I can't agree that healthy food is necessarily expensive from the perspective of someone in the US. Chicken breast is regularly 1.99 a pound and thighs even cheaper. Canned food is ridiculously cheap, and frozen vegetables don't go bad and are no worse than fresh ones.

> Chicken breast is regularly 1.99 a pound and thighs even cheaper.

Why are people trotting out chicken as an example of healthy food? It is anything but:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/15/poultry-farms-anti...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rNY7xKyGCQ

I don't mean to say you are wrong or I am right. But what do you suppose is a better healthier solution? Everyone growing their own food? Or everyone starving?

Obviously, no one food is healthy, note that I named a couple different "healthy" foods. Having a balanced diet is important. Nothing about your article seems to point to chicken being unhealthy to eat. I don't even know if you read the article.

> Why are people trotting out chicken as an example of healthy food?

Are you kidding me? If you're vegan, just come out and say it, or make an actual point. Part of my response was related to affordability, which is hard to beat when it comes to chicken as a source of protein. What healthy alternatives do you have?

I started watching the second link. Interesting stuff. Maybe chicken isn't the most healthy option, but I don't think it's evil.

> Nothing about your article seems to point to chicken being unhealthy to eat. I don't even know if you read the article.

How can getting antibiotic resistant E. coli from eating chicken be healthy?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/opinion/sunday/meat-antib...

> What healthy alternatives do you have?

Beans are pretty great.

> but I don't think it's evil.

People in Medieval Europe did not think that torturing animals to death for entertainment was evil. It is obviously evil to people in Europe today, just like breeding and enslaving animals in horrific conditions only to slaughter them for food is obviously evil if you take a moment to think about it.

It is healthy in comparison to the average thing people eat. It's hard to get obese eating just chicken breast (you will get full pretty quick). We aren't going to get everyone drinking kale smoothies.

Canned food is usually higher in sodium.

Sodium is only unhealthy if you happen to have hypertsenion.

Too much sodium can cause hypertension.

https://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/news/...

Unhealthy food is only cheaper if you can't be bothered to take 30 minutes to cook. It has been a long time, but the last time I went to McD's it was ~$5 for a meal. The expensive grocery store up the street sells chicken breast on a permanent sale for $1.99/pound.

If you're thinking the unhealthy food in the grocery store is cheap, that's also not true. Chips are $3-$5/bag while 3 pounds of onions is $2. I could go on.

I will be sure to immediately replace my bag of chips with a bag of onions?

Poor people are likely to be both cash-poor and time-poor: it's not a question of "being bothered". If you have the available time to fully consider, process, and follow this advice, then you may not realistically be poor at all.

And, if you did manage to follow this advice, you would likely still be poor - saving pennies on food is not any way out of poverty.

I was poor growing up. Both parents worked, a lot. My mom had tons of ways to quickly prepare ground beef or chicken into something that tasted good. When she had time she bought whole chickens and broken them down because it was cheaper. Maybe once/month she would buy a 2 liter of soda as a treat for my sister and me. So I've been there and done that.

And lets get off of this no time argument. Why do all these people with no time still have TVs? The average American watches ~5 hours of TV per day. Watch 4 hours instead and cook a healthier and cheaper meal.

"And lets get off of this no time argument. Why do all these people with no time still have TVs? The average American watches ~5 hours of TV per day. Watch 4 hours instead and cook a healthier and cheaper meal."

That's a complete non-sequitor. You're going to have to provide evidence that those who are poor are the ones watching tv so much, and don't have the time because they're working multiple jobs.

Yes, I recall my mother (single mother, high school education, in the rust belt of the Ohio Valley) saying to me, in between shifts of her 2nd and 3rd part time jobs, that she would love to spend 30 minutes cooking a delightful meal from scratch and then another 30 minutes eating followed by another 30 minutes cleaning up, but she just can't be bothered.

She kept the house stocked with canned soup and lunch meat because a 6 year old (me) and a 12 year old (my brother) could manage to make a meal out of it while she was working.

Sandwiches are dirt cheap, filling, nutritious, and quick to make and clean up. Sure, they aren't delightful, which is sad, but that's not the barrier to nutrition.

Wow, standards of delight have come up a lot in this country. I've probably had more delightful sandwiches than not

They can easily be bad for you if you use any kind of appealing (white) bread.

So this is what I had always assumed as well, but the science is less clear:

https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(17)...

The research done concluded that differences in Gut Microbiome meant that "The glycemic response to the two types of bread varies greatly across people".

More food for thought (Pun intended :p )

Switching from rye to white bread is a whole lot less bad for you than switching from water to soda. At some level we have to make a decision about what an acceptable level of "bad for you" is and I think white vs wheat is way below that line.

I have complete respect for single parents and how hard their job(s) are. It sounds like for your situation growing up that even 30 minutes would have been too much time to spend to make a meal.

I do think in the general case though, that people usually have 1/2 hour to cook if they wanted to. Are there going to be exceptions like yours? Absolutely.

Poor people often have less time as well, due to working multiple jobs, taking the bus, etc.

"Unhealthy food is only cheaper if you can't be bothered to take 30 minutes to cook"

Which, if you're working 2 jobs, you very well might not have.

"If you're thinking the unhealthy food in the grocery store is cheap, that's also not true."

Time is also a cost. So is the ability to store food.

I cook my own food from fresh vegetables, meat, etc. for about $10/day. It's not organic-branded, but I can't see how it's any less healthy, and it seems pretty inexpensive to me.