1. Cheap; yeah, pasta is cheap either way, but real cheese (at least the sort that'd actually be decent in mac and cheese) often ain't
2. Non-perishable; this means we could buy in bulk and not have to worry so much about shelf life, further amplifying Aspect #1
3. Quick; if you just came home from a long day at work, you're not likely to have the energy to prepare some elaborate home-cooked meal every night, so the trusty 'ol blue box it is
4. Easy; one of the first things I learned how to cook when I was growing up was packaged mac and cheese (be it Kraft or some generic brand) - all the ingredients except for water (and, optionally, milk/butter) are right there in the box
These four aspects are applicable for a lot of prepackaged food here in the US. Even if you do add other ingredients (milk/butter to Kraft Dinner, ground beef to Hamburger Helper, etc.), having most of it already ready to go - and cheaply at that - is a godsend for any working class family. And sure, this didn't mean we always ate the prepackaged stuff (my stepmom and stepdad both happened to enjoy cooking from scratch on various occasions, and sometimes it is indeed cheaper to go scratch-made than prepackaged), but it was indeed a staple.
Mac&cheese is quick. Even from raw ingredients.
Maybe this is cultural, but growing up in Europe with a single-mom who worked 2 jobs ... we had homecooked meals only. Store-bought pre-packaged stuff was too expensive and unhealthy.
Takes about 20min to cook a nice weekday meal based on whatever's in the fridge. You pack the fridge on weekends.
I think there’s a clear pattern of food cultures being hollowed out over time. It’s great if your parents know how to cook well and you can learn from them, but eventually that chain breaks when a child would rather buy their food than learn to cook it. Making things from scratch is hard and time-consuming if you don’t know how to cook. At that point store-bought meals are sometimes the best remaining option.
The United States gets a lot of flack for being the first country to encounter a lot of issues because we were the first to widely industrialize food, but this will happen everywhere.
Many people don't realize how easy cooking staples can be and are intimidated, or lack the interest to figure it out. That likely correlates strongly to the lifestyle they were raised in. Also, most folks' psyches seem tightly coupled to the foods they were exposed to at a young age. If someone was raised eating Kraft, that's naturally what they'll think of as mac and cheese, and they may never revisit that association as an adult.
Scratch / improvised cooking is a skill that takes practice to be good at. Personally, I enjoy it as a hobby. My mom cooked a lot, but made very bland food. I regularly pick out a random food I enjoyed from childhood, then figure out how to make it authentically. Last month I figured out perogies (I cheated on the mashed potatoes). Last week I made a delicious seared lamb with fennel and tomatoes (I've been watching a lot of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares lately). Over the last two years I've optimized my sourdough technique to the point that it's boring (although I still wish I could get a more sour flavor!) I learned how to make proper wood fired pizza in Italy before COVID, and I'm still enjoying optimizing that at home, and starting to experiment with sicilian style.
It takes half that to prepare it from a box. And most of that time is waiting (either for the water to boil or for the pasta to cook).
And further, you know what you're getting with the blue box. Less risk of messing up, and less painful if you do somehow catastrophically mess up.
aside from that, I think there must be some regional price differences here. a box of annie's mac and cheese is like $1.50, which goes down if you buy in bulk. if you're fancy you can add a pad of butter and/or some whole milk, but otherwise that's $1.50 to feed two people. an 8oz block of cheddar cheese is already $2 at target, and you still have to buy the pasta, milk etc.
mac and cheese is a surprisingly expensive food to cook at home though. I could definitely make a rice and beans for less money.
Well there's your problem! A portion of cheese is 1oz :D
That's 880 calories for $2. Pretty good imo
(1) as other commenters have mentioned, these products tend to be remarkably cheap in money (~$0.50/serving) and are shelf-stable
(2) the USA has a rather poor culture around food preparation, in my experience--especially in poor households. When money and especially time/effort are in short supply, boxed meals (or fast food, etc) are absolutely essential, especially when juggling multiple jobs/kids/whatnot. Shelf-stable is an added bonus, allowing these to be stockpiled when on sale. Further, boxed mac (or canned soup, etc) are things that can be trusted to a child to make while unsupervised: again, a huge force-multiplier for busy households (parent taking kid 1 to sport, kid 2 alone at home, or kids 1&2 home alone while parent at work, etc)
Even when time and other resources are available, many Americans simply aren't very interested in preparing their own food, especially not if they're a single-person household. After a day of work, with nobody to share the bounty of cooking with, it's difficult to argue putting the time/effort/creativity into a meal vs. 15 mins over the stove with some premade stuff.
I say all this as someone who adores cooking, and finds it remarkably good stress-relief. I have a partner I can share dishes (and responsibility) with, and we love a variety of cuisines and being capable of making our own healthy food--but even so we also both love being able to make boxed mac for lunch every now and again. It's simple, and a hell of a lot cheaper than eating out.
You don't need to monitor the progress of boiling, you just pre-set the timer. The food comes out perfectly cooked and ready to eat.
In the recipe I described above, you can cook everything in one pot - just add olive oil and the chicken in the bottom - it is not even necessary to cut up the chicken.
I am a bachelor and cook almost 100% of my meals using a pressure cooker now. I rarely order takeout, it is so convenient.
I own one, I use it all the time. This is false. I have to remove the seal, disassemble a valve and remove some components. A pot for mac and cheese just gets tossed in the dishwasher.
This is especially false when you want to grate cheese (now I have to clean a cheese grater).
Electric pressure cookers do not reduce the cleanup or prep at all. It replaces one pot, everything else is the same.
Compare this to boil water, dump in a box contents, wait a few minutes. Clean ONE pot and ONE spoon.
Every oven/cooktop I have ever used has a timer.
My oven and range do not have a timer. It's beautifully simple. Also, I buy grated cheese to avoid cleanup. That's one of my extragavances.
> Wash after each use with hot water and mild dish soap and allow to air dry, or place in top rack of dishwasher.
> Remove all parts from lid before dishwashing.
> With steam release valve and anti-block shield removed, clean interior of steam release pipe to prevent clogging.
I also had to buy extra seals so my beef barley soup doesn't taste like chili.
1. Add noodles
2. Fill to line with water
3. Microwave for 2:30
4. Stir
5. Microwave for 2:00
6. Stir in cheese powder + liquid (butter, milk, or water, in my order of preference)
7. Serve
Only one bowl to clean.
I'm the main mealmaker in my family. I generally like cooking, but I get tired of doing it every day. Processed stuff like Rice-A-Roni or Kraft Mac & Cheese, or frozen pizza takes single minutes of my time and only the most minimal effort and will generally be eaten without complaint.
As for cost, these items are pretty cheap averaging $1 or $2 per meal for three people. Maybe add some meat for another $2. That said, ISTR that Americans pay proportionally less of their income for food than anywhere else in the world, so food, processed or not is fairly inexpensive.
Yeah, I know there are other cheap, fast meals I can make starting from raw ingredients: I'm a fairly good cook. However, as I mentioned above, sometimes I simply don't feel like it.
I love to cook and bake, though I have the luxury of doing it when I want to. (My wife usually does most of it). I can make a batch of bread dough for three baguettes in under three minutes. Letting it rise takes no time, though it does require some foresight. Baking is only a few extra minutes of additional effort. I think I calculated that one baguette costs me about $0.17 of ingredients, almost all going toward flour, which I buy in bulk. It's also delicious - frankly, much better than anything I've bought anywhere else except for the boulangeries in France.
I learned to bake bread as a child in my mother's kitchen, equipped with all these amenities. I made some fantastic bread.
I tried it again as a young adult in a small apartment with no dishwasher, a tiny sink, mixing the bread entirely by hand, kneading it on the one corner of a counter not occupied by the microwave, then hand-washing the mixing bowl in a sink with a non-spray faucet while the dough rose before baking it in a cheap oven from 1992.
My apartment was not shitty. Many American adults are currently raising their children in equivalent apartments... more bedrooms, no significant kitchen space, no tools.
A kitchenaid mixer is 1/4 of a month's rent for most.
"Three baguettes in under three minutes" ignores every externality involved in the process.
[0] http://www.dingostick.com/2017/10/recipe-french-bread.html
Also, cost probably is a factor. Even Annie's, which is more of a "premium" brand, can be had for around 1$ US per box, which could feed two people or so as part of a meal.
AFAIK, the cheese I'm using doesn't have anything particularly special (some cheap hard cheddar). I don't even grate it, just chop it up a little before adding it to the water.
Edit: actually béchamel had some milk also, but yeah
My SO has a delicious home-made mac and cheese. It was really hard to find the cheese at Safeway; there were nights I check multiple Safeways. It is just white American. (But not "American" cheese, which is yellow, and has a completely different taste.)
As another commenter mentions, you need the right cheese, as it needs to melt correctly. My understanding is that this is the presence of emulsifiers that cause the cheese to melt correctly, which white American has. My understanding is that, actually, cheese does not, and white American is technically called "cheese product" because it is has emulsifiers mixed it. (So it's not technically cheese anymore.)
(Which is weird, because my understanding for parm in other recipes is opposite: that the cheap parm often doesn't melt correctly b/c it is usually adulterated with cellulose (e.g., wood pulp / plant matter). So I might not have this completely correct. But then, wood pulp is likely also not an emulsifier.)
(We also sometimes cut it with ham, and that is also surprisingly out of stock often. (The small sized ones; I can't use a giant/full sized ham as it would rot.))
> From there you can add chicken and fresh herbs.
Due to the car-centric nature of the US, where it is really common to be over 2km from a market, and a trip to the market requires a) driving there, b) parking, c) driving back, the average USian visits the supermarket less frequently than people in other countries because it's more time and resource intensive. This results in larger trips (shopping carts occur in 100% of markets, and also Costco is a thing) and more processed foods with preservatives due to increased time between trips requiring longer shelf life.
Fresh herbs, unprocessed cheese, non-shitty bread, et c - these are way more common in societies that visit the store every 48h (or sometimes even every 24h if there's a bakery on the corner of your block that you pass on foot every day) as opposed to the USA where you might only go to the market every 5-14 days.
Just one more way in which the religion- and racism-motivated US shift to single family detached homes and suburbs cratered the population density and took neighborhoods, sidewalks/walking, camaraderie, local exploration, and fresh groceries along with it as collateral damage.
I don't think that you and I are talking about the same things when we say "unprocessed cheese" or "non-shitty bread". Wal-mart has, in the scheme of cheese and bread available on earth, an absolutely abysmal selection - this remains so even when compared against the US more widely.
Part of this is Wal-mart's focus on a very limited number of suppliers that have many different brands/logos.
Even the mozzarella balls in brine sold in the "fancy" grocery stores are full of adulterants and other things you'd never find in quality cheese. The "fresh" bread from the bakery is lower in preservatives than the bagged stuff, but is nowhere near "good". The worst bakery in any major city in Europe has bread an order of magnitude better than any chain grocery store's "fresh bread" bakery section. (That's not nationalism: you can pick any of a dozen countries to compare.)
...and in many places in the US, that's the only/best available within a 20-30 minute drive. Food deserts (another growing problem) are even worse.
US grocery stores are very bright and shiny and have many different brands available, but the hidden structure is that almost all of those widely available come from a vanishingly small number of conglomerated suppliers, oftentimes using processes or ingredients that are banned in other countries on safety and health concerns. Even the "quality" (aka fancily packaged, more expensive) stuff comes from the same conglomerates and suffers the same problems.
My local grocery store has hundreds of small local brands that are absolutely not a front for some conglomerate. There isn't some secret that only European bakers and cheesemakers know; American bakers can and do bake the same breads and American cheesemakers make the same cheeses, etc.
[1] https://sci-hub.do/10.1111/obr.13126 Figure 1.
Many of my friends growing up had parents working multiple jobs or long hours, who wouldn’t have the time or energy to do this. I had one friend whose single mother wouldn’t come home until 10 PM, so he prepared pre-packaged meals for dinner every night.
If you compare the costs, it’s ~$2-4 per meal in a box, compared to $20-30 to get all the ingredients for meal preparation. Many Americans simply don’t have this amount of cash, and food stamp programs are insufficient in allowing for healthy eating habits.
With the rise of Walmart and Dollar General across America, prepackaged meals seem to be a dominant meal option (I don’t have any data on this, this is just from comparing shopping carts at Walmart vs Whole Foods).
A meal there is about twice as expensive as a traditional meal at a traditional restaurant.
> Note: I am from Ukraine.
Time is a short, I just want something quick to make that's got a decent protein content.
Same reason we don't all run OpenWRT on our home routers - yes, it's objectively better and possibly cheaper but most of us don't have the time to prepare the meals ALL the time.
For us, the kids prefer it (even over homemade), and once a week we let them make it themselves for lunch. Done and done.
I grew up eating mac & cheese and didn't even realize it was just elbow noodles and cheese sauce.
From there you can add chicken and fresh herbs.
If you have a modern electric pressure cooker these kind of things are super simple to make, and with glass tupperware you can store and eat it over the next several days.
Or am I missing something - are these branded products somehow cheaper than these recipes?
Note: I am from Ukraine.