Rod Dreher

Heads the Woman Wins, Tails the Man Loses

Junk Food Nation

By Rod Dreher • June 8, 2012, 3:00 PM

I can’t afford to eat better/fresher/healthier food!

So people say. But reader Jared passes on this graphic from NPR’s Planet Money team showing that Americans today are spending a lot less on groceries today — between 25 and 30 percent less — than we were 30 years ago. What’s more, we are spending twice as much on processed food and sweets today than we were back then.

Can’t afford it? Or don’t want to pay for it? Cut out the junk food and you probably can afford to buy a better quality meat, and more fresh vegetables. We aren’t helpless, you know.

Posted in Culture, Food.

29 Responses to Junk Food Nation

Church Lady says:

June 8, 2012 at 3:11 pm

Junk food is expensive. I live on brown rice, beans, whole grain breads, veggies, fish, and occasional organic chickens and grass-fed beef. I buy sacks of grain and grind my own flour for bread. It’s much cheaper overall than a junk food diet. And way healthier. In fact, it used to be that a poor person’s diet was way healthier than a rich person’s. It still is, if you avoid the processed junk food.
Nathaniel W says:

June 8, 2012 at 3:33 pm

Agreed. Junk food is outrageously expensive. The day I discovered that in our local grocery store a bag of Lay’s potato chips and a can of dip cost as much as a French goat cheese and a fresh whole wheat baguette was the day I realized that most people could not just eat healthily, but could actually enjoy some not-too-infrequent gourmet-quality treats if they just cut out the processed junk and got a little creative with their shopping and food prep.

Now I need to go work on that giant pot of porcini and spelt berry soup I’m throwing together for all of about $6.00.
Sam M says:

June 8, 2012 at 4:44 pm

I wonder if there is a comment in the queue right now arguing that it’s not the COST, it’s the CONVENIENCE. See, we are just to pressed for time, with all these single mothers.

Then I will point out that actually, a tossed salad takes less time to make than a Hot Pocket.

Then the counterargument will come that it’s not about TIME, it’s about KNOWLEDGE. People just don’t know how to make tossed salad and lentils. Nobody taught them.

Then I will say, well, actually, here are several dishes that anyone everyone knows how to make.

Silly Sam! It’s not that people don’t know how to make them, it’s that they can’t AFFORD such things.

Rinse. Repeat.
EliasInDallas says:

June 8, 2012 at 5:09 pm

Two things surprised me on those charts.

1st that the amount spent on Fruits and Veggies didn’t change. Interesting because apparently we are still buying as much veggies but I guess the processed foods must be counteracting it.

2nd that the price of peppers of all things has had the largest price increase. I love peppers but those Red Bell Peppers can break the bank at $1.50-$3.00 each!
Geoff Guth says:

June 8, 2012 at 5:35 pm

As I mentioned in a previous thread, I’m driving a truck now, and have found it’s immensely cheaper to buy healthy food in a grocery store than junk food in a truck stop. I keep a fridge and sharp knife and cutting board in the truck and routinely snack on broccoli, peppers, carrots and other raw veggies and keep sliced onion available for sandwiches.

I think what we’ve lost is even the most basic knowledge about how to prepare food, things like how to handle a knife. It’s probably a casualty of households with two working adults and lots of structured activities for kids, along with the convenience and pseudo-cheapness of fast food and microwave meals. Pretty much the only people I know who cook do so because it’s a hobby (as it is for me) rather than an integral part of everyday life.
JonF says:

June 8, 2012 at 5:39 pm

I have to agree here too. As long as your standards do not demand filet mignon, prime rib and fresh catch of the day, it’s fairly easy to eat cheap while minimizing chips and heavily processed foods.
Rod Dreher says:

June 8, 2012 at 5:47 pm

I think what we’ve lost is even the most basic knowledge about how to prepare food, things like how to handle a knife.

Geoff, you’re definitely on to something with that. I find it so odd that so many people I know don’t know how to cook, and act as if it’s some alien and difficult skill, like learning how to knit, or some unbelievable tiring thing, like polishing the silver. I am about as basic a cook as it is possible to be, and let me tell you, it’s really not hard at all. We had some fresh beans from the CSA come in yesterday. I looked in the pantry to see what I could cook them with. Found some garlic, some dried oregano, and bay leaves. In the fridge there were some grilled peppers left over from Sunday, and a fresh jalapeno. Also, we had some frozen mustard green leaves that needed to be used. I softened the garlic in olive oil, then threw in everything else, plus water and salt. An hour later, there was lunch, and dinner. Cheap. Easy. Delicious. And I made it up.

It’s not saumon en croute or anything, but it was fresh and tasty, and it cost very little.
argh says:

June 8, 2012 at 6:11 pm

Rod, the meal took you an hour, and you used some already cooked food with your raw ingredients.
Dave Dutcher says:

June 8, 2012 at 7:44 pm

No thanks.

I like having the convenience of canned or prepackaged foods waiting for me at home. I like to be able to have a meal in fifteen minutes and not one hour, because I can’t always predict the times I work. Sometimes they call me up and ask me to work a double, or I volunteer to work extra, or it’s a busy week and I work an evening, then a morning in quick succession.

I like them, and I don’t believe its bad to have them. I think it is dangerous to eat too much of them, but that’s more using food for comfort and habit than the type of food. I’m more utilitarian than sensual in my food consumption, I guess, but I’m fine as I am.
sdb says:

June 8, 2012 at 9:27 pm

It is sobering to track the cost of food relative to obesity rates. Go back to the 70′s and it was double what we pay now, and to the ’20′s and it was quadrupled. This is what a lot of people miss. It doesn’t matter if I get my calories from baguettes and goat cheese or chips and dip, if we eat more than we need we will store the excess as fat. Our bodies are biologically programmed to get all they can when they can, because in nature abundance is rare. We live in an age when calories are asymptotically approaching zero cost for consumers. We have a head start in the US, but everyone is getting fatter. Food scientist are making food more appealing and convenient.

Laments about “parents these days” are misplaced. If we were serious about dealing with over consumption, we would tax calories and make food more expensive (at least processed food).
elizabeth says:

June 8, 2012 at 9:28 pm

The argument has been shouted at me “BUT YOU ALREADY HAVE COOKING SKILLS!” as if any of us is born with them. They didn’t come from my mother, a Betty Crocker cook (brown hamburger, add can of cream soup). I learned them to save myself money.

Too many people have been scared off cooking by a combination of a lack of cooking in their home of origin and the food shows. A great book “An Everlasting Meal” talks about how to make simple great meals like people do in every culture. Rod’s example of getting fresh beans and going through the pantry and fridge is perfect. Start with something from the last meal and start adding. No waste, very economical, creative and yummy. Junk free.
Rod Dreher says:

June 8, 2012 at 9:55 pm

Rod, the meal took you an hour, and you used some already cooked food with your raw ingredients.

Yes, but about 56 minutes of that hour was beans simmering on the stove while I sat in my chair and blogged. I had a bowl of bean soup tonight for my dinner. It took about 30 seconds to get from the fridge into my bowl, and one minute in the microwave. I sliced a tomato to go with it while the soup was warming in the microwave.

The kids ate tonight some steak that I grilled on Sunday. We usually grill more than we need, and freeze it for use later in the week, or later, period. The idea is not to have to cook things from scratch at every mealtime. If you do things smartly, making things in larger quantities, and relying on your freezer, you can eat pretty well with minimal hassle. We have some fresh kidney beans from the garden too. I’m going to cook them tomorrow with some sausage I had frozen some time ago after I grilled it, just for an occasion like this. We’ll eat it for Sunday dinner. I’m going to have some time tomorrow to do this. Stews and soups are great in this way.

The point is, it can be done. You have to think creatively, though.

Somebody should write a thin book of very practical advice for how to cook simple healthy meals if you don’t know how to cook and are freaked out by it.
Sheree says:

June 8, 2012 at 10:20 pm

I’ve been saying for years that it’s less expensive to eat healthy than it is to eat junk, especially if you eat out several times a week at less-than-ideal restaurants.

Agree that people don’t think they have time or knowledge to prepare food at home. But it’s so easy.

I regularly blog about making various healthy dishes on the cheap. Those posts get the most page views on a sustained basis. I’m sure if I did more, I’d get even more hits.
Nathaniel W says:

June 8, 2012 at 11:07 pm

@sdb: The point you raise is a good one, but one that I think can be solved by cultivating better taste. If food is getting cheaper, we could either buy more food, or we could buy more expensive food. If I swap out the $4 goat cheese for the $10, I’ll be able to eat a lot less of it, but what I do eat will be more enjoyable. The problem is that so many people still take a utilitarian approach to food and want to get as much of it as they can with their dollar, even if they have more than they need. Many even go so far as to mock people who are willing to spend more money on an artisanal or gourmet product. Forcing yourself to cultivate a more refined taste gives you better health and more enjoyment. Go for an intense experience in small quantities, and cheap calories cease to be a problem.
David J. White says:

June 8, 2012 at 11:17 pm

Then I will point out that actually, a tossed salad takes less time to make than a Hot Pocket.

Sam, I’m sorry, but how on earth can you make a tossed salad in less time than it takes to make a Hot Pocket? I’ve done both, and I can microwave and scarf down more than one hot pocket in the time it would take me to make a salad. Actually, if it weren’t for those pre-made bags of salad I would never have eaten salad at all when I was single; in the past, when I’ve bought ingredients to make salad, I never managed to use them up before they started going bad. If I had $5 for every rotten half-head of lettuce I’ve tossed out, I might be able to pay off my car. I’m not defending Hot Pockets over salad, I’m just saying that heating something in the microwave does NOT take more time than something that involves lots of chopping. Unless your definition of “salad” is just shredded lettuce, which mine isn’t.

They didn’t come from my mother, a Betty Crocker cook (brown hamburger, add can of cream soup). I learned them to save myself money.

My mother turned to Betty Crocker when she was feeling ambitious. There was a lot of Hamburger Helper at our dinner table when I was growing up, as well as stuff frozen or out of a can. My mother did make a great meatloaf, though. And lots of jello molds.

My mother told me once that when she and my father were first married, she tried to be ambitious and creative in the kitchen. After awhile my father told her that, while he appreciated the fact that she was willing to go to the effort, she might as well not bother because he really preferred much more basic stuff — e.g., meatloaf and mashed potatoes — than she was making. So, that was the end of my mother wanted to make much of an effort in the kitchen.

When I started living alone I would use some of my mother’s recipes and tweak them a bit. For example, to the browned hamburger mixed with a can of chili, I would add a couple handfuls of crushed Fritos. Yum!

I agree that claims of lack of time, skill and knowledge can often be simply an excuse. But I think there is another reason: if you are used to eating processed food, with all its fat and salt, real made-from-scratch food simply doesn’t taste good at first; you actually have to work to acquire a taste for it. And I think that’s what a lot of people are unwilling to make the effort to do.
Erin Manning says:

June 8, 2012 at 11:51 pm

I went grocery shopping earlier this evening. Because we have a birthday next week–my youngest daughter’s–I “splurged” on a few packaged food items I don’t normally buy. Since I have the receipt right here, I’d like to do a little comparison of some “packaged” costs vs. some “real food” costs, from the store where I usually shop:

Toaster pastries: $1.99 (8 count)
One dozen eggs: $2.79

Packaged mac ‘n cheese: $.64 each, or $1.28 for the two I bought
Two whole sweet peppers, one red, one green: $2.48

One jar of pizza sauce: $1.22
8 ounces of fresh, whole mushrooms: $1.49

I did look at some peaches, on “sale” for fifty cents each, but it didn’t seem worth the price for smallish and indifferent-looking peaches, so I passed them by.

Are food costs just ridiculously high in North Texas? Or do those studies that say that “packaged foods” cost more include eggs in packages and mushrooms in little wrapped trays (not that they’d have been any cheaper if they were loose in a bin)? The peppers *were* loose in a bin, and cost $0.89 for the green and $1.59 for the red. And the last time my husband bought apples from the “good” grocery store (Central Market), they were $2.49 a pound (as was just about every other produce item he bought there). It’s easy to spend eight or nine dollars on half a dozen apples that way…
Rod Dreher says:

June 9, 2012 at 12:45 am

You’ll never find (non-green) peppers at a reasonable price. And I find that bell peppers are so flavorless they’re not worth buying at any price.

Apples at CM or Whole Foods are crazy expensive. We buy them because they’re the only fruit or vegetable our oldest son, with his sensory crap, will eat. They say that apples are one of the fruits that you really should go organic on if you can afford it, because apples, for whatever reason, hold on to the pesticides. Given that that’s one of the few foods Matt will eat, and the only fruit or veg, we judge that expense justified. But it’s hard when apples are out of season, and have to be shipped in from the southern hemisphere. They’re really expensive. I think we were really blessed in Philly, being so close to PA apple country. During the season, you could get crazy-delicious organic apples for $1.49/lb. at our neighborhood organic market.

Vegetables from my local farmers market here in SF are pretty cheap — probably a third of what they cost at the farmers market in Philly, which, except for apples during the season, is a fairly expensive place to shop. But in normal times, about half the vegetables I eat are frozen. They’re a lot cheaper, and food-freezing technology has gotten so good that they’re surprisingly flavorful.
Sam M says:

June 9, 2012 at 6:56 am

“Sam, I’m sorry, but how on earth can you make a tossed salad in less time than it takes to make a Hot Pocket? ”

By choosing to make a tossed salad that’s fast and cheap rather than a tossed salad I love. Chunk of iceberg. Half a cucumber. Splash of oils and vinegar. Done.
sdb says:

June 9, 2012 at 10:59 am

@nathaniel Very true, and very unrealistic. McDonalds, pizza hut, and coca cola are gaining market share every where. When I was in Grenoble this spring, there were ads for dominoes pizza at all the tram stops. Burger and pizza shops were plentiful by the JF campus. Even the vaunted French pallate is evidently no match for modern convenience fast food. World wide waste lines reflect this. One big difference I see in France (and Europe more generally) is that serving sizes are a lot smaller, and food is much more expensive.
David J. White says:

June 9, 2012 at 1:52 pm

By choosing to make a tossed salad that’s fast and cheap rather than a tossed salad I love. Chunk of iceberg. Half a cucumber. Splash of oils and vinegar. Done.

Ah, OK. I love iceberg head lettuce salad, but I’m afraid I don’t think of it as a “tossed salad” because there’s nothing to, you know, toss. The term “tossed salad” immediately calls to my mind something much more complicated.

Good point, though. After I spent a summer in Greece 25 (!) years ago, I used to make myself the kind of salad I often ate there — just sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumber, feta cheese, olive oil, and some pepper. Very easy, and excellent, esp. with some good bread. I don’t know why I got out of the habit of making it.

Rod — Your comment about apples in PA is well taken, as I remember from having lived in Philadelphia myself. One of the things I like about living in central Texas is proximity to fresh peaches when they are in season. I never liked peaches until I had really good ripe peaches from the Hill Country in July and August.
stef says:

June 9, 2012 at 4:17 pm

It depends on what they’re defining as “processed food.” Tofu is a processed food. So is tempeh, hummus, veggie burgers, as well as any number of “healthy choice-type” prepared meals.

The issue is that many people today do not cook. What gets lost in the moralizing is that many people in the *past* did not cook, either. Until forty or so years ago, many middle-class people had cooks and other servants, including housemaids. (Less time scrubbing floors means more time to cook.)
VikingLS says:

June 9, 2012 at 5:27 pm

@sdb
One thing I noticed, particularly in Russia, is that McDonalds serves a somewhat different, and in my opinion better, menu in Europe. If you want you can get potato wedges that actually taste like potato, options for the sandwiches with fresher vegetables and a burger they made up for Russia called the McRus or something like that. I don’t know that they’re much healthier, but at least some of it tasted better.
JonF says:

June 9, 2012 at 6:51 pm

Re: If I had $5 for every rotten half-head of lettuce I’ve tossed out, I might be able to pay off my car.

See if you can find Boston Bibb lettuce. It comes in small heads/bunches, and the size is ideal for a single person, Also, it’s a bit more tasty than iceberg lettuce, the king of all bland store-bought vegetables.

Re: You’ll never find (non-green) peppers at a reasonable price. And I find that bell peppers are so flavorless they’re not worth buying at any price.

Jalapeños are usually dirt cheap (but vary a lot in hotness- no telling until you bite into one). If you have any outdoor space try growing your own green peppers– they do have a good flavor right from the plant. Peppers make good container plants as long as you have enough space for the roots. along with bells and jalapeños I have banana peppers, cayenne peppers, tabascos, cherry bell, and a poblano pepper plant in planters lining the top my fence– they are just starting to set fruit now, and will produce until the weather gets fairly cold in fall.

As an aside my dinner tonight, which I am finishing off as I type, consisted of a fairly diverse salad (including shrimp and salami plus lots of veggies), and fresh steamed broccoli (from my garden) with hollandaise sauce. Took a little while to prep (about 1/2 hour), but easy to do (OK, I used a sauce mix for the hollandaise) and quite affordable.
Bar Bill says:

June 9, 2012 at 8:31 pm

Many American women of a certain age were raised by their mothers to avoid the kitchen. They just don’t have the skills to sustainably cook for a family on an ongoing basis and acquiring the skills for anything other than weekend entertaining of other adults is considered demeaning. That’s why you see kitchens with granite countertops, Sub-Zero appliances and packaged foods in the cupboard. Mom may whip up Cornish hens and risotto for the dinner guests on Saturday night, but she feeds the family packaged food and restaurant take-out during the week. We’re not talking about poor people here. America just can’t cook.
Erin Manning says:

June 9, 2012 at 9:35 pm

Rod, it’s not just the peppers–and it’s not just our usual store. Thad and I were running errands on the other side of town today and I stopped in at CM to look at their tomatoes. Still $2.50 a pound for local grown (non-organic), and the quality was awful (squishy, overripe, etc.). The other prices ranged from silly to obscene.

CM used to be the place to go for local produce. Now, it’s nearly all foreign, but they’re still charging as much or more for foreign stuff as they were for the local Texas goods (the atmosphere of thick snobbery is still free, though).

Again, my point is not “And therefore everyone should eat processed garbage.” My point is that for the lowest-income members of society who have to choose between feeding a family of, say, four people a “dinner” of salad consisting of one head of iceberg lettuce, two tomatoes, and a splash of oil, or feeding that same family a pot of processed mac ‘n cheese are going to have a tough choice to make even if the ingredient costs are the same–but when the salad costs roughly 1.5 to two times as much as the store-brand mac ‘n cheese? What then? And what if one of the family members is a physical laborer and another a growing teen boy?

I’m not trying to *justify* the awful food choices families make, just to understand them. Sure, processed mac ‘n cheese is a terrible food choice, but is a box of rotini or of angel hair pasta coated with a sauce made from canned tomatoes/sauce really any better? It’s still “processed.” So unless we’re all grinding our own durum wheat to make our own dough for our own homemade noodles while the $6.00 worth of tomatoes that was supposed to last a week simmers down to nothing in a homemade sauce mingled with the fresh basil we’re growing on our windowsills, aren’t we all a bit hypocritical about all of this?
JonF says:

June 10, 2012 at 7:58 am

Re: One dozen eggs: $2.79

Good grief, where are you shopping, Erin? I bought a dozen eggs for $1.59 a few days ago– I noted the price because it’s come down about $.20. In fact I’m starting to see signs of food price decreases, even at Whole Foods where I occasionally stop for a (very) few things going to and from work.
Bar Bill says:

June 10, 2012 at 8:28 am

I jumped in my wayback machine to bring you the 1960 secret to cooking for a family:

Wayback Machine

That section on Meat, Meat, Meat! is especially instructive. In 1960 when serving a big cut of meat the vegetables truly were a garnish. In the early 1970s the inflationary price run-up on beef truly hit Americans where it hurt.
David J. White says:

June 10, 2012 at 11:27 am

See if you can find Boston Bibb lettuce. It comes in small heads/bunches, and the size is ideal for a single person, Also, it’s a bit more tasty than iceberg lettuce, the king of all bland store-bought vegetables.

Thanks for the suggestion. Of course, at the time when I was making the most effort to do this, I was a poor graduate student shopping at Thriftway in West Phildelphia, where, as one of my students put it, the meat was green and the produce wasn’t. I think my choices were iceberg or Romaine, and that was it.
Erin Manning says:

June 11, 2012 at 1:28 am

Jon F., those prices are from my local Target ™. But I don’t want to mislead you: there are probably three types of eggs on the shelf–the miscellaneous store brand variety in cardboard cartons, the Eggland’s Best ™ brand, and a fully free-range organic crunchy etc. sort.

I used to buy just about anything that was a decent price, including the miscellaneous store brand ones which are usually priced just under $2.00 a dozen, a savings of about $0.79 over the Eggland’s Best ™ price. But do you remember that huge multi-state egg/salmonella recall that hit early this year? (I think over 30 states were affected.) Guess which egg supplier was behind most of the local miscellaneous store brands carried by the grocery stores in our town? I found out on the news, and then watched as “store brand” eggs suddenly started disappearing from all our local grocery stores’ shelves. I ended up buying the EB ones and have gotten into the habit of it–it helps that they are also the eggs carried in our nearest Sam’s Club ™ and that the price is even closer to the store brand eggs when you buy cartons of 18 there–which I do frequently to help offset the cost.

As for the organic, crunchy, free-range, happy chicken variety of eggs, last I checked, those were going for more than $4.00 a dozen here, so I’m not shelling out that much for 12 eggs (pardon the pun).

Now: if I can go back to trusting the misc. store brand eggs (which I should investigate), I’m going to spend about $2 a dozen, give or take ten or fifteen cents and depending on ads, coupons, etc. But I can’t remember the last time I spent $1.59 on eggs.

I guess that’s what frustrates me about these discussions. Everyone just assumes that what’s normal for them in terms of price, selection, etc. is normal for everyone else. I’ve lived for 12 years in an area with some of the worst grocery store options I’ve ever dealt with, and we’ve tried different ways of dealing with all that (and are still trying). But the “Let them eat salad!” tone of some of these threads frustrates me (and that’s before we get to the assumption that everyone on the planet is capable of eating jalapenos by the handful without suffering for it digestively, etc.).