Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?

[Zuul]

I'm happy to see this is being addressed in a New York Times editorial, as this is a wall I've beaten my head into many times.

Frankly, no, junk food is not cheaper.

The alternative to soda is water, and the alternative to junk food is not grass-fed beef and greens from a trendy farmers’ market, but anything other than junk food: rice, grains, pasta, beans, fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, bread, peanut butter, a thousand other things cooked at home — in almost every case a far superior alternative.

“Anything that you do that’s not fast food is terrific; cooking once a week is far better than not cooking at all,” says Marion Nestle, professor of food studies at New York University and author of “What to Eat.” “It’s the same argument as exercise: more is better than less and some is a lot better than none.”

[Orual]

Junk food isn't cheaper, no. But it is easier. It requires no (or very minimal) time and space to prepare. It can be much easier to access (in my neighborhood the convenience store and the liquor store are much easier to get to than the supermarket is, for example). I don't think that these factors can be ignored.

[Zuul]

I'm certainly not going to argue against it being easier. I live fifteen miles away from the closest grocery store, but convenience stores and fast food restaurants are all much closer. It would be far easier and more convenient to grab a Subway sandwich than to run to the grocery store, shop, bring it back, and then prepare dinner. It's also easier to eat a standard American diet than to eat kosher or vegan. But, living within a particular limitation (I won't eat fast food/I won't eat animal products/I won't eat treif) often ends up being simpler than one thinks it would be at the outset.

[The Original An Gadaí]

Fifteen miles?? Do you live in the countryside?

[Zuul]

I live on the edge of country, in a little village that only has a convenience store and fast food (the aforementioned Subway). There are other towns with more amenities down the highway. Some of these little villages don't even have as much as this one does, though. It's an extremely rural area.

[Hatshepsut]

I've wondered about this myself - junk food seems pretty expensive to me, by comparison to other things we buy. But "good" food has to meet four criteria to always win against junk: it has to be healthier, cheaper, not too time-consuming, AND taste good. The problem is that there is probably an inverse correlation between those last two characteristics: a bag of potato chips takes no time at all, but a couple of raw sweet potatoes will take some work (and that's assuming you know what to do with them in the first place).

[artifex]

One thing people seem to overlook sometimes is that healthier food is often much more perishable. It's not uncommon for us to throw out a wilted piece of fruit or half-bag of sprouting potatoes. No big deal for us. But it is basically throwing money away, and not everyone can risk that. A box of macaroni is a much safer bet.

[The Original An Gadaí]

One thing people seem to overlook sometimes is that healthier food is often much more perishable. It's not uncommon for us to throw out a wilted piece of fruit or half-bag of sprouting potatoes. No big deal for us. But it is basically throwing money away, and not everyone can risk that. A box of macaroni is a much safer bet.

An excellent point. Throwing out produce is something i'm trying to minimise at the minute myself. I recall on the SDMB there was a poster who argued where he lived in IIRC Chicago it was cheaper for him to eat a cheap Mexican meal three meals a day than to bother with non-junk food. I bet in the absolute sense the poster was wrong but if you're not resourceful, able to plan ahead, buying non-junkfood might not compete with cheap burritos or whatever. Obviously mileage varies alot across the world. I sometimes think yeah fastfood is cheap, a bag of chips here (chunky fries) is about $2.50, but then I go to supermarket and non-premium spuds, sometimes bags i can barely carry are sometimes the same price.

[AllWalker]

It helps having a well stocked pantry. For the cost of a maccas meal I can buy enough delicious, lean, high quality beef mince to make enough food to last at least four servings... and chances are I'll have spices, veggies (tinned or frozen), pasta, whatever, already on hand. If not, a few extra bucks covers it. Certainly better in every way except time, although even then, four trips to the local maccas will take far more time than once to the shops, plus cooking.

[CatInASuit]

The problem is not so much the cost of the food but all the extras that go with it. Preparation and cooking still take time, not to mention clearing up afterwards. Junk food is easy, just chuck the wrappers in the bin. It's also nice for someone else to do the cooking instead of yourself.

But no, junk food is not cheaper. Its easy enough to get plenty of ingredients to make one or two meals for the same cost. Although it does help if you know how to cook, which seems to have fallen out of favour with people. At which point, fast food is not just simpler, but a crutch.

[artifex]

The problem is not so much the cost of the food but all the extras that go with it. Preparation and cooking still take time, not to mention clearing up afterwards. Junk food is easy, just chuck the wrappers in the bin. It's also nice for someone else to do the cooking instead of yourself.

Yes. Buying the giant bag of potatoes for cheap is great. But potatoes are never a fast-cooking food. And making French fries/chips is actually a bit of a process since to make them well, there's an ice bath and two fryings. This involves time, know-how, a frying vessel, oil, preferably a thermometer, etc.

Not something that sounds like a party when you just pulled a double shift at Walmart and you've got hungry kids at home...and you're walking past the McDonald's conveniently located inside said Walmart by the door...

[Zuul]

Not something that sounds like a party when you just pulled a double shift at Walmart and you've got hungry kids at home...and you're walking past the McDonald's conveniently located inside said Walmart by the door...

It all depends on what's acceptable to you, though. In my family, no matter how poor we were, that was just never an option as far as my mom was concerned and I guess I inherited that. I can see the convenience of eating at those places and I acknowledge it's easier for people, but even at my poorest it was just never an option in my mind. Living off $90 a month for food, working full time, and taking 21 credits at school, I didn't find making rice and beans from scratch once a week and freezing portions all that onerous.

[artifex]

I didn't find making rice and beans from scratch once a week and freezing portions all that onerous.

Me either - I am a big fan of doing a lot of prep work or cooking on the weekend, which makes it simpler to throw stuff together in 20 minutes on weeknights. But not everyone knows how to cook. Not everyone had that modeled to them when they were growing up, as you and I did (we eat out way more than I did when I was a kid, when restaurants were basically for birthdays or on the road on vacation). Not everyone is educated - this is something I see all the time; what I always thought of as "this is the level of understanding about basic health concepts of an uneducated person" has been pretty much blown away when I talk to and educate my patients - in a lot of cases, it's several levels lower than what I assumed people generally understood. (And a lot of people don't want the responsibility of education.)

[Zuul]

Me either - I am a big fan of doing a lot of prep work or cooking on the weekend, which makes it simpler to throw stuff together in 20 minutes on weeknights. But not everyone knows how to cook. Not everyone had that modeled to them when they were growing up, as you and I did (we eat out way more than I did when I was a kid, when restaurants were basically for birthdays or on the road on vacation). Not everyone is educated - this is something I see all the time; what I always thought of as "this is the level of understanding about basic health concepts of an uneducated person" has been pretty much blown away when I talk to and educate my patients - in a lot of cases, it's several levels lower than what I assumed people generally understood. (And a lot of people don't want the responsibility of education.)

Good points, all. I think this really illustrates that laws about where fast food restaurants can be and trying to get more grocery stores out there aren't the sole answers, though, as much as some areas have tried going down these roads. If someone isn't educated and doesn't know how they can cook at home without wasting a lot of time and ingredients, if they don't have the cultural background of eating healthy, all any of that is going to do is make life a lot harder than them. The recipes in that article are a good example of misguided efforts. If someone has been living off of Big Macs because that's easy and relatively cheap, starting them off with a recipe for roasted chicken that takes hours to prepare is not the way to ease them into healthy home cooking. Easier access to grocery stores certainly helps (especially for people with limited ability/time to drive to a store), but until people are comfortable shopping there and basing their diets off of whole foods, more stores aren't going to get much use.

[Sarahfeena]

I DID have that modeled for me at home and I AM reasonably well-educated about health and good food choices., and I'm still prone to using too many convenience foods. I'm easily distracted, impulsive, find planning difficult, and have a tendency to over-schedule myself, which all adds up to grabbing meals on the fly. I'm trying to be better now that I've got kids, but it's hard for me. To the point of your OP, Zuul, I've never understood the claim that convenience food is cheaper...I know for a fact I spend way more money when we're eating a lot of that type of food. My husband is better at long-term planning, and he'll do things like buying a bunch of ground beef on sale and making a huge batch of meatballs and freezing them in family-sized servings, and that type of thing is great for the budget.

[Zuul]

My husband is better at long-term planning, and he'll do things like buying a bunch of ground beef on sale and making a huge batch of meatballs and freezing them in family-sized servings, and that type of thing is great for the budget.

Heh. This reminds me of a book idea I want to develop someday: how to run your kitchen like a restaurant. Managing a restaurant helped a lot towards me figuring out how to make meals cheaply and with little prep time. Sure, you spend one day a week working ahead of time, but then it takes under fifteen minutes to get each meal out afterward. Everything from spaghetti to machaca burritos can take moments to get on a plate, if the prep time was put in beforehand.

[The Original An Gadaí]

Yes. Buying the giant bag of potatoes for cheap is great. But potatoes are never a fast-cooking food. And making French fries/chips is actually a bit of a process since to make them well, there's an ice bath and two fryings. This involves time, know-how, a frying vessel, oil, preferably a thermometer, etc.

Whut? Ice bath and two fryings??? I find thinly sliced potatoes fry just fine in one go.

[artifex]

Whut? Ice bath and two fryings??? I find thinly sliced potatoes fry just fine in one go.

Two fryings is pretty standard, IME.. Thinly sliced sounds like what Americans refer to as chips. French fries as we know them don't do well without a preliminary fry to cook, then a finishing fry to brown.

Zuul, your book idea sounds like a good one to me. Right now we're about to sit down to a curry that took little time to pull together and is delicious, because I cut up and roasted carrots, potatoes, onions, and garlic, and pressure-cooked chicken ahead of time. And most of those are ingredients I can use in other meals (last night we had chicken in nachos, for example). Prepping ahead of time makes a huge difference in how I feel about coming home and making dinner, versus pulling through the KFC that's between the train station and home (One important point - having decent knife skills and knowing how to actually break down a given vegetable or piece of meat helps a lot...)

[The Original An Gadaí]

artifex - Here's my french fries/chips recipe. I'm not talking about crisps (aka american potato chips).

Fill up a pot with vegetable oil

Wash and chop up thinly some potatoes

Bring oil to boil

Place the potatoes in the oil, stir every now and then.

Cook until slightly browned, usually something between 5 and 10 minutes.

Be careful not to burn yourself or the house down.

Place cooked chips on kitchen roll on plate.

Season liberally with vinegar and/or salt.



= tasty chips/fries

[CatInASuit]

Two fryings is pretty standard, IME..

He's using peanut oil to make them.

I don't think I have ever made chips which wasn't done in one session, but I was using a proper deep fat fryer for the job. If the fat temperature is high enough, it seals the chips when you cook them.

[OneCentStamp]

I think this may be a UK/USA divide. When I think "french fries," I think the McDonald's type: completely crisp on the outside, fluffy like a baked potato on the inside. That's something that can really only be accomplished in two fryings IME. Fast food places accomplish it by par-frying, then freezing the fries for shipping, so that they come out perfect with one 4-minute second fry at the restaurant.

[CatInASuit]

French Fries are what you get in McDonalds. Chips are for eating with fish.

[OneCentStamp]

^^^ mmmmmmmm.

[The Original An Gadaí]

I wouldn't know about the UK. I'm just talking about how I make fries/chips.

Chipper chips taste different again to the homemade single-fried potato, they're double fried too methinks.

[Zuul]

If we're talking homemade fried starchy-tuberous thingies, I suggest:

Double-Fried Sweet Potato Fries

Oil for frying
2 pounds sweet potatoes
Salt, to taste

Heat oil in deep fryer or pan to 325 degrees F (163C). Peel the potatoes and slice into strips. As you slice them up, place them in a bowl of ice water.

After the ice bath, dry them thoroughly, then fry in batches. Cook for 3 minutes until they're soft, but not browned. Let them drain, on paper towels or paper bags.

Raise the oil temperature up to 375 degrees F. Return the strips to frying in batches, cooking for 4 minutes until golden and crispy. drain again, then salt and serve.

I've found them to be particularly delicious with a tsatziki sauce and some paprika mixed with the salt.

[Orual]

See, for me, deep-frying is one of those things that will never, ever be worth it for me to do at home. The mess quotient is just too high. (I do like making sweet potato oven-fries, though.)

[The Original An Gadaí]

I oven fry thinly sliced sweet potato, seasoned with some salt, pepper, and paprika, and drizzled with olive oil. Takes about 25 minutes at 200c.

[Zuul]

I've got two sweet potatoes sitting in my fridge and olive oil in my pantry. I may have to try them oven fried tonight!

[Hatshepsut]

So the cost of the sweet potato fries potentially includes the cost of the oil for deep frying, the deep fryer itself, and paprika. (And possibly a cookbook to explain everything.)

I can cook a cheap, healthy, and tasty meal in my kitchen without difficulty. But it is cheap only if you look at the actual cost of the food used. Once you factor in the cost of the deep freezer, big refrigerator, wide array of spice and herbs from Penzeys, a selection of useful cooking tools, and my cookbooks (from which I rarely cook an exact recipe, but from which I derive lots of ideas and understanding of how cooking works), I guess it is a lot more expensive.

[Zuul]

Well, I wasn't suggesting the sweet potato fries as a cheap meal so much as we were discussing frying things and it sounded tasty.

[Zuul]

Cheap frying can be done in a pan with Crisco, however. I've never personally owned a deep fryer, but I have a collection of cast iron pans that were collected from yard sales. It's not the healthiest way of eating, though, and unless frying is something you enjoy it might just be easier all around to satisfy that craving by going out to eat. Oven frying just needs an oven (a $25 toaster oven/broiler works, too) and a little bit of oil.

[CatInASuit]

I tried oven frying some sausages and onions the other day. They were delicious

I'm going to have to try with some potatos now, aren't I?

[Hatshepsut]

Sorry, this is an all-about-me kind of post rather than a real contribution, but I can't resist.

Today for lunch I had healthy, delicious and probably not too expensive food that didn't take long to prepare on the spot, but it came together in a way that would never happen if you were a stressed, busy, person without easy access to gourmet goodies and your own garden.

A day or two before, I had already made a salad of cucumbers, vine-ripened tomatoes and herb marinated goat cheese from Hawaii. That did take some time, as I took extra care to seed the cukes and tomatoes. I didn't add salt, because that makes them weep.

So, lunch was: a quesadilla wrapper filled with that luscious salad, then topped with freshly ground mixed peppercorns (black, red, white, green - thank you Penzeys! - and a specially aromatic "comet tail pepper" we get in Indonesia), sea salt, and a small bit of grated Cheshire cheese. Finally, I snipped some fresh Jamaican oregano from the garden and scattered it over the top.

Ohmygod that was good. And I doubt it was that pricy in terms of ingredients - the cheeses were expensive but the quantities used were small. But a lot of time, planning, and luck were involved. I tended the garden, sought out the special peppercorns, picked out cheese at the deli ... yeah, eating well is a way of life, not something you can usually suddenly do on the spur of the moment without spending a fortune.

I'm pretty sure that was the classiest, most delicious lunch I will ever eat in my whole life.

[RabbitMage]

See, I'm living back at home without my own food budget, and I am thusly at the mercies of what mom wants to buy. I was trying to be good and make/take my lunches to school this semester. But there's not much that I can cobble together that's easily portable, remotely healthy, and tasty while cold. So I just end up eating in the cafeteria or grabbing something at the Wendy's. Oh, how I fail at lunch. Tasty tasty lunch.

[CatInASuit]

Can you not ask for something specific to carry in as lunch?

[artifex]

wide array of spice and herbs from Penzeys

My sister sent me four jars of spices from Penzeys, which I assumed was just a Houston area shop. I had no idea that it was a big thing with many locations!
(BTW the spices are excellent.)

But there's not much that I can cobble together that's easily portable, remotely healthy, and tasty while cold.

RabbitMage, I feel you - my lunch usually has to be cold and something I can eat sitting in my car. Wraps are great, as are nuts or cheese cubes. I put hummus into a sandwich bag, cut (okay, bite) off the corner, and squeeze onto cucumber chips - way easier than taking home a plastic tub to wash out later.

[Hatshepsut]

My sister sent me four jars of spices from Penzeys, which I assumed was just a Houston area shop. I had no idea that it was a big thing with many locations!
(BTW the spices are excellent.)

Check them out on line: http://www.penzeys.com/

Their prices are quite reasonable for many basic herbs and spices, given that a one-ounce bag will last for a year or more (kept in the freezer). The bags they use are re-closeable, and they use a kind of plastic that doesn't absorb the aromatic oils from the herb or spice, so you don't have to transfer the stuff into a glass jar.

I have rarely ever wanted an herb or spice that was not available on their site - it is extremely comprehensive.

[Rube E. Tewesday]

Used to order from Penzey's when we were in Nunavut -- nice products.