The time involved in living healthy is not in the time it actually takes to make a meal (which is trivial, and can easily take less time than the round-trip to a fast food outlet.)

The real time it takes is in the time you need to learn a bunch of skills that make that possible. In an ideal world you learnt those skills at your mother's knee, but we are now 3 generations into "fast food" so it's probable that was missed.

It takes time, and effort, to regain those basics. From something as trivial as boiling water, to using a knife, to "knowing" how long things cook for. Then experience as to what ingredients go together (tomatoes love Basil, chocolate doesn't like garlic).

A skilled person can make a lovely pasta dish in minutes, an unskilled person has literally no idea.

My mother learnt to cook with minimal information (recipe books and magazines), my children can get a master-class in anything on YouTube.

We live in an age where we have access to any knowledge we want, and yet seem to be incapable of doing anything for ourselves.

"chocolate doesn't like garlic"

Mole (https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/223261/authentic-mole-sauc...) would like a word with you...

Why don’t we just teach that in schools? Instead of learning that the interior angles of triangles add up to 180 degrees maybe we could learn to cook healthy meals for ourselves?

They used to: "Home Economics"

BTW, not learning math can be very costly to your financial future.

My high school offered Home Ec. But my guidance counselor made me take Latin instead (I had already completely several years of French and didn’t need language credits). Probably a good thing - in hindsight, the home ec curriculum was pretty watered-down.

Isn't cooking classes quite common? Atleast I had that for two semesters. Mandatory.

A lot of places have abandoned that in favor of optimizing for STEM and the college rat race.

*aaS all the way down is the end result of a purely service economy. When we don't manufacture anything tangible, or develop skills of our own, it leads to reliance on 'specialists' to meet all our needs. The end result being a dependent, unskilled consumer culture... not quite as utopian as the MBAs made it sound. .

I learned those skills initially at my mother’s (and father’s) knee, but I have better access to good equipment, good ingredients, and information than they ever did when they raised me.

It’s easy to say we “seem to be incapable of doing anything ourselves” but home-cooked meals are still de rigueur for younger generations.

Recipe I described. You have to know how to chop an onion and mushrooms. How to break up a lump of ground beef.

That could be "learned" in 1/2 an hour if you don't want nice TV chef uniformity in the veggies.

That's another way. Fruit/veggie balance up to you. Add Spirulina powder or similar if you want.

Do you find the Vitamix ones reliable. I've run though a number of blenders from other companies and had them fail after a while. Usually the motor just stops working.

I know many people who use them. The only one that burned out did so after about 10 years of 3x per day use.

Also, the optional stainless container is a lot easier to clean than the plastic one that comes with it.

I've had various juicers and blenders in the past, the vitamix replaces all of them.

No, I am not shilling for vitamix. I'm just a satisfied customer.

TY for the recommendation thinking about doing this again, will look into it.

Time yes, but also “no lapses in self-discipline” is a factor as well.