I just don't even understand how that works, even if you have enough income, how do you have enough space to like store all the trash for the week?

Don't you just get tired of restraunt food at some point?

In most cities there are usually many options for restaurants nearby and Uber Eats for anything further out. For everyone else there's McDonalds and friends: https://www.qsrmagazine.com/content/ranking-top-50-fast-food...

Besides asking for studies that may or may not be there, what was your experience with this? I hadn't heard of this before.

Not OP, but I've lost >100 lb. three separate times in my life, so I suppose I qualify.

It affects you in ways that are analogous to overindulging in adult entertainment.

You need higher peaks (e.g. more salt) and, in my experience at least, you gradually lose the ability to pick out subtle flavors.

You start to prefer food that you can scale as you see fit. Lots of rice. Lots of potatoes. Lots of popcorn.

They charge a fee if you do that in my county, and the "flat rate" is dependent on the size of your bin, as a proxy for how much trash you generate. If you have more trash than fits in your bin you have to buy stickers for the extra bags to pay for them to be picked up.

Where are you? I'm in the US

Garland TX, a suburb of Dallas, has a flat rate per bin, with free curbside large item/landscaping waste twice a month. Throw your old washing machine on the curb and move on with your life!

My mother in law, lives about 50 miles outside the DFW Metroplex and pays a flat rate based on the average of her trash usage. She rolls 2 bins up to the curb once a week. She can put more out and they will take it, but if she consistently puts out more trash, they will bill her extra when it comes time to renew every year. The guys on the trash truck keep a rolling tally of your "usage" and then the office works out who needs to pay more if the customer skews towards more usage than they signed up for.

I live in Europe now and moved here last year. I pay $12 PER PICKUP for residential trash here in the Netherlands. The catch? They pickup that bin ONCE every TWO MONTHS. If I want to throw more stuff away, I need to somehow transport all my trash to the local dump, pay a fee, and unload and sort it all myself.

On a more positive note though, recycling plastic is free. Some of my neighbors generate an entire large bag of plastic every day. My wife and I fill up one bag a week. Our "normal trash" bin is usually half full when it's time for pickup.

Pricing for waste is largely dependent on the municipality as well here in the Netherlands.

My household typically throws away 3 or 4 ten gallons bags per week leaving the bin maybe a quarter full. The neighbors across the street are constantly having food delivered and routinely fill two bins.

> Today, 82 percent of the meals Americans eat are prepared at home, a much higher percentage than a decade ago, according to research from NPD Group Inc. cited by Bloomberg.

Uncited comments on HN are frequently confidently incorrect, especially when they are descriptions of average American culture

Maybe if you're a highly paid SWE in California with endless takeout options you never cook but that's an absurd proposition for flyover country

https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/news/2018/9/americans-ar...

The vast majority of the people I see actually buying produce at the grocery store are older people and immigrants. Almost everyone else is buying the processed crap in the aisles.

This is the crux of the matter: we can only buy what is on our shelves. If we have to start looking at ingredients lists, I think we've already lost the plot. Why are these questionable things on our shelves in the first place? Likely because they're cheaper to make, or worse, there's some government subsidy involved. And I don't mean "questionable" as in plain junk food, because even then, we have to decipher labeling like chocolate vs "chocolate flavored candy". It can be hard to try to be reasonably healthy once you leave the the edge of the super market.

Here in Southern California there are plenty of food desserts that sit adjacent to immigrant enclaves that provide critical mass for amazing grocery stores with a wide variety of higher quality, cheap produce and a diverse collection of nutritious processed and ultraprocessed food simply because that's the stuff that their communities demand. Replacing such a supermarket with a McDonalds would never work within these communities because most families simply don't consider fast food an alternative to their existing diets. These are huge supermarkets that are often similar in size to Costco or Walmart stores (see Shun Fat, 99 Ranch, Zion Market, etc).

We could do with a little more culinary elitism among consumers in my opinion.

If you think American cuisine consists of massive chains; TGI Fridays, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Hooters, Texas Roadhouse, etc, then no wonder you don't think highly of American cusine. But if you branch out from there, there's a ton of food culture, and Southern California's a great place to experience it.

If people want to stay ignorant and economically and nutritionally disadvantaged it’s not something I pity. I can’t but help feeling disgusted and scornful toward people with these attitudes. Cave people made bread.

You can prepare and freeze meals.