Thread: Interesting article: You are what you eat

i'm not posting a picture of its cavernous interior, but i'll describe some of its current contents:

(for the record, i'm not vegetarian, though most of the cooking i do at home tends to be vegetarian)

onion
garlic cloves
fresh parsley and basil
mushrooms
some slices of raw potato
grated parmesan (ugh, domestic parmesan blergh)
some swedish semi-soft cheese
milk (locally produced)
vegetable soup from my mom
ratatouille i made last night... it's good, but i accidently burned the tomato sauce a bit :/
left over vegetable jalfrezi from a local vegetarian South Indian resturaunt
cooked rice from the same resturaunt

uncooked grains (which I store in the fridge just beause i don't want them out):
arborio rice (the kind you use to make risotto)
qunioa
quick oats
steel-cut oats

some of my dried herbs/spices in little baggies:
oregano
cardamom
bay leaf
rosemary

i usually store my apples in a fruit bowl outside the refrigerator along with my oranges and bananas

i also usually store my coffee in there. however, i need to buy a new aeropress coffee maker this weekend for $25, as i lost a piece to my old one.


i live by myself, am a graduate research assitant (comes with a stipend to live on), and have just recently started to cook for myself

also, i'm shocked at the amount of pre-processed food and soft drinks are in these refrigerators. no wonder we're a nation of fatties.

Originally Posted by Mr. E

Some people have to eat preprocessed foods, either for lack of time to cook right, lack of money to eat right, or lack of ability to cook.

well, unless they really lack time, no one has to eat processed foods. cooking foods from scratch is both cheaper AND healtheir, and anyone can cook if they took some time to learn.

granted, i'm lucky in that it's not too terribly hard to cook for myself, since grew up watching my mom and grandmother cook and also learning what herbs and spcies taste like. it's given me an intuition for how to season foods, and i can almost taste seasoning and food combinations before i put them in my mouth. nonetheless, anyone really can cook.

also, i never developed a taste for sodas. they're rather expensive as well as full of empty calories.

oh, and people could both eat healthier and much more cheaply if they ate more vegetarian food. it's also both better for the environment and a far, far more efficient use of agricultural resources. einstein was definitely not right about everything he said, but he was correct when he said, "Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

We're not a nation of fatties because of what we eat (really), we're a nation of fatties because we're lazy.

sure we're lazy, but it's undeniably our diet too. we have essentially the worst diet in human history, filled with simple processed carbohydrates and sugars as well as saturated animal fats and processed vegetable fats. that coupled with a lack of physical activity has made us overweight and physically unhealthy.

My fridge:
Green taco sauce
quart of milk
gallon of chocolate soy milk
mayo
left over grilled chicken slices
apple pie
half a stick of butter

I live with my fiance, work at small frozen food store, and am usually at home only after 9pm

Originally Posted by Mr. E

I watched a special on TLC just on Sunday that said that if we were back in the prehistoric days eating what we eat now we'd be just fine, because we were running around everywhere and whatnot. Scientists said it, not me. Plus look at Michael Phelps. For breakfast he eats a dozen donuts and a stack of pancakes with syrup and he'll outlive us all.

Yeah, well, Michael Phelps won't be able to maintain that diet when he's 40, even if he does maintain as high a level acitivity as he possibly can.

Also, I can't argue with you on that quote since I didn't watch the same special you did, but our prehistoric ancestors were forced to eat leaner meats and lots of fruits and vegetables by neccesity

I contest your assertion that cooking from scratch is cheaper than processed food, and by contest I mean that is totally not true. Not if you eat meat anyway, and probably not even for vegetarians (definitely not for vegans).

I know what the word "contest" means, thanks

Why do you say this is "definitely not the case for vegans"? I don't believe you. It again depends on what you eat.

And meat eaters can still eat cheaper by cooking from scratch. What you're saying is just incorrect.

Originally Posted by KT.

Bullshit. A meal of hot dogs and potato chips is way cheaper than most things you cook from scratch. Healthy and organic food is always more expensive than non-healthy or non-organic foods. Just look at beef. Lean and extra lean beef is more expensive than just regular 80/20 beef and if you are counting every cent, why would you spend an extra dollar just to get something that's a little healthier?

It's cheaper to go to the grovery store and buy the same raw potatos and oil that would go into the potato chips than buying the potato chips themselves.

Also, fine, 80/20 beef is cheaper than lean beef, but then the products made with that 80/20 beef are more expensive than their ingredients (not always, but frequently.)

Originally Posted by KT.

Also: Notice how poor people have a higher obesity rate than middle and upper class people

This correlation hardly proves your point.

For example, there are simply no grocery stores in a lot of poor urban neighborhoods where one can buy produce, which forces people to buy and consume processed foods.

Originally Posted by sycld

It's cheaper to go to the grovery store and buy the same raw potatos and oil that would go into the potato chips than buying the potato chips themselves.

Also, fine, 80/20 beef is cheaper than lean beef, but then the products made with that 80/20 beef are more expensive than their ingredients (not always, but frequently.)

Obviously you have never been poor. Frozen chimichangas are like $2.40 and provides at least 4 servings, and they're like the most unhealthiest thing you can eat. I'm not saying making food from scratch is expensive, but preprocessed food is still cheaper. Also, just because the food is made from scratch doesn't automatically make it more healthy than frozen food. Healthy ingredients still cost more than less-healthy ingredients.

Originally Posted by KT.

Obviously you have never been poor. Frozen chimichangas are like $2.40 and provides at least 4 servings, and they're like the most unhealthiest thing you can eat. I'm not saying making food from scratch is expensive, but preprocessed food is still cheaper.

I admit that I, like most other posters here, have never been poor. But okay, if you're talking about being dirt poor here...

I know what chimichangas you're talking about: the chicken chimichangas that are made with chicken foot meat, for example.

You could make a vegetarian bean chilli that costs around the same price per serving.

In general, you could eat a lot less meat and use it to flavor your food rather than to be the bulk of your food. Sure, it's a compromise, but eating those nasty chimichangas are a compromise too. I think it's more of an issue of the poor both not having the information to know how to cook cheaply and having these cheap alternatives in front of them.

Also, just because the food is made from scratch doesn't automatically make it more healthy than frozen food. Healthy ingredients still cost more than less-healthy ingredients.

If you cook at home, you're probably not going to use a ton of artificial transfats. You're probably not going to pour tons of corn syrup into your food. Sure, it's not an insurance of healthier eating, but it makes healthy eating much more likely. And I still disagree that healthy ingredients necessarily cost more if you're intelligent about what you're buying.

Originally Posted by piranhas

Can I take this challenge?

I defer this challenge to you.

Also Mr. E, those chimichangas that KT is referring to are pretty gross. Have you eaten one of them? I have.

Just made up a pot of vegetarian chili, breaks down to 38 cents for a half cup serving.Not quite as cheap as the hotdogs. Could have brought down the cost more by using dried beans instead of canned but didnt feel like fucking with that. I will post a breakdown of costs after dinner tonight.

Edit: Got my math wrong. Corrected it.

Originally Posted by piranhas

Just made up a pot of vegetarian chili, breaks down to 38 cents for a half cup serving.Not quite as cheap as the hotdogs. Could have brought down the cost more by using dried beans instead of canned but didnt feel like fucking with that.

I was going to mention in my previous post about using dried beans instead of canned, but yeah.

The only difference is that you need to soak them overnight.