Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I quickly drafted a shopping list and one week menu (for one person) where three reasonably healthy meals can be eaten for under $40.
Shoot, where do you live? Your shopping list would total almost twice that around here. And I haven't seen cottage cheese for a dollar since the Reagan administration.
I'm sorry, but it takes more than six minutes to cook a chicken breast. And if you're finishing your meal in 10 minutes, you're eating too fast.
Cleaning up after dinner in three minutes? Maybe if you're on speed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rumina
There are a lot of barriers of entry such as horrible misinformation.
Time is the main issue. No, it doesn't take that much time to cook a meal. But the prep does take time and should be included. Additionally, the reason why money and knowledge are barriers is because of time. The reason why those in poverty are disproportionally obese is because they often work 2-3 jobs due to money problems and thus do not have the time to gain the knowledge.
This is a reality so many self-righteous people refuse to try to understand.
Quote:
Additionally, when your life is ****ty all the time it becomes harder to put forth that effort. Our tolerance for misery and our capacity for effort is a limited resource.
Eating foods containing fat is better for your long-term satiety and health than bread or pasta. (not to say you should be eating buttery cookies or bread with butter, I'm talking about people's aversion to meat with fat in it) There are a lot of barriers of entry such as horrible misinformation.
Time is the main issue. No, it doesn't take that much time to cook a meal. But the prep does take time and should be included. Additionally, the reason why money and knowledge are barriers is because of time. The reason why those in poverty are disproportionally obese is because they often work 2-3 jobs due to money problems and thus do not have the time to gain the knowledge. Additionally, when your life is ****ty all the time it becomes harder to put forth that effort. Our tolerance for misery and our capacity for effort is a limited resource.
I say this as someone who cooks and is at a healthy weight, while on a graduate student stipend and with the schedule of a grad student. I know what they go through, and it just makes me all the more grateful for the tools and privileges I grew up with to allow me to be able to get through this. And I actually make (barely) over poverty level. Those who make minimum wage and work full-time (assuming they get benefits) are usually under poverty level (single parents, couples with only 1 spouse able to work, etc) And that's being generous, most retail companies employ practices such as only assigning someone 30 hours a week so they don't have to provide benefits, so the employee might be working 2 jobs at 60 hours a week without health benefits, and so on and so forth.
Prep is done when there is time. If someone says they don't have time then I call BS.
Takes 5 min to learn something, and you can get it for free.....or the cost is opportunity costs of that 5 min.
BS on poverty and obese. Don't even go there. I've given people who had NOTHING the chance to work and get ahead, giving them a house to live rent free & utilities paid......They still smoke and eat at McD's more in one week than I have in 3 months(not the smoke'n part, I don't smoke)
Shi##y life? I've hit rock bottom and dug deeper. I got out, so can they.
I don't mean to pick on you, but as a graduate student.........there is alot out there you haven't seen yet. I've learned and seen alot in the last 30 yrs and look back ..........it's just that way, hard to explain.
Shoot, where do you live? Your shopping list would total almost twice that around here. And I haven't seen cottage cheese for a dollar since the Reagan administration.
I'm sorry, but it takes more than six minutes to cook a chicken breast. And if you're finishing your meal in 10 minutes, you're eating too fast.
Cleaning up after dinner in three minutes? Maybe if you're on speed.
This is a reality so many self-righteous people refuse to try to understand.
Another good point.
BS. I can cook a chicken breast in much less than 6 min. Of course not whole.
BS. Eating in 10 min is a bit fast, but if time is critical you get it done.
BS. Clean up AFTER dinner in 3 min? No problem, you have the time to clean as things are cooking.
BS. Reality is everybody has problems. Self-righteous refuse to understand? BS arrogant statement.
Bad info? we all have a brain to figure it out ourselves, we don't need someone to hold our hand.
IE... I eat mcd's everyday and don't loose weight. I eat till I can't eat anymore, I don't loose weight. Maybe I should eat less, excercise more, and eat better food than fast food.
BS. I can cook a chicken breast in much less than 6 min. Of course not whole.
BS. Eating in 10 min is a bit fast, but if time is critical you get it done.
BS. Clean up AFTER dinner in 3 min? No problem, you have the time to clean as things are cooking.
BS. Reality is everybody has problems. Self-righteous refuse to understand? BS arrogant statement.
Bad info? we all have a brain to figure it out ourselves, we don't need someone to hold our hand.
IE... I eat mcd's everyday and don't loose weight. I eat till I can't eat anymore, I don't loose weight. Maybe I should eat less, excercise more, and eat better food than fast food.
Great post, Cap'n.
I raised three kids as a single parent, worked two or three jobs, lived on an extremely limited income and we NEVER ate at McDonalds. I actually went to the library and checked out books on healthy cooking, budget meals, etc. I remember walking a mile to the library (because I didn't have a car) carrying a baby (my oldest son) and bringing home a stack of books. I walked past a McDonalds and a Burger King but never thought about eating there.
Why is the 10 minute eating time even an issue? Do people eat faster in restaurants?
Wow, I've been away a few days and my little thread really took off!
Yes, I do agree that cooking and preparing foods takes longer than eating fast food or pre-packaged foods (though I never take more that 20 minutes to do so during the week). Yes, some poor people work 2-3 jobs. HOWEVER, the lady in the show I was watching DID NOT WORK. Actually, out of the three families profiled on Our America, only one mom worked.
The other two moms were stay-at-home single moms on government assistance. They both demonstrated their cooking habits, and they certainly had the time and skill to do more than basic food preparation. The problem was their choices in what they bought and served their kids. The other mom, incidentally, had a 4 year old boy who was 3' 9" and 101 lbs.
Neither of these obese kids had diagnosed thyroid conditions, and they had both received extensive medical evaluation and monitoring. I would not have been so annoyed by the show if this were not the case.
While in the waiting room at the healthcare provider where her 4 yr old son sees a multidisciplinary team of providers including an MD, a resident in Psychology, a Nutritionist, etc, the one mother sat there and lamented about her son's weight while he sat next to her chug-a-lugging Tic Tacs out of the container. The kid would whine for more food and snacks and the mom was like "what am I supposed to do when my child, my baby, is telling me he's hungry?" The psychologist and nutritionist said "We've been over this many times, here's what you do..." Apparently they had designed a nice behavioral plan for the mom and the kid that the mom was not following.
So with all these resources, most of which the average person does not have, this lady still feigned innocence and ignorance, while her 4 yr old son has to wear a C-PAP every night or die of sleep apnea.
Sure a lot of people here kindly jumped in with suggestions on saving money and preparing easy recipes. But the internet is full of such resources. The libraries are full of such resources. Basic television is full of such resources. The public schools are full of such resources. My whole point is that no one can claim ignorance. What you eat and what you feed your kids is a CHOICE.
I just watched a very interesting episode of Our America with Lisa Ling last night, and the topic was obese kids.
I got a little ticked off at the one point when the mother of a 300lb 12-year-old girl was talking about all the extremely fattening greasy stuff she cooks, because that's how her own mother taught her. She was deep-frying everything, and her idea of "fruit" was canned fruit in heavy syrup. Lisa asked her if she could cook anything healthful and the lady said something like "No, someone has to teach me. I never learned."
Someone has to TEACH YOU? Really?
I honestly think that in this day & age, everyone in our country...everyone in the civilized world, knows what foods are fattening and which are not, knows which are healthy, and has at least a ballpark idea of healthy portion sizes.
This woman may have learned from her mother to cook fattening food, but she never watched any TV show that talked about healthful fooods? She never saw a healthy cookbook? She had a big huge TV, so I'm sure at some point, some small bit of nutrition knowledge would have trickled in. I see messages about healthy foods every single day in the short time I have my TV on. Even if she couldn't afford cook books (the show profiled poorer families) there are libraries, used books, and TONS of free resources. I can't even imagine the immense number of free government-created resources on nutrition that we've all paid for and are still paying for.
This lady is cooking and eating in an unhealthful way BY CHOICE, not due to any lack of knowledge.
I don't eat the most healthy diet all the time, but I certainly know what is and isn't fattening, and what is and isn't healthy. When I eat fattening stuff, it's by choice. An informed choice. I can't blame it on ignorance.
It just really annoyed me when this woman abdicated all responsibility and said SOMEONE ELSE must teach her. Even the 12 year old girl was trying to tell her mom how canned fruit doesn't really count as fresh fruit.
To me, it's like smoking. This isn't 1955...by now everyone knows that smoking causes lung disease. People have the freedom to choose to smoke, but it's a choice, an informed choice. Lots of people eat really unhealthful, fattening foods, but it's always by choice if the person is an adult with at least an 80 IQ.
I just wish that all of us, those who eat 100% perfectly healthy diets, those in the middle like me, and those who eat crappy diets, could all just agree that what we buy and eat is our conscious choice and not claim ignorance. How much more "education" can we pay for? Mrs. Obama, Dr. Oz, and Richard Simmons could have all gone in-person to this woman's house and spent a full week teaching her about food, and she STILL would choose crappy food.
I just ticks me off when I hear people say "oh the poor just need more education about food" or "it's the person's culture...they don't know any better." It's insulting.
I partly agree with you. OTOH, we learn a lot from our parents, good and bad. Sometimes these habits are hard to break.
There are a lot of resources out there. Personally I think the messenger is very important though. I find people like Dr. Oz a pompous windbag....so the messenger is very important as well. I used to be really into reading books etc., about nutrition...there are a lot of mixed messages, so I think that is confusing for some.
I partly agree with you. OTOH, we learn a lot from our parents, good and bad. Sometimes these habits are hard to break.
There are a lot of resources out there. Personally I think the messenger is very important though. I find people like Dr. Oz a pompous windbag....so the messenger is very important as well. I used to be really into reading books etc., about nutrition...there are a lot of mixed messages, so I think that is confusing for some.
Eating right is no longer something you learn from life; you get it out of a book, or more likely a series of them. And the information inside the pages is wildly contradictory. It's even worse than books on childrearing, for pete's sake. Eating right is a choice if you can sort out the nonsense from the truth. Not everyone can.
There you go with those Arizona prices again, Chey. Ours are easily 30% or more higher, even using loss leaders. Why didn't you just suggest that people go pick the oranges and lemons that are hanging on the tree for free? That's an exaggeration (though we certainly took advantage when we were in Tucson), but meant to point out that you're in a region where what's available for low cost is not the way it is in a large portion of the country, and most especially not in the higher population regions like the East Coast. My food budget has gone up substantially since we moved here, and that is partly because we don't eat crap, and the prices on good food here are much higher.
I don't know what your food prices are, but everybody's are not 30% higher than mine. I just took a look at an east coast region for comparison, since you mentioned the east coast. As I posted, different areas will have different sales items. I compared zip code 11727, which is on Long Island, NY, to see what their prices are. I immediately saw that where my example used ground beef for $1.99/lb., they have ground turkey on sale for $1.99/lb., which is a reasonable substitution. Very quickly glancing through this week's sales circulars for that zip code, I found the following sales:
Pathmark:
- Shadybrook Farms ground turkey $1.99/lb.
- Cheerios $2
- Miracle Whip or Kraft mayonnaise $2.99 AND get 1 free can of tuna with purchase
- Quaker Oats $1.29
- Spaghetti sauce $1.29
- Chicken leg quarters $ .83/lb.
- 3 lbs. onions $1.99
- Green Giant boxed vegetables (which they do make without sauce/sodium/fat) 4/$5
- America's Choice whole wheat bread $2.09
- Margarine $1
- Circular coupon for 20% off your next produce purchase
Waldbaum's:
- Too many BOGO's to individually list
- Lipton tea bags 100 ct. $1.99
- Circular coupon for 5% off groceries
- Circular coupon for 20% off next produce purchase
This tells me that anyone who wants to eat healthy, does not have to spend a fortune in order to do so. The key here is they have to want to. They may not be able to exactly copy the sample menu I made up for the same price as I would pay, but they could create their own menu with what is on sale in their area - which is what I said all along.
One more point worth noting... Since I know I can pay the prices I quoted initially, what is the excuse for anyone in the Tucson or Phoenix metro area not to eat healthy??
Shoot, where do you live? Your shopping list would total almost twice that around here. And I haven't seen cottage cheese for a dollar since the Reagan administration.
I'm in Tucson. I posted some of the ads here, when someone questioned the prices I was using.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Maybe if you're on speed.
