Mexico, but the way the meals are prepared and served are so completely different because of a range of influences. Why do people in the US eat the way we do? A combination of having a massive number of people living in our country, the ability to produce an enormous amount of food (especially meat), a larger GDP than anywhere else and a culture that's always trying to do things quickly/while on the go. The culture is complex and the reasons are many, but people not learning to cook while also having specific expectations of what food should be is definitely a large part of the equation here.

moate 8y ago

Fat is just calories. Fat doesn't care about vitamins, or minerals. It doesn't care about anything but calories in vs calories out. Your body can absolutely handle calorie dense, low vitamin/mineral foods and not get fat, but there's a whole bunch of other factors that play into it. Lower income obesity can be linked to the quality of the food, but OP asking why the US seems more interested in processed packaged food vs "simple staples" that other countries cook. The answer there is availability and cultural perceptions (both of what the people should be eating, and of what the observer thinks the people in that culture are eating)