You can really tell who’s never experienced poverty and food insecurity when it comes to discussions around food costs and how unhealthy food is cheaper. Some fucker always comes in with the price of like… lettuce or… apples. And it’s like yeah bitch but can you work an 11 hour shift after eating some salad and an apple!?! Find me something cheaper, and more filling than the broke ass staples of boxed mac and cheese, hot dogs, noodles, bread, beans, and rice. I’ll wait.
It also ignores the mental toll that poverty takes like maybe your home made veggie filled recipe isn’t crazy expensive but it also involves prep time and cooking time and organization in terms of fresh food that a lotta poor people can’t manage.
Not to mention if you can only afford to get to the store once every couple weeks via bus or cab then you can’t keep fresh veg on deck.
But ya know.. poor people are just dumb and lazy.
People reblogging this with “actually you can do this super labour intensive prep and only buy bulk which means more money on grocery day and all this storage space you defs have when you’re poor” and it’s like……… did you read this at all
And all the “well actually” replies on this post operate from the assumption poor people haven’t thought of these things…. or don’t know any of these things or are too lazy which I mean was my original point and people just continue to prove it …..
I say it all the time but I’ll say it again .
This one quote from a book about a turn of the century poor family : “only the rich can afford to be thrifty.”
Seriously like something ppl don’t under stand: to save money for the long run, you gotta have disposable income and time.
Let me introduce you to the Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice:
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”
Got $100 that you can spend on grocery day? You can afford to buy nutritious bulk items that can be eaten little by little throughout the week, with enough leftover to store in your pantry until a recipe calls for it. You have the option of using up ingredients from last week, because they’re still sitting around, so you can build a pretty huge collection of foods and options to choose from. Honey, flour, sesame seeds, quinoa, coconut oil, butter, chickpeas: It’s all good! You can make some bangin’ dinners just from those pantry foods alone!
Only got $40? You have to buy single servings, and all-in-one packages that will be eaten every day until they’re all gone, just in time for your next shopping trip. Nothing is going to be saved, no extra ingredients can be afforded, and you’re consuming everything that you immediately buy. No mustard, no cooking oil, no salt or pepper, no vinegar: You can’t afford them, since you need filling and satisfying food food each week, so these pantry items keep getting pushed to the side. And it’s not like you can cook any sort of impressive recipe without this stuff, so it looks like you’re stuck with processed foods until you get some extra cash and manage to restock your fridge.
It’s a cycle that you get stuck in, for better or for worse.
