Just Eat It

I watch a lot of documentaries.

During the long, long nights since Gabriel was born (2,653 nights as of this post), there were quite a few where Michael and I got...considerably less than the recommended sleep requirements. Especially while I was nursing, I tried to find something to fill the quiet hours, a way to keep myself just engaged enough to stay alert.

Video games fit the bill most of the time. With Emerald, I conquered Cyrodiil in Bethesda’s “Oblivion”; for Gabriel, I wandered the wastelands of “Fallout 3”; baby Benjamin, I soared in the skies of “Skyrim”. To this day, if I play the title screen music to any of those three, the associated child gets suddenly and inexplicably drowsy.

Documentaries made for a good distraction as it got me thinking. I have learned that you have to take what is offered in these films with a pretty hefty grain of salt, as the prevalent information is presented in that particular way to lead you to their “logical” truth, of which I can’t always entirely agree.

This past winter, I got to watch “Fed Up”, the Katie Couric/Stephanie Soechtig documentary about how junk food is affecting the health of our country.

To be perfectly and absolutely fair...yes. Many of us know the dangers of processed foods, preservatives, dyes, and the demon High Fructose Corn Syrup. The film was thoughtful and important, raising attention to a very serious issue here in America.

Why am I bringing it up here though?

There is some pointed ignorance regarding the affordability of healthier alternatives. My stint on food stamps and nearly a decade of consistently having a tight grocery budget has changed my way of thinking about how I buy food.

In “Fed Up”, they pointed out how much “cheaper” it was to eat healthy foods at home. On one side of the screen, they showed a McDonald’s meal for four, hamburgers and drinks and french fries for nearly $28. On the right, a chicken, potatoes, and salad dinner for four clocking in at just under $14.

Well, yeah. It IS more cost effective to make food at home than it is to eat out.

Kinda.

Ingredients themselves cost less, because you are not paying for someone to prepare them. Preparing your own food is costly in other ways though, which they do not factor into their calculations.

First, the expense of time.

McDonald’s, even with a line, will take no longer than 20 minutes before you all have your food.

With home-cooked goodness, you start by going to the grocery store. Discounting driving time (you will have to drive to fast food as well), the average grocery store visit takes 41 minutes (http://timeuseinstitute.org/Grocery%20White%20Paper%202008.pdf).  

That’s finding what you need and getting through checkout, if you go in already knowing what you want; it will be more if you are hoping to figure something out once you get there.

Once you get home, you still have to prepare the meal.

With the “Fed Up” example of chicken, you budget thirty minutes for prep. Assuming the bird is average size, it will take around two hours to roast fully. You gotta eat tonight, so the brine is out; you wash it, dress it, season it, and it is ready to go in the oven. An hour before the chicken is done, you come in, wash the potatoes, wrap them in foil, stab them a few times with a fork, and toss them in to bake as well. Thirty minutes out, you wash and cut the greens, whip up your own quick vinaigrette, dress your salad; pull the chicken out, carve it up, and everything goes on the table.

A cool three hours after you have started, you and your family can sit down to a meal.

Parents that are working full time won’t get home until 5 or 6 at night; they wouldn’t be able to get that dinner on the table until nearly 8, if they got straight to cooking right as they walk in the door and already had the food on hand. As indefatigable as a person might be, there is only so much they can do in a day.

Oh, just throw it in the crockpot and let it cook all day!

Which brings me my second point: the assumption that every family has access to the basic tools required to prepare a homecooked meal.

You don’t think about it unless it is not there. If you can barely afford food, it is not a far leap to think utilities might also pose a problem. You have to have running water and electricity to cook at home. You have to have a stovetop and oven to cook, and a refrigerator to store the food. Pots, pans, can openers, meat thermometers, appliances, plates, bowls, utensils. There is a bare minimum required to have the capability of cooking.

Again, with the chicken example: You have to have a dish to cook the chicken in, knife to carve it, foil to bake the potatoes, cutting board to chop the vegetables, colander to rinse the potatoes and veggies, plates and utensils to serve the food, as well as the big expensive appliances.

McDonald’s, you have a wrapper to eat your food on, and a napkin to get ketchup off your chin. That’s all you need.

But say these parents have all the prerequisites and have an abundance of time. Let’s go further and say they even have the knowledge of how to cook and the ability to do so (not all of us are so fortunate).

There is no guarantee your kid is going to eat it.

Food waste is such a huge deal. At current rate of production, we are producing enough food to feed every person in the world--it is not a production problem, but a waste one. Every year, a THIRD of food produced, 1.3 billion tonnes, gets lost or wasted (http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/).

When you have precisely budgeted so you have exactly enough to get through the month based on how many people are in your family, you can’t afford for food to go uneaten. You can force feed the kids, put it back in the fridge and bring it out at the next meal until they eat it, but I am a physical living testament to “You can lead a horse to water”. Ask my father just how long I will go without food before I will eat something I don’t want to.

As the adult, you know what your child requires to grow, to thrive, to even get through the day. You also know what battles you can and cannot handle fighting; getting your kids to eat when they do not wish to do so usually falls outside the realm of what you can handle.

In my case, if Gabriel was eating actual people food and not paper towels and sidewalk chalk, it was a win. I couldn’t worry about sweet talking him into taking just a little bitty nibble of kale please please please. It was more “peanut butter crackers have protein AND carbs, score!” (dutifully ignoring the sodium and fat content).

Then for fun, let’s toss in FOOD TRENDS.

We all get how the economy works--people start buying a lot of it, the price goes up, supply and demand, charge what someone is willing to pay. Yeah yeah yeah.

Health food trends are all the rage nowadays, which cause the crappiest result: healthy foods become more expensive!! (https://bitchmedia.org/post/the-cost-of-kale-how-foodie-trends-can-hurt-low-income-families)

Kale is a good example of this. The leafy green was listed as a superfood, and the price of it shot up by 25%. The same phenomenon can be seen with pomegranates, blueberries, collard greens, and--my personal favorite--quinoa. Quinoa, this grain that is gluten-free AND a complete protein, was once a staple of low-income families, but due to its rise in popularity has risen to a price range that even growers of the crop can no longer afford (http://www.alternet.org/food/quinoa-hot-new-superfood-it-moral-eat-it).

When the trend passes and people stop buying the food, fields of the food spoil and are tossed because no one wants it anymore.

The average payout for family of five on food stamps was $540 in 2015 (http://www.cbpp.org/research/a-quick-guide-to-snap-eligibility-and-benefits). Which sounds like a lot. It really isn’t.

Broken down, that is $18 a day, or $6 a meal. That $14 chicken dinner up there, completely outside the realm of feasibility--it would eat up nearly a day’s worth of your budget.

A savvy shopper, I can now usually tell you exactly what you can buy with a limited amount of money. Push comes to shove, I now know I can take $3 in loose change to the store and make a meal out of it ($0.50 for a pound of white rice, $1.20 for a pound of dried black beans, $0.30 bunch of fresh cilantro, $0.15 fresh jalapeno,  $0.30 for a quarter of a pound of roma tomatoes, $0.50 for a clove of garlic, and I get to walk home with a shiny nickel in change.)

Banking on buying the cheapest option available--prices reflecting that of where I live in Texas and not nationally; Colorado for example being considerably more expensive--let’s talk breakfast.

Large eggs are $1.40 a dozen; chorizo (an inexpensive meat I like), $1.50 a chub; russet potatoes $2 for five pounds; shredded cheese, $2 for two cups; salsa, $2 a jar. Total is $8.90. I have to buy all of it at once, but I will only use partial amounts--half the eggs, five potatoes, half the cheese, cup of salsa. $3.95 for breakfast.

Or a six-pack of off-brand poptarts are $1. And require exactly nothing to open and eat.

“Why We Get Fat” by Gary Taubes is a great read regarding the issue; there are also the links I attached above.

My point is that it is not so cut and dry as “eat healthier”, especially when the food options presented are usually of the “pick your poison” variety. Once we moved to Abilene and Michael started working for the university, our diets took a drastic change. Michael's parents provide a significant amount of meat to supplement our groceries, and our budget restraints have been lighted considerably.

With some of the burden of grocery cost eased off of me, I was able to buy better quality foods, adhering to my standard of “less than five ingredients on the label” for the majority of my purchase.

Sorta off topic, sorta on; it was what I was thinking about this week. We'll wander a bit closer to Michael's departure from AT&T next time :)

--Andie