3 ms·

> So wait, hold on, is cooking more expensive or not? What are they eating that's supposedly healthier but significantly more expensive? They might be "cooking

> So wait, hold on, is cooking more expensive or not? What are they eating that's supposedly healthier but significantly more expensive? They might be "cooking" every night, but they're not necessarily cooking from scratch. A pack of ramen boiled on the stove with a flavor packet added is technically cooked by their definition of "cooking", but it's still ultra-processed: the amount of sodium added by the flavor packet is nearly an order of magnitude greater than if they had simply boiled some rice noodles from scratch and added their own seasonings of salt, soy sauce, etc. Not to mention any of the vegetables the package provided are freeze dried, and likely coated with stabilizers and preservatives. A "from scratch" version of ramen that paired the noodles with freshly chopped peas, carrots, or spring onions would be significantly healthier. This is really the heart of NPR's argument, I think: there is a substantial hump that people must get over to think about leaving the can of marinara sauce on the shelf and buying canned tomatoes, an onion, and garlic instead. There's a time and labor investment, not to mention an initial loss of satisfaction when the recipe fails to come out properly the first few times.

bluedino 7y ago
'Cooking' doesn't necessarily mean making your own tomato sauce. It's making something instead of eating a frozen lasagna or pizza. A big part of the issue is the food stamp or SNAP culture. When you get your allotment for the monht it's easy to just go fill your cart with bad choices. Caseworkers should be assigned to help show people how to cook, give out kits with cutting boards and pans and such. Recipe cards, that kind of thing. Maybe even subsidize meal delivery options (like HelloFresh) for a few weeks to get people started.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  > Maybe even subsidize meal delivery options (like HelloFresh) for a few weeks to get people started. That was actually the direction I thought the article was going to go. Some kind of subsidized program to bootstrap the ability to cook decent meals from raw ingredients quickly.
- peterwwillis 7y ago
  > A big part of the issue is the food stamp or SNAP culture. When you get your allotment for the monht it's easy to just go fill your cart with bad choices. People make bad choices whether or not they're on SNAP. Our entire food culture revolves mostly around bad choices.

bluedino 7y ago

'Cooking' doesn't necessarily mean making your own tomato sauce. It's making something instead of eating a frozen lasagna or pizza. A big part of the issue is the food stamp or SNAP culture. When you get your allotment for the monht it's easy to just go fill your cart with bad choices. Caseworkers should be assigned to help show people how to cook, give out kits with cutting boards and pans and such. Recipe cards, that kind of thing. Maybe even subsidize meal delivery options (like HelloFresh) for a few weeks to get people started.

vorpalhex 7y ago
> Maybe even subsidize meal delivery options (like HelloFresh) for a few weeks to get people started. That was actually the direction I thought the article was going to go. Some kind of subsidized program to bootstrap the ability to cook decent meals from raw ingredients quickly.
peterwwillis 7y ago
> A big part of the issue is the food stamp or SNAP culture. When you get your allotment for the monht it's easy to just go fill your cart with bad choices. People make bad choices whether or not they're on SNAP. Our entire food culture revolves mostly around bad choices.