I don't know. You make it sound as if it were difficult to cook these staples. During my college years these were the easiest things to cook, along with pasta and tomato sauce. Basically it was just a matter of filling the pot with water, dropping the ingredients and then just wait.
Similarly with tomato sauce, add the ingredients in a pot and just wait.
One cannot merely put the ingredients of tomato sauce into a pot, heat it in some arbitrary way, and expect the result to be recognizable as tomato sauce.
That's literally the description of a famous tomato sauce[1]. You can add a cup or two of water and a pound of pasta to the same pot at some indeterminate time towards the end of the process.
Feel free to argue that arbitrarily heating it may involve burning it. Whatever. Pasta with tomato sauce is ridiculously easy.
[1] https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015178-marcella-hazans-...
I don't mean this to be a larger statement on the economics / logistics / choices / what have you of being in poverty.
1-Slice 3 to 5 tomatoes
2-Slice 1 to 2 portobello mushrooms.
3-Add olive oil to pan
4-Add ingredients to pan
5-Add salt to your liking.
6-Cover pan
7-Let it cook in a slow fire, no need to stir. Usually takes around 20 to 30 minutes. You can stir at the end to mix the sauce a bit.
-Use this sauce to top your pasta (pasta al dente is the best). Also add some Feta cheese.
Delicious.
p.s. I guess it would be more correct to call it chunky tomato sauce.
As for "failure modes" you can make things more consistent by boiling the water in a kettle before adding it to the rice. You really can't go wrong this way.
But yeah, I agree with the actual points you’re making. I also think a lot of people in the US literally don’t know how to cook.
I've had college graduate friends who didn't know how to make a basic (what we've got on-hand) stir fry.
Depends on how the 3 year old was raised. I'm in my 30's, along with my brother, and my parents fed us what they ate. My mother cooked most of the week and weekends we would do takeout or the occasional restaurant visit. We were given portions from our parents meal and sometimes an extra side or appetizer. When old enough I got to pick my own meal which was never a kids meal of junk like mac n cheese or hot dogs. I wanted the good stuff like rack of lamb, steamed lobster with drawn butter, prime rib medium rare, fresh mashed potatoes, whole vegetables, etc. The good things my parents ate and shared with us. Sure there was junk food around, but it was kept to a minimum. The friends who became obese had parents who let them drink soda while feeding them deep fried frozen chicken, boxed mac n cheese, and a cupboard full of cookies, candies and other fattening snacks. Some are still morbidly obese to this day.
Personally, I'm not even trying to deceive myself any longer - to me, fast food usually does taste better than most regular food. Based on taste alone, I'd much prefer to go to McDonalds than a typical restaurant. I don't do that because of a conscious choice based on health concerns.
Also, cut out as much added sugar from your diet as possible. No sweet coffee, tea, drinks, soda pop, fruit juice and of course confectioneries and other sweet treats and candies. I was somewhat overweight because I liked eating too much good food along with sugar. Now I'm lean and thin after a year of slowly cutting out sugar. If I have any sugar it comes from fresh fruit. This also had the side effect of lowering my intake and craving of other carbs like breads from greasy sandwiches and pizza. I also feel less hungry and east less as sugar and carbs cause you to overeat.
As to cooking beans, I do it all the time, and it's easy. Buy a couple of one-pound packs, sort for stones, dump in a pot with excess water, bring to boil, cook a pre-set time, dump into a collendar to drain off the excess, let set a bit to cool. Put in two zip-lock bags and put one in the refrigerator, one in the freezer, wash the collendar. A child could do it. Yeah, it takes time, but it's not like you have to sit there watching the pot the whole time you are cooking it. And you have beans for a week.
Your argument about marketing is more to the point.
2) Taste. To us adults (and mostly upper-middle class adults to boot) on HN, rice and beans may sound more appealing than cheap mac and cheese with mystery meat. Take a poll of 3-year-olds and you may get a different result.
3) Ease. Staples like rice and beans are only really cheap when you're buying them in dry form, bulk. This means you need to season them and cook them, which can be a long process. (My wife and I recently tried to save on black beans by cooking ourselves rather than buying canned. The result was good, but by the time you chop onions for seasoning, add other ingredients, monitor the beans, drain and cool the beans, and wash the crock pot, cutting board, knife, various spoons and measuring implements, etc., well, it ends up being a lot of work.) If you're a single parent working two jobs to support your kids, 5 minutes of preparation is meaningfully better than even, say, 20 minutes of preparation.