Do people still say that it's cheaper to eat crap than fruits and veg? not true...

In My Humble Opinion
41

Another thing, related to lack of time for shopping/cooking, is a lack of knowledge. There are many, many people who have never learned to cook anything that doesn’t come in a can/box with directions. It’s bad enough doing shopping and cooking after work when I know what I’m doing. For someone with no skills and no knowledge and no time, that’s a pretty overwhelming expectation you’ve got there.

Yes, anyone can learn to shop and cook. But first you have to know that it’s worthwhile - which a lot of people don’t - and then you have to have the time, energy, and wherewithal to gain the tools and knowledge.

I can figure out how to cook something without burning it too badly in a $1 pan from the dollar store. But someone who’s just learning to cook and is blindly following a recipe they’ve found? Not so much. Several failures due to crappy tools and lack of knowledge can be enough to make someone trying to learn just give up in frustration.

Hell, I’m still trying to re-train my SO, who learned to cook from her farm-wife mother, on cooking vegetables. While she does some lovely stuff, her veg could come straight from a sitcom. Think bad 50s British cooking - burner on WFO at all times, cook it to death early, then reheat it at dinner time. Mmmm-mmmm-good!

If that’s all the “fresh” veggies you’ve ever had, then chances are you’ll go for the box of chicken nuggets instead.

42

In my tiny little WV town, we only have one ‘proper’ grocery store; even that doesn’t have a lot of selection, plus they price-gouge like crazy! Now, I’m fortunate enough to have a car and be able to get into Clarksburg once or twice a week, where there is an Aldi (great produce prices!) and a Kroeger to fill in for anything Aldi doesn’t have or that I’m brand-picky about. But a lot of folks around here don’t have a car, which means they have to buy what’s in walking-distance. What’s in walking distance is the fore-mentioned Shop 'n Save that price gouges, as well as a Dollar General and a 7-11 that has a built-in sub shop.

The Shop 'n Save even has a refrigerator case full of deli-prepared foods which proudly ( :rolleyes: ) advertise: “The items in this case can be purchased with your food stamp card!” I also believe the cold subs at the sub shop at 7-11 can be bought with food stamps.

It also often is a case of just lack of planning. Even though we only have the one grocery store, right across the street from the grocery store is a church that acts as an Angel Food distributor. You can pay for Angel Food with food stamps. Fresh (well, frozen, but fairly high-quality) meats are available, as well as a fresh fruit and veggie box every month. But you have to plan to order the Angel Food, and plan to pick it up. I have a tenant on food stamps who has three young children. I keep urging her to save some of her food stamps to place an Angel Food order. She can even go to pick it up when I go pick mine up! But her food stamps come in on the 5th of the month, Angel Food orders often aren’t placed until the middle of the month, and by then, all her food stamps are gone! I’ll call her before I go to place my order and she’ll always say something like “Oh, no, Jim (her BIL) wanted to go to the market last Wednesday, so we went then”. By ‘to the market’, of course she means Shop 'n Save! :smack:

43

Neither McDonald’s burgers nor chicken nuggets contain any type of corn or soy fillers. That is absoulutely incorrect.

44

I can do the same with some selective shopping, but it’s not the same as living at the bottom. In college, I leaned pretty heavily on ramen (10/$1) and macaroni and cheese ($0.25/box, for the really cheap stuff). Paying $2 for a bag of lettuce wasn’t really on the radar when I was really struggling financially.

Don’t get me wrong, I eat healthy now and have found ways of making it less expensive. However, if I wanted to squeeze my grocery expenditures to the absolute limit, I would be eating crap food. It’s hard to justify a bag of greens for $2 when it’s not a lot of calories, or particularly comforting, or convenient. Also, food cost alone isn’t the problem - it’s also the fuel costs of cooking, maintaining the tools to cook properly (I burned stuff all the time until I got decent pots and pans), and, most of all, the expenditure of time.

I’m sure there are people who are just lazy or whatever, and who could prioritize their money better, but there are legitimate reasons to turn to processed foods to save money when you’re poor.

45

I can’t say that the two of us have ever spent at much as $40 for a single week’s worth of produce. Also, in many cases, frozen produce can be much, much superior to the fresh stuff for cooked applications, since it’s flash-frozen fresh. I have no objection to frozen produce at all. In cans, I admit that I prefer tomato pastes, tomato sauce, diced tomatos, and pretty much most cooking-application tomatos from a can. We do keep other canned and boxed food for “just in case” (e.g., needing to eat something during a weekend home from a year-long business trip in Mexico). It’s also good to have for when I invite my parents over, because all they seem to like is crappy, processed foods.

The stems are good, and you don’t have to peel them! I can’t stand to eat frozen broccoli raw, but it’s excellent for a stir fry and other cooked applications. It comes down to picking the ingredients for the intended purpose.

This is how my mother cooked when I was growing up. We were poor (in the American sense, that is: welfare and foodstamps), but had access to grocery stores. My mother was just talentless. At 11 years of age I taught her how to roast a chicken for the first time (after years of observing her sister do so). I was the one who had to convince her to stop buying spaghetti dinners in a box and purchase spaghetti and any variety of sauces separately (hey, it was still a step up, and I admit to my liking of Prego to this day). I was still young and didn’t much like the taste of vegetables, though! If it wasn’t corn or potatoes or carrots, then yuck! I guess that was the nascence of my love of cooking and food, although I didn’t really take any steps to applying it for another 20 years. I still try to convince my mother to start cooking fresh, show her how easy it is, how much money she could save, but she won’t have any of it. It’s still Manwich mix once a week, Shake-n-Bake once a week, and so on. She didn’t even try to change after my step-father’s quintuple bypass. :frowning:

C.f. my mother, above. Her sister (my aunt) got all of the talent. I guess that’s typical though, since my aunt was the eldest, and my mom was the little baby.

46

Perhaps not directly, but the chicken and beef in McDonald’s foods are made cheap by feeding the animals large amounts of government-subsidized corn and soy.

47

This is true, too. Many here have cited dried beans as a good source of dirt-cheap nutrition. But. . .the prep instructions on the back of the bag say to “pick over the beans”. If you don’t already know what this means, it can be difficult to figure out what you’re picking them over for. Then, of course, you have to soak them for a long time, then cook them for a fairly long time, and you’re back to the lack-of-planning problem! Who has time to soak a pot of beans overnight when your kids are hungry now?

48

There’s one chain grocery store in all of Detroit.

49

There is certainly a personal responsibility part of it - people who prefer junk over good stuff. But there are people without reasonable access to decent groceries. And the people who don’t have the tools (pots and pans or knowledge) to cook anything that doesn’t say “unwrap and microwave for 2 minutes.”

50

Yea, so what?.. so is the beef and chicken you get at the supermarket and even that “organic”, “free range”, beef and chicken you get at the fru fru whole foods or health food store - they were also fed subsidized corn and soy… the veggie burgers you eat… guess what?.. they’re made with subsidized corn and soy and very likely HFCS, too…

And besides, she was clearly inferring that the meat at McDonald’s has bulk fillers, and that is absolutely incorrect. If she’s going tro be holier than thou, she should at least have her facts straight.

51

But that renders your whole point meaningless. Following your logic, everybody is full of shit. Literally. Especially people who eat organic foods.

52

Sure, right now when individual peppers are on sale, this is true. But in off season, I see that little package (which usually has moldy looking peppers to boot) for as much as $6.99.

53

I think a lot of the people here have never been dirt poor and/or stupid. If I’m dirt poor and/or stupid, and there a McDonald’s 1/4 mile away, a grocery store a mile away, I don’t have a car and have to walk or take the bus, and I can either go to McDonalds and buy a double cheeseburger and a large Coke for $2, or I can truck all the way to the grocery store and lug back some fresh produce and lean meats for a lot more than $2, what am I going to do? Bah bah bah bah bah, I’m lovin’ it.

54

Grocery stores aren’t necessarily the best business to run. There are huge amounts of waste, large amounts of shoplifting (even in “nice” parts of town). High labor costs. Facilities cost up the yango (you think your refrigerator costs a lot to run?) And just moving in won’t be sufficient to change diets - which means you’ll put out those beets and throw them away because few people in the neighborhood eat beets.

Aldi seems to be making a dent in a lot of cities and neighborhoods where people need access to groceries. And while Aldi sells a ton of packaged CRAP, they also have at least some produce, meat and dairy - or its better than the selection at 7-11. Their model works well for the neighborhoods - and the neighborhoods (at least here in the Twin Cities) are getting more ethnic - more recent immigrants, which helps move the produce off the shelves.

55

I’ve noticed this, too. My mom came from a huge family that didn’t have a lot of money, and she learned to cook cheap. Huge pots of dried beans really are dirt cheap, healthy and yes, they do taste good. My boyfriend and I can buy a bag of beans for a buck or two and have leftovers for days that freeze well.

Growing up we lived on beans, rice and frozen veggies. What I learned early on is that yes, it does take a little more time to cook things yourself, but when you can take the money you’d spend on a meal or two of cheap crap and spend it on food you make yourself, you frequently end up with leftovers. We can spend $20 on ingredients and have a massive pot of sauce that also freezes very well.

I will agree that if you aren’t able to get to a grocery store that sells exotic foods like beans and onions, this will be a lot more difficult, but if you value your health at all it’s worth it to really take a hard look at what you’re doing and take steps to change it. Being poor isn’t easy, but it doesn’t mean you can’t take care of yourself.

Do beans and rice taste better than Doritos and frozen pizza? I think so, but it depends on what you’re used to, I guess.

56

I was following up on purplehorseshoe’s post that seemed to be claiming that McDonald’s foods are cheap because of corn and soy. devilsknew pointed out that they don’t use fillers, I just meant that though there may be no fillers, the meat itself is still inexpensive because of corn and soy-based animal feed.

Can you explain how my point is meaningless? I’m not following your logic.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

And, BTW, I don’t actually buy supermarket meat. I have a meat CSA from a farm that raises cows, chickens and pigs on their natural diets They’re not using commercial corn and soy-based feeds.

57

Sorry. I was burning through the responses and mistook the thrust of your argument.

58

That matches with what I’ve read about Chicago’s problems. Supermarkets around here, per the reports, don’t want to move into areas that have zero supermarkets, due to the tight market/margin of profit and issues with competition. They assume that another competitor would already be there if there was good money to be made. Many of the neighborhoods that have no supermarkets also have poor-quality businesses around, like liquor stores, pawn shops, and check-cashing/payday loan places, which discourages a lot of the big supermarket chains.

Aldi has been making headway in the city of Chicago as well, and I think the produce has improved from a decade or so ago. I go there on occasion for cheap staples.

Knowing how to cook and having the tools to do so is an important factor. I remember college friends moving into their own apartments and not being well-supplied with kitchen gear or knowledge. They would have serious trouble with things like buying a whole or half chicken and then not knowing what to do with it, or not having a decent knife for a particular task and completely botching the job. Reading a “basic” cookbook’s recipe right before making dinner and discovering they didn’t have some ingredient that would be standard in a lot of kitchens of “established”, halfway-decent home cooks. Not knowing what “simmer” or other cooking terms really mean. At least many college students have some discretionary income and education; now imagine trying to cope if you don’t have a good education, maybe you can’t even read all that well, you don’t have a lot of money, the nearest decent grocery store is a couple bus rides away, etc.

This isn’t exclusive to the poor in Chicago, I’ll note - the report I cited previously states that about 13,000 people with a family income of $100,000/yr or more also live in “food deserts.” At least with a decent income you probably have the finances to shop via Peapod, drive to a good market, etc.

59

A large part of the issue is also education. If you don’t know what’s healthy, it’s hard to plan a healthy meal. Take juice, for example. Even very educated people buy drinks that are marketed as 100% juice, assuming that they’re a nutritious addition to a meal, even a potential substitute for a serving of fruit. But if you look at the label, you’ll find that the first couple of ingredients are sugar and water, making that choice only slightly better than soda.

Or, vegetables. Collard greens by themselves are pretty healthy, right? They’re a vegetable, they’re green, they’re cheap. But then you sautee them in butter and suddenly the amount of saturated fat makes what would’ve been a healthy side an artery clogger. Oh, and do you know how many people put fatty ham hocks and chunks of fat into beans?

Then there’s the price: I’m shocked at how inexpensive the OP’s food is. I’m in St. Louis, within walking distance of two major supermarkets and when I bought cucmbers, peppers (2 for $5, by the way, and that’s a steal, especially for winter), garlic, lettuce greens, broccoli, carrots, some fruit, bread, meat and milk, my bill came to $72. Granted, the meat and milk would’ve been the more expensive items (meat was $6; milk was $4 a half-gallon and I bought two) and the canteloupe I purchased was out of season ($2.99 per piece), but still…that’s a lot of cash. And I already have many spices at home, so I didn’t have to buy those, but they can get very pricey very quickly.

Of course, had I gone to the Indian market, I would’ve paid about half what I paid at a larger supermarket, but I would’ve had to drive for 30 minutes. If I had to take public transportation, there’s no way I would’ve been able to get back home with all that crap comfortably.

60

Even if you’ve got a roof over your head and a single electrical outlet, all you need is a crock pot and a minimal amount of effort. There’s really no good excuse if you can meet those simple requirements. If you get bored of crock pot recipes all time, save up for awhile and buy your self a George Foreman grill. If you live in a “food desert” (as opposed to living in a food dessert [yummy redundancy]) you’ll have to put a little more effort into compiling a grocery list that will last for weeks in order to avoid the bus ride and hike it supposedly requires to get to the grocer. The big bonus with the crock pot is that it makes you dinner while you’re at work. The no time/too tired excuse doesn’t work.

Aside from that, people need to teach their boys and girls cooking basics at the minimum. College-aged kids shouldn’t be baffled at the prospect of making soup that isn’t ramen, or making scrambled eggs. In my view, it’s unacceptable to say “I don’t know how to cook” or to laugh off the lack of skills like, “my husband can’t make toast”. It sucks that you weren’t taught, but it’s time to teach yourself. Adults shouldn’t remain culinary infants. Start cracking eggs and cookbooks. Once your children are out of college dorms and cafeterias, or otherwise out on their own, a crock pot with a few dozen recipes printed off the web is a great gift.