[ SECRET POST #4706 ]

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⌈ Secret Post #4706 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 31 secrets from Secret Submission Post #674.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT but the idea that you don't is imo coming from a place of rich privilege. The thought that you can just buy premade food (takeaway or just from a grocery story) and never have to cook anything and not go broke from it... is unrealistic for the majority of people in any country.

[(Anonymous)]

da- nah man i live on welfare in my country and really, buying cheap premade is extremely viable it just tastes like hell. im clinically depressed so that shit is vital for me when i can't do anything but boil water or turn on the oven.

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt but nobody claimed you don't go broke from it. Lots and lots of people live mostly off takeaways and convenience food and yeah, they're broke. It's not "rich privilege", this is just sad reality.

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly, in my experience the cheapest way to eat is with pre-packaged just-heat-and-serve types of food. It's pretty terrible for you, of course, but you can live off of it and it's cheap as dirt. Back when my father and I had a food budget of $100 per month for both of us, we lived off of no name burritos which cost $10 for 18 burritos, discounted dollar-store cans of ravioli, no name spaghetti with no name mushroom soup sauce, Kraft Dinner with frozen peas, etc. (We're doing much better now and we eat a lot healthier, for the record.)

I actually think that having frequent, balanced home cooked meals made with nutritious, healthy foods is an indicator of a certain amount of financial privilege. Not by any means an unreasonable amount of privilege, mind you. A good amount, an amount everybody should have. But not everybody does.

Meals like that usually cost more and take more time and effort to prepare. And yes, you can cut down on the cost and time by buying ingredients in bulk and making large batches of things. Unfortunately, I live in a 2 bedroom 600 square foot apartment; we have next to no storage space and only a small fridge-freezer. So buying in bulk and freezing large amounts of food for later is out of the question.

[(Anonymous)]

I actually think that having frequent, balanced home cooked meals made with nutritious, healthy foods is an indicator of a certain amount of financial privilege. Not by any means an unreasonable amount of privilege, mind you. A good amount, an amount everybody should have. But not everybody does.

What. The. Fuck.

This is so fucked up I don't even know where to begin. Cooking from scratch is more expensive than takeout, to the point it's considered privilege?? Where is, this, America? Jesus.

[(Anonymous)]

I assume you're being sarcastic, but if you're not... yes, America. When you're poor and don't have the money to maintain a pantry of staples and spices (which are expensive unless you buy that tasteless Dollar store crap), or time to prepare things from scratch, then dinner for $1 at McDonalds sounds like the most cost effective option.

[(Anonymous)]

Read the comment again, dude. If you even read it the first time. No where in it do they say anything about takeout.

[(Anonymous)]

Pre-packaged is not takeout. Did you even read the comment you're replying to?

It cannot be a surprise to you that a can of ravioli is cheaper than a piece of chicken, spices, brown rice, butter, fresh veggies, and some kind of dressing? If you can make the latter for $1 flat, I wanna know where YOU live.

[(Anonymous)]

Well personally, I live in Canada, and takeout isn't quite as cheap here as it is in the US. Which is why I didn't ever say anything about takeout. But heat-and-serve or boil-and-serve shit out of cans and boxes is a LOT cheaper than fresh food, and frankly, that's true all over the place. Maybe not everywhere on earth, but it's true in far more places than just Canada and the US.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

I mean you did say Kraft Dinner, did they really have to ask? <3

[(Anonymous)]

It's not. Anyone who believes that is just perpetuating a fallacy and is either too lazy to learn to cook or do the actual math to see the cost breakdown. I cut my monthly grocery bill almost in half when I learned how to cook for myself instead of living off prepackaged shit.

[(Anonymous)]

Expensive prepackaged shit exists. I could go to the grocery store rn and buy a $4 TV dinner and a tiny $3 tin of canned "Thai chicken casserole." But you're extremely deluded if you think a one dollar canned meal is "more expensive" than anything you can cook at home with raw ingredients. Like, I'm not even sure how a person can be that deluded, tbh.

[(Anonymous)]

Look, I can cook and I almost never eat out or buy prepackaged food or frozen dinners and I can tell you that you're sort of correct, but it's more complicated than that. Cooking requires cookware. It requires a certain amount of pantry staples, including spices. It requires time - time to actually learn those skills, time to plan meals and shop for the ingredients and time to do the actual cooking. And this assumes that you already have a functional kitchen.

All of that requires an upfront investment of money.

I'm a good cook now. When I first started (fresh out of college) I was terrible and it took years of trial and error before I got OK at it. I had the luxury of having time and money because I didn't have a full time job. If I'd had to get back home at 5:30pm after a long day of being underpaid and THEN start cooking, my learning curve would've been even slower. The average beginner might have the choice of spending an hour cooking after buying $20 of ingredients, or...they could eat something off the dollar menu in five minutes.

What I'm saying is, what you said is true for people who have that skillset, ingredients and equipment. It's not true for someone who is starting from nothing.

[(Anonymous)]

I can cook a nutritious, fairly tasty bean and veggie soup for about the same price per serving as a cheap, salt laden, blah canned soup. Then I can portion it out into tupperware and freeze it and reheat it when I want it. But I have three grocery stores within less than a mile of my house, and I have a stove and a freezer and a microwave and lots of potted herbs growing and only have to work one job and have no kids. In other words, I have easy access to fresh and bulk food, some spare time to cook in, and the ability to store food once I cook it. Not everyone has those luxuries. I also grew up with parents who could cook, so I learned how early.

[(Anonymous)]

I have to say that this was my experience in the States, when I lived there for 4 months and had very little money - a pack of pre-made burger patties was 3$ on sale, a freaking apple (one!) was 0.89$. The freaking lettuce was imported from Hong Kong as it showed in the price (to this day I don't understand why a supermarket located in Massachusetts had to import lettuce from HK). I had an honest to god cry in the supermarket out of frustration when I first realised that I can afford the unhealthy stuff but I can't afford the amount of veggies I used to eat at home. Maybe that was just the area and there were cheaper vegetables somewhere else, but that really shok me.

[(Anonymous)]

+1000000 when I was poor this was prett much exactly what my diet looked like. It was bad and it didnt teach me anything about cooking, but it's what I could afford.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

[(Anonymous)]

Thirding this so hard. people who haven't had to make their food budget stretch this way just don't really know what they're talking about in my opinion. When you stand in the frozen food section and try to justify buying the frozen patties that are $0.60 each and taste good instead of the ones that are $0.45 and taste like sawdust and grease, but you're not sure you can justify it. I vividly remember those days, and I wouldnt have eaten that slop if I could've afforded anything else. :/

[(Anonymous)]

try to justify buying the frozen patties that are $0.60 each and taste good instead of the ones that are $0.45 and taste like sawdust and grease, but you're not sure you can justify it.

AYRT - I swear to god I've had this moment!

And yeah, I think there's a big difference between the prepackaged crap you buy when you can afford other food but you're being lazy, and the stuff you buy when you're poor. I mean, I literally don't buy any of the same stuff I used to? I still buy prepackaged crap sometimes but now it's like, Campbell's chunky soup or fancy stir-fry frozen veggie mix with snow peas and fucking watercress in it, you know? The stuff I buy now isn't cost efficient, and I'm aware of that. But the nasty barely-even-food stuff I used to buy out of necessity really was the cheapest you could get.

It sounds like you don't have to eat that way anymore either? High five for no more sawdust burgers!

[(Anonymous)]

It really depends a lot on where you live. Not every country has this ridiculous disconnect where pre-packaged id cheaper than fresh ingredients so it's hard to believe if you're not from one of those countries where that's the case. I know I was pretty weirded out by how insanely expensive fresh produce is in the US (and don't get me started on the prices for fresh fruit in Japan).

[(Anonymous)]

DA - Yeah, it's pretty awful the way a lot of countries (including my own) basically sentence their poor to horrible nutrition by necessity.

I bought a medium-sized green bell pepper a couple of days ago, from Walmart, and it cost me a dollar forty. Admittedly peppers are on the pricier end for produce, but it's not like most of the other vegetables are particularly cost effective.

[(Anonymous)]

And even in the US it really depends on where you are. I can go to the local farmer's market and get nice fresh produce for cheap because there are a lot of small local farms within just a couple of hours of where I live.

[(Anonymous)]

Cooking from scratch means you can eat well* for less than the cost of getting the equivalent food pre-packaged/takeout/at restaurants, but it won't be the cheapest of the cheap. I guess maybe you could buy dry beans and prepare those with little to nothing on them for the equivalent of the dollar store pre-packaged food but I feel like that would be even more dreary than eating the pre-packaged stuff, and that comes from someone who likes to eat a lot of chickpeas (I put stuff on them and mix them with other things).

*more appetizing, tastier, more variety and interest, higher quality ingredients, healthier (e.g. less sugar and salt, or at least, you can control how much, as well as what type and how much fat, etc.)

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with all of this.

When I was trying to think if there genuinely was a way to eat as cheaply off of "normal" food as you can off of horrible, bottom-basement pre-packaged food, I thought of dry beans and rice. It's definitely one good option for extremely cheap meals that are actually fairly healthy. But as you point out, it would probably be even more dreary than the pre-packaged stuff. You could definitely shuffle it in; every third night is beans and rice night or something. But beans and rice every night would make a person crazy.

[(Anonymous)]

Instant ramen. Cheap and unhealthy.