6 ms·

I live in the Midwest. If you drive past the suburbs, the only restaurants available are fast food burger, fried chicken and pizza chains, with a subway thrown

I live in the Midwest. If you drive past the suburbs, the only restaurants available are fast food burger, fried chicken and pizza chains, with a subway thrown in (I don't consider subway healthy). Obviously it's not profitable to own a healthy restaurant out there, but why? Is it a lack of healthy eating education? Is it a "harder" life and junk food is a reward? Or is it cost? If it's cost, healthy home cooked food is as cheap or even cheaper than unhealthy fast food. But so many people I talk to think it's cheaper to get fast food. If you have a shred of common sense you can make really tasty and cheap healthy food at home.

jjtheblunt 4y ago
i'm from the chicago area (nice suburban part) and totally agree. I suspect it's also something like 5x cheaper to compose healthy meals 5x healthier at home, IF one has a home in which such can be done.
vorpalhex 4y ago
American palettes are screwed up. Most people wouldn't eat a meal of a simple salad, some lean protein and a multigrain carb.
- mjevans 4y ago
  American "salads" are BS. * BS Leaf (some worthless lettuce) * Mostly filler of BS Leaf * Poor in vegetables * Poor in seeds / nuts * Frequently small or cheap protein * A 'shelf stable' dressing for flavor Yes, I've _considered_ making a salad at home, but by the time I buy ingredients I either have to eat the same for half a week in a row to try to use them up before they go bad, or just outright overpay. No, I can't go out and just buy one. Most places (there might be 1 or 2 out of like 30-40 restaurants 'car drive') near me only make a 'BS salad'. What I could really use is a sort of 'ghost kitchen' that takes relatively simple recipes based on bulk ingredients that are in stock at fair prices and makes a meal. Or maybe even just reusable snapware packs individual ingredients at sane sizes.
  - tomjakubowski 4y ago
    Not really true in my experience, unless you're talking about side salads at typical restaurants. At a "main salad" kind of place, you can do a lot better in terms of greens, nuts, dressing options. Look at the menus for chains like Sweetgreen or Simply Green
    - mjevans 4y ago
      I haven't seen any of those near me, are they regional?
      - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
        Not regional, but limited to a relatively small number of major metro areas[1] [1] https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports/Sweetgreen-USA/ https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports/Sweetgreen-USA/
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    At home, I keep a spinach/kale mix, dried fruit and several different nuts. Vegetables and cheeses tend to rotate every week. I often times do my protein on the side but that's preference. I currently have a love affair with Kewpie's onion and garlic dressing but normally go for some olive oil and vinegar, a pinch of salt and black pepper.
  - bluedino 4y ago
    Casual dining chains have hilariously high calorie "salads" Clocking in at 1,570 calories: Applebee's Oriental Chicken Salad With Crispy Chicken
corrral 4y ago
In broad swaths of the midwest, the outside isn't especially attractive, if it's not outright ugly. Minimal elevation change anywhere in sight, little visible rock outside road cuts, very few—and all unimpressive—waterfalls, slow, muddy, gross streams and rivers. And the landscape may well be like that for hundreds of miles in any direction. Then, on top of it, the weather's miserable 9 months out of the year. Oppressively hot & humid, or bitter cold. You're inside, you're in a pool/manmade-lake, or you're eagerly counting the minutes until you can get back to one of those places. Because of the first paragraph, incentive to brave the elements and go outside anyway, is practically zero. IOW our natural environments and climates also discourage outdoor activity, pretty damn effectively. [EDIT] Oh, and regarding this: > Obviously it's not profitable to own a healthy restaurant out there, but why? Is it a lack of healthy eating education? Is it a "harder" life and junk food is a reward? Or is it cost? It's a combination of cost and population density, mainly. Food culture plays in, but it's a feedback-loop sort of situation, not the case that food culture's purely driving the problem. Restaurants that optimize to avoid ingredients that spoil fast can charge less. Healthy ingredients tend to spoil faster than unhealthy ones (not universally true, but broadly so, especially for fruits and veggies). Higher prices (relative to local competition) mean a smaller customer base, which increases the population density required to support a restaurant.
- nightski 4y ago
  That sounds depressing! But it's not my experience at all in the Midwest. I love the seasons. Summer can get a little hot, but there is still a lot to do around here. Winter is very fun to from cross country skiing, to fat tire biking, bonfires, and snowmobiling. I go out regularly in anything as low as -30F to -40F as long as I am dressed properly. Then we get Fall/Spring which are very special. Honestly I've been to SF a lot and I find California down right dreary and boring! Many in our area are farmers and they are a lot tougher than your post suggests. The truth is healthy food is insanely expensive. We spend over $1000+/mo for two people. I know families with kids that eat on less than half that by eating less healthy.
  - corrral 4y ago
    > Many in our area are farmers and they are a lot tougher than your post suggests. Heh, I come very directly from extremely country stock, so I'd never disparage their hardiness. ... However, even the farmers are rocking fancy trucks and climate-controlled combines & tractors with GPS guidance, these days :-) AFAIK you still have to step out of your air conditioning to shoo loose cattle back in their pens, or mend a fence, though.
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jimmygrapes 4y ago
Perhaps the restaurant selection reflects that most people in the region don't eat out? I too live in the general area of the "Midwest" (not really but close enough), and everybody I know cooks at home far more than they eat out, and more/better restaurants wouldn't change that behavior much since we are all poor. The problem then becomes what is cooked at home, and how much is eaten, and those aren't great. It's not for lack of available ingredients (although prices of "better" ingredients tend to play some role, like I'm not going to buy an "organic" bag of dirty carrots for 3x more than the regular dirty carrots from the same brand in the same package). In my unstudied and ignorant opinion, it comes down to a cultural thing, specifically a line of recipes and behaviors stemming from the Depression era. "Eat everything on your plate" is a common refrain, even when the plate is too big and too full. The same sort of calorie dense foods are made, but as scarcity decreased, gluttony increased, and that part simply hasn't gone back down yet.
bluedino 4y ago
Guess what - thirty years ago the restaurants were all fries and burgers and we weren't overweight. We just eat out more, the portions are larger, and we love huge sugary drinks.
BeFlatXIII 4y ago
It's faster to get fast food than to cook at home. In the usual nuclear family, that's probably what they default to when both parents are working full-time. [Yes, it's possible to make food in bulk on the weekends. There is no need to spam that helpful suggestion in the replies.]
namelessoracle 4y ago
"healthy home cooked food is as cheap or even cheaper than unhealthy fast food" Is it? You can get a double cheeseburger, small fries and a large soda (the worst part arguably of the whole meal health wise) for 4 dollars at McDonalds. You can skip the fries, and get 2 double cheeseburgers for the same price. The McDonalds app will often give you a large fry for free for the 4 dollar purchase. Whats the comparable food you can be making for 4 dollars at the grocery store? Cooking only helps when you can get economy of scale going. And only when you can use up all the ingredients you can bought effectively. Also you need the energy to make the food, if you are getting up at 7am to get your kids to school, then pick them up at 6 (when after school ends) and get home at 630, and then need to cook for 30 minutes, then another 15 to get dishes and everything put away. Your looking at not even being "done" with "work" until 715pm when you started the day at 7am. Acting like the time to cook and clean is free is not productive.
- windowsrookie 4y ago
  I'm not going to list a whole bunch of recipes, there are many websites that have cheap healthy meal plans. But for example... 1lb ground 90/10 turkey $3.69 1 bag of frozen mixed veggies $1.99 1/2 of a 1lb bag of rice. $.60 2 tablespoons of oil. ~$.05 1 tablespoon of soy sauce ~$.10 Total: $6.43 Throw rice plus water in a pan for 30 minutes. Add turkey, veggies, rice, ~2TBS. of butter/oil, 1TBS. of soy sauce. Done. Healthy fried rice. High in protein, healthy carbs/fiber from the rice and veggies, and low in sugar. Should feed at least 3 people, all cooked in one pan and only requires 5 minutes of prep work. For $6.43. That's less than your one $4 meal at Mcdonalds costs, and it's significantly healthier (it has actual vegetables!). If you're just one person, It can be saved for later and re-heated in the microwave in 1 minute.

jjtheblunt 4y ago

i'm from the chicago area (nice suburban part) and totally agree. I suspect it's also something like 5x cheaper to compose healthy meals 5x healthier at home, IF one has a home in which such can be done.

vorpalhex 4y ago

American palettes are screwed up. Most people wouldn't eat a meal of a simple salad, some lean protein and a multigrain carb.

mjevans 4y ago
American "salads" are BS. * BS Leaf (some worthless lettuce) * Mostly filler of BS Leaf * Poor in vegetables * Poor in seeds / nuts * Frequently small or cheap protein * A 'shelf stable' dressing for flavor Yes, I've _considered_ making a salad at home, but by the time I buy ingredients I either have to eat the same for half a week in a row to try to use them up before they go bad, or just outright overpay. No, I can't go out and just buy one. Most places (there might be 1 or 2 out of like 30-40 restaurants 'car drive') near me only make a 'BS salad'. What I could really use is a sort of 'ghost kitchen' that takes relatively simple recipes based on bulk ingredients that are in stock at fair prices and makes a meal. Or maybe even just reusable snapware packs individual ingredients at sane sizes.
- tomjakubowski 4y ago
  Not really true in my experience, unless you're talking about side salads at typical restaurants. At a "main salad" kind of place, you can do a lot better in terms of greens, nuts, dressing options. Look at the menus for chains like Sweetgreen or Simply Green
  - mjevans 4y ago
    I haven't seen any of those near me, are they regional?
    - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
      Not regional, but limited to a relatively small number of major metro areas[1] [1] https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports/Sweetgreen-USA/ https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports/Sweetgreen-USA/
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  At home, I keep a spinach/kale mix, dried fruit and several different nuts. Vegetables and cheeses tend to rotate every week. I often times do my protein on the side but that's preference. I currently have a love affair with Kewpie's onion and garlic dressing but normally go for some olive oil and vinegar, a pinch of salt and black pepper.
- bluedino 4y ago
  Casual dining chains have hilariously high calorie "salads" Clocking in at 1,570 calories: Applebee's Oriental Chicken Salad With Crispy Chicken

corrral 4y ago

In broad swaths of the midwest, the outside isn't especially attractive, if it's not outright ugly. Minimal elevation change anywhere in sight, little visible rock outside road cuts, very few—and all unimpressive—waterfalls, slow, muddy, gross streams and rivers. And the landscape may well be like that for hundreds of miles in any direction. Then, on top of it, the weather's miserable 9 months out of the year. Oppressively hot & humid, or bitter cold. You're inside, you're in a pool/manmade-lake, or you're eagerly counting the minutes until you can get back to one of those places. Because of the first paragraph, incentive to brave the elements and go outside anyway, is practically zero. IOW our natural environments and climates also discourage outdoor activity, pretty damn effectively. [EDIT] Oh, and regarding this: > Obviously it's not profitable to own a healthy restaurant out there, but why? Is it a lack of healthy eating education? Is it a "harder" life and junk food is a reward? Or is it cost? It's a combination of cost and population density, mainly. Food culture plays in, but it's a feedback-loop sort of situation, not the case that food culture's purely driving the problem. Restaurants that optimize to avoid ingredients that spoil fast can charge less. Healthy ingredients tend to spoil faster than unhealthy ones (not universally true, but broadly so, especially for fruits and veggies). Higher prices (relative to local competition) mean a smaller customer base, which increases the population density required to support a restaurant.

nightski 4y ago
That sounds depressing! But it's not my experience at all in the Midwest. I love the seasons. Summer can get a little hot, but there is still a lot to do around here. Winter is very fun to from cross country skiing, to fat tire biking, bonfires, and snowmobiling. I go out regularly in anything as low as -30F to -40F as long as I am dressed properly. Then we get Fall/Spring which are very special. Honestly I've been to SF a lot and I find California down right dreary and boring! Many in our area are farmers and they are a lot tougher than your post suggests. The truth is healthy food is insanely expensive. We spend over $1000+/mo for two people. I know families with kids that eat on less than half that by eating less healthy.
- corrral 4y ago
  > Many in our area are farmers and they are a lot tougher than your post suggests. Heh, I come very directly from extremely country stock, so I'd never disparage their hardiness. ... However, even the farmers are rocking fancy trucks and climate-controlled combines & tractors with GPS guidance, these days :-) AFAIK you still have to step out of your air conditioning to shoo loose cattle back in their pens, or mend a fence, though.

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jimmygrapes 4y ago

Perhaps the restaurant selection reflects that most people in the region don't eat out? I too live in the general area of the "Midwest" (not really but close enough), and everybody I know cooks at home far more than they eat out, and more/better restaurants wouldn't change that behavior much since we are all poor. The problem then becomes what is cooked at home, and how much is eaten, and those aren't great. It's not for lack of available ingredients (although prices of "better" ingredients tend to play some role, like I'm not going to buy an "organic" bag of dirty carrots for 3x more than the regular dirty carrots from the same brand in the same package). In my unstudied and ignorant opinion, it comes down to a cultural thing, specifically a line of recipes and behaviors stemming from the Depression era. "Eat everything on your plate" is a common refrain, even when the plate is too big and too full. The same sort of calorie dense foods are made, but as scarcity decreased, gluttony increased, and that part simply hasn't gone back down yet.

bluedino 4y ago

Guess what - thirty years ago the restaurants were all fries and burgers and we weren't overweight. We just eat out more, the portions are larger, and we love huge sugary drinks.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago

It's faster to get fast food than to cook at home. In the usual nuclear family, that's probably what they default to when both parents are working full-time. [Yes, it's possible to make food in bulk on the weekends. There is no need to spam that helpful suggestion in the replies.]

namelessoracle 4y ago

"healthy home cooked food is as cheap or even cheaper than unhealthy fast food" Is it? You can get a double cheeseburger, small fries and a large soda (the worst part arguably of the whole meal health wise) for 4 dollars at McDonalds. You can skip the fries, and get 2 double cheeseburgers for the same price. The McDonalds app will often give you a large fry for free for the 4 dollar purchase. Whats the comparable food you can be making for 4 dollars at the grocery store? Cooking only helps when you can get economy of scale going. And only when you can use up all the ingredients you can bought effectively. Also you need the energy to make the food, if you are getting up at 7am to get your kids to school, then pick them up at 6 (when after school ends) and get home at 630, and then need to cook for 30 minutes, then another 15 to get dishes and everything put away. Your looking at not even being "done" with "work" until 715pm when you started the day at 7am. Acting like the time to cook and clean is free is not productive.

windowsrookie 4y ago
I'm not going to list a whole bunch of recipes, there are many websites that have cheap healthy meal plans. But for example... 1lb ground 90/10 turkey $3.69 1 bag of frozen mixed veggies $1.99 1/2 of a 1lb bag of rice. $.60 2 tablespoons of oil. ~$.05 1 tablespoon of soy sauce ~$.10 Total: $6.43 Throw rice plus water in a pan for 30 minutes. Add turkey, veggies, rice, ~2TBS. of butter/oil, 1TBS. of soy sauce. Done. Healthy fried rice. High in protein, healthy carbs/fiber from the rice and veggies, and low in sugar. Should feed at least 3 people, all cooked in one pan and only requires 5 minutes of prep work. For $6.43. That's less than your one $4 meal at Mcdonalds costs, and it's significantly healthier (it has actual vegetables!). If you're just one person, It can be saved for later and re-heated in the microwave in 1 minute.