I can buy pre-chopped Cole slaw, diced peppers / onions, etc. Whole Foods is best in class (Alnatura doesn’t come close)
While to me, the layman, it seems health regulation in general in Europe is more conservative about what can be put on the body / be consumed, I think it’s mostly Americans don’t want to eat healthy. And the portion sizes here are insane (just look at the evolution dinner plate. 1960s plates at an antique sale only pass for salad plates)
In the US I heard there is now parity in terms of quality products, but maybe culture takes some time to adapt to such environments.
These accessible food options come with a premium that I strongly suspect put them out of what a median income household can sustainably afford.
What I've seen consistently amongst the non-healthy eating Americans is that they argue:
1. Dieting requires them to be hard on themselves and they're focusing on self-love, which they struggle with
2. They deserve a daily treat. They look forward to it, it brings meaning, etc
3. The taste of their food is super important to them, such that they can't imagine repetitively eating (meal-prep) or eating cleanly (no added sugar, monitoring sodium)
In North America there are a lot of "food deserts" especially in poorer neighbourhoods. "Healthy" foods become a class marker. Distribution of higher quality food is through more upscale grocery stores.
Same goes for walkability in neighbourhoods. To live in a place that has transit accessibility, green grocer and bakery you can walk to -- that's not possible for the vast majority of North Americans because it exists only in urban areas that have gentrified beyond the reach of most people.
When I moved to Toronto in the mid-90s it was possible for a middle-income earner to rent or live in a home adjacent to some of the corridors in the city that offer this (e.g. Roncesvalles/High-Park, Spadina/Chinatown, College&Clinton, etc) and you could see a higher diversity of people living near the stores and in the neighbourhoods off them. As a person in my early 20s making not very much money, I could make it work. That is now no longer possible, the city has become a wealthy fortress. I imagine the same for parts of Brooklyn&NYC, Chicago, SF, Vancouver etc.
On one hand, you a processing step. On the other hand, you can process 'ugly' produce into mince. (Mince also transports more compactly volume-wise.)
I don't know why the problem is shied away from. It is because people are addicted to fast food and to their sedentary lifestyles. It's not the price or availability of good food, not the first order effect anyway.
You'll never be able to force "whole foods" sellers into unprofitable places and if you did by some miracle, you'll never be able to force people to buy it no matter how much money you gave them. Vegetables and grains and basics could be free and many obese food addicts will go buy a burger from a drive thru.
They're saying this without irony? Or by "important" do they mean "the way I like it"?
No they don’t. Even my local Walmart has cheap vegetable selections included pre cut versions.
You know what is expensive, though? Meat. There’s still plenty of meat consumption in the median household.
It’s not a price issue.
1. Practicing a healthy diet is self-love
2. A daily treat is not what breaks your diet. Have _a piece_ of chocolate, sweets or snacks now and then. If you (still) lack the self-control to not eat the whole package, help yourself out by repackaging in daily-compatible portions. Meaning is not gained by consuming anyway.
3. Taste preferences are in big parts a matter of habit. Also prepping doesn't necessitate you eat the same thing for a week. You can freeze a lot of things for longer and thaw them in a mixed manner.
Imo the issue is that people seem to lack a combination of knowledge, time to prep or motivation. Lack of knowledge could be solved with information campaigns, lack of time/motivation is a consequence of people having to spend so much of their time doing a dayjob just to get by, embedded in a culture that puts no value on thriving humans.
Even my local Walmart has pre-cut vegetables.
It’s not an affordability issue either. It’s cheaper to buy the same number of calories from vegetables, fruits, and legumes than meat right now. Meat prices are unusually high and it doesn’t seem to be slowing consumption.
I typically spend more than an hour in the kitchen cooking every day, and then there is half an hour clean up after my family is done eating. I eat much better and healthier food, but it takes time. (If I'm having noodles I'm making them from scratch myself - I could save some time buy less of things like that and the cost wouldn't be much different if any - but even then the whole meal takes time).
There's a massive amount of junk food and ultra-processed food in grocery stores, even though (rough estimate) 50% of floorspace is "raw" food. (Fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, fish.)
Processed food tends to have more sugar (high fructose corn syrup) than other countries. The same brand in the US vs another country will have more sugar.
Cultural momentum: Everywhere you go there's unhealthy food.
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Speaking from personal experience, junk food is just plan addictive and satisfying. It's not like alcohol or other drugs where you can just abstain; you gotta eat and we all get hungry.
This does not address what I wrote though because it is not what I was arguing against.
I agree part of the reason people buy junk food and fast food rather than "whole food" is because the real or perceived effort required to turn it into something they will eat. Or they don't know how to make things that can compete on taste and satisfy their food addiction like those fast foods. It's not because they are time-poor either. They are just addicted to this sedentary "lazy" lifestyle. 30 minute drive to get fast food and eat it while watching TV or tiktok for the next hour or so beats making food and cleaning up for an hour.
Not to mention the median income (in PPP) is higher in the US all but 4 countries.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...
Almost nowhere in the US walks to go to the grocery store. Exceedingly small portions of major cities. Where I live in Chicago is quite walkable, but the vast majority of my neighbors load up the car for the vast majority of their shopping trips. There are pockets of course, but they are rare.
My neighborhood also happens to be much more fit than the national average - obesity is somewhat rare to see. The correlation is with wealth. Why there is such a correlation is much more interesting, and it likely is not as simple as people want to believe.
Same goes for the poor inner ring suburbs where I lived in my 20's in a different state. Very high rates of obesity. In the rich outer suburbs obesity levels were visibly less.
It's far cheaper to meal prep and make your own food from base ingredients. It doesn't need to be fancy. When I grew up poor (working class) this is how we made it work. By buying staples in bulk and buying other items opportunistically on sale. We didn't even own a car for most of that time - and the nearest grocery store was at least 3 miles away. It simply wasn't an option to exist off of junk food since it was too expensive.
Eating junk is easier and more convenient. It feels good in the immediate moment and is low-effort. It's the default, and the environment around you encourages it. Add in lack of any peer pressure and it being normalized by those around you and I believe that explains nearly everything. Lack of walkability certainly hurts, but it's not a primary driver anywhere I've lived.
First, pre-cut isn't that much more expensive. Second, cutting is an accessibility thing now? A kitchen knife and 5 minute YouTube video should have anyone being to chop/dice without much trouble. And once they learn they will only get faster/better at it allowing them to use whole veggies adding more variety.
You need to make a distinction between leafy greens and starch.
Also, you're comparing making noodles from scratch to a typical meal. I can do an asian style chicken/veggie/rice meal in < 30 minutes and have the kitchen mostly cleaned by the time the rice is done.
Turns out that if you care enough and have the work ethic to grind out that sort of living to better your family, you also tend to care what kind of foods they eat.
There are of course seasons in everyone’s lives - but this observation has held generally true no matter the demographic or geographic location I’ve lived around.
I was obese - there is no intended judgement here for folks who struggle with it. I did for the better part of my adult life. The social tropes are simply unhelpful.
Protein + carb + veg is cheap and takes less than 30 minutes to prepare, I have no idea what people are talking about in these threads.
It's shocking.
This comment is so out of touch it must be a joke right? At least I hope so.
Far more time was spent in front of the TV than any other activity by far by my peers and their families. Moving to a more middle class area opened my eyes in how many other options people had to do with their time, and how much time and effort was spent maintaining their lifestyles.
My theory is that in US compared to Europe, you are going to need the path of least resistance more often. If you are working two part-time jobs with variable hours and schedules to make ends meet, then you are going to reach for the easy & fast food options. Whereas if you have the stability of 40 hour work weeks, regular schedule and social safety nets - regardless of the total income - then you have the time and mental energy to eat healthier.
i agree you canecook faster than I normally do - a lot of meals benefit from simmering while the flavors blend.
This is no joke. I picked up a 3 pound package of garden variety 80/20 ground beef last week and it was over $20. Maybe I just don't buy it often enough to notice, but that seems far higher than even a few months ago. I would have expected to buy a modest cut of steak for that price.
And it's a little more complicated than even just that. Another reality is that, at 12 bucks an hour, nobody is going to be giving you a steady 40 hours. You need extra shifts for buffers, and your shifts will be shorter.
Sure, working 50 hours a week across 7 days isn't technically more than 50 across 5 days. But it does certainly drain your will to live a lot more, from what I've seen.
All these tell that people do have a preference towards buying healthy stuff, given the choice. It's not their fault that they have been misled by the media/scientists in some of those cases.
Most simple salads are actually more expensive than chicken (boneless thighs, ground meat) per kg!
If you compare the price per kcal, as one really should, the difference becomes absurd.
$2 at Aldi, and I'd happily pay double. Sure beats having to break down (and use) a whole head of cabbage, which are huge.
And using numbers to support that idea doesn't work, it actually goes against you. A small (much smaller than most obese people will eat in one sitting) fast food meal costs about an hour of minimum wage! Buying stable calories in cereals where the time to buy and cook them can be amortized into many more servings can be amortized is actually cheaper and also takes less time.
In the US, obesity rates rise as income drops, but it continues to rise beyond the point at which income drops below a full time federal minimum wage income.
It's over-eating and under-exercising. I know this is hard for certain ideologies to accept because it means obesity is not inflicted upon victims against their will and beyond their control. If you really need to minimize their agency and responsibility for their choices you can call it addiction to food and addiction to sedentary lifestyle if it helps.
Yes, it's a boon esp. for old people who live alone, have mobility or sight issues, and don't trust themselves to hold a knife. It's also a convenience thing, but as you said, the general population can cut things just fine and won't suffer much without it; which isn't the case for this growing demographic.
There are more food options than meat or salads.
Citing salads and leafy greens as the alternative to meat is a common strawman, but there are more food options than those two extremes.