This is so true. If you actually know how to cook (and I just mean the basics that most people, or at least most women knew in the year 1900, nothing fancy) you

This is so true. If you actually know how to cook (and I just mean the basics that most people, or at least most women knew in the year 1900, nothing fancy) you feel gaslit constantly when you hear people talk about how hard it is to eat nutritiously and affordably. You can see this with the inflation discussion -- you can tell immediately if someone can cook by if they complain about the current inflation in the context of food or not. If you truly cook based on commodities, it's barely noticable. If you eat out or use mostly processed and premade "ingredients" with big brand names, yeah, it's a lot more expensive. What corporate america did to US food culture in the 20th century is comparable to the enclosure movement in preindustrial England. There was a common resource that belonged to and was highly valuable to all (cultural knowledge of how to prepare cheap nutritious palatable food from scratch, using time effeciently), and it was destroyed and monopolized by a small group. Crazy as it seems to those on the outside, there are entire generations of families in the USA who have inherited nothing more from their ancestors in terms of food culture than preferences for certain brands. The irony is there's never been a better time for the every day worker to be able to cook for themselves with limited time and budget, thanks to modern appliances like instant pots, dishwashers, microwaves, and freezers. A homemaker from 1900 would be flabbergasted and overjoyed. What's missing is the operational knowledge and habits.