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 Random Dude wrote:
I can't claim to know about the situation in European countries, but I assume food prices are different. Recently many of the top food growing states in the U.S. experienced prolonged droughts which raised the cost of produce.

I've been to Paris, France for a few weeks...

Parisian and the the folks out in the sticks are waaaaaay more active than the States. For one, everytihing is basically in walking distance.

Food portions are MUCH smaller.

 whembly wrote:

 Random Dude wrote:
I can't claim to know about the situation in European countries, but I assume food prices are different. Recently many of the top food growing states in the U.S. experienced prolonged droughts which raised the cost of produce.

I've been to Paris, France for a few weeks...

Parisian and the the folks out in the sticks are waaaaaay more active than the States. For one, everytihing is basically in walking distance.

Food portions are MUCH smaller.

Activity level is a good point. I'm an avid runner. I can't understand how people can sit around and not get any exercise at all. Personally, I would just be bored.

 Random Dude wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Random Dude wrote:
I can't claim to know about the situation in European countries, but I assume food prices are different. Recently many of the top food growing states in the U.S. experienced prolonged droughts which raised the cost of produce.

I've been to Paris, France for a few weeks...

Parisian and the the folks out in the sticks are waaaaaay more active than the States. For one, everytihing is basically in walking distance.

Food portions are MUCH smaller.

Activity level is a good point. I'm an avid runner. I can't understand how people can sit around and not get any exercise at all. Personally, I would just be bored.

Well I have a computer and the internet so...

Well, eating moderately could easily mitigate lower activity level.

Yeah but this factory paste stuff tastes so good!

Ah right. In Australia, a quarter pounder meal is about 9 bucks, and I was just giving 1 to each person. That's before large, extra bits and bobs, etc. So that may be why I thought fast food would be more expensive over there than it is.

 Random Dude wrote:
Well, eating moderately could easily mitigate lower activity level.

Eating is too much effort. IV drips are the way to go

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Random Dude wrote:
There's also the problem of healthy food being too expensive. It's much cheaper for a family to go order a pizza than to go to a grocery and buy fresh fruits and vegetables. It puts people in a bad situation if they're already struggling to make ends meet.

Not really. That's a common misconception but by actually taking the time to plan out a weeks meals and what you need, it can be cheaper to eat healthily.

Buy 3 medium to large courgettes (zucchini for you americans ), 2 large onions, 3 peppers, a tin of kidney beans, two tins of tomatoes, some tomato purée or passata, 500 to 750g of mince and some chilli powder and paprika, rice. That can make you enough Chilli to be a main meal for a family of 4-5 for two days (and you can freeze leftovers if you want to keep them for next week etc.) and you'll have purée and the spices left over for when you want to make it again.

That meal is $30, not counting the cost for spices or oil.

Two days of McDonalds are: 2 Happy Meals ($2.50), 2 burgers from the Dollar menu for each adult ($4.00), French Fries ($1.50) for a total of $10.50 a day. So I can eat 3 meals at McDonalds for the same price that I can eat two meals at home.

And that is just dinner, not counting breakfast and lunch. Although cereal & milk might be the one meal that is truly cheaper and easier at home.


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 motyak wrote:
Ah right. In Australia, a quarter pounder meal is about 9 bucks, and I was just giving 1 to each person. That's before large, extra bits and bobs, etc. So that may be why I thought fast food would be more expensive over there than it is.

It's $5.50 here per Quarter Pounder meal (with cheese!).

Cooking healthy at home doesn't have to be expensive. Tonight We made Rosemary Yukon gold potatoes (.69/lb), steamed green beans (1.19/lb) and tiger shrimp ($8.99/lb). For my wife an I it was less than $10 for the meal. Now, we did have the salt, pepper, dried rosemary, and cayenne pepper already, but that's a once a quarter purchase.

You can pay less for chicken breast if you get it bone in and filet it yourself. You can use chicken thighs for pretty much any recipe that involves cutting up chicken.

While eating at fast food is cheap, it's not necessarily that much cheaper than cooking at home using fresh ingredients.


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And for a direct burger comparison, one can make turkey burgers at home using ground turkey (4.99/lb) and fresh bakery buns for less than it would cost for four people to eat quarter pounders and mcheartattack

*All prices based on our trip to the market today.

 d-usa wrote:


Hate to make the world dark and gray for you, but for many people that school lunch is 1/1 meals a day.

Many schools/ school districts are routing their bus lines so that kids get off the bus early enough to get some breakfast at school, especially the bus routes that follow the more poor family areas. So it still stands that if you make ALL meals at school healthy, these kids would be getting 2/3 or 2/2 meals a day that are healthy.



Also, I'd like to point out the hugely flawed "food pyramid" that the US government insists on everyone using.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 d-usa wrote:


Hate to make the world dark and gray for you, but for many people that school lunch is 1/1 meals a day.

Many schools/ school districts are routing their bus lines so that kids get off the bus early enough to get some breakfast at school, especially the bus routes that follow the more poor family areas. So it still stands that if you make ALL meals at school healthy, these kids would be getting 2/3 or 2/2 meals a day that are healthy.

And that would help quite a bit. Even one healthy meal, and the actual act of teaching what a healthy meal is like, is beneficial.

Also, I'd like to point out the hugely flawed "food pyramid" that the US government insists on everyone using.

We haven't used the 'food pyramid" in quite a while

 cincydooley wrote:
Cooking healthy at home doesn't have to be expensive. Tonight We made Rosemary Yukon gold potatoes (.69/lb), steamed green beans (1.19/lb) and tiger shrimp ($8.99/lb).
And for a direct burger comparison, one can make turkey burgers at home using ground turkey (4.99/lb) and fresh bakery buns for less than it would cost for four people to eat quarter pounders and mcheartattack

*All prices based on our trip to the market today.

This also boils down to the Cost of Living in your area.... Where I'm at, a pound of shrimp, regardless of type is going to run a minimum of $12-15 (depending on what grocery store you shop at) per pound.

As to the second part of your statement... I live near enough a butcher shop that I can get 93% lean ground beef for 4.49/lb (any grocery store, that same % is going to be at least 6)... As a result of the price and quality, I now do grocery shopping in at least 3 locations: ALL meat (as we generally only eat land animals, with seafood as a "special occasion" or "can afford" item) comes from that local butcher shop. Then, any canned goods/boxed foods (both the wife and I work, so yeah, cooking "quick" meals is our ideal, because no one wants to come home at 6pm to cook for an hour, have the kids eat and straight to bath/bed time with no real time spent with them) come from one grocery store, while basically ALL produce, veggies/fruit as well as the occasional seafood come from another grocery store.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:


We haven't used the 'food pyramid" in quite a while

Most of the schools/public places I've seen have started using a similar thing, it's largely the same graphic, with instead of the layers of brick, it's more like a slice of pizza... but it's still based on the same flawed thinking as the pyramid

And not just the price, but TIME. If you are working 9-5 you wake up at 7 and make a quick breakfest, make lunch come home at 5 and are exhausted. Who wants to do alot of prep work when hungryman is there.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
I'm one of those fat guys who isn't really a fat guy. I'm overweight, but carry it pretty well. People have been surprised when I told them what I weigh. Desk jobs and beer do terrible things to a person.

My problem with this particular doom and gloom is that I was "obese" by some metrics when I was literally wearing size 26 pants half hanging off my ass baggy and working out regularly. At the same time, I'm a long way from that now (a fact that bothers me) and working on it.

I suppose usually people think of the giant fatty that rides the rascal at walmart when they think of the obesity issue. There's a lot of those, but how many are there really? I guess I'm not saying it's not an issue. I just wonder if it's not overblown.
.

Obeisity is poorly explained. Im considered obese at 309lb. But Im not overly big. Im just naturally a big guy. Obese is considered 20lb over the ideal, which is too low to begin with.

Well, and just without spot checking physical appearance, I have no idea what that actually could look like on a person. I know a guy who is obese, by almost any definition and about 5'7". he weighs much more than me, and then I also know a guy who weighs about the same amount as the other guy, but he's about 6'5", so I'd expect that. There should be some scale (probably logrithmic) that I'm not sure actually exists when judging these things. Like I said earlier, when I was a musclebound douchebag in school, I weighed over 200 lbs and was "obese", but it was muscle and bone.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
And not just the price, but TIME. If you are working 9-5 you wake up at 7 and make a quick breakfest, make lunch come home at 5 and are exhausted. Who wants to do alot of prep work when hungryman is there.

Umm, no.... I'm up between 5-6am, drop the kids off at daycare, and straight to the gym. I'm at the gym for about an hour, then home for work until I pick the kids up between 4:30 and 5. (This is my new schedule since leaving the army the insurance industry is tough but great at the same time)


And, you'd be surprised to know that learning a few essential kitchen skills mean you can make damn near ANYTHING fairly quickly, leaving much of the only real prep time being in the decision of what to thaw, or deciding what to cook.

You can also spend one day to do prepwork, so all you have to do on the individual days is to get your bags and cook.

The whole Food Pyramid/whatever it is now thing has always been flawed.

Also, a lot of people may be "overweight", but again its based on rather shaky standards that are old.

I know a lot of people who are "overweight" but not unhealthy.

The BMI chart is also a very bad indicator. It assumes you have a specific body type and aren't particularly tall or short. If I was in the so-called healthy weight range I'd be anorexic! Basically, there is no standard you can apply. Each person has to be evaluated individually.

I don't actually see all that many people I would actually consider to be an unhealthy weight.



And eating healthy isn't actually all that much more expensive. What it really is is less convenient.

Its cheaper for me as a college student to buy and prepare meals at home oddly enough. It just takes time I may not have. So I end up eating a fair bit of my meals out simply because I don't have time to prepare at home.

If people just bothered to make more home cooked meals they'd eat healthier.

 d-usa wrote:
You can also spend one day to do prepwork, so all you have to do on the individual days is to get your bags and cook.

So now I have to spend my day off from the office cooking for those days im at the office?
You have to get in the mindset of someone who doesnt have alot of time to do that stuff

I doubt he means the entire day, probably two hours tops.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
You can also spend one day to do prepwork, so all you have to do on the individual days is to get your bags and cook.

So now I have to spend my day off from the office cooking for those days im at the office?
You have to get in the mindset of someone who doesnt have alot of time to do that stuff

I dumped about 5 hours into making a stew that lasted about 4 servings (a couple of those were multiple people), three loaves of bread, and some homemake sourdough pancakes one night last week.

My mom spent Sundays cooking up most of the food for the next week. It's really seriously doable.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
You can also spend one day to do prepwork, so all you have to do on the individual days is to get your bags and cook.

So now I have to spend my day off from the office cooking for those days im at the office?
You have to get in the mindset of someone who doesnt have alot of time to do that stuff

I work full time, I go to school full time, I have a new baby. I truly have no idea what it is like not to have time...

Doing prepwork for an hour or two will actually take less time than preping and cooking as you go along.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
And not just the price, but TIME. If you are working 9-5 you wake up at 7 and make a quick breakfest, make lunch come home at 5 and are exhausted. Who wants to do alot of prep work when hungryman is there.

I wake up at 530, go to the gym for 30-45 mins if cardio, get to work by 8, get home between 5-530. Make dinner by 630ish. Go to the gym to lift at 830-10; come home, finish up any work and go to bed at about 1130.

We do a lot of our weekly prep work on Saturday and Sunday.

The meal we cooked tonight took about 30 mins to make, and that's only because we roasted the potatoes, which took around 25 mins.

Seriously, we could do something cool here. We could fix you up with a badass food menu. How much time do you want to spend a night working on food. Or even a week on food, if you wan't to consolidate it. I can get you recipes for good gak. Bread? Stew? Crockpotting stuff is easy and beats out McDonalds in literally every way.

 d-usa wrote:
You can also spend one day to do prepwork, so all you have to do on the individual days is to get your bags and cook.

Absolutely.

We do this for anything that's labor intensive past maybe 15 mins.

A whole chicken is $3-$4 tops and I can get 4-5 meals out of it.

Add in a big bag of chips, some bread for sandwiches, and a couple 2 liters and I've got 3 days of food for under $12

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
You can also spend one day to do prepwork, so all you have to do on the individual days is to get your bags and cook.

So now I have to spend my day off from the office cooking for those days im at the office?
You have to get in the mindset of someone who doesnt have alot of time to do that stuff

So, how long per day, on average do you play video games? how long do you read? how long do you take in showering/bathing?

Food prep doesn't literally take all day (unless you are planning a meal that does take that long), and I suspect that you "waste" a ton of time per day outside of work doing non-productive things (I'm no saint here either, almost all of us waste a bunch of time every day that doesn't ultimately help us in most areas of our life).

Im not saying It isnt doable, But to say everyone can do it or hase the time two is wrong. I know alot of people who by the end of the day are tired from being an a off until 5-6 and go home. They dont have energy to do cardio because it is spent all day at work

 daedalus wrote:
Seriously, we could do something cool here. We could fix you up with a badass food menu. How much time do you want to spend a night working on food. Or even a week on food, if you wan't to consolidate it. I can get you recipes for good gak. Bread? Stew? Crockpotting stuff is easy and beats out McDonalds in literally every way.

For those who live in college dorms, military barracks or the like will often have the major problem of not being allowed any sort of "hot plate" other than a coffee maker, so usually this will knock a crockpot off of the "available cooking items" list (unfortunately)

 Grey Templar wrote:
A whole chicken is $3-$4 tops and I can get 4-5 meals out of it.

Add in a big bag of chips, some bread for sandwiches, and a couple 2 liters and I've got 3 days of food for under $12

Drink water. Can go under ten dollars

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Im not saying It isnt doable, But to say everyone can do it or hase the time two is wrong. I know alot of people who by the end of the day are tired from being an a off until 5-6 and go home. They dont have energy to do cardio because it is spent all day at work

So I could drop you the chicken stew that will take about 30 minutes of effort and be reasonably healthy, or the recipe to cook your own bread that takes a little while longer but is literally the healthiest bread you've ever eaten (not to mention the tastiest)... what sounds good?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
Seriously, we could do something cool here. We could fix you up with a badass food menu. How much time do you want to spend a night working on food. Or even a week on food, if you wan't to consolidate it. I can get you recipes for good gak. Bread? Stew? Crockpotting stuff is easy and beats out McDonalds in literally every way.

For those who live in college dorms, military barracks or the like will often have the major problem of not being allowed any sort of "hot plate" other than a coffee maker, so usually this will knock a crockpot off of the "available cooking items" list (unfortunately)

We had microwaves in college, so we could cheat that somewhat, but I feel your pain. I loved cooking even in high school. The first few years of college really hurt that.