8 ms·

Eating cheaply is really difficult to do for the folks with the least amount of money to spend on food, as working is counter to the things that make eating che

Eating cheaply is really difficult to do for the folks with the least amount of money to spend on food, as working is counter to the things that make eating cheaper: cooking your own meals, shopping or growing cheaper foodstuffs, having appliances to store items for longer periods or cook dried items, being able to plan meals out in advance, etc. That is the reason why convenience foods are popular. A lot of advice stories about eating cheaply often fail to achieve that goal because it is hard to do and requires a lot of effort.

marknutter 13y ago
So these people have no free time whatsoever?
- fghh45sdfhr3 13y ago
  On weekdays? Long job, long commute, children, sleep - yes, it is easy to have pretty much no free time for most of the week.
  - MarkMc 13y ago
    Then plan the meals, do the shopping, prepare and cook the food on weekends and stick it in the fridge/freezer for the coming week. Would reduce food preparation time to around 15 mins on a weekday.
  - 13b9f227ecf0 13y ago
    Ridiculous. The average American watches hours of TV a day. Prepping a simple rice or potato based meal takes ten minutes; less time than the drive-thru. We have to stop pretending that the obesity epidemic is about something more than poor self control.
  - jff 13y ago
    The total time it takes to start the rice cooker, slice a chicken breast (it can even be frozen, just slice it small), and give the chicken a quick fry in my cast iron pan (which I then rinse out and wipe clean, 10 seconds cleanup) is probably less time than you'll spend sitting in the drivethrough of McDonalds. While you're waiting for the rice to cook, you can spend some time with your kids or watch the expensive cable service every "too poor to cook" person I've ever know has had.
    - snogglethorpe 13y ago
      Ricer cookers are magic. One of my favorite "I'm too tire too cook" meals is to just chop up whatever veggies I have laying around or picked up at the corner store on my way home, and toss the whole mess along with some rice into a rice cooker. I usually include some other random other miscellaneous dried grains/seeds/beans I have in bags to add some taste variety (red lentils = incredible, they're like a spice and a staple at the same time!). You don't need to pay any attention to the actual cooking, because the rice cooker will do it perfectly every time, without attention or care. Press the button, veg in front of the computer for a while, rice cooker beeps, and ... dinner! :D Cleanup is just a 2 second wash of the the non-stick pot...
      - jff 13y ago
        It's a bit more expensive, but I also like taking Zatarain's boxed black beans and rice ($2), getting it started, then tossing in some chunks of raw chicken as soon as it starts boiling. It's quick, you basically mix the ingredients together and stir occasionally until it's done. For about $3-4 (once you buy a chicken breast) you get a tasty dish with rice, beans, and chicken that'll serve two.
MarkMc 13y ago
From a book called Rework [1]: "When you want something bad enough, you make the time - regardless of your other obligations. The truth is most people just don't want it bad enough. Then they protect their ego with the excuse of time." I think virtually everyone in the UK has the means to eat healthy if they really want to. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Rework-Jason-Fried/dp/0307463745 http://www.amazon.com/Rework-Jason-Fried/dp/0307463745
- rahoulb 13y ago
  37Signals also sprinkle their stuff with "this works for us, we're not saying it's for everyone". They are outliers, and much as I love and am inspired by them, if what they said was so easy, why aren't we all working four day weeks from home, whilst racing multi-million pound sports cars?
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  king_jester was talking about the poor. I doubt telling poor people to want it more badly is going to have a huge positive effect.
  - ctdonath 13y ago
    Many poor are content with their condition, unwilling to take even basic steps to improve. Harsh as this sounds, and downvote-bait it seems, I've worked at helping the poor and found (to my dismay) most of them are in that condition because they refuse to choose to do better. Yes, they don't want it badly enough.
    - adeaver 13y ago
      And there are many that aren't. Don't make the mistake of assuming that just because a few are content that everyone in that position is.
    - jhaywood 13y ago
      Make sure you're not confusing resignation with contentment.
ctdonath 13y ago
A lot of advice stories about eating cheaply often fail to achieve that goal because it is hard to do and requires a lot of effort. This is a recurring sentiment which speaks volumes about our culture. Complaints of "hard" and "a lot of effort" belies how incredibly rich this society is, that the notion of just making pasta or growing vegetables is somehow prohibitively difficult - not because it's inherently so hard, but because we're so used to "swipe a card, get a meal" at all levels of society. Even if you're officially "poor", just be at WalMart at midnight on EBT recharge day and walk out with convenience foods. For most of humanity through most of history, what so many today belittle as "hard" was "normal" on a daily basis. On my "A Buck A Plate" blog I've addressed various forms of this complaint. Difficulty? boil some water, open a few cans, spaghetti dinner done. Cost of cooking system (stove, gas, etc.)? grandma's ancient cast-iron frying pan over burning wood scraps in the back yard, make a nice veggies-and-shrimp stir fry. No cooking space indoors or out? $4 crock-pot and an electrical outlet. Cooking your own meals? c'mon, it's not that hard, really. Shopping for inexpensive? look at every price tag in the store (Walmart, Aldi) and discount everything over $1 per pound. Appliances? thrift shops overflow with them dirt cheap. Dried items? throw 'em in water before going to work, ready to cook when you return. Planning meals in advance? you really have an issue with this? Sure convenience foods are popular. You also pay for that convenience: instead of doing the work yourself, you work doing other things then exchange the money earned there. Do more yourself, and there's less need to be out doing other things. Don't confuse "you have to do something" with "hard to do and requires a lot of effort". If you watch TV at all you have no excuse.
- itsybitsycoder 13y ago
  I think as software developers, many of us are very disconnected with the lives of the very poor in our society. There are people out there working multiple full time jobs, or working full-time while raising young kids by themselves. It boggles my mind that you would consider these people lazy because they're dead on their feet when they arrive home... probably even software developers can think of days when they're too tired to cook, is it really so hard to imagine having to work so hard that those days are every day?
  - 13y ago
13b9f227ecf0 13y ago
Potatoes and sweet potatoes are very cheap and you can practically live on them, in perfect health. Generations of Irishmen, Kitavans, and Peruvians have. This claim that you can't eat healthy on the cheap is silly. Eating just potatoes & butter & a few eggs a day and you could probably go years before having problems. The prep time argument is also silly. A sack of potatoes will keep for a month and you can boil or nuke a potato in minutes. The "convenience" foods are about the taste and pleasure. It's not cost or convenience. Junk food and fast food are very tasty and offer variety, unlike plain potato, or some other reasonably nutritious gruel.
- ellyagg 13y ago
  Indeed, the old Irish diet of milk and potatoes was pretty darn healthy. If you're trying to eat healthily, cheaply, and with a reasonable cognitive load, it's hard to go wrong with eggs, milk, and potatoes. Poor people can do this. Eggs and milk get you all the important macrominerals and fat soluble vitamins and potatoes are nature's multivitamin/multimineral. Nothing else can really touch these for depth and breadth of essential nutrients: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2864450/2 http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2864450/2 They scale well, so even if they're not the only things you eat, you're at least assured of not being acutely deficient of anything. Plus, it's easy to prepare lots of yummy things from them. Now, if you're concerned with maximum longevity, you should try to add as many fruits and vegetables a day as you can to suck up phytonutrients/antioxidants.
itsybitsycoder 13y ago
Also, and this is true for many things, the poor are less capable of spending more money now to save money over the long term. E.g., if a pair of boots that will last 3 years is $150 and a pair of boots that will last 6 months is $30, the $150 pair of boots is a better deal because you'd have to buy $180 dollars worth of cheap boots to last 3 years. But if you only have $50 available to spend and you need new boots now, you have to choose the cheap boots. So, forget buying everything in bulk, or buying a membership to a warehouse club.
- jff 13y ago
  Oh hi, fellow Discworld fan.
  - itsybitsycoder 13y ago
    I didn't intentionally reference Discworld so I'm gonna assume I'm just doing it subconsciously now. Yeah, I love Discworld. Hi, fellow Discworld fan!
Spooky23 13y ago
I hear this alot, and it's bunk. Shopping at an overpriced bodega is still cheaper than eating out. It takes 20 minutes to cook a hamburger or piece of chicken, pasta/potato and heat up a bag of green beans. There are very few people in the United States that lack the means to own a refrigerator and some sort of stove -- most localities codes require both for an apartment to be code compliant.

marknutter 13y ago

So these people have no free time whatsoever?

fghh45sdfhr3 13y ago
On weekdays? Long job, long commute, children, sleep - yes, it is easy to have pretty much no free time for most of the week.
- MarkMc 13y ago
  Then plan the meals, do the shopping, prepare and cook the food on weekends and stick it in the fridge/freezer for the coming week. Would reduce food preparation time to around 15 mins on a weekday.
- 13b9f227ecf0 13y ago
  Ridiculous. The average American watches hours of TV a day. Prepping a simple rice or potato based meal takes ten minutes; less time than the drive-thru. We have to stop pretending that the obesity epidemic is about something more than poor self control.
- jff 13y ago
  The total time it takes to start the rice cooker, slice a chicken breast (it can even be frozen, just slice it small), and give the chicken a quick fry in my cast iron pan (which I then rinse out and wipe clean, 10 seconds cleanup) is probably less time than you'll spend sitting in the drivethrough of McDonalds. While you're waiting for the rice to cook, you can spend some time with your kids or watch the expensive cable service every "too poor to cook" person I've ever know has had.
  - snogglethorpe 13y ago
    Ricer cookers are magic. One of my favorite "I'm too tire too cook" meals is to just chop up whatever veggies I have laying around or picked up at the corner store on my way home, and toss the whole mess along with some rice into a rice cooker. I usually include some other random other miscellaneous dried grains/seeds/beans I have in bags to add some taste variety (red lentils = incredible, they're like a spice and a staple at the same time!). You don't need to pay any attention to the actual cooking, because the rice cooker will do it perfectly every time, without attention or care. Press the button, veg in front of the computer for a while, rice cooker beeps, and ... dinner! :D Cleanup is just a 2 second wash of the the non-stick pot...
    - jff 13y ago
      It's a bit more expensive, but I also like taking Zatarain's boxed black beans and rice ($2), getting it started, then tossing in some chunks of raw chicken as soon as it starts boiling. It's quick, you basically mix the ingredients together and stir occasionally until it's done. For about $3-4 (once you buy a chicken breast) you get a tasty dish with rice, beans, and chicken that'll serve two.

MarkMc 13y ago

From a book called Rework [1]: "When you want something bad enough, you make the time - regardless of your other obligations. The truth is most people just don't want it bad enough. Then they protect their ego with the excuse of time." I think virtually everyone in the UK has the means to eat healthy if they really want to. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Rework-Jason-Fried/dp/0307463745 http://www.amazon.com/Rework-Jason-Fried/dp/0307463745

rahoulb 13y ago
37Signals also sprinkle their stuff with "this works for us, we're not saying it's for everyone". They are outliers, and much as I love and am inspired by them, if what they said was so easy, why aren't we all working four day weeks from home, whilst racing multi-million pound sports cars?
mtrimpe 13y ago
king_jester was talking about the poor. I doubt telling poor people to want it more badly is going to have a huge positive effect.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Many poor are content with their condition, unwilling to take even basic steps to improve. Harsh as this sounds, and downvote-bait it seems, I've worked at helping the poor and found (to my dismay) most of them are in that condition because they refuse to choose to do better. Yes, they don't want it badly enough.
  - adeaver 13y ago
    And there are many that aren't. Don't make the mistake of assuming that just because a few are content that everyone in that position is.
  - jhaywood 13y ago
    Make sure you're not confusing resignation with contentment.

ctdonath 13y ago

A lot of advice stories about eating cheaply often fail to achieve that goal because it is hard to do and requires a lot of effort. This is a recurring sentiment which speaks volumes about our culture. Complaints of "hard" and "a lot of effort" belies how incredibly rich this society is, that the notion of just making pasta or growing vegetables is somehow prohibitively difficult - not because it's inherently so hard, but because we're so used to "swipe a card, get a meal" at all levels of society. Even if you're officially "poor", just be at WalMart at midnight on EBT recharge day and walk out with convenience foods. For most of humanity through most of history, what so many today belittle as "hard" was "normal" on a daily basis. On my "A Buck A Plate" blog I've addressed various forms of this complaint. Difficulty? boil some water, open a few cans, spaghetti dinner done. Cost of cooking system (stove, gas, etc.)? grandma's ancient cast-iron frying pan over burning wood scraps in the back yard, make a nice veggies-and-shrimp stir fry. No cooking space indoors or out? $4 crock-pot and an electrical outlet. Cooking your own meals? c'mon, it's not that hard, really. Shopping for inexpensive? look at every price tag in the store (Walmart, Aldi) and discount everything over $1 per pound. Appliances? thrift shops overflow with them dirt cheap. Dried items? throw 'em in water before going to work, ready to cook when you return. Planning meals in advance? you really have an issue with this? Sure convenience foods are popular. You also pay for that convenience: instead of doing the work yourself, you work doing other things then exchange the money earned there. Do more yourself, and there's less need to be out doing other things. Don't confuse "you have to do something" with "hard to do and requires a lot of effort". If you watch TV at all you have no excuse.

itsybitsycoder 13y ago
I think as software developers, many of us are very disconnected with the lives of the very poor in our society. There are people out there working multiple full time jobs, or working full-time while raising young kids by themselves. It boggles my mind that you would consider these people lazy because they're dead on their feet when they arrive home... probably even software developers can think of days when they're too tired to cook, is it really so hard to imagine having to work so hard that those days are every day?
- 13y ago

13b9f227ecf0 13y ago

Potatoes and sweet potatoes are very cheap and you can practically live on them, in perfect health. Generations of Irishmen, Kitavans, and Peruvians have. This claim that you can't eat healthy on the cheap is silly. Eating just potatoes & butter & a few eggs a day and you could probably go years before having problems. The prep time argument is also silly. A sack of potatoes will keep for a month and you can boil or nuke a potato in minutes. The "convenience" foods are about the taste and pleasure. It's not cost or convenience. Junk food and fast food are very tasty and offer variety, unlike plain potato, or some other reasonably nutritious gruel.

ellyagg 13y ago
Indeed, the old Irish diet of milk and potatoes was pretty darn healthy. If you're trying to eat healthily, cheaply, and with a reasonable cognitive load, it's hard to go wrong with eggs, milk, and potatoes. Poor people can do this. Eggs and milk get you all the important macrominerals and fat soluble vitamins and potatoes are nature's multivitamin/multimineral. Nothing else can really touch these for depth and breadth of essential nutrients: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2864450/2 http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2864450/2 They scale well, so even if they're not the only things you eat, you're at least assured of not being acutely deficient of anything. Plus, it's easy to prepare lots of yummy things from them. Now, if you're concerned with maximum longevity, you should try to add as many fruits and vegetables a day as you can to suck up phytonutrients/antioxidants.

itsybitsycoder 13y ago

Also, and this is true for many things, the poor are less capable of spending more money now to save money over the long term. E.g., if a pair of boots that will last 3 years is $150 and a pair of boots that will last 6 months is $30, the $150 pair of boots is a better deal because you'd have to buy $180 dollars worth of cheap boots to last 3 years. But if you only have $50 available to spend and you need new boots now, you have to choose the cheap boots. So, forget buying everything in bulk, or buying a membership to a warehouse club.

jff 13y ago
Oh hi, fellow Discworld fan.
- itsybitsycoder 13y ago
  I didn't intentionally reference Discworld so I'm gonna assume I'm just doing it subconsciously now. Yeah, I love Discworld. Hi, fellow Discworld fan!

Spooky23 13y ago

I hear this alot, and it's bunk. Shopping at an overpriced bodega is still cheaper than eating out. It takes 20 minutes to cook a hamburger or piece of chicken, pasta/potato and heat up a bag of green beans. There are very few people in the United States that lack the means to own a refrigerator and some sort of stove -- most localities codes require both for an apartment to be code compliant.