4 ms·

> Coke's position was clear: soda is one of the cheapest ways to get calories - a flagrantly inaccurate statement when factoring in the health consequences. I'

by ar_lan 4y ago

> Coke's position was clear: soda is one of the cheapest ways to get calories - a flagrantly inaccurate statement when factoring in the health consequences. I'm always amazed at how many people flat out get angry with me when I say fast food is simply not cheaper than cooking yourself, provided you have a kitchen. I'm consistently told that that level of thinking is necessarily classist (and therefore racist), because it's more time, effort, and in the short-term, money, that needs to be involved. I do not understand how making stir fry with chicken breast/thighs, frozen veggies, and rice is somehow the most expensive, time-consuming task in the world, but apparently that's a high-class dinner to many folks on the internet, and I'm 100% convinced it's because of the lie they are told (and then perpetuate) that the dollar amount you see in front of you is the dollar amount in totality. Don't do Reddit, folks.

WalterBright 4y ago
I've heard the same thing, and I usually respond with prices of decent, filling food at the grocery store - like potatoes, a can of beans, a bag of apples, etc. As for cooking, you can buy a used microwave at the thrift store for about what a soft taco costs at Taco Time.
- legerdemain 4y ago
  Apples don't contribute much to a healthy diet: they're sweet, acidic enough to damage tooth enamel, and packed with fructose. You'd be much better off leaving fruit out of your diet and occasionally treating yourself to a little bit of brown rice or raw broccoli in between your meals of beans and potatoes.
  - dgoldstein0 4y ago
    Apples are a lot healthier than the same amount of fructose in isolation. they have a huge amount of fiber, which is both filling and good for your microbiome. And I'd bet on some good vitamin content though I'm not sure which off the top of my head. Some fruits may be not much better than candy in that the sugar can metabolize quickly, but apples aren't one of those despite their fructose content.
    - legerdemain 4y ago
      One hundred grams of apples (with skin) consists of 86 grams of water and 10.5 grams of sugar (mostly fructose), 2.5 grams of fiber, and negligible everything else. The only vitamin present in apples in non-trivial quantity is vitamin C. There is as much protein in broccoli as there is fiber in apples. To get your daily suggested intake of fiber (30 grams), you'd need to eat almost three pounds of apples a day.
      - viridian 4y ago
        Assuming what you say is true, an apple provides you with about 1/27th the amount of carbs the FDA recommends in a day, and 1/12th the amount of fiber recommended in a day. I fail to see the harm. If I did feel wild one day and decide to down a dozen apples (I'm not sure I physically even could), I'd meet my fiber RDA for that day, and still have only eaten 504 calories worth of carbs. You may object that I'm not getting any micronutrients this way, but most sources of micronutrients are nearly irrelevant calorically, so they don't really matter when you talk about capacity planning for macronutrients and calories.
        legerdemain 4y ago
        The harm is that the apple is acidic, damages tooth enamel over time, its nutrition value comes only from sugar (most of which is fructose), and it's not actually filling. Ask any fruitarian how soon after a meal of fruit they feel hungry again. Seeing no harm in eating apples is like seeing no harm in eating candy. Sure, eating a piece of candy once is trivial -- but you're insisting on candy as a part of my diet, not as an incidental, rare snack. Eating candy only has downsides.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  > I've heard the same thing, and I usually respond with prices of decent, filling food at the grocery store - like potatoes, a can of beans, a bag of apples, etc. As for cooking, you can buy a used microwave at the thrift store for about what a soft taco costs at Taco Time. You may want to factor in that the 20 minutes they have to acquire and prep a meal is already coming out of the 6 hours they have allocated for sleep. Having done a decade of hunger-level poverty, I found it surprising busy.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Takes me 2 minutes to microwave a $2 can of chili. The can is worth about 2 meals. The trip to the store, once a week. Driving to Taco Time every day takes time, gas, and costs $20 for a meal. Ironically, I microwave meals and such not because I'm poor, but to save time. I dislike going to restaurants and even McBurger because it takes too much time. Another meal I like takes less than a minute. Pour some oats in a bowl. Add raisins. Add milk. Ready to eat. I doubt it costs 50 cents. Or make a couple cheese sandwiches with butter and a pickle.
    - WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
      These sound like things that can be done by someone who has resources when and where they need them. They do not sound like something that can be done consistently by someone without regular transportation or pay.
      - seneca 4y ago
        > These sound like things that can be done by someone who has resources when and where they need them. > They do not sound like something that can be done consistently by someone without regular transportation or pay. If someone has transportation to go to a fast food restaurant, they have transportation to go to a corner store and buy a can of beans. If they have money for one, they have money for the other. It's actually usually cheaper not to eat the junk food. Reality is that most poor people eat junk food because it's less effort, and because the high amounts of salt, fat, and sugar that make it so unhealthy are nearly addictive and act as a comfort.
algoatecorn 4y ago
You are correct. The argument of "people are forced to eat fast food because it's too expensive to eat healthy" is not intellectually honest at all. I believe many people hold on to that sentiment because it's easier to blame a boogieman than to educate themselves on affordable, healthy diets and execute on learning to shop and cook for yourself. I am, however, interested in bringing better educational resources and time-saving instruments to consumers. Many people grow up in an environment where they don't know how to properly shop in a grocery store. For example, you give someone a $50 gift card to the supermarket and they walk out with a cart full of crap, because it's all they knew growing up. Then once you teach someone how to shop, they may not have experience cooking for themselves. For those of us who grew up cooking with our parents and continued to do so for ourselves, it's hard to imagine how overwhelming the learning process can be. If you grew up in a lower income environment with busy parent(s), chances are you never helped out in the kitchen with your mom or dad. They probably brought home a kid's meal from McDonalds on their way back from their second job.
yterdy 4y ago
>I do not understand Well, that's an easy fix. Ask your employer to cut your salary to ~$20k-$30k. Tell them that you're going to be in the office at 7 on-the-dot, and he can write you up if you're 5 minutes early or late; you're going to be there for 8-10 hours, w/ a 30-minute lunch and two 15-minute breaks (again, write-ups for taking even a minute longer than alotted). Sell your car, get a used one (financed, of course), model year before 2012, 80k miles minimum; give the profit away (give away any savings you have, too; you can't access any of your retirement or investment accounts, either). Insist that any credit you have access to be cut severely and the rates jacked up. Sell anything you own other than your car that's worth more than $2k, give the money away. You are also now limited to going 20-30 minutes out of your way to the "good" grocery store, since you are moving to a food desert. Your mattress now comes in a box from Wal-Mart; get rid of any sleep or wake-up aids other than your cell phone. Hard mode: separate from your spouse, if you have one, and adopt as many kids as you need to get to 2 or 3. People are not making poor individual choices. They are, collectively, subject to perverse incentives that are imposed by a regulatory-industrial complex that profits from the ill health they develop when behaving as might be expected of any normal human being of the past two centuries. Thank you for being frustrated at the state of the world; it means that you recognize that there are improvements to be made. First step: stop blaming the wrong people.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  I don't see how any of that stops someone from "making stir fry with chicken breast/thighs, frozen veggies, and rice" as OP put it. Maybe the chicken is the most expensive part of that. What does your retirement account or mattress have to do with taking a few minutes to cook some veggies and rice?
  - yterdy 4y ago
    Because it's not "just a few minutes". It's the time to learn how to make it well; it's the cooking equipment to make it well, consistently; it's the navigation of an ever-shifting retail environment with way too much choice and featuring the kind of sensory input meant to overload your decision-making abilities, just to get the ingredients; it's the way that poor sleep (mattress) also affects those decisions; it's the way that financial precarity means juggling concerns of the now with concerns of the future (retirement), and how that kind of anxiety also short-circuits your decision-making; it's knowing that eating "chicken and frozen veggies and rice" for every meal is going to leave you malnourished in short order, too, but that because the internet rando who's more focused on balancing a silver spoon on his nose than the points of discussion at hand will ALWAYS find fault in what you do (if he cares at all), maybe throwing all of that stress out the window and ordering Subway is the right call after all. Your inability to "see" doesn't preclude what I talked about from being there and material and true. And they are. And for the record, I cook, but I only have time to because I'm unemployed.
WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
> I'm always amazed at how many people flat out get angry with me when I say fast food is simply not cheaper than cooking yourself, provided you have a kitchen. I think the challenge here is looking at numbers without factoring in reality. A common scenario in poverty is money isn't available when it's needed. If one has $4 today for food now and will have $4 more tomorrow, their choices are to forgo eating until they can save up the ingredients or buy whatever food can be had today.
throwawayfear 4y ago
You are describing idealogues and zealots and bureaucrats who want that problem to continue to exist no matter what. Because they have an agenda which involves taking control of whatever they can if they can. They would be deeply distressed if food insecurity was solved without needing their top-down control.

by ar_lan 4y ago

WalterBright 4y ago

I've heard the same thing, and I usually respond with prices of decent, filling food at the grocery store - like potatoes, a can of beans, a bag of apples, etc. As for cooking, you can buy a used microwave at the thrift store for about what a soft taco costs at Taco Time.

legerdemain 4y ago
Apples don't contribute much to a healthy diet: they're sweet, acidic enough to damage tooth enamel, and packed with fructose. You'd be much better off leaving fruit out of your diet and occasionally treating yourself to a little bit of brown rice or raw broccoli in between your meals of beans and potatoes.
- dgoldstein0 4y ago
  Apples are a lot healthier than the same amount of fructose in isolation. they have a huge amount of fiber, which is both filling and good for your microbiome. And I'd bet on some good vitamin content though I'm not sure which off the top of my head. Some fruits may be not much better than candy in that the sugar can metabolize quickly, but apples aren't one of those despite their fructose content.
  - legerdemain 4y ago
    One hundred grams of apples (with skin) consists of 86 grams of water and 10.5 grams of sugar (mostly fructose), 2.5 grams of fiber, and negligible everything else. The only vitamin present in apples in non-trivial quantity is vitamin C. There is as much protein in broccoli as there is fiber in apples. To get your daily suggested intake of fiber (30 grams), you'd need to eat almost three pounds of apples a day.
    - viridian 4y ago
      Assuming what you say is true, an apple provides you with about 1/27th the amount of carbs the FDA recommends in a day, and 1/12th the amount of fiber recommended in a day. I fail to see the harm. If I did feel wild one day and decide to down a dozen apples (I'm not sure I physically even could), I'd meet my fiber RDA for that day, and still have only eaten 504 calories worth of carbs. You may object that I'm not getting any micronutrients this way, but most sources of micronutrients are nearly irrelevant calorically, so they don't really matter when you talk about capacity planning for macronutrients and calories.
      - legerdemain 4y ago
        The harm is that the apple is acidic, damages tooth enamel over time, its nutrition value comes only from sugar (most of which is fructose), and it's not actually filling. Ask any fruitarian how soon after a meal of fruit they feel hungry again. Seeing no harm in eating apples is like seeing no harm in eating candy. Sure, eating a piece of candy once is trivial -- but you're insisting on candy as a part of my diet, not as an incidental, rare snack. Eating candy only has downsides.
WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
> I've heard the same thing, and I usually respond with prices of decent, filling food at the grocery store - like potatoes, a can of beans, a bag of apples, etc. As for cooking, you can buy a used microwave at the thrift store for about what a soft taco costs at Taco Time. You may want to factor in that the 20 minutes they have to acquire and prep a meal is already coming out of the 6 hours they have allocated for sleep. Having done a decade of hunger-level poverty, I found it surprising busy.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Takes me 2 minutes to microwave a $2 can of chili. The can is worth about 2 meals. The trip to the store, once a week. Driving to Taco Time every day takes time, gas, and costs $20 for a meal. Ironically, I microwave meals and such not because I'm poor, but to save time. I dislike going to restaurants and even McBurger because it takes too much time. Another meal I like takes less than a minute. Pour some oats in a bowl. Add raisins. Add milk. Ready to eat. I doubt it costs 50 cents. Or make a couple cheese sandwiches with butter and a pickle.
  - WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
    These sound like things that can be done by someone who has resources when and where they need them. They do not sound like something that can be done consistently by someone without regular transportation or pay.
    - seneca 4y ago
      > These sound like things that can be done by someone who has resources when and where they need them. > They do not sound like something that can be done consistently by someone without regular transportation or pay. If someone has transportation to go to a fast food restaurant, they have transportation to go to a corner store and buy a can of beans. If they have money for one, they have money for the other. It's actually usually cheaper not to eat the junk food. Reality is that most poor people eat junk food because it's less effort, and because the high amounts of salt, fat, and sugar that make it so unhealthy are nearly addictive and act as a comfort.

algoatecorn 4y ago

You are correct. The argument of "people are forced to eat fast food because it's too expensive to eat healthy" is not intellectually honest at all. I believe many people hold on to that sentiment because it's easier to blame a boogieman than to educate themselves on affordable, healthy diets and execute on learning to shop and cook for yourself. I am, however, interested in bringing better educational resources and time-saving instruments to consumers. Many people grow up in an environment where they don't know how to properly shop in a grocery store. For example, you give someone a $50 gift card to the supermarket and they walk out with a cart full of crap, because it's all they knew growing up. Then once you teach someone how to shop, they may not have experience cooking for themselves. For those of us who grew up cooking with our parents and continued to do so for ourselves, it's hard to imagine how overwhelming the learning process can be. If you grew up in a lower income environment with busy parent(s), chances are you never helped out in the kitchen with your mom or dad. They probably brought home a kid's meal from McDonalds on their way back from their second job.

yterdy 4y ago

>I do not understand Well, that's an easy fix. Ask your employer to cut your salary to ~$20k-$30k. Tell them that you're going to be in the office at 7 on-the-dot, and he can write you up if you're 5 minutes early or late; you're going to be there for 8-10 hours, w/ a 30-minute lunch and two 15-minute breaks (again, write-ups for taking even a minute longer than alotted). Sell your car, get a used one (financed, of course), model year before 2012, 80k miles minimum; give the profit away (give away any savings you have, too; you can't access any of your retirement or investment accounts, either). Insist that any credit you have access to be cut severely and the rates jacked up. Sell anything you own other than your car that's worth more than $2k, give the money away. You are also now limited to going 20-30 minutes out of your way to the "good" grocery store, since you are moving to a food desert. Your mattress now comes in a box from Wal-Mart; get rid of any sleep or wake-up aids other than your cell phone. Hard mode: separate from your spouse, if you have one, and adopt as many kids as you need to get to 2 or 3. People are not making poor individual choices. They are, collectively, subject to perverse incentives that are imposed by a regulatory-industrial complex that profits from the ill health they develop when behaving as might be expected of any normal human being of the past two centuries. Thank you for being frustrated at the state of the world; it means that you recognize that there are improvements to be made. First step: stop blaming the wrong people.

ryandrake 4y ago
I don't see how any of that stops someone from "making stir fry with chicken breast/thighs, frozen veggies, and rice" as OP put it. Maybe the chicken is the most expensive part of that. What does your retirement account or mattress have to do with taking a few minutes to cook some veggies and rice?
- yterdy 4y ago
  Because it's not "just a few minutes". It's the time to learn how to make it well; it's the cooking equipment to make it well, consistently; it's the navigation of an ever-shifting retail environment with way too much choice and featuring the kind of sensory input meant to overload your decision-making abilities, just to get the ingredients; it's the way that poor sleep (mattress) also affects those decisions; it's the way that financial precarity means juggling concerns of the now with concerns of the future (retirement), and how that kind of anxiety also short-circuits your decision-making; it's knowing that eating "chicken and frozen veggies and rice" for every meal is going to leave you malnourished in short order, too, but that because the internet rando who's more focused on balancing a silver spoon on his nose than the points of discussion at hand will ALWAYS find fault in what you do (if he cares at all), maybe throwing all of that stress out the window and ordering Subway is the right call after all. Your inability to "see" doesn't preclude what I talked about from being there and material and true. And they are. And for the record, I cook, but I only have time to because I'm unemployed.

WarOnPrivacy 4y ago

> I'm always amazed at how many people flat out get angry with me when I say fast food is simply not cheaper than cooking yourself, provided you have a kitchen. I think the challenge here is looking at numbers without factoring in reality. A common scenario in poverty is money isn't available when it's needed. If one has $4 today for food now and will have $4 more tomorrow, their choices are to forgo eating until they can save up the ingredients or buy whatever food can be had today.

throwawayfear 4y ago

You are describing idealogues and zealots and bureaucrats who want that problem to continue to exist no matter what. Because they have an agenda which involves taking control of whatever they can if they can. They would be deeply distressed if food insecurity was solved without needing their top-down control.