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Comment by traceroute66 | Hacker News Reader

To be perfectly frank, most people in the UK (and elsewhere really) just need to learn how to cook !

From a UK perspective, being able to cook achieves:

     a) The ability to buy raw ingredients in bulk
     b) You can cook dishes that last you multiple meals (and NO, this does not mean eating the same thing)
     c) You can make soups and stocks from bones (all you need is bones, cheap vegetables, cheap spicing, and water)
     d) VAT on raw ingredients is either 0% or 5%
     e) Raw ingredients are cheaper than processed food
     f) Raw ingredients are A MILLION times cheaper than restaurant prices (depending where you eat, you're typically paying up to 300% mark-up on ingredients because the restaurant needs to cover its costs)

And no it is not time consuming, the more practice you get, the quicker it becomes. And things like soups and stocks you don't even have to watch the pot, you just put it on and forget about it for a few hours.

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The issue is that cooking becomes more enjoyable and fast if you have a well-stocked large kitchen which not many can have due to size constraints or budget constraints. Then there's also cleaning which is never enjoyable and takes a big chunk of time. Cooking is definitely efficient at 3 or more people, can have tradeoffs with 2 people and makes little sense if you live alone or with non-cooperating flatmates.

> if you have a well-stocked large kitchen which not many can have due to size constraints or budget constraints.

I'm sorry but that is oft-repeated nonsense that you have to have a well-stocked large kitchen to be able to cook at home.

You can cook as well in a small "galley" style kitchen as you can in a large one.

Other than herbs, spices and maybe a few bottles/cans of this and that, you don't need to keep vast stocks of anything. All you need to do is engage the brain and do a little bit of forward-planning for the week ahead.

How do you think people who grew up in, for example, communist-era Eastern Europe survived ? They all cooked at home. They certainly didn't have access to a supermarket so they could have a "well-stocked large kitchen". And their kitchens were certainly not large. Yet they ate well, they ate healthily.

> Cooking is definitely efficient at 3 or more people, can have tradeoffs with 2 people and makes little sense if you live alone

This is also utter tripe, again oft-repeated.

In 2023 we are blessed with this thing called refrigeration.

Again, engage brain and plan ahead.

You can make a variety of dishes for the immediate days ahead and put them in the refrigerator. As long as you stick to basic sensible food hygiene, food will be perfectly safe after a few days to a week in the fridge.

Leftovers can go in the freezer. You can equally (and should !) for example put a supply of stocks and soups in the freezer (soups for when you need a quick meal, stocks to add flavour and depth to other dishes).

It's not rocket science. It is simply, regrettably, a skill that has been lost in today's culture of immediate gratification and laziness.

I don't know if you live in the UK or not, but in my experience, almost everyone cooks at home here. It's pretty rare I'll go out and have a sit-down meal any more expensive than McDonalds or a coffee and cake, and I earn _very_ well even for London.

London (which TBF isn't the whole of the UK) sits pretty squarely in the middle of the pack at 201.1 restaurants per capita*. Assuming they're not all fronts for organized crime, somebody must be going to them, even if it's not you and your friends.

* http://www.worldcitiescultureforum.com/data/number-of-restau...

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