I recently had a conversation with an organic farmer. While he is able to pass on at least some of his increased costs for energy and fuel through direct sales and cooperatively organized distribution channels, his conventionally farmed colleagues have a bigger problem. They have long-term purchase contracts that fix the prices for milk, meat or vegetables. In the case of milk and meat in particular, production costs, including purchased feed for the animals, now exceed the agreed purchase prices.
At the same time, however, prices for the end consumer are rising because, on the one hand, the processing companies themselves have higher energy costs, but on the other hand (without passing them on to the producers) the current climate allows price increases and thus an increase in margins. So the consumer and the farmer lose out. Only the processor, its shareholders and retailers benefit (at least in the short term). And the speculators who bet on rising prices.
Many conventional farmers see their livelihoods threatened. Which further endangers food security in the long term.
I find two things funny... it might be a local thing (i'm from slovenia) but yeah...
1) gas was ~1.5eur here, then it fell to 1.0eur during the plague, and there were zero price drops beacause of that, and when the price started rising to 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 eur, everybody (farmers, retailers) started complaining about increasing gas prices and how that will result in higher consumer prices (even before we hit the price a year before that).
2) farmers complain about low prices they get from processors (and retailers).. then you want to buy meat directly from them, and their price is usually a lot higher than in-store price (even though there are usually two or more middle-men between them and the store), and you cannot choose anything... want steaks? Want beef thigh? Hah, good luck.. you can only buy 10, 20kg+ of "mixed beef", where 90% is "meat for goulash" (hard, cheap cuts) and 10% bones for soup. So yeah... it's Aldi for me.
Also, there were farmers complaining that they had a bunch of food that they had to throw away because of the plague (eg. contract with school, school closed, a few tons of salad had to be thrown out)... noone offered for people to come buy stuff directly from them at whatever cheap price,.. in the meantime in-store prices were relatively expensive for that same salad.
Farmers expect you to pay extra for the inconvenience, in addition to already cutting out the middle-men. Same thing everywhere I've been in more developed countries across North America and Asia. Even Bali.
The most charitable interpretation is that farmers are simply not as optimized as grocery stores, resulting in a higher overall cost.
Well, it's also that the people with the time and mobility to drive up to farms to buy local organic produce also tend to be price insensitive, so it makes sense for the farmer to price accordingly.
This also applies to wineries: buying a bottle directly at the cellar door is almost always more expensive buying it at $LIQUOR_SUPERSTORE, but the people plonking down $100 for a bottle don't care, so this is a perfectly sensible pricing strategy.
Sounds like the ideal is to frame the food system after the US medical system.
You can't find out what something is going to cost until after you've eaten it. You have to have food consumption insurance to get things at reasonable cost. Food insurance companies charge astronomical rates unless you're part of some group plan.
People have been waking up to this during the current gas price crisis... governments say they're doing everything they can, but they can't do more, because of the global oil prices,...
...meanwhile more than half of the gas price goes to the government, and people are notcing.
How is a market price distortion (artificially lowering gas prices through tax cuts) supposed to solve the gas price crisis? You want people to use less gas, so there is more left over for the industries that actually need it. You don't want consumers to use subsidized gas wastefully.
The idea of a federal gas tax holiday has apparently been floating around DC lately, but I'm pretty skeptical that they'll be able to return to full taxes without significant pushback.
If we look at the last price (top row), the price (without any taxes) was 0.395eur/l. Then they add (in column order) CO2 tax, "saving energy tax", excise duty ("trošarina"), "tax to help electricity production", and VAT (DDV), bringing the total price to 1.00eur. The total of taxes added is ~153% of the base price (0.395 without -> 1eur with tax).
For example, California charges both $0.539 per gallon AND sales tax. The latter varies based on city/county/district and is charged on the "after per-gallon tax" price.
The total sales tax in San Jose is 9.375%, so $6.50 at the pump includes $0.557 in sales tax. (The "at the pump" price includes sales tax.)
That's a total of $1.096/g state and local for $6.50/g at the pump.
Add in the federal $0.184/g and the total tax is $1.28/g on $6.50/g gas in San Jose.
Economies of scale strike again it seems, for #2. Cows are big. 20 kilograms is practically nothing and the efficency is low at very small scales. Consumers often operate under the delusion that cost is fixed per item in all locations, at all levels of demand and any increased prices are pure opportunism.
It's not just cows.. it's potatoes too... they pick up potatoes and have a warehouse full of them, you want to buy a sack (5, 10kg) from them, and they offer you a price, again, higher than aldi. And i'm talking about the same farmers who sell their produce to aldi and complain about how little money they get from aldi and how (relatively) high the price in aldi is.
I understand that a cow is a logistic process, where after slaughter, you have to get rid of the whole cow, not just the "best parts", but selling potatos is literally just packing a bag and weighing them, but nope...
Same with apples in the autumn, complain about low prices from companies, then not wanting to sell them at retail price (with two middlemen gone).
Whenever I buy a side of beef from a local farmer, I pay the farmer and then pay the butcher. I believe the butcher deals with the “not best parts” much more often than the farmer does, but I’m not an expert and this is an n=1 data point.
Farmers aren't salespeople. They often don't want to deal with the hassle of selling a part here, a part there. You want a tenderloin? What is the farmer supposed to do with the rest of it?
Far easier, more predictable and less wasteful of the animals to sell the entire lot to processors, who then deal with butchering, packaging and distributing individual cuts for them.
I could do one off short term programming contracts, but my customers would definitely pay much more for the overhead of me making a living that way vs simply getting a salaried job.
If you sold futures for your outputs and didn’t buy futures for your inputs, the results are on you. These are the kind of complaints you get from people who make market bets and end up wrong. You can use futures like insurance to insulate yourself from market fluctuations or you can use them like a casino.
I actually have a very specific story on this one from a friend.
In Australia, there's this stereotype of the "hard working Aussie battler farmer" and that we should all support our farmers. My friend's family business was one of these growing a type of nut. It was common for neighbouring farmers to make a good living selling their produce and using it for their own purposes and expect the government to bail them out with something like a tax break.
My friend's business wanted to prepare for water shortages and spent a huge amount of money setting up a dam or storage system of sorts. Lo and behold, a drought came some time after and they were prepared. A lot of other businesses did not prepare for this and instead spent it on other things. My friend mentioned to me that he has no sympathy for those types of people.
Disclaimer: This is a generic statement, I did not pry into the story and there could be a multitude of reasons why one didn't/couldn't prepare for such a thing
Yep. I'm from a region that grew sugarcane historically but is moving to tree crops like nuts.
Local 'big name' family is voracious in their consumption of government grants. They're not struggling by any means but they've got application writing down to a fine science.
I didn't follow up with them on that. But the discussion was initially sparked because we were watching the news and the story was about how hard the farmers are doing due to the drought and were looking for government assistance.
It isn’t though this person is just guessing incorrectly that it does not exist. Like any business buying supplies, farmers can buy things ahead of time at fixed prices.
In practice, hedging for increases in fuel prices means buying something like oil futures.
Which requires you to be at terminal at some port city 6 months down the line to physically collect the oil/gasoline/whatever that you bought. And then store it for the months before you use it.
It really doesn’t, you don’t buy fuel on the futures market, you buy it locally from the coop or whatever local purveyor you use for future delivery, hundreds of gallons at a time.
The same for your other inputs, you have contacts to buy them well into the future, you don’t just pay the market rate when you need it.
Commodities futures are just like gold based money. The gold itself wasn't traded, it sat locked in a vault somewhere. People traded receipts for the gold. I.e. that's what banknotes literally used to be.
Eh, while there is quite a lot of speculation-only trading, unless you're dealing with cash-settled futures, if you forget to close out your position you'll be expected to, say, deliver or take delivery on 5000 bushels of corn.
Commodities futures are heavily used to arrange actual exchange of goods and aren't abstractions but real contracts.
That is true right up until the day the contract comes due. Then you need to pick up your oil, pork, OJ, etc. at the time and place specified in the contract. If you holds the contract at that point in time, you are responsible for picking it up at the place in space.
Why? Wouldn't a farmer just buy the futures contract (or an option on it), then liquidate and use the profit to offset the loss on the spot purchase? I was under the impression that hedgers never take delivery.
Hedges who sit in an office at Wall street never take delivery.
If you're a person who actually needs the future, you need to take delivery. This makes sense on an industrial mega-farm scale, but doesn't make sense at the private-farm scale.
that was my initial thought as well, but you are limited by the availability of financial instruments as you move up the chain to inputs. Outputs are easy to craft instruments around, but inputs are what a business is.
Without a futures market, you don't get futures, you get forwards, don't you? Forwards don't have enforcement for when the seller goes bankrupt, which leaves the buyer out any money paid in the forward contract and needing to find another supply at market price. That's my understanding, at least.
>Without a futures market, you don't get futures, you get forwards, don't you? Forwards don't have enforcement for when the seller goes bankrupt, which leaves the buyer out any money paid in the forward contract and needing to find another supply at market price. That's my understanding, at least.
Correct. You have an over the counter market with different derivatives.
> Forwards don't have enforcement for when the seller goes bankrupt, which leaves the buyer out any money paid in the forward contract and needing to find another supply at market price. That's my understanding, at least.
You're referring to counter party risk. A futures exchange seeks to eliminate this type of risk with daily settlement of positions, margins, etc.
Calling them forwards implies that they are tradable securities.
I’m talking about going to the local farmers coop and purchasing next years fertilizer, fuel, etc. months in advance for a set price to be paid and delivered in the future.
When you sell your outputs it’s a good idea to buy your inputs at the same time. The outputs are often exchange traded commodities, the inputs are often contract purchases with local dealers although you can also hedge with appropriate exchange traded commodities.
A.) you are expecting farmers to be quants,
B.) There are 10000 more inputs to farming than what you described. Labor being a major one.
Financier:
"Well Jim, I know you were focused on digging the irrigation for your farm but with 'Free Money' in the economy, valuations for real estate and other commodities were going to rise. The Delta's on your futures were all out of wack!"
Jim:
"What's a delta?"
This is how futures contracts are supposed to work. The times when these contracts made the farmers extra money at the expense of the consumer should make up for this time.
We hope these are Futures; it sounded like GPs farmer may have Forward contracts. If this is the case, it would make more sense for the Farmer to bail on the contract if prices get too far out. (a.k.a. counterparty risk) That would be bad.
I'm less pessimistic. People in the US, and increasingly the rest of the world are on a diet that just isn't good for them: lots of low quality carbs with cheap fat and artificial flavorings and not a whole lot of nutritional value. Arguably, a large part of the population is eating way more than is good for them and not enough good quality food. And it's not just a money issue: it's a skill and knowledge issue. People literally pay extra for the privilege of growing fat on expensive junk food and they don't even know the basics of taking care of themselves anymore.
So, low quality industrial food products getting more expensive isn't necessarily a bad thing. It might prompt people to spend their money more wisely. There are plenty of options for people interested in doing a bit of work to put together a healthy diet for themselves.
Buy good ingredients yourself and learn how to use them. You'll save money and eat better. And if you source a bit responsibly, you actually help out some local producers and shops that are currently struggling. It's not that hard. A lot of us here are programmers. If you can put together code that implements a complex algorithm, you can follow a recipe and figure out how making food works. It's not hard.
For example, I bake my own bread. I do that using flour that I buy online from a local mill here in Germany. Good stuff. Works out to about 1.60 euros per kg. The supermarkets here don't even sell this quality of bread flour. They mostly sell more processed flours that people use to bake cakes. The flour I bought is locally known as type 812. In the french system it would be T85 (approximately). All that means: lots of protein and other nutrients that you need to make good bread. Unlike the supermarket, I use no additives other than salt. I even make my own sourdough starter (flour + water, let nature do it's thing). So, literally the main ingredients that I have to buy are flour and salt. Works out to less than 1 euro per loaf of bread; including the power I consume to use the oven. And it tastes good. If I wanted to cut the price of this, I'm sure I could source both ingredients even cheaper. Sourdough bread works with all sorts of flour. Even with the cheap low quality stuff. You might be able to go as low as 50 cents per kg of flour. That works out to about 25 cents per loaf. And it will still taste great.
Takes a bit of skill and some time. But otherwise it's cheap.
People in poor countries tend to know a thing or two about making the most of cheap ingredients. That's why Italian food is so popular. It's quite literally what poor Italians came up with. A lot of their famous dishes are rooted in what poor peasants could do with what they could afford. Pasta is basically flour and water. You work it hard and you end up with the perfect vessel for some sort of stew. As for the stew: whatever cuts of meat cooked for ages with whatever you can pick around you. Plenty of examples around the world of great food traditions rooted in poor people making the most of what they have access to: India, Vietnam, Thailand, Cuba, etc. Almost anywhere you go, people have this rich history of doing great stuff with whatever is available to them. Mostly, it boils down to skill and time to use those skills.
Time for me is by far the limiting factor. Short of a personal chef (too expensive) all the quick options are unhealthy.
Edit:
Loads of people suggesting cooking - I know how to cook, I just don’t have the time or energy. It’s not just preparation time but also the planning aspect.
Meal prep delivery services suggestions are interesting. I have tried a few and found them expensive and low quality. Open to trying more though.
Sunday meal prep: I did this as a student but I love food and I love deciding what to eat on the day. Going back to that would remove some of the joy from life.
I think what I really want is a work canteen, but open to the public. The economies of scale could make this price competitive and there’s less delivery overhead than the meal prep subscriptions. I like the social aspect too. I would definitely pay a subscription to a canteen.
Adam Smith warned of extreme division of labor making for humans dumber than the dumbest animal (paraphrasing).
Sticking with one career forever is an outdated story; king says someone is farmer, that’s just how it is! It would be costly to upend history, they say.
Having worked in a kitchen, built houses from foundation up, helped deliver livestock, started in tech designing power switching equipment, coding professional now since 2006; having built muscle memory for numerous “professions” comes along with living in “flow state.” I can manage structured tasks across contexts without planning, without wincing at the difficulty or time being a factor; I can make way better than packaged or fast food faster than it can be picked up or delivered.
Taking time to boot strap the habit pays off in time savings down the road.
This is the real reason people have unhealthy habits, especially with food: it takes a lot of time to source, prepare, serve and clean up after a healthy home-meal made from scratch and made with care. For better or worse, past social norms dedicated an individual (usually the mother) to stay home and tend to these tasks, but now most households have the entire family working to make ends meet and in turn externalize food production (and many other "homestead-y" operations) to companies, which are not motivated by our well-being.
> especially with food: it takes a lot of time to source, prepare, serve and clean up
Absolutely! You can't just buy a slab of chicken breast, it needs to be trimmed and put away until ready to be used. Hardest of all: planning, what to do with it, what else goes with it. Pointless to buy broccoli and kale if you don't know what makes it tastes good, and when the inspiration strikes you, there's an ugly head of broccoli you need to cut up, and a bunch of unwashed kale you need to trim. 80% of cooking is peeling, cutting, dicing, shredding, skimming, straining, pounding, deboning, deveining, and waiting. All unglamorous, time-consuming, boring, manual labor. You need to speed this up to gain efficiency. Technical and planning skills gets you probably 50% efficiency. Cooking food is labor intensive and it appears to me all attempts to commercially scale is failing.
I disagree at large, but give exception to at least the US due to how cities are built.
I am not a chef by any means or even a cook, but I learned how to cook in University due to being unbelievably poor and got tired of "low budget fast meals". Quotes because I don't think that the meals that fall into this category are at all better than their "proper" counter parts.
Prepping a quick pasta with béchamel does not take long at all, and with a common pot and pan from Ikea or even Target or Walmart and a fork and knife, you have all you need. Prepping a quick pizza by hand, some general Wok style cuisine, etc, it's all quite fast once you learn a few things about how to prepare food.
I'm sure it's cliche, but watching Good Eats with Alton Brown a few times helped me understand why certain combinations work and gave me the confidence to understand how to make different things match. In particular, watching his episodes on knife skills helped me understand how to speed up a lot of prepping (an unabashed advertisement for Shun from Alton, but let's ignore that part) [0]
When I was still in the US, long and laborious kitchen exercises were glorified; the longer and more putzy the recipe, the more most people I know fawned over the idea of the meal, but I'm here to tell you that taking the time just to understand the basics of cooking, you don't need the blogpost 2 hour narrative story for cooking, it's very basic chemistry at its best. Some meals have unavoidable time and complications, and that's fine, but you can make very tasty, very healthy meals quite fast while listening to your favorite show or some music or even just enjoying the silence of the kitchen and the sound of the cooking.
> You can't just buy a slab of chicken breast, it needs to be trimmed and put away until ready to be used. Hardest of all: planning, what to do with it, what else goes with it.
Absolutely not true IMO, but I get where you might have this if you don't have a more European style city to live in. I do not pretend to guess where you are from, but usually I heard and hear this from people I know still in the US, and it's distinctly because of how US cities are built. In Europe and in quite a few Asian countries, proper grocers are a dime a dozen and every couple hundred meters. I stock the basics (flour, salt, spices, other grains, and some slow-perishing sauces like tomato paste) and buy perishables on the way home since there's a fully stocked market no bigger than a chinese takeout shop at the base of my apartment or < 200 meters from it.
The meat and produce I get are used immediately or over the next day for another meal, and it's very nice. Half of my lunch break for work is cooking, the second half eating a freshly cooked meal.
I really feel that there is a bit of a cult around cooking that wants to overcomplicate the process because complex == classy, and I need to stress that when you're first starting, it is going to be slower because you haven't developed your technique. It's the same reason you'll probably fall a lot when first learning to ice skate or why you'll sound like a drunk playing a guitar when you first learn. The good news is that even if the end result of your first few meals is ugly, likely it still tastes pretty good.
The time is very relative -- I'm monitoring a global market so I have 10+ hour days almost every day depending on how bad certain situations get, but I made cooking part of my skillset because I didn't want to be indebted always to food delivery. It absolutely is possible even for a family without a dedicated cook, and I think the first step most people need is admitting that it's not the time sink they make it out to be. Once you get a few basics, you are some sort of wizard to most people.
Having the right set of tools and prep space really is key. A good chefs knife, a cast iron pan, a fry pan, a pot, and cutting board is all you need. Learning good knife skills and having a good chef knife drastically speeds up prep time by 2-3x.
If anyone here is new to cooking and wanting to start on a budget, you can easily get away with a cheap knife, cheap set of diamond stones, a cutting board, and an enameled dutch oven. $60-$100 after shipping and tax, and you'll be able to cook basically everything. The knife being sharp is much more important than it being high quality (being sharp is also not essential, but it makes a big difference).
If you want to splurge, I also like a few bamboo spoons.
The $60-$100 counted the pot and cutting board. Totally agree that fibrox or something is plenty fine enough.
What's the argument for the pull-through sharpener? A decent enough set of stones is tiny, costs $15 after shipping, and isn't that hard to use. Are we just making sharpening as easy as possible so they don't give up?
Yes. I find the enthusiasm for wet stone sharpening to be overblown for beginners. It's so far down the list of things that will matter when cooking vs using an inexpensive knife and pull through. If you like the process that's fine, I just don't like it being turned around into a "you're doing it wrong if you use a pull through" expectation, when the root problem is 99% getting people to sharpen period.
I'm in a suburb of a large metropolitan area in the US. The grocery store is abundant, but 20 minutes away, I make one main trip to the store weekly, and a couple of side trips to other stores, eg Mexican/Asian groceries. We have different POV because of our geographic differences, I think. I do not think complicated recipes are good in and of themselves.
Pasta + bechamel is easy, you can't do this 5 nights a week. I'm moving away from carbohydrate-rich main dish, more to grains and pulses. A slow-cooked shoulder of pork, like a cassoulet, is easy, yet still takes time to roast, then the meat separated from the connective tissues, the fat, then a stock reduction, then the beans. I offer it as an example of cheap, easy, tasty, and time and labor intensive dish. You need some greens to serve with it, and you can't prep greens 5 days ahead. I also don't want to eat this 10 meals in a row.
Edited to add: I find Gordon Ramsey YouTube videos quite instructive, his menu is simple and tasty. I got a lot of mileage out of his techniques.
Get a slow cooker. This allows you to arbitrage earlier time to do prep (before work, or during a break if WFH), set it up and forget about it for a few hours. As a bonus, it tends to taste good even if you don't pre sear or saute the ingredients.
+1 for the slow cooker. You can buy a smaller 2 liter one if you are concerned about space. There's a lot of benefits:
* Prepare huge amounts of meat (in the smallest one you can prepare up to a kg of meat).
* Very simple meal prep. Plop some meat, throw some salt in, add some sauce (soy sauce, spicy or whatever you prefer), add some liquid (water usually) and turn it on. 5 minutes or less.
* It never boils, so the water level never rises, avoiding spills (or having to even worry about it). So you can leave it overnight for the 8+ hour cooking process.
* You can transform cheap, tough cuts of meat (like Gulash soup meat) into fantastic tasting dishes.
One of the best things about a slow cooker is that the meat softens up, it uniformly absorbs all seasoning, and it makes the meat release its best fatty flavour.
> I didn't want to be indebted always to food delivery
I'd also suggest to actually calculate how much food delivery costs. I live in a relatively cheap European country, but even here getting two good meals delivered (i.e. not pizza or McD's) is close to 25€. Over a month that adds up to a not insignificant amount of my take home pay. Plus I find cooking is a really good way to forget about work and de-stress.
Some of the sister comments say you need a Dutch oven, knife sharpener, etc. This is honestly nonsense (see other comment threads about American culture over complicating recipes). The main tools I use are a knife and non-stick pan I got from a supermarket a few years ago (probably 15€ each) and they are perfectly fine. You don't need anything fancy to get started.
Frozen veggies sound like a good option for you. You can stock a wide variety, and the prep work is already done. They cook from frozen just fine. Steaming in a microwave with a closed bowl is particularly fast. Combine that with a protein you can pan fry, and you've got a decent meal in 10 minutes flat.
I also batch cook using sous vide. So I'll buy a bulk package of protein, then portion it into bags with various marinades or sauce bases. These don't have to be intricate or high effort, eg, I'll sometimes do a chicken tinga for tacos that's nothing more complex than a chicken thigh and a can of El Pato. I do a lot of variations of Thai curry that are just a thigh, some premade paste, and coconut cream, and maybe some aromatics if I feel fancy.
Anyhow, these all get batch cooked in the sous vide. It takes me around 10 minutes to process 10 lbs of chicken or such into 20 portions, usually 4 or so variations. Then into the freezer they go where they last indefinitely. I generally do about 2 to 3 batches this way per month. At any given time I have around 3 to 4 weeks of food ready to go in the freezer, with a wide variety of options, and all reflecting the nutritional balance I want.
So then how I use this on a day to day basis. Say I feel one of the Mussamum curries I made a couple months back. Even though it's not thawed I can plop it back in the sous vide to handle that. I load up the rice cooker at the same time. This takes all of 30 seconds, then I just ignore stuff for about 30 minutes. When ready I come back, pull the bag, and toss the contents into a skillet along with whatever selection of frozen veg I feel like. Adjust seasoning and then just simmer until the veg are where you want, about 5 minutes. Plate up with the rice.
So again, just because of how I've organized things, I've got a whole menu in that freezer that takes less than 15 minutes active time to get on a plate.
I wouldn't underestimate just how fast and breezy things can get once you figure out the patterns that work for you. And for me now this stuff is on auto pilot, so the active time involved doesn't feel like any particular effort. Honestly it reduces my stress levels quite a bit knowing I've got plenty of good food ready to go for weeks if I need to be a hermit for whatever reason. This whole approach particularly helped during the worst of COVID.
I saw in one of your other comments you mentioned Gordon Ramsey videos. He's very savvy as far as recipe concepts and knowing what will appeal. However a lot of his specific cooking advice is off the mark, or not particularly helpful for someone cooking at home vs in a classic french brigade kitchen.
I'd suggest checking out J Kenji Lopez-Alt's youtube channel. He's got a bunch of low key videos where he cooks various things, often using a POV camera. All his advice is grounded in modern food science vs some of the older folklore, and he has a very practical and unfussy mindset overall.
Here me out: this sounds like an excuse. If you really want to solve it you could. I did.
I use a wok to cook and it's faster than going to McDonalds. It's slower than a frozen meal but not by much. I don't aim for perfection, rather, most of my meals I try and make healthy. I still love bacon.
In less than 10 minutes you can chop celery, broccoli, tofu, chicken, etc. If it takes longer then solve that problem: better knife, cutting board always handy? Chop faster, fingertips aren't that important.
Turn the wok up to 10,000 degrees and put a little avocado oil in there, throw it all in and stir. Put some low sodium soy sauce and monkfruit sweetener (if you want no sugar, otherwise brown sugar) and a little cornstarch+water too thicken. Ginger, whatever.
Anyway, you can make tons of variants of this dish. Curry, yakisoba, subgum chow mein. Almost all will be 90% vegetables. Do some rice or noodles with them.
Then solve salads. They are fast, easy, and can be delicious if you chop stuff up small and put a lot of variety. Keep trying different things. Watch YouTube videos about it. If you are thinking "I don't like salads" shut up. That's another excuse, there are an infinite number of ways to combine and prepare veggies.
Explore and solve the problem just like a crappy little software app that needs to be built. You just have to want it and be willing to learn.
We lived for a couple weeks in Nicaragua and we hired the sister of the guy who maintained the property to cook for us (an optional service we were quick to agree to). On the first day she cooked a big batch of black beans in a pot. She left the pot on the stove, and would briefly bring to a boil each morning and night, which eliminated the need for refrigeration. With each successive day she’d throw in a few things like green peppers, garlic, etc, and the beans also gradually broke down so the flavour just got better and better. So easy, so nutritious, super convenient…we in the developed world have forgotten so many techniques like this, to our detriment.
very much so. i used to cook a couple times a week. big expensive protein. fancy sauces, a bottle of wine, and a nice salad.
strangely, my gall bladder needed to be removed.
while I was waiting for the surgery - it was brown rice and vegetables and maybe a little chicken. now its just brown rice (takes 30 minutes on an induction plate, edible for 48 hours), kimchi, and a little bit of this and that (tinned fish, fried egg, chicken)
I haven't gotten bored of it after 2 years. takes me about 30 minutes a week for cooking and cleaning up. i'm much more fit and I just never have to worry about food anymore.
in the US we're in some kind of highly inconvenient, expensive, and unhealthy minimum. fortunately it wont take much to bump us out into someplace more sane.
I think I am misunderstanding something, how did you cut your cooking/cleaning up time down to 4 minutes a day? And, are you eating the same food every day now?
sorry, I just eat a little bit of something and cook rice once every 2 days. yes, I eat largely the same food every day. I assumed that would drive me insane, but I just don't mind it. started squeezing half an avocado into every bowl, and that has been a big upgrade.
Interesting, can you provide a source? I suspect you may be referring to calorie restricted and not nutrient deficient diets. The former may lead to a longer lifespan and a better health but the latter will lead to health issues or at least degrade your quality of life.
Do you mean that it was always on ? To prevent bacteria you need to keep it above 65c or so to prevent bacteria. Heating it up once a day does kill bacteria but does not remove the toxic byproducts of bacteria which is what actually makes you sick.
No, they bring it up to temperature once per day. This is common practice around the world and quite safe.
Every time they heat the pot, it sterilizes it. It takes bacteria a significant time to recolonize a sterile pot, and it starts from a sterile state. As long as you re-sterilize (re-heat) it regularly, the bacteria won't have to time to colonize it in a meaningful way.
The downsides of this practice are not safety but the texture of the food, since repeated heating over many days tends to break it down into mush. On the other hand, it is well-known to improve the flavor of some dishes.
If you're cooking well, almost everything is clean by the time you put food on a plate. If you immediately put leftovers away, the cleaning can be 100% done by the time you start eating
It's best to let hot foods cool a little bit before moving them to the refrigerator. They can be so hot that they'll warm up surrounding items, or in the freezer, you might end up actually thawing anything adjacent.
That really only matters if you’re putting quite a bit of food in the fridge/freezer. Think a large pot of stew. It’s more guidance for restaurants than people at home.
Most cooking shows or recipes make things too fancy. You can make many recipes with a pan, a spatula, a knife and cutting board. Prep, cook and clean in 10 minutes. Burgers, pasta with homemade sauce, chicken salad.
I can't even walk into mcdonalds and walk out with food that quick.
I agree. The complaint I don't have time seems like a very first world, and honestly very American, problem to have. There is batch prep, online food delivery, and simple one pot meals that can be either done in a slow cooker, or under 20 minutes.
Your suggestions sound nice if you're a foodie. But as someone with zero interest in cooking it's just horrible having to think about it in the evening.
I get it. One way you can speed things up is to have hot water on tap (either installed, or a cheap, separate hot water appliance) and then use it for dried items like miso soup packets or oatmeal. Then you can add items to it, like pre-chopped vegetables or fruit.
The time it takes to prepare the chopped veggies and fruit in advance is one thing, but think about the amount of time you are now saving for soups and breakfast items.
This is how I think about things like meal plan tacos and burritos. I spend twenty minutes preparing all the items in containers, pack them in the fridge, and then I have fresh veggie tacos and burritos for four days. All I do is microwave the tortillas.
The salsa and the beans will go bad before anything else, so I make sure to use those up in higher quantities than the other ingredients.
I also like to cook a huge pot of basmati rice, Spanish rice, and rice pilaf in advance, so I can make all sorts of dishes for about three days just by adding the other items listed above. When you get in the habit of this, you’re only really cooking for one hour every four days using the same pre-made ingredients. It’s a huge time saver, so it doesn’t feel like cooking at all.
'All' is a bit of a stretch. I have a relatively healthy diet, and food preparation time is a non-issue. If you're fine with simple dishes (like chopping up vegetables in a simple salad and eating them raw), it doesn't take more than 20 minutes per day total. Growing up poor in the middle of nowhere helps here.
If you have the disposable income, you can dispose of it as you please of course. But still, there are ways to get good food prepared quickly as well. All you need is a pantry stocked with the essentials and some basic knowledge.
Mostly the issue isn't necessarily time but giving into your cravings. Junk food is designed for that. People buy junk food because they like eating it and crave it. Even if the experience isn't great, the craving still drives them to eat it. Ever felt disappointed after eating at a burger chain? That's what happened. You craved something and the marketing triggered you enough to buy a burger or whatever. In the end the food is greasy, salty, not really hot, and doesn't have a whole lot of flavor. And you munch it down and forget about it.
And particularly when people have worked a long day and just want to stuff food into their mouths. For me, going to a supermarket at the end of a working day generally leads to really bad decision making. And I actually know how to cook some food.
A good way to get into cooking is to make your own junk food but do it better. This is super easy because most junk food is absolutely terrible. If you like burgers, get some meat and make some of your own. It's hard to do worse than good old McDonald's. That stuff is just really nasty. Use that as a benchmark and strive to do better. You can't fail.
Burgers are a great example because this is historically how people made the most of their cheap and off cuts of meat. So, again, great if you are on a budget.
I enjoy cooking but it's pretty silly to suggest everyone do it.
Beyond the time commitment there's also equipment and space concerns and also some people just aren't good at it.
it's not silly; you can't take ownership of your own health without having at least basic cooking skills.
the "time commitment" is just another BS excuse. there are plenty of recipes that can be prepped, cooked, and served in the time it takes to order and pickup takeout. there are tons of youtube videos on this exact topic. search "but faster".
the equipment and space concerns I'll give you. there are some people who literally don't own a functioning heat source. that's a non-starter.
but if, like most americans, you do have a functioning oven/stove, you can made a wide range of tasty and healthy meals by adding just a couple cheap items to your collection. to get started, you just need a knife, cutting surface, and a sheetpan. cut things up, add a light drizzle of oil, and roast them in the oven. takes a couple minutes of prep followed by 20-30 minutes of doing something else while it cooks. bonus: add a meat thermometer to safely cook meats. or alternatively, try all the same combinations of meats, starches, and vegetables in a skillet if you want to put in a little more active time to get a finished meal faster.
Cooking can take a lot of time, but there are some tricks to make it more efficient.
1) Buy a large freezer. Then you can cook larger amounts, divide them into small boxes, and freeze them. That means you can have a cooked meal every day, without having to cook every day, or having to eat the same meal two days in a row.
A large freezer also allows you to buy ingredients when they are cheap, without having to consume them immediately. Peel them, cut them, freeze them. Later, take them out of the freezer and put them into boling water.
2) Be selective about the recipes. Some of them require 2 hours of work. Some of them only require 30 minutes, and 20 minutes of that is literally waiting. You can decide to only do the latter. And the waiting time can be spent doing something else.
3) While you cook, you can listen to a podcast or an audio book. Download some good stuff to your smartphone, or buy a wireless headset. Cooking for 2 hours can be fun, if you simultaneously listen to Joe Rogan.
An alternative is having someone to talk to. This may depend on how your house is organized. Sometimes the kitchen is at the opposite side from the living room; sometimes the two are connected. In the latter case, you can chat with someone while cooking.
>I think what I really want is a work canteen, but open to the public
I think what I want is an ordinary, a set meal at a local tavern "ordained" at a time and price. I think restaurants evolved to serve a variety of dishes, where the ordinary (sometimes a bed and board place) served only one meal, but different meals on different days. I'd buy a subscription to a canteen style Bouchon, one meal a day, 30 different meals in a month, community table, water or BYOB.
By far the aspect of college life (USA) that I miss the most is this. The communal meal tables and optional community canteen subscription. I wish these kind of establishments were common across the USA.
Here in Spain this is a bit of a thing. You can get a three course meal for a fixed price of around 12 euro. Usually about 3-4 choices for each course that change each day. Pretty much every restaurant does this.
Problem is it's only for lunch time and eating the big meal of the day at lunch doesn't work for me :( I end up being hungry at night and having 2 big meals. Whereas a small lunch doesn't bother me.
> I think what I really want is a work canteen, but open to the public. The economies of scale could make this price competitive and there’s less delivery overhead than the meal prep subscriptions. I like the social aspect too. I would definitely pay a subscription to a canteen.
This would be amazing yes. I don't know why it's not a thing.
It's normal not to do your own books. To fix your own heater. To milk your own cow. In fact I don't even do my own laundry, because there's a shop around the corner that washes, dries and folds a whole bag for 10 bucks. Nobody frowns at that. But not wanting to cook is viewed as really weird.
I just really hate cooking and when I do I do it irritated and in a hurry so it turns out crap.
I have been doing meal prep sunday for a few years, I found several recipes that keep well in the freezer and heat up pretty well.
Also modern cooking styles like Air Fryers, and Water Bath (sous vide) can also help some with the timing. As these are often ways to cook with out having to actively monitor the cooking like you would using pans and skillets
On the weekend I will prep most of my meals even if I do not cook them right then, then through out the week I drop something in the sous vide, air fyer or if it already cooked the micro.
I’m lazy and try to minimize food preparation time, and I don’t find it difficult. I don’t know how you define healthy, but I often just fry some steak or piece of fish in the pan with a side of frozen ready-made pre-seasoned vegetables in the microwave. It takes like ten minutes. Or a curry using a good curry paste with coconut milk and vegetables and/or meat, optionally some rice from the rice cooker, doesn’t take more than 20 minutes actual preparation time.
(I've subscribed to Factor75 and am generally pleased with them)
Yes, the food seems a bit pricy... until I head out and eat at a restaurant. Its certainly more costly than raw ingredients and making it yourself - but in terms of "the cost vs eating out" it is rather competitive.
I'm also become a fan of Tovala ( https://www.tovala.com ). Their thing is that its a "smart toaster oven" which scans a barcode or QR code and can do a complex set of instructions at programmed times. The oven is substantially discounted, the menu is competitive with other prepared meals but its cooked rather than microwaved which provides a different set of food options. The preparation is "cut bag into aluminum tin" and "add sauce or seasoning". You then scan the QR code on the recipe and it does its thing for 15 to 20 minutes.
The primary advantage for me with both Factor and Tovala is that they have single serving sizes. Blue Apron appears to have added microwave meals to its menu... but its not quite the range of Factor and its non-microwave is still 2 or 4 with more meal prep than Tovala.
> I'm also become a fan of Tovala ( https://www.tovala.com ). Their thing is that its a "smart toaster oven" which scans a barcode or QR code and can do a complex set of instructions at programmed times.
Looks interesting, but for some unfathomable reason it requires WiFi access. So I assume it never disconnects and builds a giant database of everything you've ever cooked.
> So I assume it never disconnects and builds a giant database of everything you've ever cooked.
Possibly - and in today's world I'd even go with "probably." The "scan a UPC and get the 'how to cook'" needs some external access. I haven't decoded the QR code to determine if the recipe instructions is encoded in there, or if that's a lookup - I suspect its encoded rather than a lookup (and the QR code based meals appear to work without wifi).
The database, however, would only be useful/of the UPCs and raw ingredient based that you scan rather than the meal plan since with a meal subscription service, they've already got that data. And as a regular toaster oven, doing "bake 375°" isn't leaking any data about what you are eating.
I was huge fan of Factor but at least at the time (before the pandemic) their packaging was iffy and I'd often get a delivery where more than half of the meal trays where busted. I did Trifecta for a bit after, they've got robust packaging but the food wasn't nearly as good as Factor's.
Some (most) of this, I believe, is the issue of the delivery company.
As an anecdote, a few weeks ago, it was unseasonably warm (88°F at 8pm when I contacted Factor support) because the package hadn't been delivered yet. When it was delivered the next day (hadn't dropped below 80°F), and I opened it, the cold packs were completely depleted and I contacted support again and I was fully reimbursed for the meal. I haven't been disappointed by Factor, though I have been disappointed by the delivery company.
I have found an air fryer is good to prepare meat that's juicy and doesn't take much work/skill to get it right beyond learning temperature & timing (and a bit about seasoning). Wish I had more freezer space/room for a chest freezer. I really feel you on the time/energy thing, though. It's just too damn easy to click an app and check out instead of planning a meal.
The canteens you mention already exist... in Brazil. It's called almoço por kilo (lunch by the kilogram). It's essentially a buffet where they weigh your plate. Almost everyone seems to eat lunch at a place like that.
I wish they were more common in the USA. I guess there are some things that are close, but it's just not common.
Meal Prep and Cooking can be a huge time sink, but it doesn't need to be. At the most basic level a meal kit service will save you substantial time.
Or just get a list of recipes you like and stick to them. Sure less meal diversity, but you can optimize your meals. For me it's generic salad (Lettuce, Tomato, Cucumber, Dressing, Cheese, Seeds), Rice Dish (Chicken, Beef, etc + Frozen Veggies), Smoothies w/Frozen Veggie and Fruit, ..etc.
Yes, of course, if you're willing to trade your time into these things, you can generally end up with an output that is less expensive. The question, as always, is the amount of time required worth the trade?
> You'll save money and eat better.
The amount of my diet that is bread is so small that this really has no measurable impact on my life, and certainly wouldn't be worth the prep, cook and cleanup time required.
I just always dislike the suggestion that you have to become an "artisan chef" to be able to eat well at home. There are plenty of whole and locally made products at your local grocery that you can make great meals out of with very little time involved.
A bagged loaf of bread, some deli sliced meat and cheese, maybe some greens and you've got everything you need for great sandwiches all week that take less than 5 minutes to prepare and serve. You're not sacrificing anything by doing this.
You're right, becoming an artisan chef takes too much time for the average person. I never managed a sourdough, but I was surprised how easy it is to make simple French bread. 5-10min to prep the dough, another 5min over the next couple hours to manage the rising and baking process. Adding a little water in a tray below the bread in the over gives it a nice crust. It's actually ridiculously easy. Naan-like flatbread is really simple as well.
I agree. Tonight I went outside into the greenhouses, took a knife and cut a few leaves of different salad varieties. Went back to the kitchen to let them water a bit in the sink to remove a bit of dirt, dust and a few insects.
Took three minutes.
While the leaves were in the water I quickly did a bit of work for a client that I put off over the weekend but wanted to finish before the week started. Went back to the kitchen afterwards.
Washed the salad again, dry tumbled it, cut a tomato, put two slices of bread into the toaster and prepared the dressing from joghurt, olive oil and balsamic vinegar all bought directly from the producer. Crumbled a bit of feta over the salad, put the dressing over it and a bit of salt and had a very fresh and extremely tasty meal within less than ten minutes.
This was extremely fast food, while still matching the slow food philosophy. And I enjoyed it tremendously.
I know that this is pure luxury. Not everybody has a garden to grow their own food. And not everybody has a SO that infected them with the bug for heirloom varieties of vegetables and salads. And I also know that gardening isn't for everybody. To me it is relaxation as contrast to staring at a screen the whole day.
My SO also bakes bread but we have a great organic local bakery that we get our daily regular bread from. Baking is more for fun.
Not disputing any of this, but this has nothing to do with food security itself. All those cheap recipes still require grains and basic food stuffs whose supply are threatened. Whether you buy it locally or abroad, the supply is fungible enough to effect costs.
This isn't a counter point to organic agriculture but against idiotic policies.
Everybody who has even a passing knowledge of the subject knows that yields drop in the first few years. Especially when the necessary knowledge about local resistant varieties, supporting crops, natural ways to deal with pests were lost over the years.
Just reading the setup it was clear what would happen. It was like blindfolding a formula 1 driver and telling him to go full speed. The crash would not be a surprise. I would have been stunned had it worked.
Let me provide a more scientific counter point regarding yields comparing different types of agriculture [0].
No till farming (which isn't the same as organic farming), requires a lot of knowledge and experience. You can't just take people's synthetics away and expect them to immediately know how to improve their soil quality.
Over the short term, conventional farming will give you higher yields. Over the long term, no till farming will give you higher profits because you aren't depleting the soil and therefore won't need to move to a different location.
>lots of low quality carbs with cheap fat and artificial flavorings and not a whole lot of nutritional value.
> So, low quality industrial food products getting more expensive isn't necessarily a bad thing. It might prompt people to spend their money more wisely
Everything is getting more expensive, so people will focus even more on buying cheap.
My family bakes our own bread. The kids really don't like store-bought bread unless it's the super expensive stuff. We prepare all of our own meals. We use relatively generic flour that comes in 5 pound bags.
The main thing I've learned is:
Get over everything having to be as yummy as prepared food, unless you're willing to hire a psychologist and a chemist, and a cardiologist. You're paying for that stuff twice: First to consume it, second, to get rid of it in the gym.
Get over the need for infinite variety. My family has a number of meals that we can prepare quickly from whatever's in the fridge. Tofu or beans figure into nearly every meal.
Figure out shortcuts and substitutions.
No knowledge worker really works productively more than about 5 hours per day. It's not like the rest of someone's time is credibly all that valuable.
This reads like a bad attempt at comedy. There is fear of global starvation and you recommend baking your own bread and a more mindful lifestyle, even including the stereotype of poor people in poor countries living in harmony with nature.
Just to be clear: rising prices doesn't mean it gets more expensive to eat. It means it's getting more expensive to eat until it is expensive enough to no longer be affordable for some people to eat.
Yes, a lot of food is also wasted, and meat production is always wasteful. It is perfectly possible to envision a world where everyone is fed even under current conditions. But its delusional to believe this crisis will easily reshuffle everything and immediately lead to that outcome.
Hear hear! I bake once a week, sourdough is my white whale, I've never made a good one, the lean crusty breads need a good commercial oven to turn out a good crust. The home ovens (even with crazy modifications for steaming) don't do as well. Alas, if anything is most anti-adapted to time-saving automation it's cooking and baking. I can spend 8+ hrs a weekend (yes, that's right, 8+) for food prep or spend that on more technical endeavors. I think about that trade-off frequently. It's not the cost, it's because the alternative is terrible nutrition.
If you want a good crust, put a Dutch oven in your oven as it’s warming up, so that it also gets hot, then take it out, drop the dough into it (has to be low hydration to keep shape), cover with lid and put it back into oven. This will keep the steam inside the Dutch oven. In my experience, it actually makes it so crusty that I take it out of Dutch oven halfway to not overdo it.
Did this for a while but also wanted to do two loaves at once. I started baking on a steel plate and added a tray with water soaked lava rocks in the oven. It turns out pretty much the same as baking in the Dutch oven for me.
This is why you buy a second Dutch oven :-) maybe a slightly different size, so it’s convenient for eg smaller dishes, if your first is on the big side.
I agree with much of your sentiment but I don't think it actually addresses food security unless you're talking about stockpiling wheat to last through a bad year. Buying wheat flour instead of wheat bread doesn't help in case of a real wheat famine. The big processors orders will be filled first, and the market shelves will be empty. Whole product lines will disappear with consolidation. Many people were completely unable to buy flour during the grocery-shock of pandemic. I had to stop baking during the pandemic.
When food security is truly tested people are going to be in for a nasty surprise. If bread runs out, people will collectively buy out the whole aisle. Then the whole baking aisle, then the rest of grocery store. Then people start eating sawdust and leather.
> lots of low quality carbs with cheap fat and artificial flavorings and not a whole lot of nutritional value
I agree that highly processed foods are likely not an optimal diet, but this perspective is just pseudoscience. Macronutrients are macronutrients, and they don’t come in high and low quality versions. While something like eating too much sugar isn’t healthy, we don’t have a problem of food lacking sufficient nutritional value. The developed world has problems with overconsumption and sedentary lifestyles, but not with micronutrient or caloric deficiency.
Making food is not hard but to me it's boring as hell. I don't want to be spending an hour doing that (including cleanup) after a work day. Especially because I live alone. So no, I take the premade stuff.
The bigger players hedge all of this in the futures markets. I think this is an understated reason why smaller players struggle to compete in modern agriculture. Maybe a cool startup idea? Managing agricultural hedging for owner operators?
Interesting idea! Reminds me of a podcast I was listening to:
>...if we want to understand the economic geography and political paths and political stability of a country, we need to understand what commodities they started out with. What this led me to do, and how I got started on the path of studying war, actually, is by realizing that some commodities are just hugely volatile in price for various circumstances, and some are not.
>So, if we wanted to understand long-term paths of development and why some places weren’t prosperous, it’s because they lost the commodity lottery, and they got a volatile commodity rather than a stable one.
When I heard this, I immediately thought: "Why don't countries selling volatile commodities just hedge?" I wonder if "commodity hedging for the masses" could be one of those things like mobile money which has a transformative effect on the global poor.
(Of course, you could also imagine the government of a country that exports something volatile hedge that commodity and buy the production of its people in lean times in order to keep things stable)
> the current climate allows price increases and thus an increase in margins.
I just want to point out and emphasize that this is literally saying "companies can raise prices right now because they feel like it." This is not how a "free market" is supposed to work.
Right. And that "when" is actually "always, eventually," because free markets create concentration of wealth (in practice, not in theory, which implies the theory isn't all that useful). So, you might as well modify this to "free markets never work in the long run."
Maybe they will also go organic and stop being tied to big food though. That would be a good thing. This system sounds really skewed and the farmers will always get the short end of the stick until they get out of it.
“The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways.” — John F. Kennedy.
I don't think he was, at least based on what he actually did in life.
He only barely beat Nixon in 1960, caused Cuban crisis through his own making by bad defense policy in the middle east, gridlocked congress.
His people turned him into a legend after he was killed.
LBJ did the real work in implementing the ideas JFK wanted (but couldn't implement). Yes JFK's death may have made some of this more possible but how much can you credit someone for dying when it wasn't even for a particular cause (other than anticommunism maybe).
You may be able to tell I've read too much Robert Caro.
Meat packing is a natural oligopoly, which could be disrupted any time by someone with enough bucks to do it. That's capitalism. Either live with the parasites or be ok with more intervention.
At the same time, however, prices for the end consumer are rising because, on the one hand, the processing companies themselves have higher energy costs, but on the other hand (without passing them on to the producers) the current climate allows price increases and thus an increase in margins. So the consumer and the farmer lose out. Only the processor, its shareholders and retailers benefit (at least in the short term). And the speculators who bet on rising prices.
Many conventional farmers see their livelihoods threatened. Which further endangers food security in the long term.