@hecks - My favorite homecooked but not so healthy meal - Mixed beans (pinto, navy, etc.) over cornbread with ketchup, onions, and relish (chow chow is best) and a side of greens with hot vinegar (cider vinegar infused with peppers) and some hominy. Loaded with sugars and carbs though and the greens and the beans normally have pork fat in them.

@Draug - Frozen veggies BETTER THAN fast food. I'm saying that, generally speaking, it is a lot easier to eat "healthier than pre-packed shit food and out-to-eat fast food" than people pretend.

@ckrobetrts - You Project Management Circle is a theory, not a law, and does not apply to my kitchen, thank you very much. By the time you drive to pick up fast food, eat it and come home, Draug and I have grilled and eaten dinner cheaper adn healthier.

Ugh. I have to say that sounds vile.

krellin, you can pick up fast food on the way home. In error, you assume I have a grill and a car, or a decent kitchen. Plus, "does not apply to my kitchen" is pretty much the point: for a lot of people, the assumptions you make about the healthy way you live and eat simply aren't accurate.

@ckroberts:
"Just saying "eat better" to someone in that situation is like saying "be taller" to someone who can't make it in the NBA. It's a problem beyond the immediate capability to solve."

That comparison is a tad glib. After all, telling someone to eat better may be beyond their *immediate* capacity, but being taller is absolutely and irrevocably beyond one's capacity. It's more like telling someone "be a better free-throw shooter". It may be beyond your immediate capacity, but you can start working on it any time you want.

@ck - I can also prepare multiple meals in advance and heat them to eat when I get home.

You are also making the fatal mistake of thinking that cooking has to be some awful chore that people must hate and avoid. I enjoy cooking. I'd rather be cooking than what? Sitting on my ass watching mindless TV and stuffing another Big Mac in my face?

You can keep you PM triangle...and your clogged arteries...

I'll be in the kitchen or on the deck with my kids making a tasty meal that, I assure you, will taste far better than McDonalds and won't leave me feeling like shit afterwards.

I pretty much feel disgusting any time I eat fast food these days - it's hardly what I would call enjoyable.

"Plus, "does not apply to my kitchen" is pretty much the point: for a lot of people, the assumptions you make about the healthy way you live and eat simply aren't accurate."

This is pretty much a bullshit statement. Very *few* people do not have access to a grocery store. give me a break.

I *have* said that...GASP!!!...it may actually take a little work and planning to eat healthy...but it is imminently possible for the *vast* majority of people to do if they wanted to.

But...it's a hell of a lot easier for people to just bitch and complain and blame society/the government/capitalism/blah blah blah... Tired, boring, old defenseless arguments all of them...

OK, hecks, I will rephrase: It's like telling someone to be a better free throw shooter if they don't own and don't have access to a basketball goal. We could keep this analogy going down a fun rabbit hole. I am trying to say that many people lack the time, means, and know-how to eat well, and even if that was not the case eating poorly is a mild analgesic for their terrible lives that they wouldn't or couldn't give up.

krellin, again, lots of people don't have the extra time for that kind of work. It's easy for smart or educated or connected people to tell poor people to work harder. But it's not possible, or at least not realistic, for everyone. And I am not blaming the government or capitalism for this problem (although federal subsidies and trade policies do make unhealthy food relatively cheaper, a distortion of the market designed to benefit big farmers etc).

Time is a lame excuse. Seriously. Stop by the sotre on the way home and grabbed a $2 or $3 prepackaged salad and a $3 bottle of salad dressing and maybe see if the deli doesn't have some fresh turkey or ham sliced up and a pack of shredded cheese. Quickjly chop up the ham or turkey and mix it all in a big ol' bowl and you have a chef salad cheaper than junk food and just as fast. Hell, the Kroger's around here have salad bars where you can make a truly fresh salad up (much fresher than the shit at McD's or Wendy's) with premium ingredients for the same price as the wilted lettuce cut up two days ago at McD's.

I can see the problem for people who live in highly urban, inner-city neighborhoods where there are no supermarkets. It is indeed the case for many of the urban poor in the US that just getting to a supermarket means an hour commute or more on foot or by public transit. For them ckroberts's protests make sense. But let's be honest, that really doesn't apply for most people on this site.

Access, time, and cost are three separate issues. Access is one I'll take seriously. But I'd content that time and cost are mostly false perceptions. It doesn't take that much time or cost that much money to choose or make something simple at home.

Google "food desert"

What do I eat? Lol, since you asked I can't resist. I don't have much money so:

Yogurt with chia seeds, almonds, and granola
Peanut butter and banana sandwiches
Fried rice with edamame, peas, eggs, and carrots with hot sauce
Rice and lentils
Grilled cheese with spinach
And eggs, obviously.

I drink milk and water, and make coffee at home or buy the occasional sweet latte when I'm looking for some sugar.

Then again, I live in a place with a Trader Joe's and have friends that can give me a ride there. If I didn't, I would be forced to buy what I can get at what amounts to a 7-11... fresh food is limited to bananas.

So don't tell me eating healthy is easy for everyone. It *should* be. But it really is not. Our food system is absolutely trashed. It's a mess. If you think otherwise you really have your head in the sand.

I'll admit I live in an area that is exceptionally rich in food access, particularly for a small city. There are six supermarkets and three different weekly farmer's markets within three mile of my house, as well as two produce shops, six local bakeries, at least five halal markets, two independent butchers (one of them halal), two cheese shops, and four fishmongers. And most of them are surprisingly affordable. What's the opposite of a food desert? A food jungle? I live in a food jungle.

Hecks and Draug, I don't know that we disagree as much as we sound like, although I'm sure we could debate realistic menu options some more. It's just that the people who need this sort of advice the most don't have access to it, don't know if they do or not, and find bad-but-short-term-fulfilling food to be one of the few bits of enjoyment in their days. We can't make universal statements about anyone being able to eat cheap and healthy.

(Oh, I forgot... there are also three Asian groceries.)

This is a non-exhaustive list of things that are wrong with our food system:

1) Fresh and healthy fruits and vegetables are more expensive calorie for calorie than corn- and soy-based processed food, because of unfair farm subsidies to corn and soy farmers.

2) Distribution networks rely on artificial preservation processes such as the use of emulsifiers, which, though many are in principle not unhealthy, usually come from Brazillian-grown soy, which, by the way, is slave-produced

(http://www.mongabay.com/external/slavery_in_brazil.htm)

3) Areas with stores that stock healthy food, i.e. non-processed, organic, fresh, and/or healthful are always areas with rich or white people. Trader Joe's is only in yuppie areas. Whole Foods is *definitely* only in yuppie areas and has prices out of control. Again, google "food deserts".

4) The FDA is a joke. The commsioner on food safety used to work for Monsanto. And so the door continues to revolve. Meat packing has become so unsanitary that even produce is now sometimes contaminated with diseases like salmonella. The best they can do is contain outbreaks. You can't even film inside of a meat packing plant, the conditions are so bad.

5) Farmers themselves are either overpaid by subsidies and amount to rich executives, or completely in debt to their primary customers, the food giants (Cargill, ADM, etc.). These companies provide them with equipment (which, by the way, they mandate that they buy) and then put them in debt to pay for it which they never escape.

5.1) The food system is an hourglass - lots of players in direct production, farmers, with no power (especially not now that they can engineer seeds to not plant after one season and sue you for using different seeds), only a very few powerful players in the middle that face basically no scrutiny - food giants and agribusiness. And then it trickles down to consumers who have extremely limited information. This is a food system where agribusiness can lobby their way out of fully labeling the food they sell you.

Given all of this and the runaway obesity rates in this country, it makes talk about "personal responsibility" extremely unhelpful. You continue to preach, and yet childhood obesity continues to rise. Blaming the whole of America's families and consumers doesn't seem to be helping.

@ckroberts,
Yeah, I get that, but as I've pointed out, that's not the case for most people on this site. When people on this site protest that *they* can't afford or can't take the time for food other than fast food, I think it's disingenuous.

What this country needs is another Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" moment - it can't come too soon.

Agreed in full, Thucy.

@ CKRoberts-- good post
maybe the analogy could be refined but the basic point(s) you made are, in my opinion, sound enough.

this started as a discussion of advertising & had some comments about exposure of children to porn as well as exposure to advertising
It's not hard to figure out why a lot of corporations want to "program" children into being lifelong consumers, I think McD's has been a prime example of this, with strategies to get "McD's" into the eraly vocabulary of children

If I had just sired children & was raising them, they would be raised with the jesuit philosophy, mould / program the child and by the age of 7 you have created the adult,
but I wouldn't be programming to get a jesuit

things I wuld do
No commercial TV, video exposure to be controlled totally by me (where possible ) to age 10
age 3 to 7 get the essential maths well programmed into them, plus reading habits
encourage artistic creativity, exposure to classical music & dance, hand -eye- ball skills including juggling, teach them to swim & start exposure to surfing & sailing, lots of things that I want to encourage, including when they are ready basic philosophy--scepticism logic etc plus physics & chemistry & other sciences
Do not do this stuff in an authoritarian way, make it all fun as much as possible

It's up to parent's to raise & train their children so that when they go out into the world, it's not the child who is afraid of the world, it should be the world that fears the child
( the motto of St Trinians-- when our girls go out into the world they are not afraid of the world, the world should fear them )