4 ms·

Everyone has time to cook... it takes way less time make a sandwich than it does to go pick up takeout.

• giraffe_lady 2y ago
  Sure but it takes less time to pick up takeout than it does to shop for a household. Especially if you have to use public transit, can only buy what you can carry, have to bring a kid with you. When I teach people to cook I usually point out that when you're at the point where you're in the kitchen with the ingredients out, 2/3 of the work is done. There's a lot of labor in planning and shopping.
  • mcntsh 2y ago
    Yeah if you need to shop for a household every day, but usually you can do it once or twice a week and be fine. People do it all around the world, people who are much much poorer than Americans, people who also do not have cars, people who generally work longer hours.
    • giraffe_lady 2y ago
      I'm trying to get you to see that it's a significant chore and you shouldn't dismiss it. It's usually done in addition to other obligations like work and childcare. A lot of americans are also poor, work long hours, or don't have reliable access to a car. Also people "around the world" may not be cooking at home as much as you assume either. Street food is everywhere and it is not new by any means. Individual household kitchens for city dwellers have not historically been the norm, and they still aren't in a lot of places.
      • thunky 2y ago
        > it's a significant chore and you shouldn't dismiss it But you're comparing it to getting fast food for every meal, which is also a chore. One way or another, feeding yourself and your family is always going to be a chore.
• throw46365 2y ago
  This only scales if everyone you are cooking for is prepared to eat the same thing. And it doesn't apply to lunch for most of the non-WFH world. And takeout delivers these days.
  • mcntsh 2y ago
    What exactly do you think that people did before fast food and delivery?
    • throw46365 2y ago
      What exactly is the relevance of this question to people living in 2024? I mean, I cook 90-95% of my meals from scratch with the odd canned ingredient and for the rest, rely on healthy-option microwave meals or a sandwich to stop me slipping into snacking for the times when depression or tiredness do not allow it, which keeps a latent eating disorder at bay. But people who eat a lot of fast food do not always do so out of laziness. Large numbers of city dwellers barely have access to a kitchen, e.g. at least 1.5 million people in the UK and probably more like 3.5 million live in HMO (multiple occupant) accommodation that does not have a private kitchen; those people are lucky if they have access to their own hotplates. It doesn't matter what people did before fast food. It matters what people can find now, in the life that we have now, as an alternative to fast food. Just telling people they should cook their own meals from scratch is not good enough. That is why the question of fast food now being a "luxury" is so interesting. Because it likely means people who relied on fast food to meet dietary needs -- even fairly healthy fast food like fresh sandwiches (in the UK meaning) -- are now eating something worse, not something better. It's naive to assume it will -- or even can -- lead to a renaissance in home cooking.
      • mcntsh 2y ago
        What changed in 2024 compared to 1924 when it comes to cooking your own food? Kitchen/living situations in cities were much worse then and people stayed alive then without Doordash... why is that not possible now? You even have access to more technology and food that make it easier to cook. Frozen veggies, lunch meat, supermarkets, freezers.