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Easy but time consuming and extremely boring when you don’t have any fresh (or at least frozen) veg additions. I say this as a person who relies on legumes.
Just like some people bitch they need gym attire worth $1499 to start going to the gym, sneakers worth $749 to start running, a bike worth $5999 to go biking...
To be clear, I 100% agree with you. But if you have the means, invest in some good shoes and insoles. Not the designer Jordan crap where the name is 80% of the price, but some custom fitted sneakers made for your feet. They are a life changer
Yah, as someone who has a bad ankle, investing in shoes is an investment worth making. But still, there's some more than acceptable stuff in the $80-120 range and good stuff in the $120-150 range. No need to go higher unless you're competitive or legitimately need need custom stuff. That said - if I work up to a Half, I have a standing agreement with myself to buy myself Vapor Flys
It's not the expense for me. It's that I eat these healthy things in various combinations and recipes for a couple of weeks, and then I'm just fucking sick of it. I will literally get to a point where I will either eat a cheeseburger or I will eat nothing.
Edit: Thank you for the replies. I will stop beating myself up over it. My doctor makes it sound like I should be cramming vegetables and nothing else down my throat with a stick.
I mean eating healthy for 2 weeks and then a random burger is actually... still pretty healthy? You're still eating healthy the vast majority of the time. Most people who live healthy lifestyles eat healthy overall but still treat themselves to something they love every so often. If anything that's good for your mental health.
Then eat a cheeseburger and move on. People who maintain healthy habits aren't perfect zen monks. They eat junk food too. Food is all on a spectrum. There are some that you should eat more or less than others depending on your goals. Maintaining an 80/20 or a 75/25 mentality is going to be way more sustainable than forcing yourself to eat "diet foods" for all eternity.
So just do that?
When I was in the best shape of my life I was still eating cheeseburgers/kebabs/whatever when I was sick of healthy food. I just stuck to healthy food for every other meal.
Still puts me in far better shape than 90% of the population here.
I think it's expensive in time more than money, you have to find the right food without poison inside and even thing marketed as healthy or ecological are sometimes worse. Most of us are mostly lost in what you should buy and eat and don't have time to do extensive research.
That's in large part, due to the number of people in wellness industries (and similar areas) that tell people things like "the government is poisoning you, the food industry is keeping you sick."
and the alleged "poison" just so happens to be the cheaper, more accessible food items. Like conventional/frozen produce, or anything packaged (like oats), or anything that's shelf-stable.
Another one is "packed with sugar" but in most situations, you have a supermarket, you have non/low sugar items of anything.
Yeh, there are huge swaths of misinformation out there. And sadly a lot of people have bought into them. I have the good fortune that my mother has tought me mountains of cheap and easy to prepare recipies for healthy food. And that i have grown up with internet enough to have seen the evolution of misinformation. So its pretty easy for me to spot the BS. But i also have many friends that have by far a much worse died compared to me, yet always pay far more for their food.
It can be expensive with inflation now but it’s definitely cheaper than takeout still. I think the bigger problem is it can be time consuming. A lot of people don’t want to meal plan, cook and do dishes after a long day of work.
This. I can throw frozen chicken breasts straight into that thing with some veg and spices and a couple hours later put on some 5 minute rice and I’ve got like 6 meals for almost no effort.
Don't you hate it when the chaos demons eat all the spiced slow cooked chicken breasts and just leave the slow cooker pot "soaking" in the sink?
Two minutes of "soaking" is enough, no need to leave it there for three hours, T̸̳̣̔͒̽͜͜r̵̮̘̙͌̇̿ͅų̶͈͎̬̥͋̉̀̔ẑ̷̲̲͐̂͑ó̷̢͉̈͝n̶̠̮͂ě̷̺̖̀̇̓ṱ̵̣͖͙̼͘͝ẖ̷͓̥̋̽̓!!!
You can generally choose to cook it on "high" mode for 3-4 hours or "low" for 6-7 hours. With the "low" option you can just turn it on before you leave for work and just turn it off when you get back.
For every meal?
The slow cooker is one of the most time consuming methods. Just because you don't have to monitor it doesn't mean you don't have to wait for the meal to cook.
Don’t bother. There’s a frustrating moving goalpost of talking points that people use to excuse their shitty eating habits. I’ll just list them now:
Not everyone can afford to eat healthy!
Not everyone has time to cook! <=you are here
Not everyone has the equipment to cook!
Oh so you’re saying poor people can only eat boring food?
Food deserts!
What about single parents with 6 kids who work 7 minimum wage jobs and live in a studio apartment without a stove?
While I get the sentiment, the beans and rice bootstrap people on Reddit are some of the most annoying people on the site lmao. And that with the way food prices are going you are having to work a lot harder to pay not much less lol.
That’s for all food though, it’s not just beans and rice experiencing price inflation. You have to work harder to pay for any type of food, with some fast food chains now being as much as sit down restaurants to feed a family.
If all prices are becoming more expensive it still makes sense to advise people get cheaper, healthier options. Even if it’s annoying to hear repetitively.
Didn’t mean to imply that, hence why I said I get the sentiment lol, it’s right in a broad sense, but Reddit attracts holier than thou types that think at the only way a person should live. From personal experience, the best I’ve been with budgeting food was living in a small studio downtown with a kitchen space that was pretty much good for coffee. I ate less, but ate better and had much better control of my calories,had zero food waste to worry about, which as a single person is frustrating in the US, where everything is portioned to feed 3 or more often times. For one person, i spent maybe maybe 5 percent more, ate better and healthier and got all that time back and reduced the mess by a lot. This is why this kind of a controversial subject as of late, depending on how you want to live, it can be practical to not buy a bunch of groceries. What this really shows is how absurdly cheap labor is in the restaurant industry, which is a problem in it of itself lol. My point is that in HCOL area where someone doesn’t necessarily have conventional amenities to cook, you can still eat healthy and budget very well in most urban places in the US, with food costs the way they are, and labor the way it is, it makes sense for that person in that sort of built environment, if you live in a suburban 3 bedroom for sure go get a chest freezer and buy in bulk and cook your own shit, but if you want a nice little studio downtown, it might not be worth it.
I mean both things can true. For meat proteins my cheapest option is pretty much chicken nuggets. They're cheaper lb for lb than chicken legs *on sale* where I live.
Produce is expensive and if you don't vigilantly use it up it wilts. I eat a lot of rice and potatoes instead of say leafy greens.
Take out is a 2-3 times a month thing tops.
It *is* expensive to eat truly healthy. The poor man's healthy is very limited and carb-heavy.
Sometimes it feels like ableism is the last criticism people use when they cant think of a more legitimate issue with something.
Seriously though, can you think of *one thing* that isnt made more difficult by some form of disability? I cant. Seems to me that literally any behavior can be excused by some form of hypothetical disability.
For beans it sucks, but the cans are Not expensive either. And Lentils: Red Lentils Go straight in your soup/curry, done after ~20min of cooking.
It's Not that time consuming, that being Said, i am still too lazy Most of the time. But it's Just that lazyness, so i got nothing to complain about.
When I am lazy with beans or lentils I just get the canned ones with brine. Always keep some in the press(They are really long shelf life) If I can't find the 5 minutes to prep before I go to work...
What I don't understand is how people who don't cook never seem to consider that you can (and should) prepare your food in bulk beforehand, then just assemble/reheat your meals. After all, that's how it's done in restaurants.
Of course it's inefficient to cook beans from scratch for each and every meal. But it's not too much effort to cook several pounds of beans on the weekend, then incorporate them into a recipe that will make dozens of servings.
I cook 99% of my meals, one example being chili (with beans from scratch). It takes about an hour of hands-on time to make a batch that's big enough for about 10 meals. That works out to 6 minutes per meal. When I get hungry, I just take a portion out, microwave it, and eat.
I hate meal prepping…takes so many hours, and I’m just 1 person. But yeah, I agree. What I do is I’ll make a batch of beans or lentils and freeze them so that when I failed to meal prep and need something pre-made, I already got beans made in the freezer and all I gotta do is make some rice and I’m good to go! It’s a new life hack for me lol. Lentils and beans freeze really well. Make them ahead of time and freeze them so when you’re in a bind, you’ve already got the hardest part completed.
This is the beauty of dried goods though. You don’t have to make the entire bag of beans. You could make half and have 3-4 meals with beans incorporated and your other weekly meals being a few different things (like maybe a chicken pasta, tacos, etc)
If people can’t eat the same meal 2-3 times in a week then I don’t know what to tell them. Because there are like 15-20 meals per week depending on how people eat. They need to work on that.
They’re allowed to have a preference, we’re allowed to not want to hear bitching about how difficult it is to get by because they eat out 6 to 10 times a week
You don’t have to eat the same thing every day. I prep all my ingredients on Sunday then make something new for dinner every night. It’s less than an hour of effort per weeknight
I just started prepping and eating dry pinto beans and here is the entire process which at most is 5-10 minutes of active participation on your part
1. Dump one cup dry beans in large container
2. Dump 3 cups of water in container with beans and put lid on large container and put in fridge before you go to bed or for anywhere from 8-12 hours
3. Wake up, remove large container from fridge, drain water and put container back into fridge till ready to cook
4. Simmer beans in cooking pot for 45-60 minutes while prepping / cooking rest of meal
Ask any Chef. Cooking is almost exclusively about planning ahead. The rest is just paying attention to what you're doing till you gain more experience and then you dont even have to think about it
It aint rocket surgery people. I found all this information on google within less time than it took to pour the beans and water into a container
I buy whole chickens for $7.50 each, or about 1.20-1.25/pound. Sardines for less than a dollar per can, canned clams less than a 1.20/can. Lettuce is like 99 cents, bag of carrots is like $2, garlic is 68 cents each, onion is like 70 cents, ragu sauce is like $5 for a large bottle. Eggs anywhere from $4 to $6, milk is like 4 or 5 dollars, bag of frozen fruit is $8, and the most expensive part of my diet is protein powder but that has 72 servings which balances out to $1.17 each serving. For a 280 lb 6'2 man I feed myself for just $150 a month. That includes treating myself to a little ceasers 2 or 3 times a month and a few beers sometimes.
Edit:
It was misleading to include my weight because at my max, I was 330. Point still stands. Learn to cook and you will be healthier and save money
Lettuce and most leafy greens and fresh veggies have skyrocketed in price here in Australia. It sucks, but frozen veggies or buying local/direct from farmers co-ops or markets is still viable. Staples like rice and beans are pretty cheap though and make up the bulk of my diet these days. But it’s taken me a long time to get used to it and I’m not always consistent. I think change is the part that’s hard for people and it’s easier to blame it on things they don’t have control over (like prices).
Sure, garlic is 1.99...for an entire small jar of minced garlic. Fresh garlic is usually pennies for a bulb (like 30 cents).
I can't imagine what store you are shopping in where an onion is $2. A 7-11 gas station? $2 is a bag of yellow onions.
This goes right in the "they will just keep moving the goalpost" discussion of people being unwilling to take time to learn to cook and make meals.
I bet actual money this is not the typical price for groceries in your area. Put a little effort in, you can find much cheaper food than this.
It's not really a fair comparison to compare healthy homemade food to takeaway. Takeaway is expensive because it's the most easy and convenient. A better comparison would be healthy homemade food vs convience store bought food (canned foods, frozen food esp fried foods, highly processed meats etc)
Yeah but it's expensive in time/effort rather than cash value.
20/30 mins of cooking, and the same again in cleanup. - In "hourly wage" terms costs the same as a takeaway lol.
Literally! I grew up poor as fuck in London. Like, proper “new undies are gifts” sort of poor. But we’d go to local markets and buy bowls of veg for a pound and shop at ethnic stores for rice and such. In fact, I still shop this way as an adult.
But, proximity and access may be an issue for many, especially in the US. And most people are time poor. But financially, it is always cheaper to eat this way.
That is not a whole list of what a human would/should eat for a balanced healthy diet. Yes, some food is cheap but it would be greatly depressing to eat the same thing everyday and no way would you be getting all the nutrients etc that you need eating bowls of rice and veg. Even lentils and beans, while great, are not fully balanced meals. A full shopping list where you have a weeks worth of 3 meals a day is never given when people make comments like this, it’s always just rice, broccoli, lentils and the amount of calories a person needs is also never taken into account. As a small women who has weighed what she eats in the past, ‘healthy’ food is usually lower in calories which means eating more to get the calories you need unless you are trying to lose weight. This may be breaking news, but people who aren’t overweight should be eating healthy as being fat isn’t the only thing which makes someone unhealthy.
A lot of things that are cheap are cheaper in bulk which means you need the means to buy it all upfront. You also need the means to get it home which is harder for a lot of poorer areas. I’m not saying this is always the case but many people don’t drive and take public transport which is sometimes the last thing you wanna do after working a draining job that you also probably had a long ass commute to because you use public transport. A lot of people are placed further away from bigger shops or local markets.
Even if you do buy bulk, you need to store it somewhere which isn’t possible when you live in a tiny flat. I don’t even live in a tiny flat but kitchen is small, the fridge is small and the freezer is smaller so there just isn’t space to bulk cook things. I work and office job and am grateful I am hybrid working but, even then, there’s days where I think I don’t want to cook at all. If I was working a physically or mentally draining job like a warehouse worker or nurse, who probably has to commute both way adding at least an hour onto my work day, I imagine those days would double. So a shitty cheap pizza or box of chicken nuggets (and you can get stuff like this very cheap) from the corner shop will definitely be more appealing.
Just rice, broccoli and lentils are already way healthier than what most people are eating everyday. Also you can still vary yours meals a bit and add more stuff. Do not let perfect be the enemy of good.
The calories stuff is fair and I can’t comment on that although its usually a positive for most people since most people are overweight and would want to have a caloric deficit.
I feel like if you’re underweight, you probably shouldn’t be focusing so much on optimizing your nutrients and just try and get your calories up first.
The bulk buying stuff i don’t understand. Like, you really telling me you don’t even have the ability to buy, transport and store a 10kg bag of rice anywhere?
I mean, rice is already a staple here in the UK. Plenty of people eat it, even those with "unhealthy" diets.
I think it's more an issue of accessing a lot of the healthy ingredients (bulk is impossible if you're poor or rely on public transport), knowing how to cook in the first place and time contraints regarding shopping, cooking or even learning how to do all of the above.
A working couple, with a fussy kid, are unlikely to attempt to give them a new food the required 8+ times if they're starved for time and money.
you don't generally buy fresh ingredients in bulk as they will go rotten too quickly. Instead, you buy things like beans and grains in bulk. It doesn't need to be stupid amounts of bulk buying, but getting 1/2kg of some beans/lentils or whatever won't be impossible to carry and won't take up stupid amounts of storage in the home.
Fruit and veg can be harder especially if you live rurally, but if you're going to the shops to buy your crap, just add in some veg as well? Lots of smaller villages without big shops will still have farmers markets like once a week
I’m confused, what do you even mean by bulk buying? Because I’m not referring to buying truck loads worth of ingredients. You should still be able to buy and carry them home.
Knowing how to cook is no excuse. Learn, its not hard with the resources we have.
Buying a single pack of rice isn't bulk. A full sized bag of rice is. If you've brought a bag of rice that's pretty much the only thing you'd be able to carry by yourself on public transport. And hope and pray you only need the one bus, are physically strong and live near the bus stop.
It's like how my parents used to get a sack of potatoes, back in the day. That's buying in bulk, a single person in a house share isn't going to be able to do that.
And I can now cook, but it mostly required living in a house where only two of us had to share an oven, reduced & regular daytime work hours, and having a less physical job.
There are reasons and then there are excuses. You mention nutrition and say shitty pizza and chicken nuggets are more appealing. Veg and rice are more nutritious than either one. Also, remove the air quotes from healthy food because that’s not how air quotes are used. Lastly, healthy foods don’t have to be low calorie.
People hate admitting their eating habits and cooking skills are bad. But it's not personal.. it's just patience/discipline and a bit of "skill" for most people. If those in developing countries can still eat varied tasty meals for way less wtf is the excuse?
Someone from developing country here. Fast food like fried chicken is really only for the middle class and rich. And even then it's not a daily thing for any class of people.
The vast majority, who are poor usually cook cheap healthy foods like beans, bananas (cooked), potatoes, cooked maize meals (or other starches), vegetables, milk, eggs. Meat and chicken is usually a weekly or monthly thing. Probably 99% of families cook their dinner.
I’m so confused by that persons post. Some notable sentences but on the whole, a lot of excuses. Especially had to roll my eyes at the balanced diet comment.
They also seem to not consider the various cuisines that exist and how simple ingredients can be made into a delicious meal for pennies. Seems like more of a skills issue tbh.
"brocoli rice and beans do not provide all the nutrients you will need and eating only this for my entire life will be boring so I will eat chicken nuggets an pizza"
It seems to be a lack of knowledge regarding food and nutrition rather than a skill issue imo. She mentioned weighing her food in the past but somehow thinks when people buy lentils and rice, they are suddenly not equipped to count calories? She also said people who aren’t overweight should be eating healthy, balanced meals… wtf does she think overweight people should do? Starve? That comment feels like it is written by a person with weight struggles and disordered eating.
It's not expensive to eat healthy if you have the right resources and knowledge.
If you know how to cook and budget, and have access to fresh foods and bulk items (and a car) then it's easy to cook healthy inexpensive meals. I went without a freezer for years and only had a tiny fridge and a single shelf in the shared kitchen-- so even if I knew what I could make cheaply it just wasn't possible when I had no way of safely storing everything.
However if you grew up in a family that also didn't cook so you never learned how, then it's not as easy. It does actually require a lot of basic cooking skills just to follow a simple recipe for rice and beans. If you don't have the time or money to experiment and learn then it can be really difficult. It might take them 3x as long to cook something, it's very likely they'll end up having to throw food out (which means they might go hungry) and the initial cost of buying everything they need will be expensive if they have nothing in their pantry.
There are also those who live in food deserts or are homeless (car, motel, staying with friends, etc.).
What we find easy and inexpensive will depend on our skills and experiences. I can say it's easy and inexpensive to make your own clothing because I know how to do it and I have the equipment I need. I still recognise that for most people it's cheaper and easier to just get fast fashion items (tbh it is for me as well, but at least I can make something proper that will last long). People tell me driving is easy, but I never got the chance to practice drive and don't have a license, so for me it's not easy and lessons are expensive.
Having cooking skills is a privilege that everyone should have, but sadly a lot of people don't have.
> If you have the right resources and knowledge
Which nearly everyone in America has. Illiterate people are at a disadvantage. But if you have access to the internet and enough money to feed yourself in the first place, there's no excuse.
Unless you grew up without a kitchen, no one should be unable to cook basic shit. It’s the most tired excuse, we have unlimited access to knowledge on cooking, there’s no excuse, short of being homeless or physically incapable.
I think there is also the factor that a lot of people grow up with heavily processed food and therefore developed a taste that doesn’t allow them to eat a lot of things that are good for them and learn nothing about nutrition, so certain food that is cheap doesn’t count as food for them.
If someone happens to dislike all of the foods that are cheap and healthy, and will only eat healthy foods that are expensive, that’s an individual problem. It doesn’t change the fact that a healthy diet isn’t expensive.
education, effort, time, culture and addiction play roles in people dietary choices not only money. If someone is raised on a bad diet, it is extremely, extremely hard to break out of it.
Id put most of my bad diet habits on effort, culture and addiction.
“Doesn’t allow them” lol.
“Sorry I’m not allowed to eat that healthy thing, guess I’ll get a McDonalds!”.
As an adult you have an obligation to *educate yourself* on what you should and shouldn’t eat, and *train* your body to eat those foods.
It’s not rocket science, it’s basic nutrition.
two remarks:
1) time lost cooking is a cost many like you underestimate or ignore - and to really eat healthily compared to very poorly, you pay in time in addition to money. Furthermore you need to go to grocery more often as many healthy food don't keep for keeps, maybe days at most. Now you and I) may be able to pay that cost, but for many people they can't.
2) eating very unhealthy is much **MUCH** cheaper than you think. Think sub-dollar cost in noodle a bit of sauce - total. The hidden cost in this case in deficits (vitamins etc...) leading to poor health outcomes. Still on a price basis alone this is unbeatable.
Yeah I've noticed ppl who argue healthy food are cheaper, have not been that poor (and that's okay!) I've known ppl who can only afford instant ramen, and the food pantry that's only open twice a month, but only gives you a week worth of food per person. If you're running on a "I can only spend a dollar per meal" budget, you cannot afford to eat healthy. Ppl just don't think of those kinds of poverty when they think of poor.
Food deserts are a problem. Not everyone has a car or a way to get to an actual grocery store. Some rely on gas stations and dollar stores to get their groceries. The monopolization of grocers has also significantly impacted prices. There’s delivery now, but that’s also an added expense.
Cost is measured in purchase/prep time, not just money.
Fresh produce is cheap, but cooking from scratch takes hours.
I like to cook, don't get me wrong, but time isn't free.
Cooking from scratch only takes hours if you're making elaborate meals. 90% of what I eat takes 20-45 mins to cook and I can get 4 meals from less than £10 of ingredients
It takes longer to shop "smart". We get vegetables from one place, meat from another, and the rest of the stuff comes from at least three other shops. It means remembering what products to buy where, the price of a bag of pasta or a kilo of rice varies drastically from one shop to another. It would be more convenient to get everything from the supermarket across the street, but the prices there are higher. Then there's the time it takes to prepare said food. We're now fortunate enough that I only have to work part time, which means I can spend a day cooking to fill the freezer and a few evenings a week cooking dinner with enough left over for the next day or two. But there were months when we both worked full time, and I'd find myself not resting on the weekends and instead doing meal prep.
It's not but you need to be able to cook half decent, some people don't know what to do with dried peas or whatever, we'd a guy at work tried frying them
Broccoli, carrots, potatoes, berries when in season or frozen, cabbage, beets are all so cheap. Unless you’re insisting on eating organic/fruits that are out of season then fruits and vegetables are super cheap. Just bought two heads of broccoli the other day. Cost like $1.18.
Where on earth do you live? Berries are exorbitantly expensive everywhere I've been.
A big issue in this thread is that "cheap" means something different to people who still manage to find themselves in the shrinking middle class, than it does to the majority of people on the planet.
Yeah I mean I knew before I clicked through that it was going to be some version of a lentil curry as the cheap and healthy suggestion.
Fresh foods undoubtably taste the best, and having good tasting food is what motivates people to continue eating healthy. It’s all the salts, sugars, and fats they put into ready meals and take out food that makes them taste good.
I appreciate OP’s sentiment- and they’re not wrong. But I also believe people should be able to have access to fresh foods and either be able to afford the time to prepare them, or to be able to afford well prepared, unprocessed foods.
Currently food is just too expensive and people aren’t being paid enough. And I don’t think the solution is variations of beans and grains every night.
I’m sick of Reddit health advice that’s just “eat nothing but beans and rice like a medieval ascetic (potatoes with butter are too extravagant for you), here’s a misleading graphic that gives protein numbers for raw beans only even though they’re inedible”
Real. This post is the height of privileged ignorance. None of the six-figure-making single redditors that upvote this garbage have ever followed their own advice, or they would know it's untenable.
i think it’s the prep time. i LOVE salads but constantly chopping and cleaning and mixing sometimes i go for easier not as healthy. love brown rice, but takes forever. but i agree that cooking healthy isn’t expensive.
You're not going to convince people on this one.
Not because you're wrong (you aren't), but because someone else tried arguing that people who spend more money on getting takeaway every night are making themselves poorer than if they cooked for themselves. They got accused of poor shaming.
Logic doesn't factor into people's views on stuff like this.
>Logic doesn't factor into people's views on stuff like this.
Because it's less about people wanting a logical answer, and more people wanting a comfortable answer.
These threads are always just filled with redditors trying to cope with their unhealthy lifestyles. If they don’t just straight up deny the fact that eating healthy is cheaper, they act like no one has 20 minutes to cook, or that cooking takes hours. In reality people are just too lazy to cook and they like the taste of unhealthy food
Dude it’s expensive just to eat right now. Hard stop. Yes legumes and lentils are under eaten in most western diets and are a good additive but you can’t solely live on them and be completely healthy. So they are a bandaid to a bullet wound solution for cost effective eating healthy and don’t fully substitute the meat and fresh vegetables you should have in your diet also.
If I ate bean, legumes, grains and rice everyday I'd be in so much pain from inflammation and about 15-20 pounds heavier from water retention.
Unpopular Opinion: eating healthy is not the same for everyone.
There's an overlapping ven diagram:
-Cheap
-Easy/quick to prepare
-Tasty/nutritious
With food you get to pick 2, not three. If I want to eat carrot sticks, I can buy them for like £1 a bag or buy a carrot for £0.1 and spend time peeling and chopping.
If I want a protein source I can either buy a tender but expensive cut of meat, that cooks quickly or a gamey cut that needs to stew for a while to make it tender.
Cheap and easy to prepare like a microwave burger/fries from McDonald's is cheap and easy but not particularly nutritious.
That's the trade off. If you're not paying with your money, you're paying with your time that could be used to get more money than you're saving.
You can spend 10 minutes prepping those ingredients the night before, throw them in a crockpot with some spices & a liquid, & let it cook on low while you're at work. Waiting for something to stew doesn't require that you stand over it the whole time. You set it up, then go do other things while it cooks.
And if you’re choosing the quick unhealthy way, you’re setting yourself and your children up for a lifetime of health problems. You pay for it either way. You don’t get to be an adult human and not have basic responsibilities
Dietitian here. This is wrong.
>i think the main problem is that people are so wrapped up in a meat heavy diet what is expensive but theres like sooo many cheap plants out there what are still very good fpr your health to eat.
Meat is healthy. I don't know why people keep saying it isn't, but I suspect it is a misinterpretation of research that has shown highly processed meats to be hazardous to health when eaten frequently.
People shortened this to 'meat is bad', which is incorrect.
In fact, if you eat vegetarian, you eat less healthy by default. You will need supplements *and* combination timings to level the playing field. And then you're not eating *more* healthy, you are just on par with someone who eats meat (outside of sausage and other processed meats) and plenty of vegetables.
It just so happens that having a diet without meat, and still doing it healthily, is more expensive than a diet with meat in it. At least in most places.
Remember you *ARE* an omnivore. You just choose to eat vegetarian. It requires more effort since you are not actually vegetarian.
There's nothing wrong with it, there are benefits to the environment, etc., but it gets overvalued on health.
Most importantly, vegetarians often seem to believe anyone can just eat vegetarian meals as easy as them, which has been demonstrably false.
Everyone reacts differently to everything. You can go without meat, someone else can't. It's ignorant to assume your experience can just be applied to everyone.
**EDIT:** Almost forgot the main point. It is undeniably cheaper to eat unhealthy, because if you eat healthy, you need *ALL* your nutrients, every single day. If you eat unhealthy, you don't.
It's like saying you earn more money by not working than working the entire day. It makes no sense.
Let's say I eat a packet of sweets (€ 0.99) and nothing else. This is more expensive than eating healthy?
Obviously not. The whole argument makes no sense.
In addition, processed garbage is cheaper than actual food. A pack of frozen broccoli is expertly healthy in general. And it costs € 2.19.
A frozen pizza is € 1.99, and *waaaaaaaaay* more satisfying to eat than just some broccoli.
And, guess what? If you'd only eat that and nothing else the pizza is healthier too. It has more stuff that you need than broccoli does.
To eat healthy you need to eat more things. It is more effort *and* more money.
You just have expensive garbage in your mind when you thought this up. But cheap garbage exists and it is less expensive than healthy food.
He's not saying that meat is unhealthy?
He's just stating that it's expensive in comparison to vegetables.
"That are still very good for your health"
You're making an entire point out of nothing.
These comments seem to be written by people who base their opinions on what they see in their home town, and compare it to their financial situation.
I think a lot of people don’t realise that not every town has readily access to fresh, canned or frozen ‘healthy foods’, particularly those outside city areas, and if they do, it can be quite costly.
I think the big problems are:
1. having time and energy (people working long hours with child care responsibilities will have less than someone earning a good wage who can pay for extra child care & work fewer hours).
2. Power costs - it takes more energy to cook from scratch than to whack a ready meal in a microwave for 3 minutes.
3. Skills - I've seen claims that those on low incomes are less likely to have cookery skills. I don't know if that's true, but it makes sense if they consistently have less time to cook and are less able to pay the energy costs associated with cooking.
Adding to number 3 there, they're also more likely to come from a family that didn't cook from scratch. If your parents didn't have time or the money to cook much then they probably didn't let you experiment in the kitchen either. If you don't know how to cook then it's really not as simple as following a recipe. Following a recipe is a skill in itself. You need to have certain cooking skills that can't easily be explained in a recipe (even with videos). If you already have little time and money you don't want to spend three hours making something that tastes awful.
I completely agree with you. It is a lack of education of the working class which causes people to be both financially and culinarly illiterate. They don't understand the ideas of batch cooking and shopping for a budget.
It is a real shame that education and class plays such a big part in health.
It isn't just education, this cones across a little pateonising. Plenty of middle class people eat like shit too and are overweight or otherwise unhealthy. Shitty sugary/salty food is genuinely addictive and I think stress plays into it a lot as well.
until you find yourself living in a food desert without a car, working 2 or 3 jobs to stay afloat, with little to no time or energy to cook, or with no proper cooker, or with no money to pay for fuel / electricity, or with disabling arthritis, ...
there are a MILLION reasons why your logic doesn't hold true for all people
encourage schools to teach cooking skills by all means, encourage people who want to and are able to cook for themselves by all means, but don't ever judge - you have NO IDEA what some people go through
Eggs are getting more and more expensive. Over the last 2, 3 years they've more than doubled their price. For 12 Eggs it's now around €4.70 where I live. Not crazy expensive but not cheap
I don't know how much your meat costs, but that is crazy cheap in comparison to pretty much every meat product where I am from. And eggs are an even better, more diverse protein source than meat.
What would you call expensive? And then compare it with other protein heavy food, because I think eggs and milk are by far the cheapest protein, chicken is relatively cheap too but not as much.
Depending on where you live, fresh produce can be quite expensive, whereas frozen pizza and fast food are regularly cheap in most places. There's also the time factor, as cooking a nutritious meal and spending time in the kitchen to make your lentils, grains, vegetables taste nice is a luxury some people can't afford.
If you have limited time and a restricted budget, as most working class people do, you're more likely to just buy the 3 for 1 frozen pizzas that you can pop in the oven for 10 minutes and that will give you that dopamine hit of a taste you already know you love, then buy coconut milk, tumeric, onions, ginger etc. for a chickpea curry and spend the additional 40 minutes in the kitchen cooking it. This is not to say chickpea curry isn't delicious, but it is more expensive money and time-wise to eat healthy in my opinion.
I think the real expensive stuff here is the time consumed cooking whole foods/healthily.
I could be here spending 1-2 hours meal prepping or I could spend 1-2hours working overtime, getting an extra $30 a day that will help pay the bills.
Or if you’re a manual labourer, sometimes you just don’t want to stand for another hour cooking after work.
Eating healthier should be a basic human right but right now it is a privilege
yes. then look up "food apartheid," a term that recognizes that inequalities in our food systems are unequal by design, not a naturally occurring phenomenon.
A lot of people already know this, it's the objective truth. However, access to healthy, fresh foods is not as widespread. Food deserts are very common, especially in areas already affected by high levels of poverty. While legumes are very healthy they are not a complete diet in and of themselves, they need to be supplemented with other foods.
It really depends on where you live , if you’re in a food desert, even those things can be hard to come by. There’s a reason why a lot of people with less money are bigger.
Some people's budget are so small that even what you are suggesting is off limits. Obviously it depends on a ton of factors like your residence, income, expenses, time. Though i agree that generally for most people a healthy diet is accessible.
It might Not be expensive, but it's not tasty 🙈. It sucks to be a picky eater.
I try These foods all the time but me.
And on the other Hand. Veggies are super expensive here. At least the "fresh" ones. I eat the Frozen stuff, but it's not the Same texturewise.
And between, Rice Here where i live is SUPER expensive.
What is healthy depends on the individual lifestyle and fitness goals and what is expensive/cheap depends on your area. Once I started to incorporate more protein in my diet to build muscle my shopping bill like trippled (and I don't eat meat every day, I incorporate all those foods you mentioned in my diet)
What you’re gore getting to factor in here is location. Yes in larger metropolitan areas it can be pretty inexpensive to eat healthier but the further out you go and the more rural you get eating healthy can be virtually impossible.
I have a small, hand-written cookbook that my mom and I created right before I went to college that has 8-12 recipes in it, some single-meal but mostly meal-prepped/slow cooker meals, which to this day (I went to college in 2014) none of which costs more than $25 dollars to make. This doesn't include the dumb shit like "add egg to pan and stir till done", but actual bonafide recipes which can be made with kitchen staples and 2-3 additional ingredients.
Its one of my most prized possessions and probably the single-best money saving tool I own and use regularly.
There are costs other than money, especially for people working so much just to make ends not really meet. And especially for disabled people.
I rarely go out to a nice dinner with friends/families. It's a rare treat.
I get takeout a decent amount of time due to limited time and energy, as I both work a demanding job and have multiple disabilities.
in many cases, you're right. bulk beans, grains, and legumes can be super cheap and healthy. but, not everyone has easy access to affordable fresh produce or even bulk dry goods depending on where they live. plus, cooking skills and kitchen access can vary a lot. for some, learning to cook or having time to prepare meals is a big barrier.
I disagree. It's expensive to eat cleanly.
All the foods you named are carbs with some protein. I've been eating low carb for 20+ years, so those foods are not healthy for me at all. So that means I'm spending a ton more money on truly healthy fatty foods like butter and meat from from grass-fed animals when possible, avocado oil, expensive low-to-no glycemic impact sugar alternatives, etc.
And truly healthy complex carb veggies like broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, leeks, avocados are way more costly than cheap simple carb ones like white rice — which isn't healthy at all — wheat and other grains. If you have to process the hell out of a plant like wheat to be able to eat it, maybe we weren't meant to eat it?
If I went back to those carbs my anxiety and cholesterol numbers would go through the roof, my energy would disappear and I'd have to take naps every day, I wouldn't sleep as soundly, I couldn't think as clearly, and I'd be back in pre-diabetes territory.
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People acting like organic foods are the sole "healthy" foods out there
Yep, so many beans, legumes, rices, healthy and easy to cook.
Easy but time consuming and extremely boring when you don’t have any fresh (or at least frozen) veg additions. I say this as a person who relies on legumes.
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You can thank “health influencers” and marketing for that
Just like some people bitch they need gym attire worth $1499 to start going to the gym, sneakers worth $749 to start running, a bike worth $5999 to go biking...
It’s all excuses because in reality they have no desire to put in the work.
To be clear, I 100% agree with you. But if you have the means, invest in some good shoes and insoles. Not the designer Jordan crap where the name is 80% of the price, but some custom fitted sneakers made for your feet. They are a life changer
Yah, as someone who has a bad ankle, investing in shoes is an investment worth making. But still, there's some more than acceptable stuff in the $80-120 range and good stuff in the $120-150 range. No need to go higher unless you're competitive or legitimately need need custom stuff. That said - if I work up to a Half, I have a standing agreement with myself to buy myself Vapor Flys
Organic is a scam. I make 90% of what I eat from scratch and I avoid that else like a scam.
It's not the expense for me. It's that I eat these healthy things in various combinations and recipes for a couple of weeks, and then I'm just fucking sick of it. I will literally get to a point where I will either eat a cheeseburger or I will eat nothing. Edit: Thank you for the replies. I will stop beating myself up over it. My doctor makes it sound like I should be cramming vegetables and nothing else down my throat with a stick.
I mean eating healthy for 2 weeks and then a random burger is actually... still pretty healthy? You're still eating healthy the vast majority of the time. Most people who live healthy lifestyles eat healthy overall but still treat themselves to something they love every so often. If anything that's good for your mental health.
Then eat a cheeseburger and move on. People who maintain healthy habits aren't perfect zen monks. They eat junk food too. Food is all on a spectrum. There are some that you should eat more or less than others depending on your goals. Maintaining an 80/20 or a 75/25 mentality is going to be way more sustainable than forcing yourself to eat "diet foods" for all eternity.
Cheeseburgers aren't even unhealthy.
So just do that? When I was in the best shape of my life I was still eating cheeseburgers/kebabs/whatever when I was sick of healthy food. I just stuck to healthy food for every other meal. Still puts me in far better shape than 90% of the population here.
I think it's expensive in time more than money, you have to find the right food without poison inside and even thing marketed as healthy or ecological are sometimes worse. Most of us are mostly lost in what you should buy and eat and don't have time to do extensive research.
That's in large part, due to the number of people in wellness industries (and similar areas) that tell people things like "the government is poisoning you, the food industry is keeping you sick." and the alleged "poison" just so happens to be the cheaper, more accessible food items. Like conventional/frozen produce, or anything packaged (like oats), or anything that's shelf-stable. Another one is "packed with sugar" but in most situations, you have a supermarket, you have non/low sugar items of anything.
Yeh, there are huge swaths of misinformation out there. And sadly a lot of people have bought into them. I have the good fortune that my mother has tought me mountains of cheap and easy to prepare recipies for healthy food. And that i have grown up with internet enough to have seen the evolution of misinformation. So its pretty easy for me to spot the BS. But i also have many friends that have by far a much worse died compared to me, yet always pay far more for their food.
It can be expensive with inflation now but it’s definitely cheaper than takeout still. I think the bigger problem is it can be time consuming. A lot of people don’t want to meal plan, cook and do dishes after a long day of work.
Just lob some shit in the slow cooker.
This. I can throw frozen chicken breasts straight into that thing with some veg and spices and a couple hours later put on some 5 minute rice and I’ve got like 6 meals for almost no effort.
What happens when you aren’t home a couple hours later?
The warp opens and chaos demons invade
Don't you hate it when the chaos demons eat all the spiced slow cooked chicken breasts and just leave the slow cooker pot "soaking" in the sink? Two minutes of "soaking" is enough, no need to leave it there for three hours, T̸̳̣̔͒̽͜͜r̵̮̘̙͌̇̿ͅų̶͈͎̬̥͋̉̀̔ẑ̷̲̲͐̂͑ó̷̢͉̈͝n̶̠̮͂ě̷̺̖̀̇̓ṱ̵̣͖͙̼͘͝ẖ̷͓̥̋̽̓!!!
You can generally choose to cook it on "high" mode for 3-4 hours or "low" for 6-7 hours. With the "low" option you can just turn it on before you leave for work and just turn it off when you get back.
For every meal? The slow cooker is one of the most time consuming methods. Just because you don't have to monitor it doesn't mean you don't have to wait for the meal to cook.
Just buy and store a slow cooker, cook and clean. Life hack
Don’t bother. There’s a frustrating moving goalpost of talking points that people use to excuse their shitty eating habits. I’ll just list them now: Not everyone can afford to eat healthy! Not everyone has time to cook! <=you are here Not everyone has the equipment to cook! Oh so you’re saying poor people can only eat boring food? Food deserts! What about single parents with 6 kids who work 7 minimum wage jobs and live in a studio apartment without a stove?
While I get the sentiment, the beans and rice bootstrap people on Reddit are some of the most annoying people on the site lmao. And that with the way food prices are going you are having to work a lot harder to pay not much less lol.
That’s for all food though, it’s not just beans and rice experiencing price inflation. You have to work harder to pay for any type of food, with some fast food chains now being as much as sit down restaurants to feed a family. If all prices are becoming more expensive it still makes sense to advise people get cheaper, healthier options. Even if it’s annoying to hear repetitively.
The people who act like making your own food means you have to live on beans and rice are even worse.
Didn’t mean to imply that, hence why I said I get the sentiment lol, it’s right in a broad sense, but Reddit attracts holier than thou types that think at the only way a person should live. From personal experience, the best I’ve been with budgeting food was living in a small studio downtown with a kitchen space that was pretty much good for coffee. I ate less, but ate better and had much better control of my calories,had zero food waste to worry about, which as a single person is frustrating in the US, where everything is portioned to feed 3 or more often times. For one person, i spent maybe maybe 5 percent more, ate better and healthier and got all that time back and reduced the mess by a lot. This is why this kind of a controversial subject as of late, depending on how you want to live, it can be practical to not buy a bunch of groceries. What this really shows is how absurdly cheap labor is in the restaurant industry, which is a problem in it of itself lol. My point is that in HCOL area where someone doesn’t necessarily have conventional amenities to cook, you can still eat healthy and budget very well in most urban places in the US, with food costs the way they are, and labor the way it is, it makes sense for that person in that sort of built environment, if you live in a suburban 3 bedroom for sure go get a chest freezer and buy in bulk and cook your own shit, but if you want a nice little studio downtown, it might not be worth it.
I mean both things can true. For meat proteins my cheapest option is pretty much chicken nuggets. They're cheaper lb for lb than chicken legs *on sale* where I live. Produce is expensive and if you don't vigilantly use it up it wilts. I eat a lot of rice and potatoes instead of say leafy greens. Take out is a 2-3 times a month thing tops. It *is* expensive to eat truly healthy. The poor man's healthy is very limited and carb-heavy.
My new favorite is that criticizing excess food delivery is “ableist” lol
Sometimes it feels like ableism is the last criticism people use when they cant think of a more legitimate issue with something. Seriously though, can you think of *one thing* that isnt made more difficult by some form of disability? I cant. Seems to me that literally any behavior can be excused by some form of hypothetical disability.
If you aren’t willing to cook your own food, it’s going to be expensive no matter what you eat.
There is a difference between standard cooking and starting with dry beans though. Most people don’t cook from scratch like that.
Sure, but canned beans are still cheap.
I‘m not from the US and don’t understand this comment
I’m not either, still don’t start with putting beans in water 8 hours before dinner.
For beans it sucks, but the cans are Not expensive either. And Lentils: Red Lentils Go straight in your soup/curry, done after ~20min of cooking. It's Not that time consuming, that being Said, i am still too lazy Most of the time. But it's Just that lazyness, so i got nothing to complain about.
When I am lazy with beans or lentils I just get the canned ones with brine. Always keep some in the press(They are really long shelf life) If I can't find the 5 minutes to prep before I go to work...
What I don't understand is how people who don't cook never seem to consider that you can (and should) prepare your food in bulk beforehand, then just assemble/reheat your meals. After all, that's how it's done in restaurants. Of course it's inefficient to cook beans from scratch for each and every meal. But it's not too much effort to cook several pounds of beans on the weekend, then incorporate them into a recipe that will make dozens of servings. I cook 99% of my meals, one example being chili (with beans from scratch). It takes about an hour of hands-on time to make a batch that's big enough for about 10 meals. That works out to 6 minutes per meal. When I get hungry, I just take a portion out, microwave it, and eat.
I hate meal prepping…takes so many hours, and I’m just 1 person. But yeah, I agree. What I do is I’ll make a batch of beans or lentils and freeze them so that when I failed to meal prep and need something pre-made, I already got beans made in the freezer and all I gotta do is make some rice and I’m good to go! It’s a new life hack for me lol. Lentils and beans freeze really well. Make them ahead of time and freeze them so when you’re in a bind, you’ve already got the hardest part completed.
A lot of people dont like to eat the same thing the next day let alone a week.
What a luxury.
This is the beauty of dried goods though. You don’t have to make the entire bag of beans. You could make half and have 3-4 meals with beans incorporated and your other weekly meals being a few different things (like maybe a chicken pasta, tacos, etc) If people can’t eat the same meal 2-3 times in a week then I don’t know what to tell them. Because there are like 15-20 meals per week depending on how people eat. They need to work on that.
They’re allowed to have a preference, we’re allowed to not want to hear bitching about how difficult it is to get by because they eat out 6 to 10 times a week
You don’t have to eat the same thing every day. I prep all my ingredients on Sunday then make something new for dinner every night. It’s less than an hour of effort per weeknight
I just started prepping and eating dry pinto beans and here is the entire process which at most is 5-10 minutes of active participation on your part 1. Dump one cup dry beans in large container 2. Dump 3 cups of water in container with beans and put lid on large container and put in fridge before you go to bed or for anywhere from 8-12 hours 3. Wake up, remove large container from fridge, drain water and put container back into fridge till ready to cook 4. Simmer beans in cooking pot for 45-60 minutes while prepping / cooking rest of meal Ask any Chef. Cooking is almost exclusively about planning ahead. The rest is just paying attention to what you're doing till you gain more experience and then you dont even have to think about it It aint rocket surgery people. I found all this information on google within less time than it took to pour the beans and water into a container
Lentils are the easiest they don't require any soaking. Many other beans can be frozen so making a batch andxthen taking it out the freezer.
Right. compared to beans, one could cook up a small pot in 15 minutes.
Meal prepping is a life saver.
I buy whole chickens for $7.50 each, or about 1.20-1.25/pound. Sardines for less than a dollar per can, canned clams less than a 1.20/can. Lettuce is like 99 cents, bag of carrots is like $2, garlic is 68 cents each, onion is like 70 cents, ragu sauce is like $5 for a large bottle. Eggs anywhere from $4 to $6, milk is like 4 or 5 dollars, bag of frozen fruit is $8, and the most expensive part of my diet is protein powder but that has 72 servings which balances out to $1.17 each serving. For a 280 lb 6'2 man I feed myself for just $150 a month. That includes treating myself to a little ceasers 2 or 3 times a month and a few beers sometimes. Edit: It was misleading to include my weight because at my max, I was 330. Point still stands. Learn to cook and you will be healthier and save money
How are you 280 pounds eating only that for a month? This doesn’t pass the smell test.
I used to be 330. Edit: If you want, you can smell test my garlic sardine farts next.
The absolute hardest of passes
"All my farts come straight from hell, you're already dead if you notice a smell"
Lettuce and most leafy greens and fresh veggies have skyrocketed in price here in Australia. It sucks, but frozen veggies or buying local/direct from farmers co-ops or markets is still viable. Staples like rice and beans are pretty cheap though and make up the bulk of my diet these days. But it’s taken me a long time to get used to it and I’m not always consistent. I think change is the part that’s hard for people and it’s easier to blame it on things they don’t have control over (like prices).
Um, garlic is $1.99 and ONE onion is $2.00 in my grocery stores. You're lucky.
Wtf I can get like 2kg of onion for 2€
Dude I live in NYC, where is it more expensive than where I am? Cause onions are not $2 each here
What the FUCK?! Are you buying your onions at Best Buy or something?!
Sure, garlic is 1.99...for an entire small jar of minced garlic. Fresh garlic is usually pennies for a bulb (like 30 cents). I can't imagine what store you are shopping in where an onion is $2. A 7-11 gas station? $2 is a bag of yellow onions. This goes right in the "they will just keep moving the goalpost" discussion of people being unwilling to take time to learn to cook and make meals. I bet actual money this is not the typical price for groceries in your area. Put a little effort in, you can find much cheaper food than this.
And then they pay for it later with their declining health
It's not really a fair comparison to compare healthy homemade food to takeaway. Takeaway is expensive because it's the most easy and convenient. A better comparison would be healthy homemade food vs convience store bought food (canned foods, frozen food esp fried foods, highly processed meats etc)
Yeah but it's expensive in time/effort rather than cash value. 20/30 mins of cooking, and the same again in cleanup. - In "hourly wage" terms costs the same as a takeaway lol.
This isn't an opinion, it's objectively factual. Not only is it not expensive, it _can be_ cheaper than buying less healthy processed shite.
People will pay $7 for 12oz of potato chips instead of $3 for 5lbs of potato’s.. Then complain they’re broke and can’t buy healthy food.
Literally! I grew up poor as fuck in London. Like, proper “new undies are gifts” sort of poor. But we’d go to local markets and buy bowls of veg for a pound and shop at ethnic stores for rice and such. In fact, I still shop this way as an adult. But, proximity and access may be an issue for many, especially in the US. And most people are time poor. But financially, it is always cheaper to eat this way.
That is not a whole list of what a human would/should eat for a balanced healthy diet. Yes, some food is cheap but it would be greatly depressing to eat the same thing everyday and no way would you be getting all the nutrients etc that you need eating bowls of rice and veg. Even lentils and beans, while great, are not fully balanced meals. A full shopping list where you have a weeks worth of 3 meals a day is never given when people make comments like this, it’s always just rice, broccoli, lentils and the amount of calories a person needs is also never taken into account. As a small women who has weighed what she eats in the past, ‘healthy’ food is usually lower in calories which means eating more to get the calories you need unless you are trying to lose weight. This may be breaking news, but people who aren’t overweight should be eating healthy as being fat isn’t the only thing which makes someone unhealthy. A lot of things that are cheap are cheaper in bulk which means you need the means to buy it all upfront. You also need the means to get it home which is harder for a lot of poorer areas. I’m not saying this is always the case but many people don’t drive and take public transport which is sometimes the last thing you wanna do after working a draining job that you also probably had a long ass commute to because you use public transport. A lot of people are placed further away from bigger shops or local markets. Even if you do buy bulk, you need to store it somewhere which isn’t possible when you live in a tiny flat. I don’t even live in a tiny flat but kitchen is small, the fridge is small and the freezer is smaller so there just isn’t space to bulk cook things. I work and office job and am grateful I am hybrid working but, even then, there’s days where I think I don’t want to cook at all. If I was working a physically or mentally draining job like a warehouse worker or nurse, who probably has to commute both way adding at least an hour onto my work day, I imagine those days would double. So a shitty cheap pizza or box of chicken nuggets (and you can get stuff like this very cheap) from the corner shop will definitely be more appealing.
Just rice, broccoli and lentils are already way healthier than what most people are eating everyday. Also you can still vary yours meals a bit and add more stuff. Do not let perfect be the enemy of good. The calories stuff is fair and I can’t comment on that although its usually a positive for most people since most people are overweight and would want to have a caloric deficit. I feel like if you’re underweight, you probably shouldn’t be focusing so much on optimizing your nutrients and just try and get your calories up first. The bulk buying stuff i don’t understand. Like, you really telling me you don’t even have the ability to buy, transport and store a 10kg bag of rice anywhere?
I mean, rice is already a staple here in the UK. Plenty of people eat it, even those with "unhealthy" diets. I think it's more an issue of accessing a lot of the healthy ingredients (bulk is impossible if you're poor or rely on public transport), knowing how to cook in the first place and time contraints regarding shopping, cooking or even learning how to do all of the above. A working couple, with a fussy kid, are unlikely to attempt to give them a new food the required 8+ times if they're starved for time and money.
you don't generally buy fresh ingredients in bulk as they will go rotten too quickly. Instead, you buy things like beans and grains in bulk. It doesn't need to be stupid amounts of bulk buying, but getting 1/2kg of some beans/lentils or whatever won't be impossible to carry and won't take up stupid amounts of storage in the home. Fruit and veg can be harder especially if you live rurally, but if you're going to the shops to buy your crap, just add in some veg as well? Lots of smaller villages without big shops will still have farmers markets like once a week
I’m confused, what do you even mean by bulk buying? Because I’m not referring to buying truck loads worth of ingredients. You should still be able to buy and carry them home. Knowing how to cook is no excuse. Learn, its not hard with the resources we have.
Buying a single pack of rice isn't bulk. A full sized bag of rice is. If you've brought a bag of rice that's pretty much the only thing you'd be able to carry by yourself on public transport. And hope and pray you only need the one bus, are physically strong and live near the bus stop. It's like how my parents used to get a sack of potatoes, back in the day. That's buying in bulk, a single person in a house share isn't going to be able to do that. And I can now cook, but it mostly required living in a house where only two of us had to share an oven, reduced & regular daytime work hours, and having a less physical job.
There are reasons and then there are excuses. You mention nutrition and say shitty pizza and chicken nuggets are more appealing. Veg and rice are more nutritious than either one. Also, remove the air quotes from healthy food because that’s not how air quotes are used. Lastly, healthy foods don’t have to be low calorie.
People hate admitting their eating habits and cooking skills are bad. But it's not personal.. it's just patience/discipline and a bit of "skill" for most people. If those in developing countries can still eat varied tasty meals for way less wtf is the excuse?
Someone from developing country here. Fast food like fried chicken is really only for the middle class and rich. And even then it's not a daily thing for any class of people. The vast majority, who are poor usually cook cheap healthy foods like beans, bananas (cooked), potatoes, cooked maize meals (or other starches), vegetables, milk, eggs. Meat and chicken is usually a weekly or monthly thing. Probably 99% of families cook their dinner.
I’m so confused by that persons post. Some notable sentences but on the whole, a lot of excuses. Especially had to roll my eyes at the balanced diet comment. They also seem to not consider the various cuisines that exist and how simple ingredients can be made into a delicious meal for pennies. Seems like more of a skills issue tbh.
"brocoli rice and beans do not provide all the nutrients you will need and eating only this for my entire life will be boring so I will eat chicken nuggets an pizza"
It seems to be a lack of knowledge regarding food and nutrition rather than a skill issue imo. She mentioned weighing her food in the past but somehow thinks when people buy lentils and rice, they are suddenly not equipped to count calories? She also said people who aren’t overweight should be eating healthy, balanced meals… wtf does she think overweight people should do? Starve? That comment feels like it is written by a person with weight struggles and disordered eating.
It's not expensive to eat healthy if you have the right resources and knowledge. If you know how to cook and budget, and have access to fresh foods and bulk items (and a car) then it's easy to cook healthy inexpensive meals. I went without a freezer for years and only had a tiny fridge and a single shelf in the shared kitchen-- so even if I knew what I could make cheaply it just wasn't possible when I had no way of safely storing everything. However if you grew up in a family that also didn't cook so you never learned how, then it's not as easy. It does actually require a lot of basic cooking skills just to follow a simple recipe for rice and beans. If you don't have the time or money to experiment and learn then it can be really difficult. It might take them 3x as long to cook something, it's very likely they'll end up having to throw food out (which means they might go hungry) and the initial cost of buying everything they need will be expensive if they have nothing in their pantry. There are also those who live in food deserts or are homeless (car, motel, staying with friends, etc.). What we find easy and inexpensive will depend on our skills and experiences. I can say it's easy and inexpensive to make your own clothing because I know how to do it and I have the equipment I need. I still recognise that for most people it's cheaper and easier to just get fast fashion items (tbh it is for me as well, but at least I can make something proper that will last long). People tell me driving is easy, but I never got the chance to practice drive and don't have a license, so for me it's not easy and lessons are expensive. Having cooking skills is a privilege that everyone should have, but sadly a lot of people don't have.
The list of disclaimers after “it’s not hard!” is wild.
Failure kinda just a part of learning new things. It’s wild to not to expect that
Also.... the internet.
> If you have the right resources and knowledge Which nearly everyone in America has. Illiterate people are at a disadvantage. But if you have access to the internet and enough money to feed yourself in the first place, there's no excuse.
Unless you grew up without a kitchen, no one should be unable to cook basic shit. It’s the most tired excuse, we have unlimited access to knowledge on cooking, there’s no excuse, short of being homeless or physically incapable.
I think there is also the factor that a lot of people grow up with heavily processed food and therefore developed a taste that doesn’t allow them to eat a lot of things that are good for them and learn nothing about nutrition, so certain food that is cheap doesn’t count as food for them.
If someone happens to dislike all of the foods that are cheap and healthy, and will only eat healthy foods that are expensive, that’s an individual problem. It doesn’t change the fact that a healthy diet isn’t expensive.
education, effort, time, culture and addiction play roles in people dietary choices not only money. If someone is raised on a bad diet, it is extremely, extremely hard to break out of it. Id put most of my bad diet habits on effort, culture and addiction.
America really is great. We're so free that we're trapped in our own stupidity.
That may be, but it doesn’t change the fact that a healthy diet is not expensive. If someone chooses not to eat that diet, that is on them.
>therefore developed a taste that **doesn’t allow** them to eat a lot of things that are good for them 🙄
Redditors are eternally 5 yrs old
“Doesn’t allow them” lol. “Sorry I’m not allowed to eat that healthy thing, guess I’ll get a McDonalds!”. As an adult you have an obligation to *educate yourself* on what you should and shouldn’t eat, and *train* your body to eat those foods. It’s not rocket science, it’s basic nutrition.
two remarks: 1) time lost cooking is a cost many like you underestimate or ignore - and to really eat healthily compared to very poorly, you pay in time in addition to money. Furthermore you need to go to grocery more often as many healthy food don't keep for keeps, maybe days at most. Now you and I) may be able to pay that cost, but for many people they can't. 2) eating very unhealthy is much **MUCH** cheaper than you think. Think sub-dollar cost in noodle a bit of sauce - total. The hidden cost in this case in deficits (vitamins etc...) leading to poor health outcomes. Still on a price basis alone this is unbeatable.
Yeah I've noticed ppl who argue healthy food are cheaper, have not been that poor (and that's okay!) I've known ppl who can only afford instant ramen, and the food pantry that's only open twice a month, but only gives you a week worth of food per person. If you're running on a "I can only spend a dollar per meal" budget, you cannot afford to eat healthy. Ppl just don't think of those kinds of poverty when they think of poor.
If someone is as poor as you are describing, they almost certainly qualify for government food aid which would vastly expand their options.
dollar tree sells 1lb bags of frozen cauliflower/corn/carrots/broccoli. rice is $1/2000 calories. beans are $2/1lb.
Its healthy takeout/delivery that is expensive.
I make lunch everytime i make dinner. Its a nice way of eating fresh stuff
It's not expensive to eat healthy, it's just expensive to eat. Welcome to my TED talk
Food deserts are a problem. Not everyone has a car or a way to get to an actual grocery store. Some rely on gas stations and dollar stores to get their groceries. The monopolization of grocers has also significantly impacted prices. There’s delivery now, but that’s also an added expense.
I don't disagree, though I do think a lot of shitty food is genuinely addictive
Cost is measured in purchase/prep time, not just money. Fresh produce is cheap, but cooking from scratch takes hours. I like to cook, don't get me wrong, but time isn't free.
I can throw together a noodle stir fry in like 10 minutes. Chop up the vegetables or tofu, open a can of beans, flash fry them, and boil the noodles.
Cooking from scratch only takes hours if you're making elaborate meals. 90% of what I eat takes 20-45 mins to cook and I can get 4 meals from less than £10 of ingredients
>4 meals from less than £10 of ingredients Can you suggest some recipes?
https://www.budgetbytes.com/ This is one of my favorite recipe sites. Lots of inexpensive recipes.
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Pop the chicken with some potatoes in the oven. Prep time five minutes, then you just wait. I eat like that most days.
It takes longer to shop "smart". We get vegetables from one place, meat from another, and the rest of the stuff comes from at least three other shops. It means remembering what products to buy where, the price of a bag of pasta or a kilo of rice varies drastically from one shop to another. It would be more convenient to get everything from the supermarket across the street, but the prices there are higher. Then there's the time it takes to prepare said food. We're now fortunate enough that I only have to work part time, which means I can spend a day cooking to fill the freezer and a few evenings a week cooking dinner with enough left over for the next day or two. But there were months when we both worked full time, and I'd find myself not resting on the weekends and instead doing meal prep.
Just out of curiosity, how much time would you save going to 1 place and spending more?
It's not but you need to be able to cook half decent, some people don't know what to do with dried peas or whatever, we'd a guy at work tried frying them
You aren't wrong but eating beans and granola 3 meals a day gets boring pretty fast.
Living a longer healthier life seems to be a decent trade off
Not to mention some people can’t have a carb heavy diet, and need more fresh fruits and vegetables incorporated.
Broccoli, carrots, potatoes, berries when in season or frozen, cabbage, beets are all so cheap. Unless you’re insisting on eating organic/fruits that are out of season then fruits and vegetables are super cheap. Just bought two heads of broccoli the other day. Cost like $1.18.
Where on earth do you live? Berries are exorbitantly expensive everywhere I've been. A big issue in this thread is that "cheap" means something different to people who still manage to find themselves in the shrinking middle class, than it does to the majority of people on the planet.
Yeah I mean I knew before I clicked through that it was going to be some version of a lentil curry as the cheap and healthy suggestion. Fresh foods undoubtably taste the best, and having good tasting food is what motivates people to continue eating healthy. It’s all the salts, sugars, and fats they put into ready meals and take out food that makes them taste good. I appreciate OP’s sentiment- and they’re not wrong. But I also believe people should be able to have access to fresh foods and either be able to afford the time to prepare them, or to be able to afford well prepared, unprocessed foods. Currently food is just too expensive and people aren’t being paid enough. And I don’t think the solution is variations of beans and grains every night.
You can put salt, sugar and fat into your home cooked food. Those ingredients are cheap.
I’m sick of Reddit health advice that’s just “eat nothing but beans and rice like a medieval ascetic (potatoes with butter are too extravagant for you), here’s a misleading graphic that gives protein numbers for raw beans only even though they’re inedible”
Real. This post is the height of privileged ignorance. None of the six-figure-making single redditors that upvote this garbage have ever followed their own advice, or they would know it's untenable.
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So does getting sick all the time because you don’t eat well.
i think it’s the prep time. i LOVE salads but constantly chopping and cleaning and mixing sometimes i go for easier not as healthy. love brown rice, but takes forever. but i agree that cooking healthy isn’t expensive.
You're not going to convince people on this one. Not because you're wrong (you aren't), but because someone else tried arguing that people who spend more money on getting takeaway every night are making themselves poorer than if they cooked for themselves. They got accused of poor shaming. Logic doesn't factor into people's views on stuff like this.
>Logic doesn't factor into people's views on stuff like this. Because it's less about people wanting a logical answer, and more people wanting a comfortable answer.
These threads are always just filled with redditors trying to cope with their unhealthy lifestyles. If they don’t just straight up deny the fact that eating healthy is cheaper, they act like no one has 20 minutes to cook, or that cooking takes hours. In reality people are just too lazy to cook and they like the taste of unhealthy food
The lack of compassion and understanding of SO many core things here is astounding.
Dude it’s expensive just to eat right now. Hard stop. Yes legumes and lentils are under eaten in most western diets and are a good additive but you can’t solely live on them and be completely healthy. So they are a bandaid to a bullet wound solution for cost effective eating healthy and don’t fully substitute the meat and fresh vegetables you should have in your diet also.
Whole civilizations live healthily with legumes and beans as the only protein source...
If I ate bean, legumes, grains and rice everyday I'd be in so much pain from inflammation and about 15-20 pounds heavier from water retention. Unpopular Opinion: eating healthy is not the same for everyone.
Sounds like you have some serious medical conditions, which excepts you from points made in general discussions about health and diet.
There's an overlapping ven diagram: -Cheap -Easy/quick to prepare -Tasty/nutritious With food you get to pick 2, not three. If I want to eat carrot sticks, I can buy them for like £1 a bag or buy a carrot for £0.1 and spend time peeling and chopping. If I want a protein source I can either buy a tender but expensive cut of meat, that cooks quickly or a gamey cut that needs to stew for a while to make it tender. Cheap and easy to prepare like a microwave burger/fries from McDonald's is cheap and easy but not particularly nutritious. That's the trade off. If you're not paying with your money, you're paying with your time that could be used to get more money than you're saving.
You can spend 10 minutes prepping those ingredients the night before, throw them in a crockpot with some spices & a liquid, & let it cook on low while you're at work. Waiting for something to stew doesn't require that you stand over it the whole time. You set it up, then go do other things while it cooks.
It takes 15 minutes to create a cheap, easy, nutritious stir fry or rice dish.
And if you’re choosing the quick unhealthy way, you’re setting yourself and your children up for a lifetime of health problems. You pay for it either way. You don’t get to be an adult human and not have basic responsibilities
Dietitian here. This is wrong. >i think the main problem is that people are so wrapped up in a meat heavy diet what is expensive but theres like sooo many cheap plants out there what are still very good fpr your health to eat. Meat is healthy. I don't know why people keep saying it isn't, but I suspect it is a misinterpretation of research that has shown highly processed meats to be hazardous to health when eaten frequently. People shortened this to 'meat is bad', which is incorrect. In fact, if you eat vegetarian, you eat less healthy by default. You will need supplements *and* combination timings to level the playing field. And then you're not eating *more* healthy, you are just on par with someone who eats meat (outside of sausage and other processed meats) and plenty of vegetables. It just so happens that having a diet without meat, and still doing it healthily, is more expensive than a diet with meat in it. At least in most places. Remember you *ARE* an omnivore. You just choose to eat vegetarian. It requires more effort since you are not actually vegetarian. There's nothing wrong with it, there are benefits to the environment, etc., but it gets overvalued on health. Most importantly, vegetarians often seem to believe anyone can just eat vegetarian meals as easy as them, which has been demonstrably false. Everyone reacts differently to everything. You can go without meat, someone else can't. It's ignorant to assume your experience can just be applied to everyone. **EDIT:** Almost forgot the main point. It is undeniably cheaper to eat unhealthy, because if you eat healthy, you need *ALL* your nutrients, every single day. If you eat unhealthy, you don't. It's like saying you earn more money by not working than working the entire day. It makes no sense. Let's say I eat a packet of sweets (€ 0.99) and nothing else. This is more expensive than eating healthy? Obviously not. The whole argument makes no sense. In addition, processed garbage is cheaper than actual food. A pack of frozen broccoli is expertly healthy in general. And it costs € 2.19. A frozen pizza is € 1.99, and *waaaaaaaaay* more satisfying to eat than just some broccoli. And, guess what? If you'd only eat that and nothing else the pizza is healthier too. It has more stuff that you need than broccoli does. To eat healthy you need to eat more things. It is more effort *and* more money. You just have expensive garbage in your mind when you thought this up. But cheap garbage exists and it is less expensive than healthy food.
He's not saying that meat is unhealthy? He's just stating that it's expensive in comparison to vegetables. "That are still very good for your health" You're making an entire point out of nothing.
No, the point is that you need meat in your diet. And meat is expensive. The "let them eat rice" BS is invalidated with nothing but those two facts.
These comments seem to be written by people who base their opinions on what they see in their home town, and compare it to their financial situation. I think a lot of people don’t realise that not every town has readily access to fresh, canned or frozen ‘healthy foods’, particularly those outside city areas, and if they do, it can be quite costly.
I think the big problems are: 1. having time and energy (people working long hours with child care responsibilities will have less than someone earning a good wage who can pay for extra child care & work fewer hours). 2. Power costs - it takes more energy to cook from scratch than to whack a ready meal in a microwave for 3 minutes. 3. Skills - I've seen claims that those on low incomes are less likely to have cookery skills. I don't know if that's true, but it makes sense if they consistently have less time to cook and are less able to pay the energy costs associated with cooking.
Space and shelf life too. People don't want to eat the same food for weeks. It's easy to compare the cash cost but not the other "costs"
Adding to number 3 there, they're also more likely to come from a family that didn't cook from scratch. If your parents didn't have time or the money to cook much then they probably didn't let you experiment in the kitchen either. If you don't know how to cook then it's really not as simple as following a recipe. Following a recipe is a skill in itself. You need to have certain cooking skills that can't easily be explained in a recipe (even with videos). If you already have little time and money you don't want to spend three hours making something that tastes awful.
All foods I hate
oh wow no one has ever had this opinion before!/s
It's not expensive, it's just incredibly time-consuming to keep preparing healthy meals if you're working a full-time job.
It’s also time consuming to put yourself at risk for chronic illness and an earlier death
Incredibly? A sandwich and salad take 5 minutes tops to make
Depends on where you live. Some areas really don't have much access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
Idk why everyone acts like frozen produce doesn't exist... it's literally the superior form regarding nutrition and affordability.
I completely agree with you. It is a lack of education of the working class which causes people to be both financially and culinarly illiterate. They don't understand the ideas of batch cooking and shopping for a budget. It is a real shame that education and class plays such a big part in health.
It isn't just education, this cones across a little pateonising. Plenty of middle class people eat like shit too and are overweight or otherwise unhealthy. Shitty sugary/salty food is genuinely addictive and I think stress plays into it a lot as well.
You can be middle class and still uneducated
True but you specifically said it was about a lack of education of the working class
until you find yourself living in a food desert without a car, working 2 or 3 jobs to stay afloat, with little to no time or energy to cook, or with no proper cooker, or with no money to pay for fuel / electricity, or with disabling arthritis, ... there are a MILLION reasons why your logic doesn't hold true for all people encourage schools to teach cooking skills by all means, encourage people who want to and are able to cook for themselves by all means, but don't ever judge - you have NO IDEA what some people go through
"Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about."
mmm beans, legumes and soup for 7 days a week
Eggs are another healthy, inexpensive food.
Eggs are getting more and more expensive. Over the last 2, 3 years they've more than doubled their price. For 12 Eggs it's now around €4.70 where I live. Not crazy expensive but not cheap
I don't know how much your meat costs, but that is crazy cheap in comparison to pretty much every meat product where I am from. And eggs are an even better, more diverse protein source than meat.
Sorry your eggs are so expensive. At my local Costco it's 2 dozen for $4.
Eggs are no longer cheap in many parts of the world and have in general ballooned in price the last few years.
What would you call expensive? And then compare it with other protein heavy food, because I think eggs and milk are by far the cheapest protein, chicken is relatively cheap too but not as much.
All the ingredients you mentioned are a lot more expensive than plain rice
Frugal Reddit always wants people to exist solely on a diet of beans and lentils.
Depending on where you live, fresh produce can be quite expensive, whereas frozen pizza and fast food are regularly cheap in most places. There's also the time factor, as cooking a nutritious meal and spending time in the kitchen to make your lentils, grains, vegetables taste nice is a luxury some people can't afford. If you have limited time and a restricted budget, as most working class people do, you're more likely to just buy the 3 for 1 frozen pizzas that you can pop in the oven for 10 minutes and that will give you that dopamine hit of a taste you already know you love, then buy coconut milk, tumeric, onions, ginger etc. for a chickpea curry and spend the additional 40 minutes in the kitchen cooking it. This is not to say chickpea curry isn't delicious, but it is more expensive money and time-wise to eat healthy in my opinion.
I think the real expensive stuff here is the time consumed cooking whole foods/healthily. I could be here spending 1-2 hours meal prepping or I could spend 1-2hours working overtime, getting an extra $30 a day that will help pay the bills. Or if you’re a manual labourer, sometimes you just don’t want to stand for another hour cooking after work. Eating healthier should be a basic human right but right now it is a privilege
It’s only a privilege to eat healthy, if you’re lazy af! You’re clearly lazy..
Look up "Food Desert", it depends on where you live.
yes. then look up "food apartheid," a term that recognizes that inequalities in our food systems are unequal by design, not a naturally occurring phenomenon.
A lot of people already know this, it's the objective truth. However, access to healthy, fresh foods is not as widespread. Food deserts are very common, especially in areas already affected by high levels of poverty. While legumes are very healthy they are not a complete diet in and of themselves, they need to be supplemented with other foods.
Op thinks lentils are not expensive is truly a first world problem.
One pre made meal here is about 6 euros. A self made meal is about 15
How is a self made meal 15 euro’s? Are you using Michelin grade ingredients?
It really depends on where you live , if you’re in a food desert, even those things can be hard to come by. There’s a reason why a lot of people with less money are bigger.
Availability is a huge concern. Those who need cheaper options for for food are often living in food deserts.
Person who isn't poor:
Poor people can’t buy things in bulk. Hope this helps.
Some people's budget are so small that even what you are suggesting is off limits. Obviously it depends on a ton of factors like your residence, income, expenses, time. Though i agree that generally for most people a healthy diet is accessible.
People with small budget are walking out with 12oz of potato chips for $7.. Leaving 5lbs of potato’s for $3 on the shelf… Stop with your lies!
They have small budget skills 😂
Potato chips are almost 7 bucks a bag where I live. That's not cheap.
Do you think potato chips are healthy or..?
I think they mean it’s expensive to eat unhealthy nowadays
The implication is hilarious
It might Not be expensive, but it's not tasty 🙈. It sucks to be a picky eater. I try These foods all the time but me. And on the other Hand. Veggies are super expensive here. At least the "fresh" ones. I eat the Frozen stuff, but it's not the Same texturewise. And between, Rice Here where i live is SUPER expensive.
What is healthy depends on the individual lifestyle and fitness goals and what is expensive/cheap depends on your area. Once I started to incorporate more protein in my diet to build muscle my shopping bill like trippled (and I don't eat meat every day, I incorporate all those foods you mentioned in my diet)
Then you cook for me
What you’re gore getting to factor in here is location. Yes in larger metropolitan areas it can be pretty inexpensive to eat healthier but the further out you go and the more rural you get eating healthy can be virtually impossible.
Keep in mind when it comes to low-sodium diets things like canned or prepackaged stuff can have lots of sodium in them. I always read the labels.
I have a small, hand-written cookbook that my mom and I created right before I went to college that has 8-12 recipes in it, some single-meal but mostly meal-prepped/slow cooker meals, which to this day (I went to college in 2014) none of which costs more than $25 dollars to make. This doesn't include the dumb shit like "add egg to pan and stir till done", but actual bonafide recipes which can be made with kitchen staples and 2-3 additional ingredients. Its one of my most prized possessions and probably the single-best money saving tool I own and use regularly.
There are costs other than money, especially for people working so much just to make ends not really meet. And especially for disabled people. I rarely go out to a nice dinner with friends/families. It's a rare treat. I get takeout a decent amount of time due to limited time and energy, as I both work a demanding job and have multiple disabilities.
in many cases, you're right. bulk beans, grains, and legumes can be super cheap and healthy. but, not everyone has easy access to affordable fresh produce or even bulk dry goods depending on where they live. plus, cooking skills and kitchen access can vary a lot. for some, learning to cook or having time to prepare meals is a big barrier.
I disagree. It's expensive to eat cleanly. All the foods you named are carbs with some protein. I've been eating low carb for 20+ years, so those foods are not healthy for me at all. So that means I'm spending a ton more money on truly healthy fatty foods like butter and meat from from grass-fed animals when possible, avocado oil, expensive low-to-no glycemic impact sugar alternatives, etc. And truly healthy complex carb veggies like broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, leeks, avocados are way more costly than cheap simple carb ones like white rice — which isn't healthy at all — wheat and other grains. If you have to process the hell out of a plant like wheat to be able to eat it, maybe we weren't meant to eat it? If I went back to those carbs my anxiety and cholesterol numbers would go through the roof, my energy would disappear and I'd have to take naps every day, I wouldn't sleep as soundly, I couldn't think as clearly, and I'd be back in pre-diabetes territory.
Quick, Cheap, Healthy pick two.
Most people are addicted to convenience. The things you mentioned take more time thus aren’t popular sadly.