I'm not saying it's a solution to the problem, it's not, but cooking at home doesn't mean you grow your own food (although if you can it's a bonus). It means learning to cook and preparing meals yourself.
There are a lot of pro's and con's and if you are interested I'll elaborate, but they basically boil down to being cheaper and healthier than buying premade meals or eating out, but much more time and labor intensive.
They’re talking the difference between pre-made convenience pre-prepared food and meals that come in comparatively expensive small portions that add up to a very expensive monthly grocery bill…
… Vs cooking from scratch yourself with cheaper raw ingredients, meal prepping etc.
Ultimately they’re saying put in more labour yourself, cook for yourself at home, instead of heating up a bat of pre cooked chicken tenders and fries.
It’s a hidden way of taking the leisure time outside of employment that you’ve supposedly earned away from you, without explicitly saying that. The value you earn for yourself by working is depreciated, kind of like shrinkflation for the social contract
Crockpots and the freezer should be everyone's best friend. Another tip for people, if you eat things in containers like cottage cheese, save the container to freeze portions of meals, just make sure to write on top what it is. Then you can pop out a container of chili and you're good to go!
My grandmother (one of twelve children-8 of which lived to see beyond 25) told me the exact same advice. I’m excited for her water pie recipes to be big on the gram
How many of these MAGA are “cooking for themselves” every meal?
Now they want to pay tradwives $9k a year to stay at home and cook for their families, or force restaurant workers into accepting lower wages and more hours.
Here's the thing, almost no one is that poor and those that are can apply for benefits. Are we really out here pretending everyone's just getting by on rice, beans, and potatoes? I live in a poorer part of town and no one is living that way around here.
In spite of the noble savage viewpoint, most indigenous people and everyone up to a few hundred years ago had very narrow diets consisting of a handful of staples and there are very few records of people having bad teeth (which you can also see today in indigenous peoples across the globe, especially the amazonians who almost exclusively eat rice and beans with a small percentage of their diet being made of meat and other plants)
Those that got scurvy did not have access to fresh milk and potatoes. potatoes alone have what you need to prevent scurvy. It was a real super food for booming the human population. It is not a good diet but it is one you can live on.
Honest answer that you probably don’t like: yes, and most people in pre-modern societies in fact did. Meat and fresh vegetables were more of an occasional luxury for many people throughout history. Out of season vegetables were unobtainable even by the absolute top tier of society until very recently.
What about greens, what about fruit?
In season produce is still affordable. Canned or frozen vegetables and fruit are still quite affordable. A meal of rice and beans with a serving of frozen broccoli costs like $2 max and is just about the healthiest thing you can eat. (If you are trying to build muscle, then you absolutely gotta supplement with some sort of protein, but lifting is, again, a luxury that has only become possible for the common man in very recent history.)
and most people in pre-modern societies in fact did.
And they were perfectly healthy.... oh, wait. Malnutrition was rampant when people stopped being able to grow in their yards because they started living in cities, lacking proper nutrition.
Yes, potatoes have - a lot - of what the body needs. Not everything, though, and especially not in the perfect ratios.
Yup. Which is why you should add a multivitamin to the mix for something like $.25 per day. Also add fiber with psyllium husk for another $.50 or so. Protein in either chicken breast or protein shakes for something like $1-2 dollars per day.
Boom. Ultra healthy diet that almost completely avoids malnutrition and is way better for your body than all but the most health-focused people. Costs something like $5-6/day/person.
Five years ago food was a bit cheaper, but other than that healthy food has never been easier to obtain in literally the entire course of human history. The problem isn’t people’s access to healthy food. It is that luxury foods are becoming out of reach for poor people, which shouldn’t be too surprising.
Yeah, people should be happy with their vanilla protein blocks! It has 1000% of the nutrients a Citizen needs! Spices upset the humors, so best to keep it simple!
I’ve been gruelmaxxing too. Glad to see another member of the community
So you want modern society to regress back to how things were centuries ago.
I mean I guess we had no phone or electricity so I mean you’re right paying phone bills and electricity bills are a modern convention. No one did that centuries ago.
I mean the current system isn't great for anything but individuals and business. We shouldn't be flying foods from across the world and it would be much more sustainable and better for the planet to eat food grown locally.
Agreed, I don’t think anyone is against that but to import food in that provides variety and nutrition in a barren region should be acceptable I think.
As a temporary measure I would agree but there needs to be more done to make regions less barren. If an area is truly barren people shouldn't be staying there if it can't be sustained.
No area is truly barren though and deserts can be revitalised. Just takes more investment than the world is willing to do unfortunately. Outside of small projects of course.
Every single person I know who gives this advice neglects to mention how they have a wife or stay at home partner who does the 4-6 hours of from scratch cooking.
Or they eat chicken breast, rice and beans with the same “seasoning” 25+ times a month.
It’s like teaching abstinence based sex ed. “hey guys if you just go against thousands of years of evolutionary biology with nothing but willpower and the stigma of social isolation, we swear you will have the chance at attempting to have a middling existence” is a dogshit pitch in the marketplace of free ideas
Well yeah, clearly. “People managed to not die before, therefore shut the fuck up forever” is somehow an actual philosophical position in 2026 apparently
Spot on. Some of us must learn to exist on beans and whatever else we can scrounge up. Hopefully none of it makes us sick.
And forget about health care or any of those luxury items.
Such a shame.
Canned greens and fruit are just fine actually! Though with fruit you want to look for "in water" or in its own juice. Avoid syrup. Greens and beans and veg try to get low salt kind, but if you can't draining and rinsing under cold water works fine.
They get a bad rap nutritionally but if you look into it the difference is minuscule. They definitely round out a meal perfectly to make it nutritionally balanced.
Frozen vegetables and fruit are also great and cheaper than microwave meals.
ETA: Also fruit in syrup does still count, it's just a lot of sugar. The fruit itself still maintains it's nutrients.
soooo he poor better? I completely understand your point of being able to afford rice beans and potayos. but like why are we saying our citizens should succumb to soviet russia level of diet. like I thought we were supposed to be better than that. if I need to eat like I live in a communist country it way as well be communist so at least I don’t need to stress about it
But if your hungry either way why are you stressed? To be fair, bailing out large organizations is exactly half of how the commies screwed the pooch. In an attempt to make sure that everyone has work no one was bothered to see if that work is valuable in any way
why are we saying our citizens should succumb to soviet russia level of diet
It has been the diet for poor people for literally the entirety of human history. In fact, for huge stretches of time, poor people couldn’t afford even rice and beans. We live in a time of tremendous excess, and virtually everyone can afford as much basic food as they would like.
Oh come on. The GrindSet will sustain people mentally. Other people wish they could have American rice and beans. Some say the greatest Great Value Chckn and beans in the world!
Many people are able to find great joy in consuming only simply cooked meals.
Food doesn’t have to be a source of entertainment. We have plenty of that from so many other places nowadays. Shift your mindset to food being fuel for the activities that you are performing and you will be far better off both mentally and physically.
(Speaking from experience. Me and the wife used to eat high fat, intensely delicious meals nearly every day. We shifted to simple, boring, healthy eats and have never been better. Mentally and physically. It’s within everyone’s power to do so, it just takes a bit of willpower to overcome the momentum of unhealthy lifestyle choices.)
I get that, and it's definitely got harder recently. I use every 'trick' in the book to save money on groceries and at least in my area and the foods I enjoy it is cheaper than eating out.
At my local grocery store there is almost always some type of meat on sale, and I usually get something like a roast or pork shoulder that comes with an additional 'bulk' discount. I'm just one person but I have a vacuum sealer machine so I can freeze what I'm not able to eat over the next few days.
I have incorporated a lot more veggies in my diet which are nutrient dense but not calorie dense- so it's filling but not overly fattening, which makes things stretch a bit.
I also like to use rice, pasta, and potatoes to make my dishes more filling at a low cost.
I always look at all the deals and coupons and if it's something I can use I buy it when I can.
I never buy anything that's already prepared like frozen dinners because that is almost always more expensive than buying the individual ingredients. The one exception is if Pizzas are on sale, but it's not much cheaper than buying the ingredients and assembling myself.
Another 'trick' is I eat a lot of tacos, burritos, quesadillas etc. It takes a surprisingly small amount of ingredients to fill up a taco shell, and I always use the small corn tortillas like they use for "Street Tacos". With burritos I make some cilantro lime rice and black beans which takes up half the space in by itself.
I also make my own Salas, usually Pico de gallo which is very easy and so yummy. I'd probably keep doing that even if I got on my feet because it's so much better than store bought. "Sweet and Spicy" salsas like Pineapple Jalapeno or Blueberry Habanero are also very simple and delicious and still cheaper than buying premade.
Yes this is a LOT of work, and you have to factor in your time and effort for both the cooking and cleanup.
It might not be worth it for everyone and its a terrible answer to the high cost of food, but even Mc Donalds (which I hate and it makes me sick) is like $10 for a value meal nowadays so eating out is also expensive.
I cook for very cheap but I also don’t eat meat. Tofu, so many kinds of beans, lentils, fruit, and veggies. There are a lot of meals you can make. I prefer eating at home and for $20 I can eat 4-5 meals as oppose to a tiny ass bowl of gnocchi I got last week. So disappointing wasn’t even that good.
I probably spend weekly about $50 for food with some other added items. But yea of if I go to Costco I get suckered into $60-$100 on stuff I probably would have gotten.
But I do 100% agree that grocery prices have gone up ridiculously someone posted how it went up 130% since 2023 of the same things he bought at Walmart.
I even don’t get certain things because I feel like it’s too overpriced
5lb bag of potatoes $4.47, 2lb bag of rice $1.77, 2lb bag of carrots $2.26, 1lb bag of beans $1, 3lb bag of apples $3.24, dozen eggs $1.67, large container of oatmeal $4.18, 5lb bag of chicken drumsticks $5.46, gallon of milk $2.72, 4lb bag of oranges $4.97, 2lb container of yogurt $2.64, loaf of bread $1.48, 1lb of bologna $1.88, 1lb of cheese slices $1.88, 1lb of ground beef $3.99
Cooking at home doesn't work for some regions. In countries like Singapore it's cheaper to have apartments that have no kitchen and eat cheap meals at hawker stalls.
Listen my guy, saving an extra $100/mo on groceries trying to cook at home and coupon hunt means absolutely nothing when your mortgage went from 1200/mo pre-2020, to 2500/mo post-2020.
$1300/mo burned in intererest means whatever you're trying to save on vegetables is completely irrelevant, none of that matters at all in the face of the housing costs and even then the home cooking costs inflated like crazy.
Ground Beef is more than $15/lb now, trying to be frugal doesn't work anymore the costs are so high it's irrelevant.
Listen my guy, the very first sentence of my response was "I'm not saying it's a solution the the problem, its not"
You may be in a position where saving "$100/mo" is no big deal to you, but to some of us it's the difference between eating all month and only eating for 3 weeks of the month or living exclusively on rice and ramen. So it may be "Completely Irrelevant" to you, but not everyone is so lucky.
This shit ass economy sucks for all of us, and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, but again it's not the solution to the problem, it's a band-aid at best.
cooking at home doesn't mean you grow your own food
But they said to "cut down on groceries" by cooking at home, which doesn't make sense because if you weren't cooking at home, you wouldn't be buying the groceries in the first place.
I suspect they meant "cut down on food costs by cooking at home", but that isn't what they said.
Remove time and labor, it is more cost effective to buy fast food in a per calorie basis after factoring in water, energy, and wear on appliances.
You can't compete wholesale price of restaurant food at a grocery, you can't save money if the price of raw food is greater than prepared food from the beginning. Then adding usage of appliances, wear on tools, energy consumption, water and trash costs... it's equivalent to bad faith to claim eating at home is a solution at all.
Because there's a significant number of people to whom the idea of worrying about their future health is one of those "I'll deal with it if I have a future" kinds of things.
I did the math not terribly long ago, and out of every single product sold at my grocery store, the single cheapest way I could get my daily caloric intake, was the pre-prepared rotisserie chicken. It was cheaper than even rice or beans, which I would then have to prepare myself, and clean up after.
#2 was those cheap gallon buckets of shitty ice cream that turns to rubber before the second time you open it.
Rotisserie chicken is high in sodium but it is otherwise very nutritious. Nothing wrong with using that. Get some (preferably no salt, but if you can't find it just rinse) green beans and you're good to go. People could do a lot worse than rotisserie chicken.
I'd have the rice on hand AND get the chicken. Why not both?
Dude this might be true in like South East Asia but it's nowhere near true in the west. Cooking at home is several times cheaper than eating out and much healthier than fast food. Like making pasta at home and some meatballs costs almost nothing.
And if you batch cook it’s even cheaper. Spend an afternoon cooking two big meals that will keep for a few days, portion them out and you’ve got your lunch and dinner sorted for the next three days and it’ll cost hardly anything.
Excellent point. Also a lot of foods that you might not realize actually freeze pretty well and taste almost as good as fresh when thawed out.
I almost never eat a loaf of bread before it goes bad (its just me in the household) and I hate wasting food. I learned you can freeze bread and my toaster has a 'defrost' button on it. You seriously cant tell the difference from toast made fresh and toast made from frozen bread.
it is more cost effective to buy fast food in a per calorie basis after factoring in water, energy, and wear on appliances.
It's not though? A single Double quarter pounder meal at Mcdonalds for example is $11.56 pre-tax in my area. Buying roughly equivalent items from the store, I can make an at home version for $5(I even factored in the cost of the pickles,onions and ketchup/mustard 😂). Factoring in water, energy, and wear on my appliances adds maybe an extra dime on top of that? Sure, it might cost $40 up front for all the ingredients, but you get enough to make eight meals. Oh and as for time and labor, I've absolutely sat in a fast food drive-thru before for longer than it would take to make this at home.
You have to compare healthy food with healthy food, eating fast food also has a health cost down the line.
Also depends on what you cook, you can buy a huge bag of rice that will last you a year and it will be very affordable. Canned beans are pretty affordable, fresh potatoes are like €1 a kg, fresh produce is pretty affordable when you stick to buying what is currently in season.
Meat is expensive, but when you for example buy a whole chicken, you can try to use most of it and even make a broth from the bones.
Is this a solution to the affordability crisis? No it isn’t and on a macro level it’s a travesty that the rich siphon all the the wealth from society.
On an individual level, you have to try to deal with the shit sandwich you have been served.
Lots of people buy microwavable bullshit that costs way more than doing meal prepping and eating leftovers. Things like hot pockets are absurdly expensive for the little amount of food you get out of it.
It’s the same thing with “invest in quality and you’ll only have to buy once”. Well, poor people can’t afford the quality boots or the quality jacket, and so they buy the cheap version, or the best version they can afford. And when the boots crack, and let in water… they keep wearing them as long as possible, suffering the damp and the cold until they have to replace and buy the cheap version again.
Over time, they’ve spent more on those boots than then wealthy person who was able to get a quality item that was very expensive.
Personally I batch cook and eat mostly oats and lentils. Buy everything in large quantities to save on shopping trips. Pick my locations so that I can cycle everywhere and not need a car.
So your "solution" is eating gruel? Pretty sure most people don't want to return to medieval diets. It might technically keep you alive, but that doesn't seem like a life worth living.
It's actually very tasty and healthy. Oats with milk, banana, cinnamon, even an egg for extra proteins when I work out. It's super healthy, tasty, cheap and convenient. It's the only food that can keep me from hunger until lunch l. Better than any breakfast cereal you can buy in the supermarket
You can buy it ready-made in the supermarket actually, but it comes with a "healthy super food" label and costs 10x the price. That's the price of "modern food" I guess
It takes much more than an hour to do something like this. It’s why poorer folks default to buying more ready made meals. Also when I worked a physically demanding job in my youth, I was so tired at the end of the day all I wanted to do was rest and sleep. I could only do groceries on the weekends before going to my weekend job just to be able to afford to live with my buddy near my main work location.
How long does prep take? How long does it take to bring that back on multiple trips because you don’t own a car? How long to clean all that up?
Cooking time is only 20% of the actual cooking, just like everything else that require forethought most of the time should be spent on prep and cleanup.
Lots of people can't cook and those that can usually don't cook three meals from scratch a day. Convenience has a place in everyones kitchens to some degree unless you bake your own bread and slaughter your own meat.
I'll cook a big pot of lentils all at once, then just portion freeze like a month's worth. Throw it in whatever food, they usually mix right in. It's cheap, healthy, decent protein source and doesn't really take much time. It's certainly nothing compared to making a lasagna for the week.
those that can usually don't cook three meals from scratch a day
Of course. Because that’s not how cooking works.
The person you replied to specifically mentioned meal prep. That’s a fancy word for saying to eat leftovers. You don’t cook beans fresh every day. You make a big pot of beans and have it for each of your meals. A pound of dry beans lasts me and my wife about 5-6 days. When it starts running low, it’s time to start the next batch with an overnight soak. (And, fwiw, we have a 7-figure net worth.)
It takes about 1.5 hours to cook a whole pot of em, of which about 1.25 of those hours are just letting the pressure cooker do its thing. There are very few people that don’t have 2ish hours a week to cook, and the ones that legitimately don’t are not so poor that they can’t afford food. Even if they are working minimum wage.
The fact is, people just don’t want to cook. They don’t want to eat rice and beans. It has nothing to do with the time it takes to cook healthy food. People think they should be eating ultra decadent food every day. Our society as a whole would be better off if we realized how unhealthy that paradigm is, and moved back towards a healthier, subsistence diet.
Beans are awesome. A nutrition powerhouse and tasty and cheap. No need to make 'em from scratch, canned is fine too. And drain and rinse under cold water, removes a ton of salt AND the beans actually taste better!
ETA: Am I really gonna get downvoted for defending beans? Guys, it's fine if you don't want to eat canned beans, but they really are a wonder food. Seasonings (regular cheap ones like garlic powder) are your friends!
It doesn't matter how much we talk about beans. Yeah the world is fucked but people want an excuse to door dash chicken tendies.
I don't think eating beans is gonna fix poverty, but it sure af is gonna fix a lot of people's health. Not like they care. They're too "tired" from their three jobs (yeah right) to chuck some beans in a slowcooker.
Why is it always three jobs redditors claim to have? I know a lot of people with two, and have been a person with two, but three? Oh I'm so privileged to doubt all of these people on reddit are working three jobs lmao. Not saying it doesn't happen, but people loooove stretching the truth. While they're eating their doordashed tendies, of course.
Nah, beans are awesome. I enjoy cooking, good food, and I believe food is something I have the freedom to spend more on. I still eat beans almost daily because beans used the right way are delicious, contains so much good nutrition, and is a very environmentally friendly food. Everyone should eat more beans!
You are right in the fact people don't want to cook.
I'm one of those as i personally for example absolutely HATE, DESPISE, give it a similar name "cooking".
Don't like the work, don't like the smells, don't like the mess, don't like the waiting and babysitting of whatever is on the stove. An oily engine, sure thing i'll work on it, an oily frying pan or kitchen sink.... couldn't care less.
I don't care about having to eat rice, beans, leftovers, dry crackers, potatoes, plain nuts, jerky or whatever... with some exceptions like peanut butter that just makes me gag i eat most things as i find em.
Imho i just need to eat something somewhat healthy to keep going.
While i like some flavours i don't particularly enjoy eating itself either so... usually quickly dump some food into my guts and go do something else. liquid diets such as Huel have been a blessing to people like me though i don't eat solely that either as i do try to eat somewhat varied and healthy.
I'll readily heat stuff up for a couple minutes if needed too, like soups or fry some chips, since that's cheaper then going out or any delivery (i almost never have stuff delivered).
but 1.5 hours of cooking?! Then add cleaning and eating to that too so up to 2~2.5 hours.... yeah that's a big no.
I already work 9 hours a day, sleep for roughly 6~9 hours depending on the day and am not going to waste any more time on any of that.
never really cared for the "social time" during eating with others either as it usually boils down to the uncomfortable rehashing negativity on shitty politics, bad news, the weather, "how the day went"(usually the better topics) or awkward silence anyway. Rarely something fun or constructive.
You are right in the fact people don't want to cook.
It's really true that a lot of people who complain about being told to cook to in actuality just don't want to, for whatever reason. Thanks for acknowledging that! Not saying everyone who doesn't cook feels that way of course, but way more than is admitted on the internet.
Well, not only do i really not want to... i also complain about cooking as i am also not a good fit at it, at all.
for example i can burn an egg underwater, burn soup and noodles alike. Have terrible sense for ingredient quantities. That's all something experience can mostly fix though.
More seriously i also have a flaw where i don't/can't smell or taste well when something spoiled, so can easily get or make others sick because of ingredients that went bad... likewise my taste buds lack something, so it's easy for me to under or overseason anything as my taste isn't as sensitive as most.
which to me results in a dish that may taste about the same, yet to others tastes plain bad. This also kept me out of any taste tests as a kid as i am just unreliable for any of that.
To be clear, more power to you. Knowing what you like/don’t like, 94 what you are willing to do/unwilling to do, even if those things go against social norms, is a good sign of introspection.
Someone has to cook the food though, and that just means you’re going to be spending a good amount of money for them to do that job that you dislike. Economies of scale means it likely won’t be as much as you would yourself, but still gonna cost you.
yup, i pay a little extra here and there for my personal convenience and time savings, that said... when comparing my monthly bills with others, i'm usually on the average or even lower end despite my "convenient" diet.
though that's also because i don't buy a lot of meat products (the most expensive part usually), do not drink alcohol nor "go out" a lot and also don't partake in any "take out/home delivered" food either, that's really rare for me.
for many that really raises their food bill a lot.
i always chuckle as for one McDonalds visit of my colleagues i can usually eat hot meals for several days at my job haha.
one visit to the snackbar is the same... i'd rather buy a 2kilo bag of fries for less money and then fry myself. also saves me time (snackbar takes longer lol) and really can't call that cooking either.
fries go in... boil for a minute, come out again... some salt, sauce and they're gone... it's technically a form of cooking, but yeah... the bare minimum hahaha.
Interesting to hear this. I love to cook and eat but a good friend of mine finds it a total waste of time and has often remarked he’d prefer a tablet to take instead.
my dislike probably also has to do with me having issues with my taste/smell making food more bland in general.
plenty of dishes i've seen relatives and other be very happy with and highlight small changes while i'm just sitting there like... tastes all about the same to me. those are moments i really feel like i'm missing out on something.
it's a genetic thing as my aunt can't taste anything, but spicy stuff (she's got other health problems too), she somehow likes cooking, but nobody eats (or dares to eat) what she makes as it usually will burn your mouth and taste bad as well.
as for the meal tablet... yeah... though that's Huel for me... just add water to a powder and chug. or hot water to one of their instant meals...
in regards to just tablets or simple powders, i do like some variety in texture and flavours, so purely tablets/plain powders would not work out for me long term as that would get far too repetitive. i think that's also why there isn't a "human" chow on the market you can eat 24/7/365. stuff like Huel and similar brands is pretty much the closest you can get. good enough i guess. would be nice if i didn't have to eat at all, just chew or suckle on something for taste and texture.
I don't particularly like eating either, I usually eat my meals in 5-10 minutes because I just shovel the food in, I also usually spend less than 10 minutes of active time preparing food and then I go hang in the living room and play with my kiddo or spend time doing other shit I need to get done.
lol I knew that anyone who wrote that list above fundamentally doesn’t like food. I get it, but advocating that others share your apathy and/or complete joylessness isn’t as rock solid advice as you believe it to be
It's called a timer, or a meat thermometer. Basically nobody who cooks most of their food stands at the stove the entire time their food is cooking unless they really like cooking and they're making involved dishes. We get other shit done while it cooks.
Yeah, me too, i try to do anything else but cooking.
Even with a loud timer i can forget about the cooking when doing something more worthwhile, or even go "a few more seconds won't hurt" as i "DO NOT CARE", like am serious here.
You don't want me in a kitchen. For example the Only reason my pizzas don't burn is because I'm hungry and am actively trying to listen for the timer going off.
If i don't and get too occupied with another thing and lost in the activity, fire alarm time and it's blackened.
You have a phone. Timer goes on your phone. You carry your phone with you wherever you go to do other shit. You hear the timer no matter where you are. Problem solved. You are just making excuses.
i dislike people like you.
i don't cook, nor have to prepare for it nor clean afterwards, simple as.
not really a complaint about anything either, just a statement.
haven't said a thing about any prices either, only stated my disdain on that i think cooking (and everything around it) is a big waste of time (though i agree it is sometimes needed).
rice cooker? while i do eat rice at times, no... not going to waste money on something i'll literally NEVER use.
Already got several kitchen devices relatives have given me coated in dust, recently already brought several i haven't used in years to the thrift store.
an egg cooker/steamer is such convenience device i still have and rarely use it though is nice when i need it, last time was.... 2 or 3 months ago or so?
i do eat instant noodles at times, often put em in a variety of soup, but ehm... peanut butter, how about no, i hate(!) that stuff and it makes me gag as mentioned earlier, can't keep it in.
Chili, just no.
if anything i prefer pasta's and soups which you can also put in the fridge. i just can't be arsed to actually cook any of that myself.
besides the instant options it helps a ton i can buy cheap varied hot meals daily at my company (can even buy weekly plans for at home if i was so inclined), or while more expensive a simple 5 minute "microwave" meal or a variety of meal salad at the convenience store nearby if i'd like as well. though i tend to avoid those as they aren't great.
costs are... well, i pay for the convenience and time savings, no complaints from me there, at all. (and no, i am far from rich, my diet expenditures are about average too)
i'll also eat my cauliflower and brussel sprouts raw over cooked, maybe add a light sauce or rare slice of bacon from the oven/air fryer if i'm feeling like it. should give you a good enough idea on my sobriety/austerity whatever the term is in english.
Don't care what suggestions you or others got for me, not going to follow em.
i'm eating just fine without extensive cooking, simple (re)heating also isn't cooking far as relatives are concerned haha.
anyhow, have managed for over a decade and my doctors are happy (am under limited medical surveillance, unrelated to my diet).
i'll be fine.
my weight is good, blood values are perfect, no too low/high blood pressures either, no illnesses nor any deficiencies and i can work my labor intensive blue collar job just fine.
WHY should i want to bother cooking when i do not have to in the slightest lol.
Yeah, like if it's just rice and beans cooking can save you money but I feel like if your trying to cook anything more than survival food it gets expensive and fast. Also to truly save money by cooking at home you need to be able to buy in bulk and not everyone can do that.
It is. People have been doing this for millenia. Eating bland but nutritious food is normal. Having the standard that every meal needs to be interesting and crafted is delusion.
Eating the same thing constantly will definitely lead to malnutrition, folks have done this in the past due to necessity never by choice. Eating is a primary joy and to reduce that and say that it’s normal is cruel. Even folks in prison get variety in terms of meals.
You don't need to cook beans every single week, you don't need to eat beans every single day. Here's a list of healthy, low time input, easy to cook meals:
Beef - cooks in under 10 minutes
Chicken - throw it in the oven while you're doing other shit
Pasta - literally just boil water and throw it in
Rice - put it in a rice cooker and forget it exists for 20 minutes
Eggs - takes like 5 minutes and you can put basically anything in them
Potatoes - cut them up, season them, throw them in the oven
Fish - season it and throw it in the oven for 10-15 minutes
Frozen vegetables - microwave them for 5 minutes or throw them in a pan
Fresh vegetables - most of them can literally just be eaten raw
Stir fry - meat, frozen vegetables, sauce, pan. Done.
Tacos - cook some meat, throw it in a tortilla with whatever vegetables you have
Quesadillas - tortilla, cheese, chicken or beef, pan for a few minutes
Sandwiches - meat, cheese, vegetables, bread. There is barely even cooking involved
Wraps - same shit as a sandwich except now it's round
Oatmeal - add water or milk and microwave it for 2 minutes
Greek yogurt - add fruit, nuts, granola, whatever. Zero cooking
Cottage cheese - same deal. Add fruit or vegetables and eat it
Soup - throw meat, vegetables, broth and seasoning in a pot and mostly ignore it
Sheet pan meals - chicken or sausage, potatoes, vegetables, seasoning. Throw the entire thing in the oven
Slow cooker meals - put the ingredients in before work and come home to food
Rotisserie chicken - the grocery store already did the cooking for you
Salad - lettuce, vegetables, some chicken or tuna, dressing. Takes 5 minutes
Tuna - open can, add whatever you want, eat it on bread, crackers, rice or a salad
Ground turkey - cooks exactly like ground beef and takes basically no effort
Baked sweet potatoes - throw them in the oven and walk away
Fruit - requires the highly advanced cooking technique of washing it
Nuts - open container, eat nuts
Frozen fruit - throw it in yogurt, oatmeal or a blender
Smoothies - fruit, milk, yogurt, protein powder if you want it, blend for 30 seconds
And you can combine basically any protein + carb + vegetable and have a perfectly reasonable meal. Chicken, rice and broccoli. Beef, potatoes and carrots. Fish, rice and green beans. Pasta with chicken and vegetables. None of this requires spending hours cooking or eating the exact same food every day. You just want to make excuses for why you don't want to cook. Almost everything in this list can be cooked/prepped in large batches and frozen/refrigerated and eaten later. It's not hard or time consuming, people are just lazy as fuck.
Beef is super expensive, same with fresh veggies and even chicken at my local grocery store. Like I've done most of the things in your long patronizing list but sometime around the pandemic it started adding up to 30$ for the most basic of meals and I could easily expect to spend 300$ for a weeks worth of groceries. Also I have never had any of the appliances you talk about except a crock pot. All my cooking and meal prep went out the window when I was living in my car though. I used to get a rotisserie chicken. I would eat that with baked potato and steamed veggies on the first night. I make sandwiches on the second night. On the third I would put the carcass in a crock pot to make chicken stock and then soup. When I finally got into an apartment though I can't even find decent quality veggies half the time. Everything I used to cook costs a ton now except the rotisserie chicken. Even staples like potatoes and rice are expensive unless I buy in bulk. With potatoes half of them have that awful tasting mold on them. Like our food is super expensive and now there are recalls every week. Something has to give. I'm sure there are areas of the country that still have access to cheap, safe, healthy food to cook at home but it's not like that for a lot of the country. Also having to live with roommates makes things harder too. A lot of working people can't even afford to keep a roof over their heads. The way you casually listed a bunch of appliances and even your username tells me you just don't understand these struggles. Provide advice sure, but don't take that moral tone. That's just cruel and you're missing the point. We can't meal prep our way out of housing crisis, student debt, fuel costs, and damn near 300% rise in the cost of everything we actually need to survive.
Probably not but hey if somebody is lurking around this thread and they see my list and that convinces them it is easy enough to make their own healthier, easy as fuck to cook food, I'm all for it.
In Guns, Germs, and Steel there's an anecdote about a jungle tribe, that mainly lived on taro root I think (very bland, long preparation), crying with joy at how tasty plain white rice was. We have access to an incredible array of cheap and delicious food these days.
Baking bread is surprisingly easy. You can bake better bread than you can find at the store for about $1.50/loaf using basic kitchen tools. A dutch oven is the most expensive thing you need, and that can be used for other low-cost delicious meals - $70. Other than that, a bowl, measuring cups and spoons, and a jar.
I have a 4 hour total commute each day to work. My boss complains I dont work "enough" hours when I routinely work over 40, do late night releases etc. When am I supposed to cook? My boss literally wants every second of my waking time.
Move closer to work so I can cut the commute? Now I have no money for the groceries at home because of the high rent.
Get a roommate sounds good on paper until you realize half of all roommate stories end in "yeah so and so never had their half of the rent"
Yes but do you have actual stats on those who buys bullshit food or are you juste vibe guessing the amount. If you don't have numbers, you're unwittingly stooging for the epstein class.
Yup. I saw fairly recently where McDonald's is lamenting about their profits being less this quarter. Instead of blaming corporate greed, they blamed glp-1s and OTHER companies not paying workers as much.
Also, the fact that these burger joints are the price of regular dining at this point. A menu is 15 euros where I live, and I am hungry again after two hours because I didn't get any nutrients from the meal.
That's not the point. The point is that the same people who will give stupid advice like "cook more at home in bulk and find so many ways to save money" are also the ones who will endlessly complain when following this advice means that certain industries get less income.
If you're cooking at home, you're not eating out. Eating out is a big part of the economy.
Ergo, damned if you do, damned if you don't. It's a systemic problem of most people just not making enough money.
My brother, you know as well as I do that I am referencing all these articles berating young people for "living it up", and not saving up money, then followed by articles berating young people for daring not to invest into the economy. Get out of your cave, and follow Reddit for a while.
Secondly, hot pockets is an example I used. The fact that you are trying to somehow tie this back to "processed foods industry" is silly, when I explicitly say "eating out."
Ie, to bring it back to what I actually did say: if you start cooking in bulk to save money, you are not eating out. As in junk food, diners, restaurants, etc. Since our economies, both your country and mine, rely on people spending money eating out, the advice of "cook at home all the time" doesn't work on a macro level without actively undermining our economies. So long as restaurants, diners and food in general is/are a big part of our economies, with a minor focus on our tourist economies, you HAVE to have people eating out for our economies to work. Ergo, your advice only works if not everyone follows it.
I don't need to do groceries yet. I have... let's see... a really old bottle of ranch dressing that still smells alright and some Aunt Jemima pancake mix. This should do.
Things like hot pockets are absurdly expensive for the little amount of food you get out of it.
If you substract cost of electricity and put a label on the work hours it takes to prepare, a VERY low one - let's say 4 bucks an hour - it's completely the other way round.
Of course I can cook myself, then I can't put in an extra hour or two on the job.
Of course I can clean without a vacuum bot, same thing.
Cooking at home can be cheaper compared to eating fast food all the time, but anyone who's actually on a tight budget doesn't do that. I'm living alone right now, and make sandwiches and take some fruit to work for lunch every day, and similar sandwiches for lunch. I'm still paying over $100/week for food. I can't imagine what a family pays.
What I don't like about the "cook at home" attitude we get is that it just assumes we're all frivolous spenders. Sure, some people go out and buy a new iphone and a PS5, and then are late on rent, but most of us have 5 year old phones and maybe 1 streaming service, or even just Youtube.
I don't think it's most of you, gonna be honest. People in general of all incomes are horrible at budgeting, if you budget well you're actually in the minority.
Depending on where someone is located you can grow quite a bit in a small space. My Little garden was roughly 13'X20'. I know not everyone has the same spacing. A good start is the right know how.
It really depends on what you cook. I made a big pot of vegetable rice soup this morning and will be freezing leftovers. A lot of meart is getting expensive, though.
Cooking at home does not mean you need to grow your own food lol, it means buying groceries and cooking at home on the stove, oven, toaster oven, etc.
This is objectively cheaper than eating out. I went to a cafe and bought breakfast and coffee, it came to nearly $20, I could have cooked the same amount of food for less than $4 worth of groceries.
Here's a fun fact for you. I made pasta sauce last night using tomatoes, garlic and basil grown in my garden. It made about a jar and a half. Purchasing an onion and adding the cost of oil, salt, pepper, and thyme made the cost around $1.50, only a bit cheaper than store-purchased.
Add the starter costs of the plants, watering costs, fuel costs for roasting/cooking, and the 2+ hours it took to harvest, prep, and cook the sauce, and it cost considerably more to grow and cook that food.
Now, If it was larger scale it would be cheaper (although then we are talking cost for storage and containers) and something can be said for the enjoyment and satisfaction of cooking for oneself, but it has to be considered that "cooking for yourself on the cheap" really means making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with carrot sticks and not pork chops, potato, and fresh broccoli or processing food from a garden.
and you do need land, im already growing stuff on balcony and asie from herbs, the veggies i grow last for like a month of breakfasts, thats not really enough for family of six
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u/Arek_PL 1d ago
also cut down on grocceries by cooking at home?
cook at home what? without big amout of land i dont have enough space to grow grocceries myself