Hey, I need some advice. My mother is very adamant that healthy food is cheaper than fast food and that people who say otherwise are just being lazy, which surprised me as she is normally very supportive in situations like these. I don't know if it's really possible but what can I say to help change her mind about this?
In conversations like this, there are three main points that you want to get across to your mom:
Preparing your own meals may be cheaper in the long run, but it requires a huge cash investment in order to start, thus making fast food the more affordable current option for many people.
Everyone experiences different living situations and dietary values, making it impossible to state that either fast food or home food prep isalways going to be best answer for everyone. It’s instead necessary to acknowledge that both have legitimate value.
People have the right to eat what and how they want without being shamed for it. Their right to bodily autonomy is not trumped by our “concern” for their health or money.
We have to remember that monetary cost is just one small aspect of this. If it was just about which one is cheaper, then there would be an easy objective answer. But people are still arguing, so that’s not the case. A bigger issue is: Why do people feel that they have the right to control and criticize a complete stranger’s diet? Why does fast food bother them to the point that they’ll shame anyone who eats it? When people criticize fast food, what they’re really condemning is 1. poverty and 2. fat bodies. Dumping on fast food is a form of body shaming and classism: Identifying it as such is an important step to talking about diet critically.
Now in terms of money and resources,
When eating fast food, you’re required to pay for:
transportation to and from the facilities
the cost of the food (a small lump sum that buys one meal)
That’s pretty much it. Things like the cost of labor, access to a bathroom and a heated environment are all included in the cost of food. As long as you can pay for the meal, you have access to a huge range of resources.
Compare that it what you must pay when preparing your own meals with your own ingredients:
transportation to and from the grocery store
the cost of the food (a large lump sum that buys several meals at once)
running water, in order to clean your hands before and after preparation
a heating implement to cook the food
additional ingredients/spices in order to prepare a full meal
utensils in order to prepare the meal
dishes to serve the meal with and utensils to eat with
furniture such as tables or counter tops where you can both prepare and serve the meal
electricity, lighting and heating in order to make the environment comfortable enough for you to spend all this time in
child care and/or entertainment so that any potential kids will not be put in danger by the cooking process
Add into that the time that it takes to complete your shopping, transport all the food home, store it properly, take it out at meal time, prep your meal, cook it, store the leftovers, and then routinely sort through your food in order to throw out anything that was wasted or has gone bad. Due to opportunity cost, the large amount of time that many people spend maintaining their kitchens can cost them a rather significant amount of money in addition to what they’re literally spending on food and resources.
So when people talk about how a pound of chicken is sooooo much cheaper than a Big Mac, they may be right about the cost of food, but they’re only looking at one tiny aspect of meal prep. People like your mother are ignoring the big picture.
Eating “healthy” and preparing your own food can absolutely be cheaper than fast food, but that can only occur once you’ve already invested significant funds into the process. If you’re working a minimum wage job and are just starting this process of feeding yourself (and others!), then it’s highly unlikely that you have access to a big enough lump sum to gain all the resources necessary to cook your own meals.
If your mother can’t accept this information (and if you’re comfortable enough to get on her sh*t list for a little while), then there’s always a much less mature debate tactic that you can employ: Turn into a two year old. Every time she eats something, ask her “Why?”
"Mom, why are you eating that cereal? It would be so much cheaper if you got whole oats and baked that granola yourself, why are you being so lazy and eating it out of a box? We could have just dehydrated grapes instead of being lazy and buying raisins!”
"OMG Mom, why did you buy a gallon of milk? If you didn’t spend so much money on store milk, we could have our own cow! It would be so much healthier to just milk our own cow every morning and make our own cream and cheese from it. God, I know that a cow costs like thousands of dollars, but the milk would be cheaper. It’s better for us in the long run."
"Mom! You’re so lazy! Why are you using cake mix? For just a couple cents, you could have grown wheat in the back yard last summer, stored the stalks and ground it into flour. Why would you buy the store stuff instead? Why aren’t you willing to do even the slightest bit of work for your food?”
Chances are, your mom is going to get frustrated and PO’ed really quickly. And she’d have every right to. But this will hopefully start a conversation - Why is it okay for her to take short cuts and rely on pre-made foods, but it’s bad when other people do it with fast food? Why is she the one who gets to declare which short cuts are acceptable and which ones are not? And is she really taking these short cuts out of laziness, or because it’s impractical for her to spend so much time prepping meals? Use this as a chance to show that food is not a black and white issue: Even she’s actively participating in “fast food” culture by buying some form of prepackaged food, so it makes no sense to completely condemn or blame other people for doing the same thing.
Now, in addition to what I’m posting here, I have tags dedicated to both #fast-food and #food-politics. Some of those posts might be helpful in giving you resources about both food politics and people’s right to bodily autonomy.
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