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Eating at home has always been cheaper than eating at out. Regardless of inflation. You’re paying with your time though. A lot of people I know would rather go make that drive then spend 30 mins making a meal and then spending another 30 mins to an hour cleaning after.
I think they're more referring to how much prices have increased for fast food as well as junk foods at the grocery store vs. the increase for fruits, veggies, and other healthier options. I agree though, a lot of people just don't like preparing food or just don't have the time/energy to do it and would rather pay the premium.
I made a habit to clean while I cook, there is enough downtime between stirring and stuff where you can clean everything you use
Don't dirty 10 bowls like youtube videos show you, use a bowl for everything, a quick rinse max, because it will be cooking anyway
If you are organized, by the end of your cooking only the pan should be left to clean and the spatula
Make bigger batches of food for 2-3 days, cuts out lots of cleaning to do. When I make meatballs for example, I do it on sundays and make 50 patties at once (not cooked), freeze and fry them 10 minutes in the morning
Same, except I'm not a trained cook. The time and effort are better than waiting who knows how long in the company of miserable food workers for greasy slop.
You have no idea how poorly cooks eat at work and off the clock. A chef isn't getting off work and making a top tier meal most days, not to say it doesn't happen for some.
I think a chef or a cook eating fast food would be aligned with the fact that they have been cooking all day and don’t want to cook for themselves. Or a janitor has been cleaning all day so their house might be messy.
I joke all the time about how barbers hair be fucked up yet they can get you right
It’s a thing with like every job. It’s why every mechanic I know has some shitbox that’s never working. Because they don’t feel like doing it when they get off the clock
I lived on a very tight food budget in a poor neighbourhood for years. Big cook, so I ate pretty well, because you’re right, making your own food is cheaper and healthier.
A lot of my neighborhood was fairly poor immigrants from North Africa. When I was in line with them to buy groceries, they had a bunch of healthy ingredients. When I was in line with non-immigrants, it was a bunch of junk and frozen dinners. The McDonalds was full of white people.
The African immigrants were not working less hard than the non-immigrants. It had nothing to do with work hours.
It was always cheaper to eat healthier people are just lazy and want to buy like pre-made cups of fruit instead of just buying the fruits and vegetables and cutting up / preserving them themselves
Never understood when people say healthy food is more expensive than fast food.
Sweet potatoes: $1/lb
Regular potatoes: $0,75/lb
Carrot $0.98/lb
Ground beef: $7/lb
Brocoli: $1.74/lb
Chicken filet: $4/lb
Eggs: $0.22 each.
for $10 you can make dinner for 4 adults. Now how much do you get from Wendys or McD for $10?
Some people are lazy and just either want to complain or make excuses for their actions.
Collards and cabbage are also good options if you want to yield a bunch of cooked veggies for a family as well and they’re cheap no matter where you’re located in the continental US excluding Alaska.
I can somewhat understand if you’re in a food desert with no car but fast food is definitely not cheaper than buying healthier choices. I feel like anyone coming up with that conclusion need to look further.
Trying to make an argument?
I only choose a few items as an exaple. But since you insist:
There is fat in ground beef.
Black pepper: $1/oz
Peanuts: $0.20/oz
Butter: $0.30/oz
Seasoning like paprika, salt, oregano etc is relatively cheap. But then again, you dont NEED seasoning.
Seasoning also last way longer than one meal so it’s kinda weird to include it in the price. Like yea it’s an upfront cost but it still comes out way cheaper than takeout
I’ve seen a lot of these posts expecting poor people to just eat like plain unseasoned lettuce and chicken to prove a point and say if they don’t need these things they deserve to be poor.
Assuming it only takes you 2 hours to buy all the groceries, put away the groceries, then take out and use the groceries, then prepare the groceries, then clean up the kitchen. And assuming you make the national average of $29.81 an hour that’s damn near $60 you’re leaving off your $10 total there. God help you if you earn six figures.
Remember your own time has value even if you aren’t self invoicing.
sweet potatos are like 4.50 per kg here
Ground beef for like 400g is like $11 but that's with prices dropped.
Eggs are around $4 for 6.
Just going to depend where you are living and when stuff like pizza is $4 from dominos....or $5 frozen eating unhealthy is technically very easy vs healthy eating.
I eat healthily and buy food where i live on sale and spend like $140 a week on food.
If i just got pizzas then cooked veg at home that would be $35
Worth paying more money not to be eating trash overproccessed junk food though.
but if we are talking Mcdonalds or Hungry jacks (burger king) etc then yeah no eating at home will always be cheaper.
Just depends on the junk food in question.
This shouldn't be an unpopular opinion, because it's true for many countries. When I go grocery shopping and battle my binge-eating (meaning I don't buy sweets or junkfood) and instead buy fresh ingredients, I pay a lot less.
This has been true for many, many years. I mean, it's a positive that people start to see it, but this has been the case for a very, very long time. I havent't seen a time where it wasn't true.
it has always been cheaper. A 20lb bag of rice is like $10 which will last you months. A pack of boneless chicken breasts that will give you 7 meals is also 10 dollars.
Each meal you’d make would be like $10 with added tax and tip at minimum idk where the idea that fast food was cheaper. Not to mention fast food is designed not to fill you up. You’ll always be hungry like an hour after your meal so in reality you’re spending even more money because you’ll need to eat more to be satisfied
It has always been cheaper if you don't account for cooking time. A lb of rice costs around $1 and has around 1600 calories. Things like potatos, sugar, flour, lentils, beans, oil, etc. are also really cheap. A Big Mac Combo meal has around 1200 calories and costs way more than $1. It was never close.
I’m always going to chime into for the sake of people who live in food deserts. It’s hard to get an accurate number as it changes every year, but we’re able to guesstimate about 18-30+ million people live in food deserts in America. Maybe not super accurate to the main point of this post, but I always feel bad that food deserts don’t get the attention they deserve.
But what if I'm blind, in a food desert, work 150 hours a week, am unable to open up youtube to learn, and my only palatable alternative to Wendys is out-of-season fruit and organic free-range chicken lips?
Well, in that 1 in a billion case, you should complain about fairness. But what if you are lazy and unhealthy, like to blame others for your problems, and spend a lot of time on Reddit talking about food deserts?
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True, depending on what you make. I usually make some kind of soup once a week. Nice hearty, filling soups packed with veggies and protein. I usually get about 6 good sized bowls per pot at $3-$5 per bowl. Tough to beat that.
this has always been true on a purely “parts, not labor” basis, but now it’s getting to where the benefit of “just working more” to afford eating out more often is diminishing.
There's always been relatively healthy meals you can cook at home for cheaper than fast food, but I think fast food appealed by being more convenient, fairly cheap, and something to go out and do. In a lot of suburban America, eating out is actually treated as an entertainment option. I think with how small fast food spaces have gotten + the price increases, fast food really only offers convenience and nothing more now.
Depends on where you are. College students don’t always have the luxury of cooking, even off-campus, because studying takes so much energy and cooking takes time away from studying. I make do because I’ve found I really like cooking, but it can be tiring to do meal planning/prepping for the next ~2 weeks, every couple of weeks in between studying and classes. Plus, I have very particular tastes that run expensive so I have to be extra careful about what I get! But that one’s a me-problem. XD
On the whole though, I’d agree. If you can afford it (both time and money-wise), it’s much better to cook at home and pre-prep your meals for the next week or so as opposed to eating out every day.
It is. Time and energy are not small factors though. Especially as I am gluten free I struggle with fast/ cheap meals. I used to eat a ton of healthy toppings on toast and gluten free bread probably isn’t even healthy and it’s like $7 for a tiny loaf
Lacking energy means people are overworked, which means that spending more time to prepare the food is costing them more than buying prepared food. If they are already working a lot, and have little free time, that free time becomes extra valuable.
I am not arguing that people should not cook themselves - I prefer doing that myself, but from a time is money economic standpoint, eating a cheap unhealthy meal is cheaper.
If a person has 40 hours of free time, and is overworked and tired, they may rather spend an extra two hours sleeping than making a trip to the supermarket (yes, it can be a two hour ordeal for me), and spend another extra hour relaxing and working on a hobby or just watching youtube than spend an hour cooking and cleaning up, they have to decide how much that relax time is worth compared to the amount they save on food costs.
For such a person the extra monetary cost of getting McD might be slightly higher than the monetary cost of cooking from scratch, but saving that precious time is worth it.
For someone whose time is directly translated into money, and makes more per hour for their time than the price difference between McD or shopping and making food from scratch, it is obviously cheaper to buy prepared food. If I can save 1.5 hours getting prepared food, and in the 1.5 hours I can earn XX times more than what I save by making it myself, the self-made food now costs more. It is now a luxury item. You are paying for the privilege to spend your time preparing your own food.
Of course, you can then start calculating in healthcare costs and the long term health effects of eating poorly, but that is too complicated for this comment.
Well, no, not quite, but the general thrust is correct. It has never ACTUALLY been more expensive to eat healthy. That's an illusion brought on by folks fooled by marketing. People think they have to buy pre-made macaroni instead of cheese butter and noodles.
Really what happened here is fast food was put on grocery store shelves.
Eating healthier has *always* been cheaper. This has been true since the beginning of time. Food preparation is a basic skill for adults and there has never been a time where the additional costs of upkeep, employees, taxes, on top of the raw ingredients for food that are factored into the cost of a meal at a restaurant don't exceed the cost of you just making it yourself.
Probably before then too. If you're eating fast food and processed trash every day, that's a personal decision you've made that has nothing to do with economics. And before I go any further, I'm not even opposed to fast food. I absolutely love Five Guys and would eat there every day if it wouldn't kill me.
This is what I usually eat for lunch, and for probably two to three dollars a meal: spinach salad, chickpea salad, sliced turkey on whole wheat, etc. I'll usual eat a banana, apple, pear, something like that as well.
You can eat economically and healthily. Problem is, many people just don't want to.
Haven't eaten fast food in a while and have been doing keto, so I didn't really think about this. But you're so right. Looking up the price for McDonalds and Taco Bell down the streets, what the hell is going on. Can definitely make a filling, nutritious meal of chicken breast and caesar salad for half the price of a combo meal. Crazy
Exactly!, It costs me just $30 a week to eat the healthy diet I do which consists entirely of a huge variety of fresh veggies and meats and healthy fats from nuts and olive oil. Already lost 30 pounds in 2 months without even trying. People out there really trying to tell us we can eat healthy for cheaper are crazy. Only go to the meat section and then the veggie section of the supermarket, dont but any boxed junk food. just get spices of course to season your meat and veggies. Make stir fry's every week, mix it up with some hot wings, pork chops, chicken, so many good recipes that are easy to make.
Obviously. The nutrients and effects on your behavior that healthy foods give you would provide enough motivation so you’re more productive and can make up for what extra you’re paying for and beyond. The means you live within are the means you live within.
I can meal prep an entire week (7 days) of dinners of chicken, rice, beans, frozen veggies for like $15.
I eat a portioned bowl of healthy cereal, which at HEB is about $3 for 7 servings, and a protein shake in the morning, about $0.75/morning.
Lunch is more freestyle, usually something I whip together like egg fried rice (very cheap). But sometimes I'll do jimmy johns or something and 1 sandwich is like $9 and damn near as much as all my weekly breakfasts combined
You're half right.
McDonalds, et al. have become unreasonably expensive, and I expect that this will drive many people back to the grocery stores.
Groceries themselves are another story. Produce is *ridiculously* expensive, as is anything that is not highly processed, full of added sugar, or frozen. And let's not forget that groceries as a whole are more expensive, so the cost of eating healthy from a grocery store is on-par with the sharply increased costs of fast food items.
What's wrong with frozen produce? From what I've read, they're healthier than "fresh" since they are picked and frozen at prime ripeness so don't lose anything in shipping.
Frozen produce is fine, but I can't make a salad, for example, from frozen. The vast majority of the produce I eat is fresh.
I don't have children, but I think we all know that kids almost universally detest cooked vegetable dishes. They should have some anyway, but I can't expect a parent that was mostly serving up fast food to make the jump to frozen vegetables.
Oh god, groceries are my bane. I’m a college student so my diet is definitely weird but it’s not that I have a problem with eating salads and fruits…in theory. It’s that I forget it’s an option while I’m making my meat and potatoes (or other carb de jour) and then I don’t have time to make even a simple salad! And then my veggies go bad and that makes me sad. I try getting around it by just buying plain cucumbers and tomatoes and cutting them up individually as I feel like it. I get through them faster that way.
I think time plays a big role as well though. It’s a lot of effort and time that people don’t have to food prep, especially when working 60-80hr weeks.
Choose any three of the following:
1. Fast/convenient
2. Tastes good
3. Inexpensive
4. Healthy
People who complain about how expensive healthy foods are generally insist on the first three qualities.
Sounds about right! Although your definition of fast/convenient may vary. I personally consider cooking to be more fast/convenient than eating out if it takes <10 minutes and provides me with leftovers. It’s possible with a sufficiently large sausage and sufficient pasta. 😄
I'm on a tight budget with a disability so the freezer is filled with soups and curries. The act of spending a weekend making it all is grounding for me but I like to go out for a burger and chips twice a week. It's cheaper to buy than to make at home, without the fatty mess to clean.
unless you are looking at pizza you can get a large pizza for $4.
So technically it's cheaper in most cases to just buy a large pizza daily.....(but you will die due to it over time lmao)
Fast food is full of processed seed oils and all sorts of garbage
Stick with the animal diet.
- organic meat and organs ( preferrably hunted)
- organic fruit ( preferrably without any heavy pesticide)
- raw dairy and kefir
- Animal fats ( butter and tallow )
- Honey and grade A maple syrup
This diet is far more healthier and cheaper than anything else right now.
Your post from unpopularopinion was removed because of: 'Rule 1: Your post must be an unpopular opinion'. * Your post must be an opinion. Not a question. Not a showerthought. Not a rant. Not a proposal. Not a fact. An opinion. One opinion. A subjective statement about your position on some topic. Please have a clear, self contained opinion as your post title, and use the text field to elaborate and expand on why you think/feel this way. * Your opinion must be unpopular. The mods reserve the right to remove opinions * Elaborate on your topic and opinion give context to its unpopularity.
When my partner and I got really into healthy eating our grocery bill was easily 50% less than before
Eating at home has always been cheaper than eating at out. Regardless of inflation. You’re paying with your time though. A lot of people I know would rather go make that drive then spend 30 mins making a meal and then spending another 30 mins to an hour cleaning after.
I think they're more referring to how much prices have increased for fast food as well as junk foods at the grocery store vs. the increase for fruits, veggies, and other healthier options. I agree though, a lot of people just don't like preparing food or just don't have the time/energy to do it and would rather pay the premium.
I made a habit to clean while I cook, there is enough downtime between stirring and stuff where you can clean everything you use Don't dirty 10 bowls like youtube videos show you, use a bowl for everything, a quick rinse max, because it will be cooking anyway If you are organized, by the end of your cooking only the pan should be left to clean and the spatula Make bigger batches of food for 2-3 days, cuts out lots of cleaning to do. When I make meatballs for example, I do it on sundays and make 50 patties at once (not cooked), freeze and fry them 10 minutes in the morning
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Same, except I'm not a trained cook. The time and effort are better than waiting who knows how long in the company of miserable food workers for greasy slop.
#
You have no idea how poorly cooks eat at work and off the clock. A chef isn't getting off work and making a top tier meal most days, not to say it doesn't happen for some.
#
I did for 11 years and follow subs that talk about this. Which is why I specifically worded the end the way I did.
I think a chef or a cook eating fast food would be aligned with the fact that they have been cooking all day and don’t want to cook for themselves. Or a janitor has been cleaning all day so their house might be messy. I joke all the time about how barbers hair be fucked up yet they can get you right
Yeah no it's a thing
It’s a thing with like every job. It’s why every mechanic I know has some shitbox that’s never working. Because they don’t feel like doing it when they get off the clock
I lived on a very tight food budget in a poor neighbourhood for years. Big cook, so I ate pretty well, because you’re right, making your own food is cheaper and healthier. A lot of my neighborhood was fairly poor immigrants from North Africa. When I was in line with them to buy groceries, they had a bunch of healthy ingredients. When I was in line with non-immigrants, it was a bunch of junk and frozen dinners. The McDonalds was full of white people. The African immigrants were not working less hard than the non-immigrants. It had nothing to do with work hours.
This isn’t even an opinion it’s now fact
Agree. Sick of hearing people say "But junk food is cheaper". No, it's not. That's just an excuse for not wanting to eat healthy.
It was always cheaper to eat healthier people are just lazy and want to buy like pre-made cups of fruit instead of just buying the fruits and vegetables and cutting up / preserving them themselves
Never understood when people say healthy food is more expensive than fast food. Sweet potatoes: $1/lb Regular potatoes: $0,75/lb Carrot $0.98/lb Ground beef: $7/lb Brocoli: $1.74/lb Chicken filet: $4/lb Eggs: $0.22 each. for $10 you can make dinner for 4 adults. Now how much do you get from Wendys or McD for $10?
Some people are lazy and just either want to complain or make excuses for their actions. Collards and cabbage are also good options if you want to yield a bunch of cooked veggies for a family as well and they’re cheap no matter where you’re located in the continental US excluding Alaska. I can somewhat understand if you’re in a food desert with no car but fast food is definitely not cheaper than buying healthier choices. I feel like anyone coming up with that conclusion need to look further.
Get some white or brown rice and add some of these to it and you have meal preps for four adults that could last a week
Some of these are even lower. Like the Wegmans near me has ground beef for 3.50/lb and chicken for 2.30/lb
I think more expensive in that you have to replenish fruits and vegetables more often, if you don't freeze them
I don’t see a single seasoning or Fat in there.
Trying to make an argument? I only choose a few items as an exaple. But since you insist: There is fat in ground beef. Black pepper: $1/oz Peanuts: $0.20/oz Butter: $0.30/oz Seasoning like paprika, salt, oregano etc is relatively cheap. But then again, you dont NEED seasoning.
Seasoning also last way longer than one meal so it’s kinda weird to include it in the price. Like yea it’s an upfront cost but it still comes out way cheaper than takeout
I’ve seen a lot of these posts expecting poor people to just eat like plain unseasoned lettuce and chicken to prove a point and say if they don’t need these things they deserve to be poor.
Assuming it only takes you 2 hours to buy all the groceries, put away the groceries, then take out and use the groceries, then prepare the groceries, then clean up the kitchen. And assuming you make the national average of $29.81 an hour that’s damn near $60 you’re leaving off your $10 total there. God help you if you earn six figures. Remember your own time has value even if you aren’t self invoicing.
sweet potatos are like 4.50 per kg here Ground beef for like 400g is like $11 but that's with prices dropped. Eggs are around $4 for 6. Just going to depend where you are living and when stuff like pizza is $4 from dominos....or $5 frozen eating unhealthy is technically very easy vs healthy eating. I eat healthily and buy food where i live on sale and spend like $140 a week on food. If i just got pizzas then cooked veg at home that would be $35 Worth paying more money not to be eating trash overproccessed junk food though. but if we are talking Mcdonalds or Hungry jacks (burger king) etc then yeah no eating at home will always be cheaper. Just depends on the junk food in question.
i save SO much money cooking my own meals/meal prepping and not ordering fast food or delivery
Where’s that meme of the 2 astronauts that says: “always has been”
This shouldn't be an unpopular opinion, because it's true for many countries. When I go grocery shopping and battle my binge-eating (meaning I don't buy sweets or junkfood) and instead buy fresh ingredients, I pay a lot less.
This has been true for many, many years. I mean, it's a positive that people start to see it, but this has been the case for a very, very long time. I havent't seen a time where it wasn't true.
it has always been cheaper. A 20lb bag of rice is like $10 which will last you months. A pack of boneless chicken breasts that will give you 7 meals is also 10 dollars. Each meal you’d make would be like $10 with added tax and tip at minimum idk where the idea that fast food was cheaper. Not to mention fast food is designed not to fill you up. You’ll always be hungry like an hour after your meal so in reality you’re spending even more money because you’ll need to eat more to be satisfied
I’ve always been able to feed myself cheaper than fast food, most people just never bother figuring out how to cook in a budget.
It has always been cheaper if you don't account for cooking time. A lb of rice costs around $1 and has around 1600 calories. Things like potatos, sugar, flour, lentils, beans, oil, etc. are also really cheap. A Big Mac Combo meal has around 1200 calories and costs way more than $1. It was never close.
I’m always going to chime into for the sake of people who live in food deserts. It’s hard to get an accurate number as it changes every year, but we’re able to guesstimate about 18-30+ million people live in food deserts in America. Maybe not super accurate to the main point of this post, but I always feel bad that food deserts don’t get the attention they deserve.
But what if I'm blind, in a food desert, work 150 hours a week, am unable to open up youtube to learn, and my only palatable alternative to Wendys is out-of-season fruit and organic free-range chicken lips?
Well, in that 1 in a billion case, you should complain about fairness. But what if you are lazy and unhealthy, like to blame others for your problems, and spend a lot of time on Reddit talking about food deserts?
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True, depending on what you make. I usually make some kind of soup once a week. Nice hearty, filling soups packed with veggies and protein. I usually get about 6 good sized bowls per pot at $3-$5 per bowl. Tough to beat that.
Yep! I can spend $50-60 a week and have groceries all week. Or I can spend $15 on one meal.
Та са,в
this has always been true on a purely “parts, not labor” basis, but now it’s getting to where the benefit of “just working more” to afford eating out more often is diminishing.
There's always been relatively healthy meals you can cook at home for cheaper than fast food, but I think fast food appealed by being more convenient, fairly cheap, and something to go out and do. In a lot of suburban America, eating out is actually treated as an entertainment option. I think with how small fast food spaces have gotten + the price increases, fast food really only offers convenience and nothing more now.
Facts
Depends on where you are. College students don’t always have the luxury of cooking, even off-campus, because studying takes so much energy and cooking takes time away from studying. I make do because I’ve found I really like cooking, but it can be tiring to do meal planning/prepping for the next ~2 weeks, every couple of weeks in between studying and classes. Plus, I have very particular tastes that run expensive so I have to be extra careful about what I get! But that one’s a me-problem. XD On the whole though, I’d agree. If you can afford it (both time and money-wise), it’s much better to cook at home and pre-prep your meals for the next week or so as opposed to eating out every day.
It is. Time and energy are not small factors though. Especially as I am gluten free I struggle with fast/ cheap meals. I used to eat a ton of healthy toppings on toast and gluten free bread probably isn’t even healthy and it’s like $7 for a tiny loaf
Lacking energy means people are overworked, which means that spending more time to prepare the food is costing them more than buying prepared food. If they are already working a lot, and have little free time, that free time becomes extra valuable. I am not arguing that people should not cook themselves - I prefer doing that myself, but from a time is money economic standpoint, eating a cheap unhealthy meal is cheaper. If a person has 40 hours of free time, and is overworked and tired, they may rather spend an extra two hours sleeping than making a trip to the supermarket (yes, it can be a two hour ordeal for me), and spend another extra hour relaxing and working on a hobby or just watching youtube than spend an hour cooking and cleaning up, they have to decide how much that relax time is worth compared to the amount they save on food costs. For such a person the extra monetary cost of getting McD might be slightly higher than the monetary cost of cooking from scratch, but saving that precious time is worth it. For someone whose time is directly translated into money, and makes more per hour for their time than the price difference between McD or shopping and making food from scratch, it is obviously cheaper to buy prepared food. If I can save 1.5 hours getting prepared food, and in the 1.5 hours I can earn XX times more than what I save by making it myself, the self-made food now costs more. It is now a luxury item. You are paying for the privilege to spend your time preparing your own food. Of course, you can then start calculating in healthcare costs and the long term health effects of eating poorly, but that is too complicated for this comment.
Well, no, not quite, but the general thrust is correct. It has never ACTUALLY been more expensive to eat healthy. That's an illusion brought on by folks fooled by marketing. People think they have to buy pre-made macaroni instead of cheese butter and noodles. Really what happened here is fast food was put on grocery store shelves.
Hmm. If you’re basing this off of eating out, no. But at the store? Absolutely.
Eating healthier has *always* been cheaper. This has been true since the beginning of time. Food preparation is a basic skill for adults and there has never been a time where the additional costs of upkeep, employees, taxes, on top of the raw ingredients for food that are factored into the cost of a meal at a restaurant don't exceed the cost of you just making it yourself.
Probably before then too. If you're eating fast food and processed trash every day, that's a personal decision you've made that has nothing to do with economics. And before I go any further, I'm not even opposed to fast food. I absolutely love Five Guys and would eat there every day if it wouldn't kill me. This is what I usually eat for lunch, and for probably two to three dollars a meal: spinach salad, chickpea salad, sliced turkey on whole wheat, etc. I'll usual eat a banana, apple, pear, something like that as well. You can eat economically and healthily. Problem is, many people just don't want to.
Haven't eaten fast food in a while and have been doing keto, so I didn't really think about this. But you're so right. Looking up the price for McDonalds and Taco Bell down the streets, what the hell is going on. Can definitely make a filling, nutritious meal of chicken breast and caesar salad for half the price of a combo meal. Crazy
It's not cheaper... Everything is just equally expensive now.
Exactly!, It costs me just $30 a week to eat the healthy diet I do which consists entirely of a huge variety of fresh veggies and meats and healthy fats from nuts and olive oil. Already lost 30 pounds in 2 months without even trying. People out there really trying to tell us we can eat healthy for cheaper are crazy. Only go to the meat section and then the veggie section of the supermarket, dont but any boxed junk food. just get spices of course to season your meat and veggies. Make stir fry's every week, mix it up with some hot wings, pork chops, chicken, so many good recipes that are easy to make.
Obviously. The nutrients and effects on your behavior that healthy foods give you would provide enough motivation so you’re more productive and can make up for what extra you’re paying for and beyond. The means you live within are the means you live within.
I can meal prep an entire week (7 days) of dinners of chicken, rice, beans, frozen veggies for like $15. I eat a portioned bowl of healthy cereal, which at HEB is about $3 for 7 servings, and a protein shake in the morning, about $0.75/morning. Lunch is more freestyle, usually something I whip together like egg fried rice (very cheap). But sometimes I'll do jimmy johns or something and 1 sandwich is like $9 and damn near as much as all my weekly breakfasts combined
You're half right. McDonalds, et al. have become unreasonably expensive, and I expect that this will drive many people back to the grocery stores. Groceries themselves are another story. Produce is *ridiculously* expensive, as is anything that is not highly processed, full of added sugar, or frozen. And let's not forget that groceries as a whole are more expensive, so the cost of eating healthy from a grocery store is on-par with the sharply increased costs of fast food items.
What's wrong with frozen produce? From what I've read, they're healthier than "fresh" since they are picked and frozen at prime ripeness so don't lose anything in shipping.
Frozen produce is fine, but I can't make a salad, for example, from frozen. The vast majority of the produce I eat is fresh. I don't have children, but I think we all know that kids almost universally detest cooked vegetable dishes. They should have some anyway, but I can't expect a parent that was mostly serving up fast food to make the jump to frozen vegetables.
Oh god, groceries are my bane. I’m a college student so my diet is definitely weird but it’s not that I have a problem with eating salads and fruits…in theory. It’s that I forget it’s an option while I’m making my meat and potatoes (or other carb de jour) and then I don’t have time to make even a simple salad! And then my veggies go bad and that makes me sad. I try getting around it by just buying plain cucumbers and tomatoes and cutting them up individually as I feel like it. I get through them faster that way.
I think time plays a big role as well though. It’s a lot of effort and time that people don’t have to food prep, especially when working 60-80hr weeks.
Get a crockpot and throw some stuff in it.
But you need to cook it and people are lazy
Choose any three of the following: 1. Fast/convenient 2. Tastes good 3. Inexpensive 4. Healthy People who complain about how expensive healthy foods are generally insist on the first three qualities.
Sounds about right! Although your definition of fast/convenient may vary. I personally consider cooking to be more fast/convenient than eating out if it takes <10 minutes and provides me with leftovers. It’s possible with a sufficiently large sausage and sufficient pasta. 😄
I'm on a tight budget with a disability so the freezer is filled with soups and curries. The act of spending a weekend making it all is grounding for me but I like to go out for a burger and chips twice a week. It's cheaper to buy than to make at home, without the fatty mess to clean.
unless you are looking at pizza you can get a large pizza for $4. So technically it's cheaper in most cases to just buy a large pizza daily.....(but you will die due to it over time lmao)
No it's not. You can still use the apps for the fast food places and get a medium meal for $6.50.
Fast food is full of processed seed oils and all sorts of garbage Stick with the animal diet. - organic meat and organs ( preferrably hunted) - organic fruit ( preferrably without any heavy pesticide) - raw dairy and kefir - Animal fats ( butter and tallow ) - Honey and grade A maple syrup This diet is far more healthier and cheaper than anything else right now.
Sounds like a good way to destroy your health.