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http://www.good.is/post/picture-show...-what-you-eat/
I thought this was a cool and interesting article. In this thread post your fridge, your occupation, how many people live in your house, and one interesting fact we may not know about you.
I'm at work now, so I'll post mine tomorrow.
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.
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. We're not a nation of fatties because of what we eat (really), we're a nation of fatties because we're lazy.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. E
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."
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.Quote:
We're not a nation of fatties because of what we eat (really), we're a nation of fatties because we're lazy.
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
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.
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).
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?Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
Also: Notice how poor people have a higher obesity rate than middle and upper class people
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. E
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 know what the word "contest" means, thanks :pQuote:
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).
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by KT.
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.)
This correlation hardly proves your point.Quote:
Originally Posted by KT.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
I admit that I, like most other posters here, have never been poor. But okay, if you're talking about being dirt poor here...Quote:
Originally Posted by KT.
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.
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.Quote:
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.
"Obviously you have never been poor."
WHAT AN ARGUMENT!
I grew up poor and came from a family of six. If my parents brought preprocessed foods we would have never made our money stretch. We at mostly rice, chicken and beef. During the various hunting seasons, my dad and other brother would hunt deer, duck and wild pigs.
As I said before, buying in bulk and planning what you cook you can eat food with a lower cost per serving than most of that garbage people seem to enjoy.
Edit: We also had a very large garden, usually about 5 acres or so, with purple-hull peas, snap beans, corn and potatoes.
My fridge:
butter
Parmesan cheese
1 flour tortilla
a bowl of iceberg lettuce
2 tomatoes
3 limes
pitcher of water
ketchup
mayonnaise
mustard
Italian dressing
salsa
bbq sauce
jelly
sour cream
leftover chicken parm hoagie(mine from earlier tonight, so fucking good)
freezer:
little bit of fries
some eggo's
a few hamburgers
ice
some chicken
There are 6 people sharing this fridge.
I call bullshit sycld, in addition to an additional complaint. The complaint is: vegetarian chili is pointless and gross. Not everyone likes what you like. The bullshit call is this: List the necessary ingredients for this vegetarian chili. I guarantee that when you tally them all up it comes to over $2.40, I guarantee it. There is not even a chance I am wrong.
If you don't like that argument take this one: you can get 8 hotdogs for 82 cents. If you eat two hot dogs a sitting that is four servings. That means to eat a serving of hot dogs costs 20.25 cents. Name something with a cheaper serving than that that you make from scratch.
Can I take this challenge?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. E
I defer this challenge to you.Quote:
Originally Posted by piranhas
Also Mr. E, those chimichangas that KT is referring to are pretty gross. Have you eaten one of them? I have.
I haven't actually, I don't eat a lot of processed food, because I love cooking. I'm not trying to advocate for myself with this discussion, I'm just playing devil's advocate because I know I spent a lot less money when I was fat and eating microwavable bratwursts than I do now when I cook salmon fried rice and spicy barbecue oven fried chicken
Well, this also has to do with the fact that you are eating things like salmon fried rice and spicy barbecue oven fried chicken. You can eat healthy and cook for much cheaper if you buy cheaper ingredients, but obviously you lose out on taste. Just like some junk foods are super cheap and others are pretty expensive. The whole debate is kind of pointless because we can afford to eat better food, so we should. But the less money you have, the less variety and the less taste your menu will have. This whole thing stemmed from the exercise vs. diet debate and the truth is it's both. Americans as a group don't exercise (ever if you go by averages) and eat nothing but over-processed meats and bleached flour (again going by averages).Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. E
I suppose you're right, but I still don't think the existence of these foods is the biggest problem. I still think lack of exercise and no ability to eat in moderation are the biggest problems. I mean, every now again I eat a bucket of fried chicken, but then I go and exercise for four hours and I manage to stay pretty studly.
I want to say that Mr E is modeled after the gods but I have a funny feeling it's the other way around
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.
i could take a picture of my fridge just because its the most digusting looking fridge ever...
I was going to mention in my previous post about using dried beans instead of canned, but yeah.Quote:
Originally Posted by piranhas
The only difference is that you need to soak them overnight.
I have had some really good vegetarian chili before. I was surprised.
a 1/2 cup isn't a meal, but neither is 2 hotdogs.Quote:
Originally Posted by piranhas
An interesting sidenote, I had a personal finance class one time where I did a project with the theory that it is cheaper as a college student to eat fast food (or out) everyday than cooking and eating for myself everyday (this was a mix of preprocessed foods & cooking from scratch). I kept all the bills and the totals were as follows:
Fast food came to $283
Groceries came to $378