I often hear people complaining that eating healthy food is too expensive. I call bullshit on that. I was in Dunnes today and bought a bag of sweet potatoes for 1 euro and a tin of chickpeas for 44c.
Comfort, or emotional eating I've heard it called.
You are ignoring the fact that if you have a stressful job and kids it can be hard to find the time and mental energy to plan out meals and cook instead of picking convenience. Tiktok and YouTube are designed to distract people from the other things they should be doing
You are right, Tiktok and Youtube are probably the mental equivalence of convenience. It's still doesn't take from the fact that it's neither too expensive or too time consuming to eat healthily cheaply.
So it's not a time issue then. They're wasting their time and not prioritising their families health. Watching youtube is more important.
Yes, you have to establish the source of the problem, however you also need to compare like with like, and it's all relative.
For example I got into this conversation thinking "unhealthy" food is food not bought, prepared, cooked by myself. Basically I would class food not prepared at home as unhealthy, because it's so processed.
Eg someone mentioned buying a bag of salad leaves. I never do this!
How can you eat "fresh" leaves stored in a plastic bag and how do they last so long?
(If I pick lettuce from the garden it'll last just about last a day.)
Yet the packaged leaves are most definitely better than highly processed delivery foods.
Another example is pasta.
This is a processed food, but if eaten in moderation as a treat, it's fine.
Yet again though, compare to delivered food and it's probably is a healthier option!
I'm happy buying chicken from the supermarket once it's Irish and Bord Bia approved.
My sister will only buy Organic Irish chicken
And I've a friend that'll only buy Irish Organic from a butcher's!
If you were to compare my friends shopping bill to mine, it's much higher, so compare that to someone that gets a lot of takeaways / deliveries and there's not much in the price difference.
There's a generational bias
There's budget bias.
There's cultural bias.
That's all before you factor in people getting up at 6am, driving an hour and half to work, doing their 8 hours driving an hour and half home, picking up the kids, all in the dark, rain and stormy days.
It's so tough for families and the sweeping generalisations on this thread are so blinkered.
- My favourite is the one about porridge, how cheap and nourising it is - it's disgusting, looks like snot/puke and tastes similar - I don't care how cheap it is.
There's a wide variety of healthy food, the key point is that you don't have to spend a lot of money if you want to eat healthy food.
You've made that point about 15 times at this stage, and choose not to address or even acknowledge the multitude of other factors that contribute to an individual's or a family's food choices.
At this stage I'd call it borderline trolling.
The thread is about dispelling the myth that healthy food is expensive.
Name those factors then.
Both my parents worked fulltime, yet somehow we all ate cheaply and well. No chippers, no pizzas etc… We ate well because we were price conscience.
Making up excuses to buy convenience food is just poor life management.
There is a few tricks to porridge. Make it with half milk half water. Make it in the microwave. I use a half round spoon I got in a easy cook carton of porridge two scoops of porridge to 3 of water and three of milk. I also add two heaped T-spoons of oat bran.
If making in the morning use boiling water cook for 90 seconds on high ( on my microwave I use1000 watt setting) and then 2 minutes on 200 watt setting. It will be cooked perfectly. I use fresh fruit with it used to use sugar but no longer. Preference is rasberries but grapes, mandrians, strawberries all work. Some use frozen berries thawed and drained. Cream is excellent if there is any in the fridge
The biggest point in making porridge is having it at the consistency you like that is just a matter of adjusting the liquid.
like John Rambo - family of four here. Everything is cooked from scratch. Porridge for breakfast. Stretch curries and stews with lentils etc. we are spending close to 1000 a month on food groceries. No alcohol in that. Replaced fresh berries with frozen some time ago. Fruit is expensive. A watermelon was decimated in last 24 hours alone. 4:50 for that.
Ah here! For goodness sake, that poster is simply pointing out facts.
Fact 1: Healthy food can be inexpensive. (E.g. pulses, in-season vegetables like root vegetables, potatoes, cabbage, inexpensive cuts of meat)
Fact 2: People may decide they do not like healthy foods (see disparaging comment about porridge above). And that's fair enough, it's their choice to buy food to their taste, but unfortunately, as another poster says, their food bill is astronomical because of those choices.
I totally get that people are under great pressure workwise, and commuting and rearing kids, and time isn't always available to prepare and cook healthy meals when you're run off your feet. The hard fact is that eating healthily and inexpensively takes time and effort.
... and whiskey, don't forget the whiskey along with the cream 😋
70 and 80% Lidl bars are "actual" chocolate. This kind of chocolate is good for you and has a lot less sugar than our regular brands.
Cadburys, Nestle, are mostly sugar, palm oil and additives. You are eating sugar and its keeping you hooked for more. Cadburys cannot even call their bars chocolate anymore, check out their labels. this is because the cocoa content does not come up to the levels required …20%….to be called chocolate. Very bad for you.
There was a thread on that a while ago. Whatever those products are or are not allowed to be called they are toxic products and no one should consume them ever, even as a treat.
The high % chocolate options are expensive to buy but better value as a couple of squares are enough to satisfy the chocolate urge. The likes of Cadbury can never ever satisfy that urge which is why so many binge eat them.
yes I agree. The good thing is that more and more people are becoming aware of the poor quality chocolate from the big brands like Cadburys and Nestle. For the first time last Christmas there were hundreds of tins of those bloody awful Roses and Quality Street left in shops. They're pure rubbish, no flavour except sugar. Tins full of wrappers, palm oil and sugar, you couldn't give them away.
Likewise Easter Eggs are stacked to the ceilings in most supermarkets now, they are not moving, not being sold out. Lidl and Aldi do their own brands too, aisle after aisle of sugar. But if you take time to read the labels the ones Lidl and Aldi sell rarely have palm oil, yet the overpriced rubbish from Cadburys is full of it and double the price. So if you must buy Easter Eggs, buy better quality ones….. and boycott Cadburys.
There are a few good Instagrammers who are now calling this stuff out, raising public awareness. Its good.
Cadbury still call their bar chocolate. Check out their label.
as far as I know, they call it Dairy Milk now…………not Dairy Milk chocolate. This is a photo from their packaging partner last May, the word chocolate does not appear on any of the bars anymore.
Are you aware of the challenges people face when trying to eat healthy?
Honestly with the price rises of fast food and even pre packed meals in the shops I genuinely can't fathom how someone could even begin to try the eating healthy is expensive schtick.
Like go into a SV for example 1kg of baby potatoes is €1.50, a 4 pack of large bean tins €1.75, tinned corn I think was 40c last time I looked. You could get 3 for €10 on nice big packs of chicken thighs or legs etc
Like for what €13 there you'd have that spent now on an burger, chip and drink.
A pre packed dinner from chef in the box is €5.50 now.
Yes Cadbury chocolate is very very bad for you, full of sugar and pam oil, but I love the stuff. 70/80% is too bitter for me, is there a middle ground?
You can cook the food in advance and freeze it have it set then for the week or weeks in advance etc.
Tony’s. Lovely milk chocolate.
The OP is simplistic in assuming that the same solution is going to be appropriate for all. It assumes that bulk buying and batch cooking are options that work for everybody, but many people just don't belong to the appropriate demographic and end up having to go to more expensive single serving options. It assumes that people don't have dietary requirements or food intolerances. It assumes that people don't have physical or visual disabilities that prevent or hinder their ability to do their own cooking.
Meanwhile it ignores the real problem which is that everything has just become too expensive.
Go into a shop and look at the reverse of a bar of their chocolate.
It says milk chocolate!
The vast majority of people have no valid excuse for not eating healthily. The reason they eat unhealthily is due to the choices they make with their time and money.
Were they deals or regular priced?
But in Ireland we don't have as big an issue with poor food quality as we have a wide selection of shops. When people say that eating healthy is expensive they are taking about places with feck all shops, there are vast areas in the USA where people have no access to reasonably priced quality food.
Slow cookers and air fryers are great.
Put everything in the slow cooker early in the day and time it to come on at lunch to be ready for dinner
And batch cooking for two days - eg bolognese to last two days, or chicken curry, or lasagne.
Eggs are a cheap source of protein and tuna. Natural or Greek yogurt as well
I'll buy one today! As an experiment of course! :-) :-)
That was just the normal price. People in Dublin say that healthy food is too expensive.
