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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

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.
- throw46365 2y ago
  > why is that not possible now? Well we don't have massive communal dining halls or poorhouses. I think you underestimate the extreme poverty of food even for people in 1924 who had access to a communal kitchen. Average nutrition in 1924 was not good. It was likely significantly worse than it is now. People were on average several inches shorter and life expectancy at birth in 1924 was less than 60 in the USA and the UK. The life expectancy for, say, a 24 year old in 1924 would be lower still. People did "stay alive", but they died young of diseases, many of them worsened by chronic malnutrition. Kids were literally severely malnourished in the USA until the national school lunch program was launched in the 40s, and the UK was only a bit ahead, providing breakfasts and sometimes lunches for kids from 1906 onwards, and then full school meals in the 40s. Adult malnutrition was rampant in the USA of the 1930s. You are comparing 2024 with a romantic fiction, when the issue is what are the options in 2024. The era of abundant cheap food, enough time to cook it, labour-saving devices and parents who were not both working is short, and it spans about 30 years from 1940 in the USA, and less in the UK due to rationing. We don't have that life anymore. It would be better to engineer a culture of street food in the UK and USA, because that leads to more healthy food options for vastly more people (as well as catering efficiency and less food waste)

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.

throw46365 2y ago
> why is that not possible now? Well we don't have massive communal dining halls or poorhouses. I think you underestimate the extreme poverty of food even for people in 1924 who had access to a communal kitchen. Average nutrition in 1924 was not good. It was likely significantly worse than it is now. People were on average several inches shorter and life expectancy at birth in 1924 was less than 60 in the USA and the UK. The life expectancy for, say, a 24 year old in 1924 would be lower still. People did "stay alive", but they died young of diseases, many of them worsened by chronic malnutrition. Kids were literally severely malnourished in the USA until the national school lunch program was launched in the 40s, and the UK was only a bit ahead, providing breakfasts and sometimes lunches for kids from 1906 onwards, and then full school meals in the 40s. Adult malnutrition was rampant in the USA of the 1930s. You are comparing 2024 with a romantic fiction, when the issue is what are the options in 2024. The era of abundant cheap food, enough time to cook it, labour-saving devices and parents who were not both working is short, and it spans about 30 years from 1940 in the USA, and less in the UK due to rationing. We don't have that life anymore. It would be better to engineer a culture of street food in the UK and USA, because that leads to more healthy food options for vastly more people (as well as catering efficiency and less food waste)