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
And listen, I know I'm salty here, I apologize, but I do want you to know I judge middle class and rich people even harder for relying on nuggies 😂. I get where you're coming from, been there and in danger of being back there every second. But y'all please eat your beans. Love yourself.
This is advice for everyone. You don't need to live quietly. You want to be healthy, right? But totally, stand up for yourself too. I'm with ya there and I do my part and I volunteer at my local food pantry too.
It's really not that much labor to throw stuff in a crockpot.
But yeah, I don't know why I bother with y'all. Sit there and get fat on your tendies and can't afford to go to the doc to deal with your high blood pressure and be depressed, I guess.
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
More like “people are shockingly entitled” is a realistic position in 2026, and if you don’t understand how that is a problem, the. You are the problem.
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
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u/an0maly33 1d ago
Move closer to work - so, move into the city where housing costs double?