Usagi said: $15 for a weeks worth of meals??? I'm not trying to be mean or anything but how poor do you have to be to only have that much money to spend for a week? ._.55Snakes said: beef, tomato, lettuce, cheese, onions, certainly doesn't sound unhealthy to me Why do people go on and on about how unhealthy food is cheap. That's not an excuse to be fat because you can just buy healthy food and eat less, with the same amount of money. It's a simple logical argument. "I have $15 dollars to spend on dinner for the week. I can either get a few onions ($0.75 each), a small pack of chicken ($8), and a small pack of cherry tomatoes ($4) and not be able to eat every night this week, or I can check out that 10 for $10 instant noodle sale. There is also frozen fried chicken dinners 2 for $3. Which one do I pick?" Obviously people aren't going to choose to eat three or four nights out of the week compared to eating all seven. |
 A pair of eyes appear disguised, ask for discord serverI take flight and stay high in paradise, With bad luck, snake eyes, a pair of dice. I'm paralyzed, she speaks twice, a pair of lies, It's parallel, apparent hell of parasites. |
deadaccount___ said: $15 for a weeks worth of meals??? I'm not trying to be mean or anything but how poor do you have to be to only have that much money to spend for a week? ._. I know of some college students who were on a budget like that. They had $25 dollars a week to spend on all of their groceries for the week. That includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They were literally living off of instant noodles and bread. |
 |
Usagi said: Minimalists, huh. I take they don't really have any income besides some kind of welfare then? That sounds tough, but I guess you gotta start somewhere.deadaccount___ said: $15 for a weeks worth of meals??? I'm not trying to be mean or anything but how poor do you have to be to only have that much money to spend for a week? ._. I know of some college students who were on a budget like that. They had $25 dollars a week to spend on all of their groceries for the week. That includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner. |
A pair of eyes appear disguised, ask for discord serverI take flight and stay high in paradise, With bad luck, snake eyes, a pair of dice. I'm paralyzed, she speaks twice, a pair of lies, It's parallel, apparent hell of parasites. |
| That's....kinda the opposite for third world nation i live, where a piece of hamburger often cost twice than a full set of normal lunch, or where pizza is often my entire day's worth of meals. I guess that's why people here normally eat stuff made from scratch and very rarely obese. |
| I live out in the boonies aka rural US and you can get stuff like turnips, onions, peanuts, sweet potatoes, etc. All for dirt cheap prices, but in larger cities stuff tends to be more expensive |
 |
| How can they be poor if they're so loaded. |
 |
| It's about price but it's also about preparation. You have to have the time AND the space to prepare and store healthy food. It takes no time or space to get a packet of chips or a fast-food meal. To prepare chicken yourself, you have to buy it, usually in bulk (which means you have to have somewhere to safely store it) for more than it costs to buy an individual chicken sandwich at Burger King. Then you have to have all the oils, spices, etc. and pans to cook it, not to mention the time to do so - which if you work multiple jobs you may not. The interaction between poverty and obesity in modern western countries is a recognized public health problem. It is not the case that millions of people are just lazy or choosing to be fat. (Also consider periods of starvation slow your metabolism which could be playing into it) |
| It's honestly really hard to discern the excuse makers from the genuine people in this thread but I'd put it somewhere at a balanced 50/50. There are genuine reasons in some cases as to why some people don't have the time or resources to live a healthy lifestyle, but I know full well how easy it is to make an uneducated excuse to feel better about one's situation. |
A pair of eyes appear disguised, ask for discord serverI take flight and stay high in paradise, With bad luck, snake eyes, a pair of dice. I'm paralyzed, she speaks twice, a pair of lies, It's parallel, apparent hell of parasites. |
| People who are poor tend to live in urban food deserts. These are areas that have no access to veggies or fruits, so they end up living off of shit in gas stations, fast food, and anything else they can find. It's a huge catch twenty two because they need to be healthy in order to be fit for good jobs, but they can't get healthy because they don't have the money to move out of the city to a place that has healthy food. A lot of really cool charities are trying to start green roofs (gardens on rooftops) and city gardens to help increase access to fresh fruits an veggies to those who don't have the access many of us are blessed to have. |
SaturdayKrush said: I don't understand it. I see it all the time in the USA. The poor are usually obese or chunky. Even the people begging on the side of the road for change have a large amount of body fat around their mid section. How is it they are poor but can afford to stuff their fat faces like that? Compare that to the days of the great depression. When you were poor back then you were skin and bones and starving. Healthy food is expensive, while unhealthy food is cheap by comparison. That is why poor people today have poor diets. This wasn't the case during the great depression because the technology which allows food to be sold as cheaply as today -processing, mechanised agriculture, home freezing etc- were not available during the great depression. |
| Losing an Argument online? Simply post a webpage full of links, and refuse to continue until your opponents have read every last one of them! WORKS EVERY TIME! "I was debating with someone who believed in climate change, when he linked me to a graph showing evidence to that effect. So I sent him a 10k word essay on the origins of Conservatism, and escaped with my dignity intact." "THANK YOU VERBOSE WEBPAGES OF QUESTIONABLE RELEVANCE!" |
| My 2c; Really it is way cheaper to make good food from scratch using ingredients like eggs, flour, apples, potatoes, onions and mince etc than it is to buy fattening junk/convenience food (which pound for pound, is actually quite poor value for money). I don't buy the whole "I can't afford to eat healthy" because countries like Japan and S.Korea have some of the most expensive food prices in the whole world (and general cost of living rates) yet also have some of the lowest obesity rates in the whole world. And if you ever go to these countries its not hard to see why they are so slim (they eat a great deal of vegetables and very little meat or junk food). I also don't buy the whole "I don't have time to cook" argument because there are literally THOUSANDS of cookbooks out there (which can be bought second hand for less than the price of a 6 pack of beer) entirely dedicated to recipes which take only 30, 20, 15 or even 10 minutes to make (and c'mon, you're only kidding yourself if you believe that you don't even have 20 minutes to cook a decent meal for yourself). Really, although I hate to say it...A lot of people who are poor are not poor through terrible luck but because of their own lack of discipline, planning & foresight. That sometimes their obesity is symptomatic of the very attitudes which are making them poor (rather than the other way around). Of course nobody likes to suggest this (because the current trend is to believe that everyone who is poor & obese in society is a victim of everybody but themselves). To be sure there are other factors at play. But I simply don't buy the whole "I am fat because I am poor" argument. I was once downright poor for years on end- so poor that my life revolved around little but endless mindless work and trying to make the most basic ends meet (paying rent and buying food- that was it). Buy a new t-shirt? Go for a heavy drinking night out? Buy a new videogame? Go on a holiday? These were all extravagances back then which I could only dream about (for a long time, a "treat" for me was perhaps ordering some fish & chips or going to the hairdresser once a month etc). But did I get fat? No! I was extremely slim and I ate within my means. Like an intelligent person, I avoided the junk food etc and instead bought real ingredients which I made real healthy meals out of (and yes I worked full time as did my partner- in fact a most of the time, we were working overtime). I had absolutely no problems staying slim nor affording to buy the basic food essentials (because I budgeted well on my means). I also managed to save money etc so that after a couple of years, I was living a much easier life (better income, more freedoms). Really when you a poor, if you are smart you don't go buying **** like bags of frozen potato chips, "sandwich ham", chocolate bars and crisps etc (because you know that they are not good value for money and that you can live without them). In fact if you go to a lot of poorer EU countries like Poland, although the people there can buy junk food as much as we can, its rare to see people buy into it much. Instead people there take a much more sensible approach to food budgeting and diet (and as a consequence are better savers and slimmer people etc). In fact its only a few countries which blame their obesity levels on being poor. But as harsh as it sounds (having been poor in the past, having traveled to many countries etc), I think a lot of fat people are just making excuses (and that their obesity is more a result of their lack of discipline and prioritization than anything else etc). In France there is even a common view that fat people are usually stupid & lazy (because they think that you have to be dumb and lacking in self-discipline to let yourself get really fat). In fact if you're morbidly obese in France, you may struggle to find a decent job because so many people there believe obesity is a reflection of someones poor character (that the things which make someone allow themself get really fat also make them less likely to be good & professional worker). Personally I have nothing against fat people. Yeah, if you wanna allow yourself get into a state then so be it (its your choice). But I do find it annoying when people blame their problems (which they are responsible for) on everybody but themself. Yes, poor people are more likely to be smokers and heavy drinkers too (but at least the poor smokers and drinkers don't try to excuse their drinking and smoking on, I dunno...Tap water being too expensive to drink or fresh air too expensive to breath lol. That, its only with the over-eaters that they try to directly blame their dietary choices and lack of dietary discipline on their poorness etc). edit: spelling |
Tokis86Jun 8, 2016 7:00 PM
 |
| The food that they can afford to buy has a higher calorie to nutrient ratio. A burger is cheap and it will give you more energy than healthy food, but it won't contribute much to your other nutrients so you need to eat more. Many of the large Blizzards from Dairy Queen that are over 1,000 kcal which is half of your daily limit, but they don't give you much else other than calcium and protein. |
  |
| because it costs more money to eat healthy. and thats not really their fault.. |
 |
Tokis86 said: I don't have the patience to read all of this, but you deserve a reply for your effort so I skimmed over the basics, and I agree with what I read, well written and thoughtful. :)My 2c; Really it is way cheaper to make good food from scratch using ingredients like eggs, flour, apples, potatoes, onions and mince etc than it is to buy fattening junk/convenience food (which pound for pound, is actually quite poor value for money). I don't buy the whole "I can't afford to eat healthy" because countries like Japan and S.Korea have some of the most expensive food prices in the whole world (and general cost of living rates) yet some of the lowest obesity rates in the whole world. And if you ever go to these countries its not hard to see why they are so slim (they eat a great deal of vegetables and very little meat or junk food). I also don't buy the whole "I don't have time to cook" argument because there are literally THOUSANDS of cookbooks out there (which can be bought second hand for less than the price of a 6 pack of beer) entirely dedicated to recipes which take only 30, 20, 15 or even 10 minutes to make (and c'mon, you're only kidding yourself if you believe that you don't even have 20 minutes to cook a decent meal for yourself). Really, although I hate to say it...A lot of people who are poor are not poor through terrible luck but because of their own lack of discipline, planning & foresight. That sometimes their obesity is symptomatic of the very attitudes which are making them poor (rather than the other way around). Of course nobody likes to suggest this (because the current trend is to believe that everyone who is poor & obese in society is a victim of everybody but themselves). To be sure there are other factors at play. But I simply don't buy the whole "I am fat because I am poor" argument. I was once downright poor for years on end- so poor that my life revolved around little but endless mindless work and trying to make the most basic ends meet (paying rent and buying food- that was it). Buy a new t-shirt? Go for a heavy drinking night out? Buy a new videogame? Go on a holiday? These were all extravagances back then which I could only dream about (for a long time, a "treat" for me was perhaps ordering some fish & chips or going to the hairdresser once a month etc). But did I get fat? No! I was extremely slim and I ate within my means. Like an intelligent person, I avoided the junk food etc and instead bought real ingredients which I made real healthy meals out of (and yes I worked full time as did my partner- in fact a most of the time, we were working overtime). I had absolutely no problems staying slim nor affording to buy the basic food essentials (because I budgeted well on my means). I also managed to save money etc so that after a couple of years, I was living a much easier life (better income, more freedoms). Really when you a poor, if you are smart you don't go buying **** like bags of frozen potato chips, "sandwich ham", chocolate bars and crisps etc (because you know that they are not good value for money and that you can live without them). In fact if you go to a lot of poorer EU countries like Poland, although the people there can buy junk food as much as we can, its rare to see people buy into it much. Instead people there take a much more sensible approach to food budgeting and diet (and as a consequence are better savers and slimmer people etc). In fact its only a few countries which blame their obesity levels on being poor. But as harsh as it sounds (having been poor in the past, having traveled to many countries etc), I think a lot of fat people are just making excuses (and that their obesity is more a result of their lack of discipline and prioritization than anything else etc). In France there is even a common view that fat people are usually stupid & lazy (because they think that you have to be dumb and lacking in self-discipline to let yourself get really fat). In fact if you're morbidly obese in France, you may struggle to find a decent job because so many people there believe obesity is a reflection of someones poor character (that the things which make someone allow themself get really fat also make them less likely to be good & professional worker). Personally I have nothing against fat people. Yeah, if you wanna allow yourself get into a state then so be it (its your choice). But I do find it annoying when people blame their problems (which they are responsible for) on everybody but themself. Yes, poor people are more likely to be smokers and heavy drinkers too (but at least the poor smokers and drinkers don't try to excuse their drinking and smoking on, I dunno...Tap water being too expensive to drink or fresh air too expensive to breath lol. That, its only with the over-eaters that they try to directly blame their dietary choices and lack of dietary discipline on their poorness etc). |
A pair of eyes appear disguised, ask for discord serverI take flight and stay high in paradise, With bad luck, snake eyes, a pair of dice. I'm paralyzed, she speaks twice, a pair of lies, It's parallel, apparent hell of parasites. |
deadaccount___ said: I don't have the patience to read all of this, but you deserve a reply for your effort so I skimmed over the basics, and I agree with what I read, well written and thoughtful. :) Thank you ^_^v . zombie_pegasus said: The food that they can afford to buy has a higher calorie to nutrient ratio. A burger is cheap and it will give you more energy than healthy food, but it won't contribute much to your other nutrients so you need to eat more. Many of the large Blizzards from Dairy Queen that are over 1,000 kcal which is half of your daily limit, but they don't give you much else other than calcium and protein. If you're really smart though, instead of buying a pre-made burger (which will be made with the worst quality ingredients imaginable etc), you buy some mince and eggs and bread instead make your own burgers (basic burger ingredients = fresh beef mince, a little whisked egg, salt & pepper all mixed together and shaped into burgers). Yes it will initially cost more to buy the basic ingredients but pound for pound you will get SO much more for your money (and the leftovers can be used for all sorts of things- there are literally more than 100 dishes you can make with mince and even stale bread can be used for stuff). And because you get much more for your money buying the basic ingredients, in the long run that leaves you with more money to buy other stuff (like more quality basic ingredients to make a greater diversity of dishes out of). There are very few things you can make from a leftover burger but there are many things you can make from the things you can make a burger with (mince, eggs, bread, lettuce etc). Honestly people eat far too much meat these days. People go on about protein but most people's problem is that they actually consume too much animal fat and protein (and not enough of it). I wouldn't be surprised if most of these obese people had no real idea even over how much protein they needed a day (and what they were consuming daily). And if you really think that all these poor fat people are just being forced to eat cheap fatty meats and carbs etc...Well then go to a cheap "all you can eat" buffet (u'know, those real budget ones which draw in all the skint families etc) and watch what all the fat people heap up onto their dishes when they are given the choice to eat whatever (and as much of) they like! Because you can sure as heck bet that they will not be rushing to the salad bar to get a fix of tomato salad, vegetable stir-fry or boiled peas etc. Instead they will be piling up on as much meat, sugary deserts and cheap carbs as possible! Really, the overwhelming majority of people who are morbidly obese are so because they overeat. And they overeat not because they are addicted to food in general but because they are hooked on very specific food groups or flavours. You could put these people in front on 2 whole tables of food (one healthy table one unhealthy table) but even if the food was 100% free, you still wouldn't see most of these people queuing up for the healthy stuff (the salad over the doughnuts, the lentil stew over the hotdogs etc). I worked on checkouts at a supermarket once for a long while and I have to say that overwhelming majority of the time, the fattest customers not only bought the most junk food, but their food bills also always cost the most (living off a diet of junk really isn't good value for money). In fact working at checkouts demonstrated to me more starkly than anything else people's direct correlations between diet, weight & cost (and it wasn't the slim people buying the healthier foods whose bills came to the most!). |
|
| @Tokis86 I think another factor is that most poor people are uneducated. Quite a lot of what you've said doesn't just come down to them eating too much of what isn't good for them but also that they don't realize what it's doing to their body. |
|
deadaccount___ said: SaturdayKrush said: Carbs are energy that turn to sugar when not used, for example - when you eat pasta/noodles on a student budget and spend all your time studying instead of exercising, you put on weight fast. Rice is the same.You're joking right? Rice and beans are way more healthy than a fast food burger. =/ Being healthy isn't as expensive as people make it out to be though, I pay for a fortnight's worth of top quality healthy food with just $90AUD. I feel like you're misinformed about carb rich diets. Low fat High Carb has been shown to be extremely healthy. The literature is out there debunking all those "carbs make you fat myths". |
zombie_pegasus said: @Tokis86 I think another factor is that most poor people are uneducated. Quite a lot of what you've said doesn't just come down to them eating too much of what isn't good for them but also that they don't realize what it's doing to their body. I will agree with you there. TBH I think Home Economics (basically cookery & nutrition class) should be made a mandatory part of the curriculum at school (and not the crappy Home Ec classes where the teacher just teaches kids to make junk like cupcakes). All this focus given to Maths, English, History and Science etc...Well although I am not saying that these subjects aren't important (they are!), you can technically live without all these things. However you can't live without food. In fact, you could argue that knowing how to collect/buy and provide/make food for yourself (and to understand nutrition) is one of the most basic and important life skills of all! Yet unfortunately cooking and understanding nutrition is not considered much of a life skill (even though Home Economic classes can go a long way to teaching kids how to cook, understand nutrition, be healthier and save themselves a lot of money and more as adults). Personally I would like to see Home Economic classes taught as more of a primary subject at school not because it will help anyone get a job (it probably won't) but rather because if people were more clued up on food and cooking, people in society would probably be less fat & unhealthy (and would be more capable of saving money). My last school wasn't good for much however one thing I will give it credit for was the Home Economics class. The class was particularly good for giving me a really good understanding of nutrition & healthy diet. And a lot of confidence when it came to cooking! After completing 3 years of those classes, I felt like I could cook pretty much any kind of dish (and much of what I learned from how to prepare and cook the perfect stir-fry to how to look for the best cuts of meat etc, came to serve me well for years to come once I moved out of home ^_^v etc). |
Tokis86Jun 9, 2016 7:53 AM
|
| @Tokis86 just putting this out there but with your reply rate and articulacy you must type like a fucking machine lol |
A pair of eyes appear disguised, ask for discord serverI take flight and stay high in paradise, With bad luck, snake eyes, a pair of dice. I'm paralyzed, she speaks twice, a pair of lies, It's parallel, apparent hell of parasites. |
deadaccount___ said: @Tokis86 just putting this out there but with your reply rate and articulacy you must type like a fucking machine lol Lol XD ! Yeah I am a very fast typer and the thoughts just flow out of my head (most of the time I spend writing each post I actually just spend trying to spell check/proofread what I've written as my dyspraxia makes me pretty poor at stuff like that). Anyhoo, I gotta go to bed now ^_^v . |
|
Tokis86 said: Yep, as an author I was rather intrigued because I spend so much time thinking rather than writing, and seeing replies come out like that was rather interesting. :pdeadaccount___ said: @Tokis86 just putting this out there but with your reply rate and articulacy you must type like a fucking machine lol Lol XD ! Yeah I am a very fast typer and the thoughts just flow out of my head (most of the time I spend writing each post I actually just spend trying to spell check/proofread what I've written as my dyspraxia makes me pretty poor at stuff like that). Anyhoo, I gotta go to bed now ^_^v . Sweet dreams. btw MAL guys if you wanna pick up MAL chicks you gotta compliment them on their typing skills. works 100% guaranteed. I'm also off to bed. No connection, I swear. |
A pair of eyes appear disguised, ask for discord serverI take flight and stay high in paradise, With bad luck, snake eyes, a pair of dice. I'm paralyzed, she speaks twice, a pair of lies, It's parallel, apparent hell of parasites. |
| Poor people are also usually less intelligent also. All of the cheap foods are made from concentrated carbohydrates and cheap vegetable oil, both of which is toxic to the body. Most of the food poor fat people consume should really only be used to make ethanols. Cheap vegetable oils were only ever used as fuel for diesel engines - now people eat it! Potatoes and a lot of grains are best used to produce alcohols with, but people consume it. Poor people are fat because they cannot afford good food, and even if they could, are not intelligent enough to chose it. |
| idk about you but the closer a girl gets to looking like ronald mcdonald, the more aroused i become. CAV where can we cast our eyes to @PoruMairu who thinks of himself a member of the true church. Helion. |
| Because they live in Merica , land of obesity. |
PoruMairu said: All of the cheap foods are made from concentrated carbohydrates and cheap vegetable oil, both of which is toxic to the body. Most of the food poor fat people consume should really only be used to make ethanols. Cheap vegetable oils were only ever used as fuel for diesel engines - now people eat it! Potatoes and a lot of grains are best used to produce alcohols with, but people consume it. I find it interesting that you point that out about the vegetable oils because its true (but its something that few people are that aware of). Rapeseed (u'know, that crop you see growing in the fields in the summertime with the bright yellow flowers) is a vegetable oil plant (its seeds are small but very rich in oil) however in England before the 1970s it was a pretty rare crop. However since the 70s demand for vegetable oils has rocketed (and so in turn has the amount of rapeseed being planted so much so that now, fields of rapeseed in the patchwork landscape of rural England are a quintessential part of the summer image of the countryside in Summer). Up until the 90s it was still the norm for most rapeseed to be primarily grown for machine oil (if I remember correctly, its also used in animal feed too). Its always been totally edible but few people thought that anyone would be convinced to consume a type of oil which was more normally turned into fuel or used to lubricate cogs & gears etc. So when food companies started demanding human consumption quality rapeseed oil, most farmers were very surprised! I remember my mum telling me about this back in the day and she told me to never eat anything with rapeseed oil in it (because it was apparently a really cheap oil and she wasn't convinced that it was healthy for people to consume). The reason of course why so much vegetable oil is added to products these days is because it increases the shelf life of products, it's a cheap bulking ingredient and it makes products taste more addictive. But I think its pretty mad that sometimes people outright buy actual bottles of rapeseed oil to pour on their food! Of course they don't often call this oil rapeseed oil now but instead call it "Canola" oil. Canola is basically a hybrid rapeseed plant (but it looks exactly the same etc). However the laws are pretty mixed up and so sometimes rapeseed oil gets labelled as canola oil and vice versa. Either way...I think my mums suspicions about rapeseed oil not being healthy for humans to consume is true. Both rapeseed and canola oil contain Erucic acid (which is inedible and toxic in high doses) although the latter contains less of it. There is also a lot more spotlight on the health impacts on vegetable oils in general now as its now beginning to be believed that some which were previously thought to be really healthy for you are now not at all; https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131111122105.htm http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11981884/Cooking-with-vegetable-oils-releases-toxic-cancer-causing-chemicals-say-experts.html I don't think you can go too wrong with olive oil (people have been consuming that for thousands of years and its health benefits seem very solid/well proven). But so many of the other vegetable oils? Who knows. Either way, these days a lot of people are certainly consuming too many fats and oils in their daily diets. |
|
| Most of being fat is genetics.. You also have to account for those people could have been eating in excessive for 10+ years before they BECAME homeless. You're usually not born homeless. Obviously bad genes+eating unhealthy is going to make it worse but yeah.. I eat like a hog and am still very underweight. On top of that if a homeless person makes 15$ a day that's 3 mcdonald meals.. Or if you order off the dollar menu you could eat 15 burgers.. Fattening unhealthy food is cheap in USA, making that much a day is pretty easy for a hobo - depending on what area you're at but yeah. |
Tokis86 said: I don't think you can go too wrong with olive oil (people have been consuming that for thousands of years and its health benefits seem very solid/well proven). But so many of the other vegetable oils? Who knows. You most certainly can. Olive oil is actually quite rare, there just isn't enough of it for mankind. Once it became more popular, the majority of olive oil sold now is trash, though it's still legal to call it extra virgin oil if it has like 10% of it mixed in. Most are just too focused on the McBurgers to even consider their basic foodstuffs are actually junk food. |
| @mecharobot Yeah I have heard that too. I saw this scandal last year where it was found out that a number of olive oil brands were selling cheap virgin oil as extra virgin olive oil; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11988947/Italian-companies-investigated-for-passing-off-ordinary-olive-oil-as-extra-virgin.html In this article they also mentioned the whole adding (or disguising) of non-olive oil as olive oil etc; http://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2016/02/10/the-olive-oil-scam-if-80-is-fake-why-do-you-keep-buying-it/#5b6cff2b5e0c Honestly I have no idea if the olive oil I use is the real deal or not. But I'm generally dubious of any olive oil which tastes kinda acrid or which is a suspicious colour (too pale or too dark etc). Olive oil is one thing I never skimp on in the kitchen (I love the flavour of it and I use it in all my savoury cooking etc) but it sucks as I don't know which brands to trust or not trust (are the more expensive ones really always a better quality? Etc). So generally I use the cheap stuff for cooking dishes where the flavour of the oil will be pretty lost (like in a sausage casserole) while I save the better quality stuff on dishes where it will make more of a flavour difference (like salads and pasta dishes). |
|
| If you can only feed a family of 4 for a week on like $60, and you need to get: Breakfasts for everyone Lunches for everyone - which means lunches that 1 person can take to work, separate lunches that 2 can take to school, and 1 for the other person to either eat at work or at home Dinners for everyone Some type of snack Drinks The difference in price between unhealthy, processed foods that last and healthy, fresh fruits & vegetables and quality meats that are only good for a limited time and require extra means to take and store to eat later is tremendous. I've had to do it in the past both in low cost areas and high cost areas. You can feed a family dinner with a $1 box of pasta and a $2 jar of sauce. That's actually a pretty nice meal when you're living in poverty and it's only $3. Not what many would consider healthy though. Your other options are things like macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, ramen, and the like. If you do get any meat, it's either hot dogs or low-quality high-fat ground beef which you use for hamburger helper or sloppy joes, because you probably can't get enough to even make a decent hamburger for everyone, and if you do you've got to cut back other places for such a nice meal. If you can afford get any chicken, it's going to be just drumsticks or tenders; no skinless/boneless white meat or anything like that. If you want pizza, Totino's party pizzas go for about $1.50 a piece and can function as either dinner or lunch depending on your requirements for lunches. For snacks, you can get a couple bags of chips or a box of cheezits and a pack of chips ahoy for $3-4 total which everyone can split for snacks or as a side for lunch throughout the week. Compare that to fruit, in which apples go for $3 a pound (which comes out to roughly $0.75 per apple; for 4 people to have 1 each day is $21!). Bananas are the cheapest fruit option, at ~$0.70 a pound, or $1.50 per bunch of 5-6. You'd still need 4-5 bunches for a week (~$6 aka twice as much as the junk food option) and since bananas spoil faster you're probably going to have to get 2 bunches when you go shopping and then make a second trip to the store halfway through the week to get a couple more, costing extra in gas and time. For drinks, a 2 liter of soda is $1 (for generic or a name brand on sale) and kool aid packs are $0.10 (plus a pound of sugar for $2 which will make a few gallons of kool aid). Meanwhile juice runs $3-6 per bottle depending on quality (the healthier with real ingredients costing more, obviously) and water is at least $5 a pack. Fucking water is more expensive than soda! Lunches are going to be where most of your money can quickly disappear, since you have to get so many different things for different people and they have to travel well. Still, processed foods are both cheaper and keep better than things like fruit, cheeses, lunch meats, etc. And even looking at lunch meats, bologna is far cheaper than turkey or ham. White bread is cheaper than wheat, and if you want any kind of white bread that is enriched or anything to make it healthier, prepare to pay premium prices for that (going from $1 a loaf to $4 or more). Seriously, whenever I hear people talk about how it's not expensive to eat healthy, it means that either A) they've never been poor, B) they have no idea how to realistically feed a family, C) they have bizarre qualifications for "healthy" eating, or D) some combination of the above. Anyone who says, "You can just eat dried beans and rice" is suffering from B and C. |
Noraf46 said: If you can only feed a family of 4 for a week on like $60, and you need to get: Breakfasts for everyone Lunches for everyone - which means lunches that 1 person can take to work, separate lunches that 2 can take to school, and 1 for the other person to either eat at work or at home Dinners for everyone Some type of snack Drinks Ok I am going to have to disagree with you on some stuff here (don't like to argue but there are some points I really want to make); Noraf46 said: The difference in price between unhealthy, processed foods that last and healthy, fresh fruits & vegetables and quality meats that are only good for a limited time and require extra means to take and store to eat later is tremendous. I've had to do it in the past both in low cost areas and high cost areas. 1. "Tremendous" effort- how?? 2. A lot of types of fruit and veg will last 1-2 weeks in a refrigerator while raw meats are good for at least a couple of days depending on what type of meat you buy. Unless you only go to the shops once every 2-3 weeks, then its no real mission to prioritize/plan fresh food so that you're under no pressure to cook it all up within a couple of days or something. Noraf46 said: You can feed a family dinner with a $1 box of pasta and a $2 jar of sauce. That's actually a pretty nice meal when you're living in poverty and it's only $3. Not what many would consider healthy though. Your other options are things like macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, ramen, and the like. If you do get any meat, it's either hot dogs or low-quality high-fat ground beef which you use for hamburger helper or sloppy joes, because you probably can't get enough to even make a decent hamburger for everyone, and if you do you've got to cut back other places for such a nice meal. If you can afford get any chicken, it's going to be just drumsticks or tenders; no skinless/boneless white meat or anything like that. If you want pizza, Totino's party pizzas go for about $1.50 a piece and can function as either dinner or lunch depending on your requirements for lunches. 1. The meat: If you really want to save money, buy a whole chicken instead of separate cuts. Pound for pound you will get more for your money and a huge variety of dishes can be made from one chicken (for example when its been stripped of the large cuts of meat after being roasted, you chop up the smaller bits to add to a pasta salad and then you boil down the carcass into a rich chicken stock for soup etc). This also goes for other meat. For example instead of buying pre-cooked individually sliced sandwich ham, just buying a raw large lump of gammon. Gammon is easy to cook- just boil it on a low heat for about 1hr (you don't have to do anything either- you can get on with other stuff while its cooking) and then take it out and let it cook off for 5mins. Then just slice away! A single large lump of home cooked gammon will last about 1 week in the fridge (and an immense variety of dishes can be made from gammon). When you buy sliced ham, all you are doing is paying for the novelty of a pre-cooked pre-sliced bit of gammon (but which probably won't even be pure meat and will have had water injected into etc). 2. You can make pizza for like 50c per pizza (its not difficult to make pizza dough). 3. Pasta is cheap but it is one of the worst foods to fill up on- its very easy to overeat on (making you fat) yet without stuff added to it to bulk it out, it breaks down very quickly in the stomach (leaving you feeling surprisingly hungry again after very little time). Noraf46 said: For snacks, you can get a couple bags of chips or a box of cheezits and a pack of chips ahoy for $3-4 total which everyone can split for snacks or as a side for lunch throughout the week. You don't need snacks and if you buy ingredients for a proper meal to begin with you won't find yourself feeling hungry in between meals. Furthermore chips etc are impossible to fill up on (if anything they tend to make you feel more hungry after eating them than before). Crush a bag of chips into crumbs and roll it into a ball with some water and you will quickly see that portion of chips you are buying over the apples is not even half the size of an apple. Noraf46 said: Compare that to fruit, in which apples go for $3 a pound (which comes out to roughly $0.75 per apple; for 4 people to have 1 each day is $21!). Bananas are the cheapest fruit option, at ~$0.70 a pound, or $1.50 per bunch of 5-6. You'd still need 4-5 bunches for a week (~$6 aka twice as much as the junk food option) and since bananas spoil faster you're probably going to have to get 2 bunches when you go shopping and then make a second trip to the store halfway through the week to get a couple more, costing extra in gas and time. Yet the fruit is far more filling, nutritious & healthy than almost any other food item you have listed so far. If the point is to fill up better (so that you don't feel hungry all the time on your poor budget), then so far all you have been eating is pretty much just carbohydrates (and really poor ones at that with virtually no nutritional content etc). Noraf46 said: For drinks, a 2 liter of soda is $1 (for generic or a name brand on sale) and kool aid packs are $0.10 (plus a pound of sugar for $2 which will make a few gallons of kool aid). Meanwhile juice runs $3-6 per bottle depending on quality (the healthier with real ingredients costing more, obviously) and water is at least $5 a pack. Fucking water is more expensive than soda! 1. You do NOT need to drink soda. If anything, soda is not only fattening (because of all the sugars) but it actually increases the appetite too. 2. Sorry but at what part does buying BOTTLED WATER become a necessity?! You get water out of a tap. Buy a bottle and refill it from the tap if you really want to drink bottled water all the time! 3. Most fruit juices are no more healthy (or necessary) than soda. The majority are made from concentrates which basically mean that they are little more than jam (or do you call that jello in America?) mixed with water. Furthermore, whole fruit is cheaper and more filling etc than juice. Noraf46 said: Lunches are going to be where most of your money can quickly disappear, since you have to get so many different things for different people and they have to travel well. Invest in a lunch box and anything will travel well. Noraf46 said: Still, processed foods are both cheaper and keep better than things like fruit, cheeses, lunch meats, etc. 1. Put the fruit in the refrigerator and it'll last 1-2 weeks or more. 2. Cheddar cheese will last for at least 2 weeks in the refrigerator (even more if you don't open the pack- it can last over a month!). 3. "Lunch meats"- those are processed foods! There are many types of meat that you can freeze so if you want a plentiful supply of fresh raw meat, then store some in your freezer. Noraf46 said: And even looking at lunch meats, bologna is far cheaper than turkey or ham. White bread is cheaper than wheat, and if you want any kind of white bread that is enriched or anything to make it healthier, prepare to pay premium prices for that (going from $1 a loaf to $4 or more). If you focus on getting actual nutrition into your diet, you won't need for "enriched" anything (and the brown bread is far more filling and nutritious than the white stuff). Noraf46 said: Anyone who says, "You can just eat dried beans and rice" is suffering from B and C. This is the funniest thing of all. You say no to buying beans and rice yet basically most of what you've described buying (pasta, pizza, white bread) is just carbohydrates (and significantly less healthy/well rounded ones than beans etc at that!). I don't think your prioritization is good at all because despite being on a lean budget, you are buying (and prioritizing) things that you don't need at all like soda, bottled water and chips/crisps etc. Yet meanwhile at every point you justify not buying healthy food! I think you also severely over-exaggerating the impracticality of fresh foods. I only go to the supermarket once a fortnight yet I never have any problems with food wastage or storage because I use everything I buy in the right order. So for example courgettes/zucchini don't have to be used for a couple of weeks so they don't get cooked up until the end (while meanwhile I will use mushrooms within the first 4 days of buying etc). All it takes is a little knowledge and planning and you can significantly cut down on food wastage to virtually 0. Really I recommend that you invest in some second hand budget recipe books like this one (I own this one BTW and its full of easy, cheap & quick recipes); http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Budget-Recipes-Collins-cheerful-cooking-Wright-Carol-1973-05-28-few-small-m-/112003535308?hash=item1a13ee51cc Or this one (contains 400 budget recipes!); https://www.amazon.co.uk/Best-ever-Budget-Recipes-Step-step/dp/0754817709 Home cooking is still the way to go if you want to save money. You also don't have to be slaving in the kitchen for ages each day if you make meals out of meals etc (roasting a chicken and then using the different parts to make different dishes or cooking a large gammon ham and making a diverse array of dishes from that etc). Beans, cheese & eggs are excellent sources of cheap protein and if you want to be getting lots of protein into your diet, then cut back on the cheap fatty cuts of meat. If you have anything like a butchers or greengrocers near where you live, you will also save yourself a lot of money going there (for example the meat at my local butchers is half the price of that in the local supermarkets). |
|
| That's a silly question. It is because unlike "during the great depression", much of the cheapest and fastest meals one can eat are very unhealthy. Another problem stems from the fact that often in low income, inner city areas, there is no large supermarket, so a lot of families would have to do there shopping quite a bit out of the way simply to get healthy foods. This is relevant because when you think of a poor person, someone living paycheck to paycheck, they typically aren't people with a lot of free time, usually instead it is someone who works a job or two at odd hours. However, this may change to some extent in many areas as Target and Walmart have both relatively recently (within the last few years) started carrying basic produce, however since the "frozen dinner" lifestyle of many poor inner city families has become the norm for two or more generations (since you also don't have too spend time cooking), I'm not sure if that will make a difference at this point. |
 |
| Potato chips are like the cheapest food per calories, and its unhealthy as fuq. This is just one example of unhealthy food that is mass produced, cheap, and easy to consume. Compared that to the price of fresh vegetables, fruits, and meat, and you began to see that "cheap food" nowadays equates to unhealthy food most of the time. Then there's the culture of fast food, which is also extremely affordable for these so called "poor" population. Compound that with a culture of sedentary lifestyle, and money stops being a factor of why people are fat or skinny. |
TachiiJun 9, 2016 4:55 PM
mecharobot said: Raimu4 said: Well rice and water doesn't cost that much now doest it? Rice is junk food, though. Along with pasta and bread. wut.... how are grains "junk food"? |
| Holy hell, I rather them eat and be whatever than to be hungry and homeless. |
| "It's not like I wanted a signature or anything...BAKA!" - A MAL user. |
| @Tokis86 Man, this forum is clunky to use. I was going to quote to reply to parts but holy hell. Anyway, some things I wanted to clarify: "Tremendous" was in reference to the difference in price. That sentence ran on so that may have been lost and I can see how you may have confused that to be in reference to the effort. Still, since you brought it up, your points over getting the whole chicken or gammon and preparing it in different ways to get more meals out of it does actually take more effort than throwing a prepared meal into a microwave or what have you. Not a point I was really banking on, but it's there. Some vegetables will last about a week, some a bit more, especially if not opened, but not opening something doesn't really help with the issue. You made the same point with meats lasting longer if unopened or stored in a freezer, etc. And how long it keeps still doesn't overcome the initial cost. Whether you're buying 21 apples a week or 42 every 2 weeks, the cost is the same overall with a higher cost at one time which is not an option for the most struggling people. Anyway, one lunch meal I sometimes like to get is making my own chicken wraps. The downside to this is that getting a bag of shredded lettuce or even a head if I want to take the extra time to shred it myself to save a buck means that for the first couple days I have delicious, crispy lettuce in my wrap. Day 3 is still ok, but you start to notice some pieces turning and there starts to be a minor smell. Day 4 requires a lot of picking through to find the pieces that aren't as bad, and by day 5 I'm trying to see if I have anything else I can eat instead. This is all while keeping the bag as tightly sealed as possible. I really don't see how you're making pizza for 50c a pie. Maybe if you're buying in bulk and trying to cost out the price for every pizza, but since the ingredients aren't going to keep long after you open them, you're banking on serving pizza around the clock for days to get to that price point. Sauce is $2-3 a jar (and if you're going to make sauce, tomatoes are $3 a pound, never mind the spices which are pricey), cheese is about $3 for a small bag. Sure, dough is pretty cheap since you can use the flour and whatnot for other things, but then you're looking at a lot of preparation and cleanup to save at best a dollar, and that's if you're just having plain cheese pizza. Pasta is cheap and bad to fill up on, those are the central issues of this topic. Snacks. Yes, you don't strictly need snacks. If you really boil it down, you don't need to eat 3 full meals a day either to survive, but then I'm trying to be realistic. You're going to get hungry between those meals, even if you're eating healthy, hearty meals. It might even be boredom eating or wanting a snack while watching a movie or what have you. This is infinitely more true for kids who are both running around playing (burning energy) and growing. One of my friends has a teenage son who is involved in sports at his school. He's told me stories of how he brought home 2 entire rotisserie chickens the night before and when he came how from work the next day his son had already eaten them both over the course of the day and was still asking what they were going to have for dinner. This kid is like 6'5" and rail thin, by the way. I agree the apple is a better snack for all the same reasons. Unfortunately it is also a far more expensive snack, which is the crux of the topic. The drinks. Of course you don't need to drink anything other than water. I take it from your post you aren't in America. What's it like to have clean water from your tap? I remember drinking tap water when I was a kid in Germany, but moving back to the states that didn't last long. You've heard of Flint, Michigan, right? That's just the biggest, most recent one that got news because so many people were highly effected at once and the problem could be easily traced to a politician still in power, so there was a juicy scandal with a villain to blame. Lead and other contaminants are in tap water in many places in the states. We don't have it as bad as some other countries like Mexico, but it's still there and you can taste it, sometimes see it or feel it in the worst places. Cancer clusters and other problems abound in certain areas, with the drinking water being a major factor. I suppose the best option is to get a Brita or Pur filter for your water, as that will save you in the long run. However, there is a high entry cost for those that will keep many people with limited budgets from considering them. I wasn't saying "no you can't have beans and rice" I was discrediting the people who say, "just buy beans and rice." At one point when I was struggling I was given this advice by a few people that I should buy these giant bags of dried beans because then I could just eat that for weeks. They'd say, "spend $3-5 and you've got lunch and dinner for at least 3 weeks out of that big bag." Eat nothing but beans for weeks, who knew it was so easy! Oh wait, all those people giving that advice had never been poor in their lifetime and would never consider eating only one thing for every meal forever. I'm sure butchers and green grocers exist in America somewhere, I've just never seen them in any of the cities I've lived in, so I can't tell you if they're cheaper than a supermarket, or if they're more expensive because they can claim that they're healthier, better quality, or locally sourced or whatever. The closest I've seen are things like farmer's markets (which might be cheaper, although not by much) or maybe the meat section at the supermarket, where you can buy steaks or ground beef that isn't already packaged on the shelf, but that's the same price. On that note, I do have some advice for poor people with access to a farmer's market (they often only happen certain days in certain places) since I know a couple people whose families deal at those markets: come late. Early in the day they're overpricing things to gouge the hipsters and the yuppies who are all about the organic fad and such; during the last hour before closing, they're desperately trying to unload the ugly ones that have been picked over so they don't have to take them back/throw them out, so they'll drop the price and give better deals. I was probably over exaggerating the amount of prep or storage of some things. It's still a consideration for some people in some situations, particularly those who may have never been taught how to cook a lot of things from scratch. I'm not trying to come off aggressive or argumentative with this, but having had to struggle in the past while supporting a family (I have had to feed 4 people for a week on $60 max, and I wasn't even the worst off), this is one of the topics that really gets to me. I don't think many people really consider the practicality or how disheartening it is when you've got to stretch a few bucks and you're looking at the prices in the produce section the way most people look at a luxury car. "Wow, I'd love to have that, look how nice it is. Maybe some day..." "Oh, they sell crab legs. Fan-cy! Maybe I can get these 'Manager's Special' misshapen tilapia filets that expired today as a nice meal since they've been discounted. It is our anniversary..." I get the same way when people talk about things like welfare/food stamps or make bullshit judgements about someone using them while holding a smartphone. |
Desert_GuyJun 10, 2016 5:32 AM
| Easy accessible food, that's all. You bay around 5$ for a burger and fries. Fresh vegetables are usually more expensive. Obesity in rich country is usually spread amount the lower incomes individuals. In poor country, it's the opposite. |
 |
SaturdayKrush said: I don't understand it. I see it all the time in the USA. The poor are usually obese or chunky. Even the people begging on the side of the road for change have a large amount of body fat around their mid section. How is it they are poor but can afford to stuff their fat faces like that? Compare that to the days of the great depression. When you were poor back then you were skin and bones and starving. Unhealthy food high in fat and calories tends to be cheap. Like those packs of ramen are 25 cents to 40 cents a pack and around 400 calories. |
| Cheap food is generally unhealthy.. |
 |
More topics from this board
» what makes a forum signature catch your eyes?707supremacist - Yesterday |
20 |
by DesuMaiden
»»
2 minutes ago |
|
» Do you like Hyperdimension Neptunia? I do...DesuMaiden - Yesterday |
12 |
by DesuMaiden
»»
4 minutes ago |
|
» Are you Caucasian???? I am btw...DesuMaiden - Apr 29 |
42 |
by DesuMaiden
»»
5 minutes ago |
|
Poll: » What is your average step count? [Poll] Do you think that you should take more steps?Miscanthus - Apr 27 |
39 |
by DesuMaiden
»»
23 minutes ago |
|
» Are there hackers on the Internet?DesuMaiden - Yesterday |
8 |
by DesuMaiden
»»
25 minutes ago |