Most people just don't like doing the shopping, cooking, and cleaning involved with daily meal preparation. Most people also don't like cleaning in general, and hate their commutes. Thinking of these as therapeutic tasks is as much a luxury of white collar life as unlimited access to maids and food delivery services is.

And the idea that you'd save time or money with proper knowledge of how to source and prep your own fruits and vegetables, or that time spent cleaning disappears because you consider it exercise, all seems like magical thinking to me.

As soon as you place a realistic dollar figure on the value of your time, for most of us, all of those calculations break down dramatically in favor of outsourcing most tasks related to food, cleaning, and transportation, not only as a matter of comfort, but also as a matter of economics.

It makes sense that it would work out this way, too. A single Uber driver with a single car can satisfy the transportation needs of a dozen people. An Instacart shopper can gather everything 3 families need in a single pass through the store. The driver can get those groceries to 3 homes in a single round trip instead of 3 separate round trips.

Outsourcing can seem wasteful and opulent, but in doing so you're often participating in a sharing economy or benefiting from economies of scale and division of labor that actually serve to reduce waste and inefficiency.

While say playing video games seems more enjoyable than taking out the trash that's a subjective assessment. And you can alter your subjective perceptions.

If you like cooking or cleaning or taking out the trash then by all means you should do those things. But, if you don't like doing those things then the threshold for when it makes sense to pay someone else to do them is lower than most would think.

A different take on their data is: Not doing things is becoming ignorant and in the short term ignorance of the negatives in life is bliss. In the longterm, not knowing how to do the things that are happening so you can survive is a larger stress for people. Consequently, people are happy when they are choosing to outsource, but it does not last and they choose to cycle back. The noveau rich outsource willingly and the other rich outsource more reluctantly as they are more familiar with the eventual costs of short term stress reduction.

However a big part of this is simply how much space your keeping up. An efficiency can be kept clean though habitat, a 1,000 acre estate takes a staff.

PS: That's not to say having groceries delivered is a bad idea, just maximum productivity is simply a wasteful goal.

2. I spend zero time at gas stations, washing the car, servicing it, warming it up, changing to winter tires, or cleaning the windshield off. I also spend zero time doing driveway snow removal in the winter.

3. I have to find parking with my own car.

4. I am more likely to use my feet as my primary mode of transportation. This means I am less likely to need to schedule separate exercise time. And I can still listen to music, news, or an audiobook.

5. Because it saves money, budgeting is a little easier (especially if you are poor) because you aren't as tight.

I still try to take public transit when I travel (Chicago is pretty good and Portland is OK when it goes close to where you want. Bay Area doesn't have enough tendrils to get you within a few miles of where you want to go unless you're in SF proper, and half my friends refuse to ride Muni even though it's totally fine compared to SMART busses in Detroit) but it's hard to convince most people that the train or the bus could ever be not disgusting and filled with people who exist to make your life miserable.

Uber style services is a market response to the problem of transportation, because public transit options have not grown form the market because the government is slow and outlaw most private public transportation.

I think these should be also included in the comparison.

It's like driving. Sure some people love the feel of the road or whatever. But I Uber everywhere and it's fantastic.

And it didn’t matter if they were rich or poor: People benefited from buying time regardless of where they fell on the income spectrum. (The authors note, though, that may not hold true for the poorest of the poor.)

Neither the NYTimes article or the research paper addresses debt. Nor does it address if punching yourself in the face increases or deceases happiness, nor if the lesser savings of someone who spends on a maid makes them miserable in 50 years time when they retire.

But caring about their working condition is a different problem on its own. (Still valid)

The data on this is pretty clear, economics has studied this for a long time.

And these people are poor because of several reasons among which is bad government, but not exclusively! The current "world order" (for lack of a better term) in regards to the economy ensures disadvantaged people remain disadvantaged, keeps people who are poor in poverty for the foreseeable future. We can't excuse that just because we like cheap shiny stuff to buy and because the richest among us want a few billions more, as if they don't have enough power on us already. And I'm getting off topic so I'll just stop here.

I mean, that's demonstrably false. When I lived in Bangladesh as a young child, GDP per capita was $250 per year in current dollars. Today it's about $1,500 per year. In my lifetime it's gone from about 6% of US GDP per capita to 10%.

I absolutely agree with the other poster that the "world order" does not keep countries poor. With a lot of exceptions, it's bad governments and bad value systems that keep people poor. In 1969, Korea's GDP per capita was also about $250 per year (about 5% of that of the US at the time). Today, it's $27,000 per year, or about half of that of the US. Nothing happened to Korea in 1969. Instead, they started getting their government in order (though it was something of an autocracy at first), implemented market reforms, and prosperity followed.

Note that it took Korea just 25 years to go from having 5% of US GDP per capita to having 33% of US GDP per capita. Meanwhile, in ~35 years Bangladesh has only gone from 5% to 10% of US GDP. Nobody is doing anything to Bangladesh to cause it to grow slower than Korea. It's not a victim of some proxy war like some countries. It's all about the quality of the government and the moral virtue of the people.

Most people use buy chocolate based on price and quality. That how it is in the real world, and that gone stay that way. Even fair trade chocolate can only give farmers a tiny bit more money and the economics of fair trade basically shows that it does not make a large difference and it makes no difference in the long run.

You can claim it is not ethical, fine, you don't have to participate and you can buy 'fair trade' products if it makes you feel better but in the real world this will never actual solve the problem of poverty. Poverty will be solved when poor people/nations evolve institutions that facilitate growth.

> The current "world order" (for lack of a better term) in regards to the economy ensures disadvantaged people remain disadvantaged

No it does not. A country that manages to establish effective government can turn itself into a middle to high income country within 30 years. Look at Vietnam, China, Botswana, Chile and so on.

In fact its the exact opposite. Never has it been so easy for a country to go from poverty to wealth. Most of the tech is already invented, you can simple jump over many generation of technical evolution. You can use your competitive advantage effectively because you have a huge market to sell to.

2. ???

3. Cocoa farmers make more money.

Does it really create more overall? At first it would seem obvious that it would, because there is now packaging for transporting the prepared food from the restaurant to my home. If I prepared the same meal at home that packaging would not be needed.

But, on the other hand, the restaurant does much more volume than I do. They will buy ingredients in bulk, whereas I'll buy them in much smaller packages. For a given total amount of an ingredient the restaurant will probably generate less garbage per serving than I do at home.

So the question then is does the savings in garbage per serving from the restaurant operating at high volume outweigh the garbage from packaging individual meals for take out?

My guess is that it might depend on what kind of food is being taken out. Food that is taken out in styrofoam containers probably has more impact than food taken out in paper bags.

Yes, much more, in my case. My transition from a standard American diet took a couple years, but is one of the biggest improvements I've made.

I get most of my fruits and vegetables through a CSA or the farmers market, which use much less packaging than any store or restaurant I've seen. The farms are within a couple hours' drive.

I get most of the rest -- mostly dry legumes, nuts, and spices -- from a bulk food store a couple blocks away, filling containers I bring with me. I also avoid packaged food, as I document in this blog post: http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging, which has improved the deliciousness, freshness, savings, convenience, and healthiness of my diet.

I compost and recycle so my landfill garbage gets emptied about twice a year, as shown in this video: http://joshuaspodek.com/leadership-environment-podcast-5.

One takeout meal produces months worth of garbage so in my case the difference is orders of magnitude.

And my homemade food is more delicious, convenient, cheaper, healthier, etc.

In London, restaurants all pile down to Smithfields, Spitalfields and Billingsgate markets at the crack of dawn for their day's ingredients - they don't go down to their local supermarket and walk around with a basket.

They fill up their crates with the stuff they buy and head back to their kitchens.

I get everything else you are saying, but how is homemade more convenient?

Convenience is the most important reason (for me) to do take out. Normally its picked up when already out on the way home, no time spent preparing/cooking, no time spent cleaning up (except the extremely bad part of throwing it all in trash)

Also, when meeting people, I have them over for lunch or dinner more than before learning to prepare food from scratch, business and personal, so meeting gets easier. And cheaper -- I save money cooking them and me dinner compared to eating out and just paying for me, though they usually bring something with them.

Plus it deepens the relationship faster to cook at home and share, so there's a convenience in shortening the get-to-know-each-other part of a relationship.

The picking it up takeout on the way home part is an inconvenience. As is dealing with paying for it. I pick up my CSA delivery once a week, but it's one of the highlights of the week. Seeing all the fresh fruits and vegetables, the anticipation, the creative challenge of figuring out how I'll combine and prepare them... I'd choose it over going to art galleries, movies, or many social things. In fact, I bring people with me to pick them up as a social event.

In summary, food becoming an enriching part of my life replaces a lot of time wasters. Healthier food means less exercise time and cost for the same fitness, etc.

Thanks for the reply. Do you by chance have a recipe list on your website somewhere for the meals you normally cook for the week?

This video -- http://joshuaspodek.com/20-minute-vegetable-stew -- shows how I do it. The video isn't supposed to be entertaining or glamorous, just showing how I make a half-dozen meals in about 20 minutes' preparation time.

People give the stews rave reviews. The same technique as in the video with different vegetables gives very different stews. Following the same process as different vegetables come in and out of season... I've never tasted the same result twice, but they're always delicious.

I hope it helps.

1. Phone for delivery, and they will say "45 minutes" (it will probably be here in 35).

2. Phone an order for me to pick up, and they will say "half an hour", and I'll go and get it, and it will probably take me 10 minutes to get there and back, again 35 minutes.

3. Take a small detour, and spend 10 minutes sitting at the food vendor (as in your example). How convenient this is depends on how big the detour is. If you are on foot, even a small detour can add quite a bit of time. If you are driving, parking up and walking between car and vendor is an oft-ignored time sink.

4. Spend 20 minutes preparing and cooking, then eat. Put the leftovers in the fridge or freezer.

5. Get something I made earlier in the week out of the fridge or freezer, put it in the microwave for 3-5 minutes, eat it. (Granted, the same is true if you over-order your takeout)

Options 1, 2, and 3 all rely on the vendor being open and not too busy at the time I decide I want the food.

If you only ever eat out or takeout, hire a cleaner, and have someone do all your laundry, you might be able to get away without doing any grocery shopping. In which case, adding such shopping to your weekly routine might add an extra hour. However, if you do already have to do that shopping, then spending an extra 20-30 minutes each week in the supermarket choosing vegetables is likely to be more convenient than stopping off at a food vendor each day.

Depending on the variety of food vendors available on your route home, and the size of their menus, you may be stuck eating pretty much the same thing every night, or having to take larger detours, or make special trips to get something different (negating the convenience). If you cook at home, then there may be a few dishes requiring exotic fresh ingredients that you can't have, but beyond that, the world is your oyster. You can get a lot of variety from basically the same stuff put together in different proportions.

For example, in many cases it is more environmentally friendly to use disposable paper coffee cups compared to ceramic cups, once the energy usage to produce and wash them is taken into account. See http://sustainability.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/Comparati...

I've just checked by washing my teacup.

I used 0.25 litre of water at 53 C. Incoming water temperature here is about 10 C so that means:

    0.25 kg * 4200 J.K-1.kg-1 * (53 - 10) K

  = 45 kJ = 0.045 MJ

This is off by a factor of several. For example coal fired power stations are maybe 45% efficient. Then you have to mine the coal, transport it to the power station etc etc.

> Hocking assumed a new, commercial dishwasher running on Canadian electricity, requiring about 0.18 MJ/cup-wash.

Nowhere in the article does it say, or even imply as far as i can see, that the energy cost included cost of mining and transporting coal (or oil or gas or solar energy) to the generator.

If that was the intention then it should have been made much clearer because it dramatically affects the results. Where I live (98% hydro) the total energy cost of the energy I use from the grid will be lower than, say the UK (mix of oil, gas, nuclear) simply because the raw material cost is eliminated.

If these details are omitted from the article then the information cannot be effectively used except in that one location in the world where it was written making it rather difficult to draw useful conclusions for or against the use of disposable cups.

The footnote at the bottom says that 1 MJ will raise 3 quarts of water to boiling and that is clearly the energy delivered not the energy consumed in the total process.

So perhaps the only conclusion to be drawn here is that ILEA Leaf carries some rather sloppy articles.

Note that this system is already how many catering services work. Except that in those cases, the caterer will also take away the containers themselves. (Personal catering—i.e. "an arrangement with someone who cooks to prepare meals for you and stock your fridge with them"—is a commonly-consumed service among both the upper class and the physically disabled. But oddly, outside of those two contexts, you just never hear about it.)

Buy your produce in re-usable or recyclable containers, or grow it yourself? We pick up produce from a local farm, they bring it to the pick up site in re-usable plastic bins, we pick it up using re-usable cloth bags. Eggs are in recyclable containers.

I don't know where you can buy Franks Red Hot in a re-usable package, but when you find out you'll let me know, right?

Yes my pasta comes wrapped in plastic and my vinegar in a plastic bottle like everyone else - but it doesn't compare to the waste of takeout and frozen dinners.

Can you buy a pocket full of rice? No, but why would you? Buy a huge bag at Costco and see how long that lasts. That is how you reduce waste per meal.

Even letting slide that moved goalpost, some things requiring packaging doesn't merit disparaging the idea of reducing packaging.

In my case, I stopped buying pasta and mostly replaced it with legumes, which I buy from the bulk food store with bags I bring with me, so I've achieved the same effect. As best I can tell, the legumes are healthier and taste delicious in my stews. Plus I've learned to make more foods in the process.

The clickbait title is designed to appeal to a set of people that are frustrated with life at this time. Either they have the money and are able to do these things or they don't and see it as something to strive for even though their toil might be for nothing .

The title has the opposite effect for people who don't believe that these actions will help them. I am not sure if this is intentional or not but it helps it to go viral. The article is so polarizing that people would want to repost it on their Facebook / Twitter or whatever and criticize it. Of course this has the side effect of spreading it to more people and thats the point.

Apart from Karma-based approach in Gita, you can also look towards the Service-based approach in Sikhism or the Non-Detachment in Buddhism. In Sikhism, service is an integral part of religion and every Sikh is expected to give at least some time to do voluntary service in Gurudwaras(Sikh Temples). This is mostly in the form of chores like cooking food, washing utensils, polishing the shoes of visitors etc. In India, you can find some of the richest Sikhs doing these chores in Gurudwaras.

Similarly in Buddhism, detachment of the self is an important aspect of living a life which involves restraining oneself, cultivating discipline and practicing mindfulness and meditation.

None of them have any details about pursuing happiness specifically.

I think it is true- but specifically when we limit happiness to very low forms of it (cheesecake, casual sex, meaningless gratifications, etc.)

That's not a small point - it's very true when we're talking about that, and I believe it is the type of happiness that is pursued with the most energy, most of the time.

However - if we re-frame happiness to some other definition, say the happiness one finds in keeping a home sanitary, or helping a friend, or building something useful, then I think it has the opposite effect. e.g. the happiness that comes from learning something new that improves the lives of you and those around you, is not the same as that which comes from getting drunk. Pursuing the first will not lead to sadness, but pursuing the latter will.

Not really, if you consider the time and effort needed to prepare a meal at home. Starting from shopping at a kitchen market, transporting the goods to home, cutting, prepping, the cooking and finally cleaning up afterwards...

Unless you have several hours of free time each day, preparing ones own meal is not something everyone looks forward to...

That leaves us wondering why economies of scale haven't beaten out your costs? A place like McDonalds should be able to buy food considerably cheaper than you can, hire people at a fraction of the cost of your time to prep for yourself, etc. While I understand why you may not want to eat McDonalds food constantly, from a price perspective you shouldn't be able to compete.

Have you forgotten some of your costs? It's easy to ignore the opportunity cost of owning the means of production, for instance, despite being a substantial cost, especially in high-cost cities. I have calculated in the past that simply having land allocated for the averaged-sized kitchen in SF costs about the same as a meal out at a nice restaurant 365 days a year, every year. That's even before getting into the cost of building the kitchen structure, furnishing it will the tools needed to prepare food, etc.

If you still believe that your methods are cheaper than a restaurant, what prevents it from working at scale to allow restaurants to offer food just as cheaply?

> I don't always have the time

This is an interesting statement. "I don't have time" means that you value doing one activity over another. If cooking isn't your top choice when faced with options, then perhaps you have undervalued your time spent in the kitchen when calculating your costs?

My setup costs are pretty much next to none, I pay a rent for fully furnished apartment with kitchen, pots and pans, tableware and everything included. Actually it would be a shame not to use them, those would be wasted expenses.

My cooking habits are opportunistic, if I'm at home, with no plans, I'll cook a meal and enjoy the process of doing so. A lot of the times I'm simply not home, so I don't even have the opportunity to cook.

Having explored some investment opportunities in the restaurant industry in the past, I don't see the markups being that large. Competition is fierce enough that there isn't a lot of room to go overboard with the margins. Even McDonalds makes the vast majority of their profits from being in the real-estate business[1], rather than the food business.

> Actually it would be a shame not to use them, those would be wasted expenses.

That I agree with, but the cost of the kitchen is still baked into your rent/utilities. You cannot simply ignore the cost because you happen to already be paying it. It is a very real cost that affects how much it costs to cook at home.

> A lot of the times I'm simply not home

Which, I would argue, is also a cost that should be considered as part of cooking at home. Time to get home, cost of travel to get home, giving up the opportunity of whatever else you may be doing, are all costs involved in cooking at home when you are away from home. And it seems that you have found eating out to be the cheaper option under these circumstances.

[1] http://blog.wallstreetsurvivor.com/2015/10/08/mcdonalds-beyo...

Maybe a lot of the traditional home cooking stuff isn't as good as what you'd get from takeout. A subtle form of inflation. For really cheap stuff the early blog posts of Jack Monroe are a good read; https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/02/jack-mo...

Home cooking benefits from amortisation. Cooking more servings is often only a little more labour, up to the size of your kitchen. You don't need to shop daily either.

I do my own cooking and it rarely takes more than half an hour of actual work, plus up to half an hour (longer for weekend roasts) of semi-unattended cooking time.

Do people really need to spend several hours a day cooking? I don't think so. Simpler meals, simpler prep, putting something in the oven and setting a timer. Totally doable in much less "active" time. Maybe people are just not spending enough time at home.

What sort of black beans are those? The ones I know aren't edible when raw.

But anyway, the are great fiber. Much more comfortable than grain fiber. But one must rinse them carefully after cooking, to reduce gassiness.

I feel somewhat masochistic even uttering this, but I really enjoy pulling weeds by hand.

Please, let me explain why!

I just bought my first house this past year with a lawn that the previous owners left in considerable disrepair.

Weeds... weeds... creeping clovers of all types... and more weeds.

But there was a good 75% grass cover, so it felt wrong to rip it all up and replace it with sod.

We have a dog, and our previous one passed of bladder cancer, so roundup or any other herbicides were completely out of the question.

So I sat on a milk crate, and started digging at the dandelions at first with a garden tool.

That worked well enough.

But I was ripping up a lot of the grass with each punch of the garden tool, so I tried to start ripping them out by hand... and by George by worked!

I was weeding my lawn twice as fast now because I was just grabbing and ripping with my bare hands instead of an awkward tool.

Smiling every time I got the root, and grimacing every time I did not!

I was losing less grass.

But my back hurt.

Sitting on that milk crate and hunching over really did not sit well with my back.

So I tried bending over.

And my back felt great!

A few days later, I noticed a strange pain in my hamstrings.

Lactic acid was building.

But I hadn't been running or cycling or doing any kind of workout recently... or had I?

Bending over and placing your hands to the ground is actually a great stretch that I always considered myself somewhat incapable of doing. And I never did it regularly.

Yet there I was, stretching for an hour a day, out in the open sun and breeze. Hanging out with my dog.

Admiring my progress as the pile of weeds I picked grew, and the ground I stood foot on looked more like a real lawn... I was in heaven.

I now find myself weeding my lawn first thing every morning, before even eating breakfast sometimes.

I'm absolutely loving it.

And I hated doing "yardwork" when I was younger.

Even the best takeout food is low quality. You can't trust the ingredients.

In a world that epitomizes heinous men like Columbus or Alexander, it comes as no surprise that a racist, kinky pervert like MK Gandhi is hailed as peacemaker...

His `ahimsa` nonsense benefited the British raaj more than the Indian subcontinent. Because of his stubborn refusal to support forceful eviction of the imperial forces, independence had been delayed by a decade. Thousands of young men had been killed. Their blood is on Gandhis hands. Not to mention, during WW2 he sent Indian forces to reinforce the ailing British army.

During the 1899 2nd Anglo-Boer war, Gandhi volunteered for the British army. He preached independence, except for Black people. He expressed his disdain for Black Africans, by frequently referring to them as "Kafirs".

In 1930, he raised Rs 1.32 Crores - a humongous sum in those days (even in present day India that's a substantial amount of money) for the Dalits of India. No records yet exist that a single penny of that fortune had been spent for the betterment of the people. Not very surprising for a failed lawyer, who tried his luck abroad and decided to work as legal counsel for a wealthy Muslim smuggler in South Africa charging hefty fees.

People extol his vow to celibacy... and forget to mention, that he would separate married women from their husbands, and lie with them naked. He'd advise the husbands to take a cold shower whenever they felt aroused, while he was lying naked with their nude wives in the same room. He'd even lie naked with nude teen/pre-teen girls. When in Bengal, used the Bengali Muslims as an excuse to sleep naked with his 18 yr old grand-niece. He was 77 then, arguing that muslims may kill them, they should remain in the state of purity in case death comes. So he forced his grand-niece to sleep naked with him.

Though there's no account of Gandhi ever having sexual relationship with any of these women. Lying naked with nude women was his way to demonstrate his resolve... the "vow of celibacy"... Of course, it should be easy to refrain from heterosexual romp with all the nude girls and ladies lying with him in the same room... someone who was decades later found to be a closet homosexual...

Imagine if Mahatma Gandhi was alive today, and indulged in the weird activities that he did...

1. I joined a CSA with a rule for myself not to let anything go to waste. That forced me to figure out how to prepare local, in-season fresh vegetables and fruit. The first year I did it, I had to steam a lot of vegetables and eat them with salt and pepper since I didn't know what I was doing. So, healthy but not delicious. The next year I knew what I was doing and learned to make things delicious. Now I can go to farmers markets and get local, in-season produce, which is cheapest, healthiest, and most flavorful. I barely ever go to markets any more.

2. I gave myself a rule to buy no packaged food for a week (no bags, boxes, bottles, rubber bands, stickers, etc). The challenge seemed hard at first, but I made it 2.5 weeks and by the end of it, my views on food changed. Packaged food became far less appetizing and more weird in a way I can't explain but you have to experience. Anyway, it forced me to buy almost exclusively fruits and vegetables.

Oh, third: I found a store near me that sells bulk foods, so legumes, nuts, oats, and a few other things I get there.

The short answer: force yourself to buy only fresh vegetables and fruits and you'll figure it out! You're not going to die. You'll only face a challenging transition.

For example, I really relax when I fill or empty the dishwasher - but I hate cleaning my flat - it's like wasted time for me - really thinking now about hiring a maid to clean it once a week.

I used to incorporate cleaning into my home workout routine as well. I knew I couldn't be the only one! A "rest" for me was sweeping the floor. Now I go to the gym because bodyweight isn't enough any more but I haven't found a good way to keep my floors clean because I hate doing that too.