Is junk food actually cheaper than healthy food?

Factual Questions
41

[QUOTE=kawaiitentaclebeast]
I have to admit there might be a bit of regional variation here. I’m not sure if I can work out the equivilant price across currencies and Consumer Price Indexes, but as far as I can tell, in Canada, even a single Big Mac is far more expensive than a meal of steamed rice, vegetables and eggs. Is fast food then substantially cheaper in the US than Canada? I have also heard, here and elsewhere, that serving sizes are bigger in the US. I haven’t noticed this in my various trips there, and I did live in the US for a few years, but if true then it must also play a role.
[/QUOTE]

This could be. I’ve never ordered le Big Mac or a Royale with Cheese, so I wouldn’t know. As for knocking out the complex carbs, I think the answer is yes, most people in North America would be significantly leaner and healthier if they knockled the complex carbs (rice, pasta, white bread) completely out of their diets and instead ate more of certain legumes, fruits, nuts, fresh vegetables and lean meats.

42

Cans are heavy and frozen things drip. It’s true. I accept that argument. But if you are buying one day of food at a time, then it’s only one can…

Still standing up for my point that “healthy” doesn’t equal “organic.” I think that “healthy” should mean, basically, food that isn’t processed too much. Meat, poultry, fish, grain, vegetables, fruit, milk, yogurt, eggs–all healthy. Pasta, noodles, bread, prepared dishes–somewhat less healthy. Fast food, cookies, cakes, ice cream, cheese, Doritos, sausages, crackers–unhealthy.

And why on earth would it cost $1000 to outfit a kitchen? Did that include appliances? I think I spent about $400. My knives and pots were pretty cheap, but they still work just fine four years later. I’m sure things cost more in Seattle, but not that much more. And I probably shouldn’t be nattering over the point, because people who can’t afford to buy cooking utensils can’t afford my $400 kitchen setup, either.

kawaiitentaclebeast: it sounds like you are in your early 20s. I and my peers are just past 25 now, and believe me, there is a metabolism slowdown at 25. We are all scared to death of what 30, 35, and beyond are going to bring.

43

The healthy stuff is out there but it’s more expensive and harder to find…just look at mcdonalds…they have over 50 items on the menu but only something like 3 (the salad…fruit cup…milk) are really healthy, not very filling, and expensive. The dollar menu is always the crappy stuff like double cheese burger and fries, and of course to get the value of the “value” meals you have to get a big corn syrupy drink to wash it down with. When i go to the poor side of town grocery store it’s 99% crap…a tiny corner of the store has a few old veggies…you see the people in line getting huge packages of chicken wings, ground meat, white bread, cookies, mayo. We’re continually being told to eat more fresh vegetables, lean meats and fish, whole grains…see what percent of your grocery store are the healthy items and what are prepared simple carb/fat/salt/sugar/corn syrup…it’s really hard to eat healthy when 95% of what’s sold is crap.

44

[QUOTE=Sattua]
Cans are heavy and frozen things drip. It’s true. I accept that argument. But if you are buying one day of food at a time, then it’s only one can…
[/QUOTE]
Sounds good on paper. But my point is, you shop for efficiency. A can is heavy; this counts against it. Thus the percentage of canned goods I buy when I’m bussing it is lower than when I’m driving. Pretty simple. If I’m at the store, I may need orange juice or bleach or whatever heavy item. I may just not feel like adding a can of tomatoes to the weight of the load I’m gonna have to carry.

[QUOTE=Sattua]
Still standing up for my point that “healthy” doesn’t equal “organic.” I think that “healthy” should mean, basically, food that isn’t processed too much. Meat, poultry, fish, grain, vegetables, fruit, milk, yogurt, eggs–all healthy. Pasta, noodles, bread, prepared dishes–somewhat less healthy. Fast food, cookies, cakes, ice cream, cheese, Doritos, sausages, crackers–unhealthy..
[/QUOTE]
And again, it’s not that simple. You seem to have determined to hold onto an image of a welfare queen spending all her food stamps on whipped cream and crack. I’d hoped my detailed “case history” would have given you some idea of how the balance is simply–if only slightly–weighted toward fewer healthy choices, or more difficult healthy choices. It’s not as simple as, “you’re standing their with $2 in your hand. Are you gonna buy an apple or pork rinds?” It’s far, far more complicated that. I’m sorry if your prejudices make it impossible for you to grasp that. The variety of the things you eat, over many many meals, is more complicated than “carrots are healthier than Doritos.”

[QUOTE=Sattua]
And why on earth would it cost $1000 to outfit a kitchen?
[/QUOTE]
Because it did. I just kept buying what I thought I needed, and figured out when I began to slow down that I had spent around $1000. And I have friends whose kitchens are better, and more expensively, stocked than mine was.

[QUOTE=Sattua]
Did that include appliances?.
[/QUOTE]
Minor; some large soup bowls, a ladle, some funnels; that kind of thing.

[QUOTE=Sattua]
I think I spent about $400. My knives and pots were pretty cheap, but they still work just fine four years later. I’m sure things cost more in Seattle, but not that much more. And I probably shouldn’t be nattering over the point, because people who can’t afford to buy cooking utensils can’t afford my $400 kitchen setup, either.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, and I’m gettin kinda tired of emphasizing over and over again that this is a very individual thing.

Sorry if I sound like I’m gettin testy, but your position is basically, “Nope, there’s no difference at all; poor people have exactly the same opportunities and availabilities and nutritional access as rich people. The only difference is you’re fat and lazy and stupid.”

Why is it so hard to understand that opportunity and access vary with income level? That people with more money have more choices? Is that really such a foreign concept?

45

Actually, I’m not saying anything about poor people. I came in here to argue that, in this kind of thread, a lot of people have a false idea of what is healthy, namely that it means expensive, organic, designer, soy, whatever, when in fact it ought to mean just good, whole food. Of course the organic stuff is expensive–too expensive. But the non-organic stuff is nutritionally equivalent.

My secondary argument is that the prices you quoted for kitchen gear seemed inflated.

I’m sorry that you’re so het up you can’t read me clearly. I’ve made my points, and I’m outta here.

46

Again, are we begging the question?

Stores/restaraunts stock what sells. Supply and demand. People want big/fattening/greasey meals, the demand is met, and the demand keeps rising. Some demand pops up for low-cal options and the stores/restaraunts react, but DEMAND is not high, so SUPPLY is not high.

There is high demand for lottery tickets and liquour in low-income areas, and check cashing stores: All are signs of a group of people who don’t know how to spend their money or how to spend their calories.

Now, as to WHY the demand is so high, that becomes a complicated social question.

47

I think people are a bit confused about what a “healthy” diet means. It doesn’t mean bean sprouts and soy milk, it doesn’t mean “The Atkins Diet”, it doesn’t mean organic blue-green algae extract and flax-seed oil capsules.

It just means fresh fruit and vegetables, a bit of meat or other protein, some inexpensive starch, go easy on the fat and salt.
You don’t need a lot of money or time to cook a pot of rice. You don’t need a lot of equipment to cook a pot of rice, you just neet a pot, a cup, and a spoon to eat it. It takes about a minute to measure out the water, meausre out the rice, pour them in the pot and turn on the stove. You can chop up head of broccoli and toss it on top of the cooking rice, and you’ve got steamed vegetables and rice. This is a dirt cheap meal. If you have a rice cooker it’s even easier. I’ve had the same rice cooker for 15 years, which I got used, and it works great, the advantage is that the sides have premeasured lines, you don’t need a stovetop, and it turns off automatically so you don’t even have to watch the clock. Do the same thing with ramen noodles instead of rice…toss in the ramen, toss in fresh veggies, drop in an egg, and 1 minute later you’re eating.

Sure, $3.00 buys you more rice than it does fresh vegetables. But how much rice can you eat in one sitting? Probably $0.50, max. If you can’t afford another $1.00 for broccoli and carrots then how could you afford a McDonald’s hambuger either?

Heck, how much does a peanut butter sandwich and an apple cost, per meal? Even if you add jam?

And you don’t have to live near an upscale grocery store to get vegetables. Doesn’t that barrio store have vegetables? What do you think the undocumented day laborers eat? Stacks of dirt cheap tortillas, bags of dirt-cheap beans, onions, vegetables, tiny amounts of cheap meat, chiles, a little of this, a little of that. They certainly aren’t spending their food money getting a crunchwrap supreme from Taco Bell.

So, if you want a cheap healthy diet, eat like a mexican peasant. Or a chinese peasant. Or an indian peasant. Or an italian peasant. OK, maybe add more fresh veggies than those guys used to get. But it isn’t that hard.

Thing is, food is so much cheaper nowadays relative to other things. Read books from 100 years ago and you’ll find things like people selling their coats to buy food. But how much can you sell a second-hand coat for nowadays? $5.00? And people would live in garrets and starve to death. They had enough money to intermittently pay the rent on a cheap apartment but not enough to buy food. Nowadays if you were that poor you’d be on the streets, but getting enough to eat wouldn’t be a problem.

48

Again, I apologize for my tone. But I’m also not that interested in debating such a complex issue with anyone who believes that income level is absolutely not a factor in the choices available to you when you are *buying * things to eat. If income is irrelevant in a discussion about the food people buy–if the simple, inarguable, universal truth that income and choices are directly proportional is not a basic given in such a discussion–well then I don’t have much more to contribute here either.

49

What question am I begging Philster? I don’t really give a shit about poor people or why they’re fat, I’m poor myself! I’m too busy trying to make ends meet between bus rides and I haven’t the time, Mmkay? :wink:

The question: Are junk foods cheaper than healthy foods, in terms of absolute prices? I will have to modify this to “In the US?” and “in Canada?”, since I’ve now realized that there might be a difference.

This question is important to me because I LIKE junk food, and being poor I want to be able to get it cheaply. However I am reduced to eating rice and vegetables because they are so much cheaper than the outlandish(by comparison) cost of eating every day at Mcdonalds and similar fast food establishments(my desired outcome, I also enjoy whipped cream. It is possible that if I one day become rich, I may eat nothing but whipped cream, everyday.). Can this situation be rectified? How?

50

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
Ain’t callin’ ya a liar, but I have to wonder. I’ve run into any number of people who think that, because they didn’t have much money in their younger years while they were getting through school and getting their careers off the ground, they’ve “been there” and know all about poverty. Bear in mind that poverty isn’t simply a matter of household income.
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[QUOTE=lissener]
it’s ungenerous of you, Duckster, to dismiss the entire low-income population as lazy and self-indulgent just because you, as an individual, respond differently, psychologically, to such personal economic challenges.
[/QUOTE]

Ya know, it’s rather snarky to attribute one’s experiences of something from a single post on the issue, let alone think that single post is dismissive of an entire low-income population. An OP was posted and a response given.

I’m fortunate that I no longer live that way now, but I do not forget it. I could find myself there again. Perhaps that’s why I am very careful in the food I buy and that I hate wasting it. I grew up in a household where we could “take what you want, but eat everything you take,” mentality. Food waste, even down to the bread crust was a mortal sin growing up. If that makes my food psychological makeup different than most, so be it.

51

Food companies try and sell us things that have a good markup for them. White flour, sugar, corn syrup, hydrgenated oil (crisco) are comodities that they get cheap. That’s why most grocery stores have an entire isle devoted to 1. crackers 2. cookies 3. soda pop 4. chips. Food manufacturers come out with hundreds of new products every year but MOST of them are basically white flour, sugar or salt and crisco arranged in some way or another. These products are cheap for them to produce and when prepared and boxed have a high mark up. That’s why they take up SO MUCH of the grocery store. They don’t care that the stuff isn’t good for you…they care about the bottom line. Fresh veggies don’t do SQUAT for General Foods or Krafts bottom line…so you don’t see much of them. What you do see is starchy, salty, fatty, sugary, starchy CRAP on 3/4 of most grocery store shelves.

52

[QUOTE=kawaiitentaclebeast]
Do you guys think that my current diet is “unhealthy”?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know exactly what you eat and in what amounts, so I’m not qualified to say. But I got the skinny (yuk yuk) from a pretty knowledgeable dietician.

Carbs are essential, but must be eaten in moderation. Half a cup per meal for a woman. That’s 1 slice of bread, or 1/4 of a bagel, or about a third of a potato (depending on the potato, of course). Men should eat slightly more. Now if you’ve ever seen half a cup of rice, you realize how very little that really is. On my new “diet”, I started with literally half a cup and felt like I was starving. I try to fill the void with veggies, which helps a lot, but still felt a bit deprived at first.

Think about the carbs you get in a restaurant meal. Two dinner rolls, a mound of mashed potatoes, croutons, and the cracker crumb topping on your shrimp. That’s probably 3-5 times what you need.

So are too many carbs bad for you? Yes. They’re loaded with calories. Go to www.fitday.com and enter in a typical meal for yourself. You might very well be apalled at the number of calories you’re getting from carbs. They are probably the single biggest contributor to the caloric content of the meal.

Atkins adherents claim all sorts of pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo about ketosis, but in fact, they have simply cut out a very high-calorie food.

53

I think we’re missing something else here too.

Salt, fat, sugar and starch taste good. In fact, I could go for a salty, fatty, sugary starchy meal right now. Our food instincts served us well on the African savanna, where salt, fat, sugar and starch were rare and difficult to get. There was no need to include a mechanism to tell that savanna hunter-gatherer to cut back on the sugar, because he could only gorge himself on sugar a few times a year when different varieties of fruits came in season.

So it isn’t surprising that grocery stores sell a lot of salty fatty sugary starchy food. The appetite for those foods is nearly bottomless, and they aren’t that expensive to manufacture. A bag of rice, a bag of flour, a package of salt, a bag of sugar, a bottle of vegetable oil…these are pretty cheap.

But people don’t get fat by cooking themselves 10 pound of cheap rice every day and eating it to the last kernel.

Fast food isn’t that expensive, but it is surely much more expensive than bulk rice. People don’t eat fast food because it’s the cheapest food they can find, they eat it because it’s mid-priced, convenient, and loaded with fat, salt, sugar and starch. But they could make hamburgers at home much more cheaply. A dollar for the cheapest burgers sounds really really cheap, but a bag of the cheapest buns and a pound of the cheapest hamburger and a bottle of the cheapest ketchup means you can make burgers at home for much less than a dollar a piece.

So people don’t get McDonald’s because it’s the cheapest. They get it for other reasons.

54

Yes, in my experience it is more expensive to eat healthy. My healthy I mean, fresh/frozen vegetables, fresh fruits, fresh lean meats and fish.

For example, here is a list of healthy items and how much they would cost at my local Safeway:

Poultry
chicken breasts 4.99/lb
lean ground turkey 4.61/lb

Fish
tilapia 6.99/lb
trout 9.99/lb
salmon 5.99/lb

Fresh veggies
asparagus 3.99/bunch
red tomatoes on the vine .50 each (x4=1.00)
red roma tomatoes .60 each (x4=1.20)

Fresh fruit
red delicious apple .90 each (x4=3.60)
Red Globe Seeded Grapes 2.99/lb
1 cantalopue 2.50 each
1 red grapefruit 1.39 each (x2=2.78)
1 large navel orange .99 each (x4=3.96)

Frozen veggies
frozen brocolli florets 2.79/lb
frozen chopped spinach 2.89/lb

So let’s say the above is my grocery list for 5 dinners for 2 people (meat/veggies), plus the fruits could serve as 5 days worth of snacks and/or half of a lunch.

The total is: $60.27

That’s pretty expensive, especially since that is JUST for 5 dinners and snacks, and doesn’t include breakfast or lunch or milk or juice.
Eating cheap rice and noodles is not a healthy diet to me. The real killer on a healthy diet is the cost of the meats and fish.

55

To weigh in (ha ha!) on the issue of whether preparing meals takes a long time, I’ll add my data in the form of an anecdote.

For one thing, I have lived in the city for all of my adult life. Going to a supermarket has never been easy for me. Most city supermarkets that I’ve seen have produce that is pretty questionable. And there’s one where – let’s just say that it takes only one whiff to be convinced never buy seafood. The salmonella, tricanosis, bacterial meningitis, and staphalococcus are simply not worth the pleasures of eating what once may have been fish-like. shudder

My kitchen is the size of a walk-in closet. My fridge is tiny. I have, literally, about 3 square feet of counter space (and not arranged in a convenient way). My shelves hold very little.

Be that as it may, I get a lot out of a little. I’m an excellent cook, and a pretty fast one. Still, it takes me at least half an hour to “whip something up.” Then half an hour to eat. Then another half hour of cleanup. That’s an hour and a half of my day spent on one meal.

Not that I’m not willing to spend the time, but if I had to work a second job, there is no way I’d go through all of that.

56

The biggest obstacle to answering the question “Why are so many chronically poor people fat?” is that we’re desperately looking for a politically-correct answer. The truth probably lies elsewhere.

57

[QUOTE=rock party]
Fresh veggies don’t do SQUAT for General Foods or Krafts bottom line…so you don’t see much of them. What you do see is starchy, salty, fatty, sugary, starchy CRAP on 3/4 of most grocery store shelves.
[/QUOTE]
[nitpick]General Foods is a Kraft Foods brand. Kraft Foods is owned by Altria Group, whom you may know better as Philip Morris. Kraft Foods has a wide variety of healthy alternatives for most of the foods they sell, but I doubt they sell as well. Our taste buds respond quite favorably to salt, sugar and fat. Kraft Foods is not trying for a niche market, and tries to appeal to the broadest possible group.

58

Not that any of this has much to do with my original question, but are you saying that fresh meat and fish are essential for a healthy diet? I eat very little of either due to both the cost and preparation time, and I am quite healthy. My diet has plenty of protein from eggs, soy milk, beans, grains and cheaper meat products, i.e. hotdogs and the like.

Your list sounds great, but as you say it IS rather expensive, I believe you can get buy much more cheaply.

59

[QUOTE=kawaiitentaclebeast]
What question am I begging Philster? I don’t really give a shit about poor people or why they’re fat, I’m poor myself! I’m too busy trying to make ends meet between bus rides and I haven’t the time, Mmkay? :wink:

The question: Are junk foods cheaper than healthy foods, in terms of absolute prices? I will have to modify this to “In the US?” and “in Canada?”, since I’ve now realized that there might be a difference.

This question is important to me because I LIKE junk food, and being poor I want to be able to get it cheaply. However I am reduced to eating rice and vegetables because they are so much cheaper than the outlandish(by comparison) cost of eating every day at Mcdonalds and similar fast food establishments(my desired outcome, I also enjoy whipped cream. It is possible that if I one day become rich, I may eat nothing but whipped cream, everyday.). Can this situation be rectified? How?
[/QUOTE]

No, I was not addressing you per se. These threads turn into people offering up all the reasons poor people are almost coerced into eating fattening foods. it is hard to define ‘poor’ and hard to explain why a group of people – if they are a ‘group’ – maintain certain dietary habits.

It then breaks down into humble opinions. Healthy food is abundant and cheap. What is cheaper than tuna fish for lunch and an apple for breakfast? There are alot of hypotheses based on low-level observations flying around in here.

60

[QUOTE=kawaiitentaclebeast]
The question: Are junk foods cheaper than healthy foods, in terms of absolute prices?
[/QUOTE]

Sticking with food, let’s arbitrarily define “healthy” as the dietary guidelines proposed by the USDA Food and Nutrition Information Center (this used to be called the “food pyramid”. For a 2000-calorie adult male diet, the group recommends:

2 cups of fruit a day,
3 cups of vegetables a day,
8 ounces of grain products a day (oatmeal, flour, rice), half of which should be whole grain (brown rice & bread instead of white)
6 oz. of what I’ll call the “protein” group; that’s meat, fish, poultry, beans, peanut butter, what have you.
3 cups of low-fat milk a day; 1-2oz of cheese (depending on processing) is equivalent to a cup of dairy.

There is also a note that the fruits, vegetables, and grains should be varied during the week (e.g. they list five subgroups of veggies, designated mainly by color); that, in my opinion, rules out cherry-picking a ton of rice because it happens to be on sale at the Jewel this week. Note also this is a bit of a minimum (they mention some “discretionary calories” that will allow you to bump any of these portions a bit each day, I spend mine at the pub most nights…) but I think this is a decent enough baseline for a “healthy” diet. Finally, these are average per-day values; anyone counting their intake this precisely on a day-to-day basis is likely just the healthiest inmate at the asylum they’ve been committed to.

Still, it allows us to make a guess at the cost of healthy eating:

  • An apple or orange, I’d say, is close to a cup. I can buy these at about $1.25 a pound; guessing about 3 to a pound costs me 80 cents a day.
  • A can of veggies is about 2.5 cups; fresh veggies maybe a little more. I’m going to say this will be similar to the cost for fruit, i.e. 80 cents a day.
  • For grains, I suppose I could bake my own bread, but a 2lb. loaf at the store costs about $2.25 if I go cheap. Dry rice (not that “Minute Rice” crap) is perhaps $3 for a 1lb. bag. Let’s back-of-the-envelope 6 oz. worth to be maybe $1 in material.
  • Let’s say I’m a vegetarian, not only a healthy choice, but one that avoids the expense of meat. 6 oz. of beans can’t cost more than $1; a dozen eggs maybe $2 at the outside. I think setting aside $1 a day for this is OK.
  • For dairy, I have a glass of milk (I can get eight from a $2 half-gallon carton) and some cheese (crappy American, 2 slices from a $2.50 pack of 16): That costs me 53 cents a day.

All tolled: $4.13 a day. Let’s bump that a bit for possible error and say $5 a day total in material only, add a buck for the electricity/gas/water to cook my meal and clean up after myself, and we’re up to $6 a day. That’s less than the cost of two “value meals” at McD (ditching the soda would help, though not by much).

The real point here is that by American standards, the “healthy” diet outlined above is relatively frugal. Incessant marketing and increasing portion sizes have led to an expectation of “how much” you need to eat daily. Think about it: when you were young, how big was the usual soda you bought in a restaurant or from a convenience store? 12 oz. How big are they now? 20 oz (not to mention the 44 oz Big Gulp). Marketers learned long ago that we don’t cut down on the number of sodas we buy as the size goes up, we just happily pay more and drink more.

The fact is that by the pound McD is probably cheaper, but we’ve now been programmed to believe that a quarter pounder, large fries, and jumbo Coke are a standard portion (if you’ve every seen “Super Size Me”, you’ll know Morgan Spurlock was so unprepared for the McD version of a meal that he vomited it up, and that over 30 days eating exclusively at McD he quickly gained 20 lbs.). From that vantage point, it’s not hard to see why so many people think eating healthier = more expensive: They want to eat healthy food at unhealthy portion sizes.

To put it glibly, theres a very simple way to eat healthier and save money: Don’t eat as much.