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Comment by friendly_chap | Hacker News Reader

I think you miss the point entirely. Prepackaged foods are way more expensive (where I live at least).

You can go to a butcher they wrap up the meat in hair thin plastic bag instead of the bulky one in supermarkets.

If you go to a grocer/farmers market you buy almost all things lose. Packaging is an entirely different industry with people adding their own (usually substantial) margins.

In Lidl nowadays they sell loose nuts etc, also cheaper then prepackaged ones.

You dont have to buy cashew in organic bamboo leaf packaging hand crafted by Cambodian virgins, just bring your reusable bag.

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Sorry, I should be clearer.

First, where I live, in sunny suburban Houston.

There are definitely no places around here that sell fresh meat, nuts, grains, beans, etc without plastic for less than a national brand in plastic at WalMart - forget the Cambodian virgins...

The food may certainly be fresher and better and healthier - but it's not cheaper.

And in the aggregate if I substituted cheap plastic bagged cereal, prepackaged frozen meals, and juice jugs for a farmers market / bulk store meal plan, my food budget would skyrocket.

If it really, truly cost less to go without plastic, poor people would do it, they do any and everything to save a dollar on food.

I stayed with a friend in Houston in November and December. We went to a farmers market selling plenty of produce, nuts, etc that we put in our bags we brought. I spoke to one of the farmers a bit and he gave me some free vegetables. I find that pattern happens a lot.

I was full of envy because by that time of year, New York, where I live, has mostly cabbage for greens. Your local farms had a variety of greens in season (meaning plentiful and cheap). I'm pretty sure I could eat cheaper in Houston than here.

We also went to a store called HEB with a huge bulk section. We filled bags we brought with us.

We ate delicious, healthy, nearly package-free at low cost.

I'm not sure what you tried, but I find experimenting for a week or two doesn't give enough experience to learn to cook from scratch fast and cheap. For example, learning to cook beans from dry in a pressure cooker is fast, simple, and very low cost. Here are reviews of my famous no-packaging vegetable stews that resulted from my experiments: http://joshuaspodek.com/food-world-reviews.

> If it really, truly cost less to go without plastic, poor people would do it, they do any and everything to save a dollar on food.

I suspect causality goes the other way, at least in part, that eating habits, prompted by poor education and predatory marketing, contributes to them being poor. As I understand it, your logic would suggest that poor people wouldn't drink alcohol, but I see lots of alcohol stores in poor neighborhoods.

Well I deeply appreciate this response!

I feel you've cornered me into at least trying an experiment here in the next month or so to "upgrade" my meal plan.

I'll do my best to catalog the process and results - maybe there'll be a guest blog on joshuaspodek.com soon ... :)

I'd love to hear your experience. And help share it, whatever way it turns out, since I'm not trying to make a Disney version and say it's always easy. But I do believe it improves one's life.

I find what leads people to change is community more than facts, figures, doom, gloom, etc.

I understand, wow...

I only lived in the UK and Hungary and both places sell stuff I mentioned. I'm very suprised to learn about the USA practices regarding this.

> If it really, truly cost less to go without plastic, poor people would do it, they do any and everything to save a dollar on food.

Then it seems like the problem is with the system indeed, if people are easy to motivate with savings. People try to save on food here too, that's why almost nobody buys the prepackaged meat from supermarkets (happens more in London where people are not that price sensitive).

Based on the quantity of meat I see in supermarkets in Hungary (not that much at all), I estimate 98% of the meat sales happen at butchers where you ask for a certain weight (let's say 2kgs of chicken breasts) and they put it into a thin plastic bag.

Very weird differences.

> And in the aggregate if I substituted cheap plastic bagged cereal, prepackaged frozen meals, and juice jugs for a farmers market / bulk store meal plan, my food budget would skyrocket.

Very sorry to hear about your frozen meal habit, I did that for a year and it took me about 5 years to recover from the weight gain and a general bad health state.

You have not asked for advice but perhaps you can try to make one dish meals in bulk using mostly cheaper ingredients like bulk rice & beans, cheaper veggies, eggs etc. It's generally much cheaper and healthier (again, we are in different contries, so YMMV).

"Then it seems like the problem is with the system indeed, if people are easy to motivate with savings"

Well, that equates to saying "poor people are not poor enough". I'm not saying you're wrong, but the only fix to "the system" is to make things a lot more expensive. If there were any substantial progress towards that, there would be riots and politician's heads on pikes.

I don't see how you arrived to that conclusion, all I tried to convey is that it seems people are motivatenod with cost savings but it's an availability problem, ie. the cheaper packageless product is simply not there. (If you read the whole thread you can see it's a recurring theme in the conversation).

Now, if there is a cheaper and more ecofriendly solution is available, then yes, I think the less ecofriendly version should be much more expensive as a penalty.

>If it really, truly cost less to go without plastic, poor people would do it, they do any and everything to save a dollar on food.

I think it's more about the effort that goes into it. If you look at what the op said, op travels to farmers markets, hits up bulk stores and butcher shops and generally puts effort into tracking down and sourcing out these things. For the op, it may well be cheaper, but it comes with a pretty large time sink(comparatively) and some amount of planning, I also wonder if op is factoring in travel time to their costs. It costs more to travel to a few different stores, both in gas or bus fare if these places are distant, plus in the time it takes to get around to these places. If someone has limited time and resources, in the end, it ends up being easier and more efficient to go to one store and spend the money on packaged foods than to make the trips op says.

This is from my own personal experience. I used to live pretty close to a butcher shop and a fresh produce and bulk place, the food quality was always better, the prices were better for what you got, you'd pay a lot more at the grocery store for the quality of meat you got from the butcher, but in the end I found myself going to the grocery store more often then not, just because it was easier after work or during the limited free time I had.

Right, the claim is that it's not a 'burden or chore', not that it's necessarily more efficient.

The most efficient thing to do might be to sit on your laptop all day and eat pop tarts or something. I'm only half joking.

But yeah, the answer might well not be as simple as "just do this one thing differently". It might even be a massive change. Whether that's a burden is in the eye of the beholder.

A lot of the problem with environmental stuff here is that people don't find it a burden because it neatly dovetails with the way they like to live. It's easy to spend time hunting fresh foods and cooking because you love to do it and are a bit of a foodie. It's not hard to consider vegetarianism or no children depending on the person.

Essentially to use a christian term its cheap grace. Its easy for a kind person to be kind; but its hard for them to be stern when it is needed.

>in sunny suburban Houston.

My parents moved there after I left (I visit once/yr), and that place is a literal swamp, and would not be so populous without the invention of AC.

>If it really, truly cost less to go without plastic, poor people would do it,

On what are you basing this statement? I don't use the plastic bags in the produce section, I just put produce directly in the cart (and wash them when i get home). Prepackaged food costs more because the manufacturers are "adding value." Try making potato or tortilla chips at home, and tell me it's not cheaper to pay $0.25-$0.60/oz ($4-$9.60/lb). Raw potatoes are $2/lb; cornmeal is even cheaper.

It's all about convenience. Convenience stores have the most ridiculous prices for almost everything, and they sell a lot; gas is the loss-leader with razor-thin margins.

"organic bamboo leaf packaging hand crafted by Cambodian virgins"

I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Sincerely,

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