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American Eating Habits Are Changing Faster than Fast Food Can Keep Up (bloomberg.com)
Home cooking would be making a comeback if it ever really went away. From a report: Restaurants are getting dinged by the convenience of Netflix, the advent of pre-made meals, the spread of online grocery delivery, plus crushing student debt and a focus on healthy eating. Eighty-two percent of American meals are prepared at home -- more than were cooked 10 years ago, according to researcher NPD Group. The latest peak in restaurant-going was in 2000, when the average American dined out 216 times a year. That figure fell to 185 for the year ended in February, NPD said.
Don't be fooled by reports of rising U.S. restaurant sales at big chains like McDonald's. Increases have been driven by price hikes, not more customers. Traffic for the industry was down 1.1 percent in July, the 29th straight month of declines, according to MillerPulse data. "It's counterintuitive because you see a lot of things in the press about restaurant sales increasing," said David Portalatin, a food-industry adviser at NPD. "America does still cook at home." The shift is weighing on the fast-food industry. Eateries already are struggling with higher labor and rent costs that they're passing along to customers, which in turn makes home cooking more economical. McDonald's, Jack in the Box, Shake Shack and Wendy's have all raised prices in the past year.
Don't be fooled by reports of rising U.S. restaurant sales at big chains like McDonald's. Increases have been driven by price hikes, not more customers. Traffic for the industry was down 1.1 percent in July, the 29th straight month of declines, according to MillerPulse data. "It's counterintuitive because you see a lot of things in the press about restaurant sales increasing," said David Portalatin, a food-industry adviser at NPD. "America does still cook at home." The shift is weighing on the fast-food industry. Eateries already are struggling with higher labor and rent costs that they're passing along to customers, which in turn makes home cooking more economical. McDonald's, Jack in the Box, Shake Shack and Wendy's have all raised prices in the past year.
The whole article can be summed up in a single sentence... Americans are eating out less?
Why is this on Slashdot?
because they are poor.
Even when working 2 jobs.
Somethings gotta give...
We usually make food at our house, and have for years.
But over time it's gotten easier and easier to just say something like "I feel like some dish that has apples and rice" and boom, within seconds have some recipes to choose from.
It makes making food at home a lot easier when you don't need to do any work to dig up a recipe and can easily just bring together a few things you have on hand into a full meal.
Also the other aspect I would think helps is that produce in grocery stores is better than it used to be, with more variety as well. There's honestly a lot of stuff I make at home I'd way rather eat than most restaurant food.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Back during the Great Recession, I recall a survey that asked people what they'd cut back on in order to make ends meet. Right at the top of the list, people said they'd eat out less at restaurants. People are feeling the squeeze economically, so fewer people are eating out.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Eating out is suppose to be a special occasion thing, or for convince when you are not near a kitchen.
However for the most part we just cook our own meals. Guess what for a basic meal it isn't that hard and you can cook for a family for about as much as one serving at a fast food restaurant.
Heck when I was laid off back in 2008 I got a whole chicken for about $5.00 baked it. Then after we had our dinner, I shaved off the extras for sandwiches, and boiled it down with the bones to have chicken soup for a couple days. Yes by the end of the week I was sick of chicken, but it was a good idea that I had money to pay the mortgage and car payments. Granted I was lucky enough to get an other job in a couple of weeks, however I needed to save up.
For those pesky millennials who are still trying to save up for this middle class life style, cooking at home vs wasting money on prepared food is a good plan.
Even if you are not a chief of even a good cook you can normally make yourself a decent meal. Unlike the boomer time and before, we now can google how to cook nearly anything now.
This is how our grandparents/great grandparents lived, very few went to a restaurant every day for their meals. It was a special thing, for every once in a while. The Boomer generation who didn't want to force women to cook, and were too manly for the men to do the cooking, had a generation who ate out more. And now in their 70's suffering from diabetes and demanding their Social Security Checks or are still working, because where did all their money go.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Location, Location, Location.
Country and Suburbs will eat at home much more, City Folks will eat out more.
Due to greater availability of restaurants, and smaller kitchens in their apartments, which makes cooking more difficult.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The average person I know certainly eats a non home cooked meal at least once a week. How many people do you know who never buy breakfast or lunch at work? I mean, never? It doesn’t have to be a steakhouse to count. You can get two small burgers for under $2.50 most places; not good quality, but it’s cheap, it’s reasonably filling, and it takes almost no time.
I am as mystified as to why this is even here as the rest. But "crushing student loan debt" is influencing eating habits in a sigificant way? When it affects a tiny fraction of the population, and only those who did something really stupid?
I now work white trash jobs. Yes, plural.
All of my co-workers buy fast food because they are jumping from job to job and work too hard and too long to have enough time to cook for themselves. Yes, too hard. They work harder than any CEO who gets an eight figure salary and bonuses.
Why am I stuck in those jobs? Because I was a good employee. I drank my employer's Kool-Aid, devoted myself to my company's "technology" and focused on my employer.
When my employer decided that what we did can be done cheaper overseas, I lost my job. However, since my skills were very very specific to my employer - because I was so loyal - they weren't transferable: or so I'm told.
I should have drank the Microsoft Kool-Aid years ago. I'd be OK now. Or better yet, never went into technology. I should have went into finance. Yeah sure, '08 -'10 sucked - but they're humming along again!
Kids: your employer will cast you to the side on a heartbeat. Don't ever - EVER - think you're essential.
I eat exactly *0* homecooked meals a week. My time is worth more to me than the $$ is costs to get a (good) restaurant meal. But, I would imagine I'm an outlier. I would guess that most people eat at home most of the time because they simply can't afford to eat out.
I don't respond to AC's.
It will be a golden time for Aldi.
Here in Germany, simple home cooking and buying cheap food at Aldi/Lidl/... is the normal everyday routine for every student or poor person, and richer people also still prefer home-cooked meals, and only eat out if they have less time than money.
To us, US culture is rather strange. You really go out to eat each day, every day? And if you "cook" at home, it’s ready-made convenience food? How do you even survive? Isn't that extremely expensive? Don't you miss real food?
And then we hear, how much you Americans are forced to work, just to survive.
Guys, you're the closest thing to enslaved one can be, without officially being enslaved!
NORMAL is 8-9 to 16-18, with 1/2 to 1.5 hours of lunch break, and going for a pee, a snack, some fresh air, or a chat whenever you like, because what matters is the end result. If not necessary, you can come between 7 and 10, and leave when you're done for the day or it's too late. (>18:00 is too late.)
NORMAL is 20-30 holiday days a year, and ideally Christmas and summer holiday bonuses. And your boss telling you to go home or to the doc if you do not feel well. With an employer-provided healthcare ensurance that you can keep even if you switch jobs or become unemployed. And getting paid for the free/sick days too!
NORMAL is not being harassed by your boss if you don't work hard enough. (Or do you get to harass him to, if he doesn't pay you high enough??)
(And GOOD is having not just a job, but a profession. Something that matters, and that is your passion (which kinda implies that it matters).)
And "hard working" is a BAD thing. Only stupid people and slaves work hard. Especially on /., with its computer experts, that should be clear. Smart people's goal is to get as much done as necessary with as little effort as possible. (But not less, as that is when efficiency becomes laziness.)
The best company is one, that is so good at that, that everyone can sit back and relax, while the money comes in.
Your boss knows that. Because that's exactly the point of management. Look busy while commandeering people around, and calling their work yours. YOU are their automation. That's why they want you to work hard. So they don't.
Sure, there are bosses that actually work hard. But only at small companies or unsuccessful companies where the boss gives a fuck. But the bigger the company, the more that "hard work" only becomes the "work" of making others work for you.
*ramble ramble ramble* ... ... It's true though.
I know a lot more millennials these days that starve themselves to be like the Kardashian girls
Just like my sisters did in the 1970's. It's not exactly a new phenomenon.
Also, there used to be roughly 2 gender choices and sexual orientations. Now there are about 70 or something
No there are not, no matter how much "conservatives" want it to be true, no-one really thinks like that, except trolls on the Internet.
There have been continuous price increases in the United States.
The grocery stores and food producers are extremely hostile toward customers. Cans of Tuna, for example, went from 6.5 ounces to 6 ounces and the reduction continued to 3 ounces. They found a weakness in the customers. The customer may remember the price, but may not notice that the can size has been reduced by 0.5 ounce, and the amount of water has increased.
It's good to make your own bread. For example: Adm Whole Wheat Flour # 17688, $13.98 / Unit (50 lb). When you buy bread, it may be $2.50 per pound or more, and the weight includes the water in the bread. You can buy the flour used to make bread for $0.28, 28 cents per pound.
There are many examples like that.
For me it's more about eating healthy than saving money. Restaurants don't really care about your health, they care about their profit. They will use ingredients that taste good but aren't necessarily healthy, so that you will like it and visit frequently.
Oh, that guy with the talk show?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH-QqV1Fjak&ab_channel=timecapture
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
39% of the population is overweight. A lot of people keep shoving shitty food in their mouths and not burning calories by exercising.
City Folks will eat out more.
How does location change what they do in the bedroom?
"I eat exactly *0* homecooked meals a week. My time is worth more to me than the $$ is costs to get a (good) restaurant meal. "
Unless you live in NYC and go around the corner to your fave restaurant (and even if this is true), I don't believe you actually save much time given your "good restaurant meal". It is fairly simple to prepare a very high quality meal with a wide variety of foods in well under an hour, in many cases under 30minutes. No "good restaurant" experience that I know of is less than 60mins, usually at least 90mins. And if it is truly "good" and in NYC, you are going to be waiting for a table for at least 30mins.
So no, even if time > $$$ (which I might agree in many scenerios), I don't believe you are actually saving time. The caveat would be decent take out/delivery where you still eat at home, but you can work while a restaurant cooks and delivers.
How are they going to get that just right size booty if they are starving themselves? I think they have it bassackwards.
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That makes no sense. If their kitchen is small and crappy, they'd eat out more, not less.
I just finished making lunches for the week.
Grilled garlic and herb chicken breast sliced up over pasta tossed in roast garlic olive oil. Total cost, $13*, time spent, 20 minutes.
Eating out at McDonalds or Wendys, processed food, fillers, tastes bland, high in fat. Total cost, $11-15*/meal, 15 minutes to drive and get it.
So in the end, it's $50-75* a week to eat out, vs $13* for home cooked.. for better food, and substantially less time spent.
* Prices are Canadian, YMMV.
That's really true, along with those time-lapse videos of different food items being made that seem to be really popular sharing on Facebook.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The trend in New Zealand is weekly delivered food and recipes.
I've seen that approach for a while in the U.S., in various forms.
But it seems to stay niche. in part because you are at the mercy of what they decide you should eat, along with you not being the one picking out produce.
The last aspect is what really has killed it for me every time, there's always something about the stuff that is delivered that I would have never picked that item at the store - like overly wilted lettuce, or especially bananas that are way, way to overripe for me.
It's really 1000x better to go into a store and see what looks good, so it totally puts the balance away from delivery being convenient or useful if you can't rely on what is being delivered to be usable or good.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have a tiny (ish) apartment kitchen with 24" stove. Pans don't take "forever" to heat -- it works as well as any other gas stove, just smaller. Burners are the same size with less space between them.
Cleanup is easy -- wash the pans used, dump everything else into the dishwasher, throw some powder in, and turn the knob to "RUN." Cut/chop things on old plates that you don't care about scratching -- they're dishwasher-safe, unlike cutting boards.
At a restaurant you can read while waiting. If you're cooking for yourself, reading is not an option.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
When was the standard tip ever 10%? In 1960 in the US the tip for average service was 15%.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I eat exactly *0* homecooked meals a week. My time is worth more to me than the $$ is costs to get a (good) restaurant meal.
Given how unhealthy most restaurant meals are, you're probably hacking far more time off the end of your life than you'd ever save by not cooking.
Any guesses as to where food is most likely to be coated with pesticides? A roadside farmstand, where those fresh picked vegetables come straight from the field to dusty bushel baskets, unwashed.
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I have noticed over the past 5 years that the fast food is tasting worse and worse. We have slowly stopped eating fast food because of this. Even my kids that LOVE fast food are telling me it is tastes worse than ever. In our household we now don't eat any fast food (McD, Wendy, BKing, Taco Bell, etc.) anymore. We do go to some good locally made food restaurants but that has come way down from once or twice a week to once a month, and are are not going to any of the sit down chains either, seems their prices have become way to high and now servers want a 25% tip, just can't do it. So I would agree that people are cooking more at home, but I wonder if it has more to do with the food tasting so bad now-a-days. ????
An unknown number of people have special eating needs. Driven, I suspect,
by the total revision of what and how food is grown and created
over the last 100 years. By needs I mean not hospital,
necessarily, but at least discomfort and immune system issues.
The Gluten Free and Paleo Diet consumers are a symptom of this great
change. Big Food prefers not to know about any of this as
it reflects on *all* their current product lines. Very
uncomfortable for grocery stores and more so for
restaurants.
it's not going away. I and many others can no longer eat
the 'Standard American Diet'. Period.
Arby's did a good thing by selling Gyros. The Lamb "traditional" Gyros are damn good and I hope they're permanent this time.
Pretty solid nutrition, too, especially for fast food. I ate worse in my teen years.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
My wife and I eat at home most of the time. We're each competent cooks, but not great. Even so, we find the experience of eating at home to be as good or better than most restaurants, especially where we live now. After all, the food we like is always on the menu at home, the ingredients are never poor quality, and we know the food has been handled and prepared safely. Eating out and ordering in, at this point, is mostly a fallback plan if something comes up. Even then -- with takeout in particular -- we frequently end up disappointed with our food. Yes, there are "life hacks" to give us better odds of getting fresher or better-prepared food, but these are often just as much of a hassle for everyone involved as just cooking it ourselves, minus whatever sense of accomplishment and mutual appreciation we get from preparing our own food.
Honestly, I find most things in life to be like that.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I'm sorry that happened to you. Sounds like it was, and is, pretty rough. I hope something like that never happens to you again.
To avoid really bad things happening, it might be helpful to be very clear about the cause.
Hurricanes happen. Businesses get destroyed. Laws like HIPPA and GDPR change industries so that some products and even companies no longer fit, or the changes give new competitors an opportunity. Technology changes, major contracts get cancelled. Any product or company can become infeasible at any time. Even large companies can fail quickly. No job is guaranteed to stay the same or stay around, no matter how much your employer might want it to.
> However, since my skills were very very specific to my employer - because I was so loyal - they weren't transferable
I believe you've misdiagnosed the cause. You didn't end up with only skills that are useful only to one part of one business because you were loyal. You put yourself in a position where you'd eventually become unemployable either because:
A) you were unaware that change happens, major change, unpredictably
Or
B) You were short-sighted
Knowing that things WILL change, that whatever product you work with or work on will eventually get cancelled, someone thinking long term could do a few things:
Think about what job you'd like to have in five years, assuming you need to make a move.
Look over related job ads and note which skills employers look for.
Make a list of the skills you're missing.
Find opportunities within your company, in open source, or volunteering to learn the skills you're missing.
Had you been prepared for the fact that at some point your company will be gone, and that could be because of an accounting scandal *tomorrow*, you wouldn't be screwed whatever happens.
Setting yourself up for catastrophe if your job ever changes isn't loyalty, it's short-sighted.
I keep my list of needed skills in Wunderlist. Actually I have two lists of job requirements to work on. One is skills that show up often in the want ads for my industry. The other list is what my two target companies are looking for. I'm loyal to my employer - I don't stab them in the back and I don't intend to leave any time real soon. I've ALSO thought about what happens when eventually I do need a new job, what work I want to do, and for which company. Boeing and Lockheed Martin fit what I'm looking for, so I'm keeping an eye out for opportunities to learn the things Boeing wants people to know.
Perhaps I'll be at my current employer for the next three years. If so, I'll then walk into a Boeing interview saying "yes, for each skill you want, I have at least three years of experience in each one". (Obviously these aren't skills that ONLY apply to Boeing - Lockheed is looking for many of the same skills, as is Bell Helicopter).
PS - if anyone works in IT or software development at those companies, particularly information security, I'd love to talk to you.
That makes no sense. If their kitchen is small and crappy, they'd eat out more, not less.
Indeed. In many dense Asian cities, small apartments don't even have kitchens. But street food is available on every block, and is inexpensive and very good. I'd love a steamed mushroom-leek-fennel baozi right now.
so you're going to go to a "good restaurant" and READ while you wait? How gauche... Read while driving to the restaurant? read while waiting for your table?
Ok, so when you're cooking, you can listen to music OF YOUR CHOICE (or even TV if you must).... not possible at a restaurant (unless I suppose you're going to do the earbud thing and continue to be gauche...)
... loses its "flair" once it becomes commonplace. Who would've thunk? MD's always was about indulging in something generally regarded as unhealthy and not something to do every day. That was no different in the 70ies when I was a small kid and we'd go there to treat the family to some junk food.
Perpetual fast food has turned the US population into a flock of land-whales and the growing counter movement are hipster foodies and minimalist Paleo and quantified self geeks.
That sort of thing only works emotionally if you actually prepare your meals yourself and steer clear of junk food.
By and large this is a good thing IMHO.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
How many people do you know who never buy breakfast or lunch at work?
The place where I work doesn't sell food. Either I bring some home made lunch in a box, or I just skip it. At home we cook all our meals, except on birthdays when we go to a restaurant (where they sell healthy food)
I really doubt your off time is a valuable as what you assign it. As stated elsewhere, this is a very common /. attitude. Your off time is no more valuable than the garbage man's.
Seventy was an exaggeration. NYC only had 31 that they will fine you for for not using 'correctly'.
Roadside stands are typically from the farmer's own field that is used to feed said farmer's family. In those, treatment is usually not done or is so with tobacco-juices and such, not commercial pesticides. Large conglomerates and farmers harvesting for General Mills don't have roadsides. And unless you're a moron, you wash your veggies anyway.
No wonder so many people get trapped in a cycle of poverty.
You think eating out is what traps people in poverty? You might want to learn about poverty traps and their causes. There are lots of causes of poverty. Eating out is not a meaningful cause.
That's more than every other day! And the latest figure is still more than every other day.
If you look at the number of restaurants out there (and the obesity statistics) this should not surprise anyone. People like to look down their nose publicly at McDonalds and the like but the simple fact is that vast numbers of people eat at these places routinely regardless of what they actually say. You think they stay in business because people are eating at home? People LIKE to eat out, they like fast food, and honestly a lot of the food tastes better than what many people can cook themselves.
WTF people, the fastest way to save money is to not eat out; doesn't everyone know that??
Several points on that. Basically your thesis isn't necessarily supported by the facts.
1) There is plenty of evidence to suggest that eating healthy tends to be more expensive than eating badly, at least in the short term. Even if you do manage to save money (which can be done) it's going to come at the cost of an investment of time and energy.
2) There is also evidence to suggest that eating out can be cheaper than eating at home for many.
3) Eating at home requires having the time to prepare the food. Speaking as someone with a young child and a working wife this time can be hard to come by for many people even if you would prefer it.
4) Eating at home does not necessarily equal eating healthier nor does it necessarily equal costing less. It CAN but it often doesn't.
5) Many people don't know how to shop economically in grocery stores and grocery stores have no incentive to help.
6) Food culture is as subject to fads as anything else. One should expect to see variation over time in where and how people eat their food.
The reason this market is dominated by prepackaged convenience foods is government subsidies. Take all that pasta and cheese; it's just subsidized wheat and milk industrially converted into a highly palatable food that is cheap because it's largely already been paid for with tax dollars.
This is not correct. That same wheat and cheese in their "raw" form share the same government subsidies but people don't buy those. The reason processed foods are cheap is because they can be produced at massive economies of scale, they don't require special handling or storage or refrigeration, they can use artificial (read cheap) ingredients, packaging is standardized, and they don't perish on shelves. A large company can buy cheese FAR cheaper than you or I can because they buy more of it and they can process it into food products FAR cheaper than you or I can because they have specialized mass production equipment to do so. So much cheaper that even with the packaging and marketing and branding it's still cheaper than you can do it yourself from raw ingredients even if you don't count your meal preparation time.
While there are problems with government subsidies in foods in relation to healthy versus unhealthy options, this is a minor consideration in regards to why processed foods are as cheap as they are. McDonalds can sell you a hamburger with a bun and condiments for $1 for reasons that have almost nothing to do with tax policy. It's all about economies of scale and standardization of products, packaging and handling. I can make a BETTER hamburger than McDonalds but I cannot make a cheaper one. Tax policy is not the reason why.
My wife would make baked goods by pouring a mound of flour on the counter, making a crater and adding the other ingredients by "feel".
That's still a recipe. It's just not one written on paper. People who bake at home and who cannot control all the environmental conditions (humidity, temp, etc) for baking kind of have to do it by feel and experience. Particularly if they do things like measuring flour by volume instead of weight. (Professional bakers basically always measure by weight because granulated products like flour and sugar have variable packing densities) This has a lot to do with why home baked goods tend to be quite variable in quality even with experienced bakers.
To us, US culture is rather strange. You really go out to eat each day, every day?
And to us, German culture is rather strange. Doesn't mean it's bad but it's definitely quite different. Understand that eating out in this context might mean getting lunch at the local fast food joint for lunch which is fairly common. Germany has an average of around 135 restaurant visits per person per year which is less than the US but still about one every three days.
And if you "cook" at home, it’s ready-made convenience food? How do you even survive? Isn't that extremely expensive? Don't you miss real food?
You talk about the ready made food like it's made of arsenic or something. It's fine. Not optimal but certainly will keep you going. And no it isn't really terribly expensive and for many people it's what they actually prefer.
And "hard working" is a BAD thing. Only stupid people and slaves work hard.
Really? You think Germans don't work hard? That's not exactly their reputation. Elon Musk seems like a pretty hard working guy and he is neither stupid nor a slave. Go ahead and find me a lazy CEO of a successful major corporation. Hard work is only a bad thing to people who are disinclined to work hard. (that means lazy) Working hard does not mean you cannot also work efficiently.
The best company is one, that is so good at that, that everyone can sit back and relax, while the money comes in.
And precisely zero of those exist in the real world.
It takes exactly 6 minutes to grill the chicken to 170 degrees
Maybe if you slice it to be as thin as deli meat and don't care much about the end result. Properly cooking a reasonably thick chicken breast will take quite a lot longer than that. Roasting a whole chicken typically takes 30-40 minutes in an oven. Oh, and unless you are cooking dark meat, 170F chicken is (slightly) overcooked.
Ok, so it takes 32 minutes.. big deal.
32 minutes can be a lot of time to some people. Right now I have a young child under the age of 1 at home and my wife and I both work alternate shifts. There are quite a few days where 30 minutes to prepare even a simple meal is an unattainable luxury to us. If you can do it it is time well spent but it's not an easy thing to do sometimes. Not to mention I'm not particularly interested in eating exactly the same thing every day for an entire week. If you can then more power to you but I have a hard time with that.
Point being, it's still a hell of a lot quicker than spending 75 minutes a week driving to get food, only to have to scarf it down once I get back to the office.
Where are you driving? I have three fast food restaurants literally within walking distance of my office and even if I drive there every day it would take me less time than the 30 minutes you spent prepping food at home. Not to mention that several nearby restaurants deliver. Don't get me wrong, I'm very supportive of making your own food but it's pretty hard to beat the convenience of restaurants and fast food. It certainly doesn't save time to cook at home.
I am approaching my 6th year eating low carb / high fat. STILL feeling the best I have felt in my life, and I am in my late 40s. I know people like to call it a fad, but high-carb low-fat bullshit is the fad. We only eat huge amounts of grain/starch carbs in the absence of real food. We've only been farmers for 10k years, yet as a species we've been evolving for millions of years. We didn't get to where we are by accident. I've also been an avid home cook for 20+ years. Once you learn the basic principles, you can use them the rest of your life. Teach a man to fish, as it were.
This is supposed to be a site for nerds, and if you REALLY want to nerd out on something read up on low-carb and a lot of the research going on. Learn more about lipidology and heart disease. Don't like reading? Listen to some of the podcasts on peterattiamd.com. Seriously fascinating stuff, lots of links to as much as you would want to learn and as deep as you would want to go.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
When I was single, I kept my pantry stocked with meals that took less time off my computer to prepare than it would take me to get in my car and drive to the end of the block.
Occasionally I would cook more involved dishes, but not usually.
I also never ate out by myself as it took too much time away from other things.(Social eating was different because as an introvert I would force myself to do social things even when they felt like a waste of time, because otherwise I would never engage in activities where I might meet someone)
If you plan ahead, it is easy to cut total prep-time(including shopping) to less than the time lost to eating out(mostly transit, but also lines, ordering, paying, and any time needed to set-up or tear-down your work environment if you bring it with you)
Now that I am married(and she likes to cook), I spend even less time cooking.(I also eat out a lot more, but once again, not alone)
The only exception I have had to this policy is business trips with meal reimbursement(with caps), as opposed to a straight per-diem, as that makes doing things efficiently too much of a headache to bother with.
An unknown number of people have special eating needs.
There is a LOT of well validated science research on this topic. While we don't know everything, it's not as if our research is ignorant on the topic. We certainly have very good data on the prevalence of many special dietary requirements in the population.
The Gluten Free and Paleo Diet consumers are a symptom of this great change.
That's not a change. Those are food fads, mostly driven by an epidemic of hypochondria, not validated scientific evidence. Very few people actually have problems with metabolizing gluten and there is no evidence of change in this regard. There is very solid data available. A recent study indicated that 86% of people who thought they had a problem with gluten do not in fact actually have a problem. The paleo diet is based off the unsupported theory that we should eat what humans ate thousands of years ago. Never mind the fact that we have evolved since then and so has our diet.
I and many others can no longer eat the 'Standard American Diet'. Period.
There is no such thing. America is a big place with diverse tastes and menus. There have always been people who have trouble with certain ingredients (milk, wheat, etc) but that is nothing new and will likely never change.
Where the heck do you live with such crappy apartments?
I lived in a number of apartments, many of them while in college, cheap college apartments, and I never had it as bad as you described?!?!
I cooked back then, had room for all my cooking gear and a pantry that was decently stocked.
Nothing as small and nightmarish as you describe...are you only talking apartments in crappy urban areas where you are piled on top of everyone else like NYC, etc?
Most of the US is nowhere near that bad, even for a lower end apartment.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Cooking for one, it's probably cheaper to eat out for some meals.
You don't need the "probably" qualifier. It's DEFINITELY cheaper for quite a few types of meals. Not all, but a large number of them.
Cooking for five. It's never cheaper to eat out.
Not true at all. Again it depends on the meal. I can feed a family of 5 very cheaply at the local pizza joint for example. Not saying the food will be better but there is no single answer to the question.
I've said that about packing a lunch ... saves time on going to a restaurant as well as saving money. But fast food is, well, fast - especially when not rushing through a 30 minute lunch break
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Funny, while I was growing up as a kid, same situation, we STILL managed to have home cooked meals 99% of the time..
Good for you. Guess what? Your situation is not identical to mine. We have a lot of home cooked meals but we also actually like eating restaurant food too. We could probably get it done if having every meal cooked at home mattered to us but we have other priorities and it is more time efficient for us to eat out some meals. We also happen to live in a location with some pretty darn food restaurants.
Seemed normal for us, and frankly, most everyone I knew growing up in my neighborhood with working parents ate home cooked meals Imost from scratch) with no problem.
Some places that is common. Others not so much. I can easily show you plenty of locations were home cooking is the exception rather than the rule. I coach a youth sports team and the parents are all over the map when it comes to how they feed their families.
What's wrong with the families today...this isn't rocket surgery.
Nothing is "wrong" with them any more than something is wrong with you. Just because people make different life choices and have different situations doesn't equate to right or wrong. A lot of families don't look like a Norman Rockwell painting and that is just fine. Your argument is wrong because the premise is false.
We don't really have "mars chokolade bars" in the US, at least we don't call the kind you're referring to a Mars Bar. Perhaps you're thinking of Scotland?
If you're looking for a vile American fried treat, then look no further than Deep-fried butter.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
We could control the ingredients through legislation. We don't necessarily have to allow businesses to put whatever the fuck they want in our food. I know this would runs counter to some God-given freedom to put corn syrup in sliced bread.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I can cook, basics at least, but I can't stand it (especially washing dishes by hand). I still rarely eat out as I hate the cost and time. So I eat a lot of stuff that requires little prep, like deli meat and cheese sandwiches.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Revise your strategy. You sound like someone who bumped into a problem and gave up. Rethink. Keep trying.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
As soon as the population was tricked into needing males and females both working full-time, Amercian life went to shit.
Wow, where to start. "Tricked"? Women were prohibited from even entering much of the work force until not all that long ago. It wasn't even a choice. Believe it or not, not all women want to be stay at home mothers and spit out youngins'. That should be a choice, not a duty based on which genitalia you happen to have. In the US couples where both parents work are to a large degree because they want to and because they want a certain lifestyle regardless of gender. My wife and I both have careers because we WANT them. She's a doctor because she's smart and likes being a doctor. I'm an engineer for similar reasons. We don't need to both work but we choose to both work. We want our daughter to have the same choices and options and we're trying to set a good example for her. I don't want her to have to depend on someone else to fulfill some obsolete notion of gender roles like what you seem to prefer.
As for "american life went to shit"... I have no idea what you are talking about. American life in general is great and I wouldn't trade it. And I've spent lots of time overseas so I'm not just imagining what life is like elsewhere.
Now both parents are required to work if you have kids in a normal household, and there is little to no time to cook right.
There is no such thing as a "normal" household and a family doesn't need to look like a Norman Rockwell painting to be a great family. As for "cooking right" there is likewise no such thing. There is healthy eating but this can be achieved many ways including eating out. Not everyone gives a shit about home cooked meals. I'm pretty sure most captains of industry are not spending a lot of time in front of a stove. People have lots of priorities and eating a traditional sit down meal every day at home is not always among them. Nothing wrong with that. You be you and let them be them.
Eating out is not a time saver.
Sometimes it absolutely is a time saver. Sometimes it is a money saver too. This isn't even up for debate. Whether it is a time or money saver depends on what food is being made, how much of it is being made, what recipe is being used, what pre-made or restaurant options are available as alternatives and what the price of all of the above happens to be. If the food you want can only be obtained by making it yourself that's fine but it's a choice you make. The rest of us may have different priorities and food requirements. Sometimes making food at home is the most economical choice but not every time. Pretending otherwise is to be willfully blind to the evidence.
Do a study.
Don't have to. There are literally thousands of scientific studies on the topic. Go look them up. Not to mention I'm nearly 5 decades old so I have a lifetime of first hand data on the subject.
I can prepare several meals in the time it takes to order and wait on pizza or some other oil ladden sugary trash.
You think when I order a pizza I just sit around doing nothing until it is delivered? I'm ordering a pizza precisely because I'm BUSY doing other things and I'm paying someone else to take the time and trouble. Ordering a pizza takes me all of 2 minutes of my time. Hell I can drive to my local pizza joint and be home with a ready made pizza in less than 10 minutes. You are not going to "prepare several meals" in less time than that. You aren't even going to prepare one meal in less time than that unless it is something stupid simple.
One of the very best thing I've ever done was to start using Chick-fil-a's mobile app, rather than waiting in line... not because I have anything against the in-person ordering experience, nor even because of a time difference between the two experiences. (There is often little or no time advantage, actually.) Rather, the critical factor which makes ordering from my phone worth doing, is the digitally e-mailed receipt. With all of those receipts already in a digital format and handily sent to me automatically, I don't have to really think about things like historic price increases, until the moment that such a thing becomes important to me. Nor do I have to guess at how often I frequent a given restaurant/store; the answer to that question is a simple word search away.
Obviously, you could also go with one of those apps that attempts to read your paper receipts and collates them for you... assuming that you're going to consistently remember to add your latest receipt to the app. But I'm not Sheldon; I'm not nearly obsessive enough to remember every single time. For those of us who are more Leonard and less Sheldon, letting the computer do a bit more of the work for us is, perhaps, a good thing.
As an aside: Chick-fil-a doesn't seem to change their prices very often; that's vaguely interesting to me, especially in light of this particular article. (Not that I ever actually eat at McDonalds, anyway...)
They should aggregate and create a delivery service that jointly operates across their restaurants. And lower end chains like Denny’s and Applebee’s as well. The delivery fee should be at the cost of delivery, so customer service not a profit center. They can then, at the regional “dinner time” and “lunch time” do free delivery for orders placed 1 hour in advance of desired delivery slot. Consumers still cover the delivery cost the majority of the time, the store covers delivery cost when they are having peak profits. Extend free delivery slots to major televisied events, possibly getting the televisied event to cover the delivery fee. This can be passed on to the purchasers of commercials to these premium events. Think different or get left behind.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
The English like boiled meat, news at 11.
Sous vide is for people that don't like meat.
Steaks are 'fully cooked', in seconds on a hot grill. Low and slow is for tough meats, not steak.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Using recipes is more expensive than just winging it.
That is totally not the case, since you can choose recipes that make sense for what you have, or have less ingredients. They are also just a basic guide, you do not HAVE to do everything the recipe says...
If you think recipes cost more you are looking at the wrong sources.
You can just throw together what's on sale or what is seasonal.
Yes and you can bring more variety to what you do with that - using recipes!!
That's part of my whole point. We have been collecting a lot of tomatoes from plats we have, so it's great to be able to browse through a huge assortment of things we can do with them. Otherwise we'd just be making tomato sauce for pasta or something, lame.
And winging can be less wasteful since you can use what you have on hand
Again my point about recipes being easy to search is that I can find recipes that use what I have on hand, or are close enough if I don't mind omitting a few things.
Also, I don't really find food that is crafted from recipes to be any better.
Better than what though? Recipes are great because they can bring a bunch of different perspectives on what do do with ingredients, and also give you a rough idea of what levels and kinds of seasoning might make a dish more interesting. Even if you don't follow a recipe just looking through them can give you lots of great ideas for what you can do yourself.
Again, like the Pirate Code, just remember that recipes are more guidelines than rules you must follow. Do what makes sense to you and leveraging recipes can be an amazing tool.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Minimum wage went up. Prices have increased. No kidding. I don't know how anyone can afford to eat lunch anymore.
Your knives must hate you. :p
Over the past 7ish years I've worked at 3 different places. All 3 places had almost every employee (except me and a very small number of others) go out for fast food pretty much every single day. Maybe it's changing for some.... but definitely not enough.
My paternal grandmother purposely left out ingredients in recipes that she gave my mom, but purely out of spite. She didn't want anyone cooking for my dad better than she cooked for him herself.
I've seen people do stuff like that before. I'm amazed how petty people can be sometimes.
Of course that's why if you learn to really cook you become harder to fool when people pull shenanigans like that. You might have to do some detective work but it will be obvious that something is wrong if you know enough cooking or baking. Kind of like if someone hands you incomplete source code. Might take a minute to figure out the problem but you'll get the right result in the end. Sometimes even better since a lot of recipes are not actually all that good.
Boiled in a bag is still boiled.
Good beef takes 5 minutes to fully cook. Maximum. But I _like_ the taste of beef.
If you are slow cooking a steak, you are doing it completely wrong. That's for brisket, but smoke it don't boil it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'