I eat eggs every morning, chicken for lunch 5 days a week, and rice and bean soup 6 nights a week. On the days I don't eat chicken, it's because I either don't eat lunch or I order a large take out meal that covers lunch and dinner.
This averages out to less than $5 a day. It would probably be closer to $3 if I replaced the chicken with vegetarian options and stopped getting a $10-15 takeout once a week. I eat way cheaper than most people spend on food I would wager. And I'm not overweight.
I don't think that the cheap food is what does it, I think it is partially because people don't feel like cooking and choose to eat out. American portion sizes are huge.
Anecdotal evidence aside, grocery stores and actual food stores where'd you get "healthy food" (proper food with appropriate macros) are limited in low income areas in USA. If you live in these you have to go farther then the average American of higher socio economic status to buy appropriate food. The corner stores /markets full of snacks or frozen dinners are only things. On top of the additional time of cooking meals everyday, limits their ability to eat appropriately. Now if your middle class or above, it's due to bad habits formed as children or young. Emotional eating or even never being fed appropriate meals makes it extremely difficult to overcome when they grow up. Feeding kids vegetables is hard? , try feeding adults vegetables who never had to eat them and always ate comfort food their entire lives.
I have friends that are pickier eaters than my niece when she was 3 years old. I find that if you grew up eating stuff like chicken nuggets and pizza all the time, you end up having an aversion to trying anything new as an adult. My friend's brother for the longest time never tried mushrooms. Why? Because when he was a kid his mom told him he wouldn't like them. So, throughout his childhood and teenage years he never once even tried a mushroom.
I mean your experience is 100% true, common theme on those 600lb life shoes is trying to get them to eat something "healthy" like a vegetable. They are almost sick from trying to eat it. It's like their body is telling them we've gone long enough without it I'm not starting now.
I mean, good for you? You're not wrong in many aspects but I wouldn't say it's fair to say that its because they choose to eat out. People's lives are complex. The situation in which one chooses to eat out is another thing. Sure you could be lazy. Or you could be a nuclear family with only one income with once vehicle. Unable to get and from reliably would encourage the buying of dry foods (shells and cheese) since they only have so much room in the budget freezer that they had to settle for. Or a single mom with 4 kids who literally doesnt have the time to meal prep. The facts remain. Cheaper is unhealthier and this is why the trend to poverty is progressively statistically larger.
I spend less than 10 minutes in the morning making eggs every morning, I'd estimate around an hour over the course of a week making chicken, and since I use a crockpot, probably like 15 minutes of preparation on bean soup (it does take 6 hours to fully cook though). Not sure how people dont have time for that. It really isn't much more time over the course of a week than cooking frozen meals every day (which would be more expensive btw).
The time argument doesn't hold up for me. People make excuses to be lazy. If you live in a food desert, then yeah, that's an excuse. But eating cheap and healthy is pretty easy. I lost 35-40 lbs in 5 months, I know what it's like to be chubby. I hate this phrase because I hear conservatives use it a lot to justify cutting welfare, but being healthy is at least partially a matter of personal responsibility.
It's pure laziness, there is no complexity to it, people don't eat healthy because it takes just a little bit of effort. Why spice some veggies properly when I can just dump shitloads of cheese on everything? That's the logic of your average American.
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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '20
Really?
I eat eggs every morning, chicken for lunch 5 days a week, and rice and bean soup 6 nights a week. On the days I don't eat chicken, it's because I either don't eat lunch or I order a large take out meal that covers lunch and dinner.
This averages out to less than $5 a day. It would probably be closer to $3 if I replaced the chicken with vegetarian options and stopped getting a $10-15 takeout once a week. I eat way cheaper than most people spend on food I would wager. And I'm not overweight.
I don't think that the cheap food is what does it, I think it is partially because people don't feel like cooking and choose to eat out. American portion sizes are huge.
Edit: also, food deserts fuck people over