Junk Food IS Cheaper Than Buying Healthy Meals
Many health conscious people have suggested that it is cheaper to buy healthy foods than junk food because a head of lettuce costs less than a bag of chips. This article recently compared “an average meal” at McDonald’s to a meal of beans and rice with onions and peppers. Aside from the fact that I hate onions and peppers, let me tell you something—poor people are buying things like macaroni and cheese for 44 cents. These are high in calories while being low in price, filling up your family when all you have is ten bucks to eat on for the entire week. I know this because it’s what my sisters and I did grow up on.
Fast food was a treat for us, not a daily item like it is today. But with the costs of food today and inflation in general compared with the lack of pay raises—indeed, the lack of jobs altogether—I would argue that it is actually cheaper to eat out. This supposed average meal is not what a poor person’s meal looks like! Buying expensive combo meals with sodas is not how the poor purchase food at McDonald’s. If you even suggest that, then you have no idea what it feels like to have to choose between gas and food like my parents always had to do.
Poor people get food items off the dollar menu—usually one or two items per person—and skip the expensive soda. They drink water or kool-aid at home, where they bring their meals, or they ask for a water at the restaurant if they eat there. They also ask for tons of ketchup packets and other condiments to keep at home. You know what else they do? They use public bathrooms as much as possible while out to help reduce water costs at home, too. I know these tricks; you obviously do not.
Cooking beans and rice also cost money. When your family of five includes two working parents who do not get home until five or six o’clock at night, soaking beans and taking the time to cook is not an option when there are still baths to be given, homework to be done, and chores to be finished. I will acknowledge that the convenience part of this article is true, but not for the laziness that is implied. They are called working families for a reason.
As far as the food being addictive, well, I would agree with that; its own genetic makeup is filled with addictive substances. That said, I would also argue that countering that addictive quality could really be done with educating people early in school by including more nutrition classes and cooking lessons rather than shaming and book instruction. Teach children to cook early! Include them in making their own lunch at school. Sacrificing a history lesson each week or a science quiz in order to help them learn to prepare healthy foods—as well as how to grow and get said foods—would be much more meaningful to their lives.