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			| Bad_Rich_Chic | 03-11-2004 11:36 AM |  
 
	Quote: 
	
		| Originally posted by bilmore
 A lot of the "it's cheaper to eat fast food" myth stems from people who truly do eat paycheck to paycheck, and who never go into a grocery store and stock up their kitchen with "ingredients".  In a kitchen without oil, flour, sugar, and all the million other little items, you can't make a dinner unless you buy everything for that dinner.  Thus, a Big Mac becomes a cheaper alternative.
 
 Granted, it's not truly cheaper - but, in a very short-term view (which is what people with ten dollars until next payday tend to live by), it's more managable.
 
 |   Yes (and "Yes" to GWNC's post on eduction).  The time/convenience issue is real, but the "junk food is less expensive" issue is a myth.  Avoiding junk food doesn't leave you with a diet of chanterelle mushrooms and $3 per piece sushi.  A cheap lunch is a ham and mustard sandwich and an apple stuffed in a bag on your way out the door in the morning, not McDonalds or nuking a prepackaged burrito to eat with some chips.  If the Mr. and I could scrape together the time to go shopping regularly and the energy to remember how to turn on the oven, we'd probably eat sirloin and salad every night, maybe substituting chicken or some other green thing instead, just for fun.  And it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than eating out, ordering in, boiling Lean Cuisine or heading for McD's.  And it would be one hell of a lot more healthy than any of those options. 
 
I don't even think the education would be that hard - it's not difficult (or much of anything) to learn, it is just that the whole idea somehow magically never occurs to a lot of people.  I can't cook to save my life, know jack-all about it, but I have figured out how to chop up a head of lettuce, usually boil water successfully (admittedly, not always - I've learned the hard way NOT to put in pasta before you actually see bubbles), and can often even cook meat without turning it to charcoal.
 
I refer back to my three brilliant and foolproof weight loss diet plans:
 
Eat nothing you don't cook yourself. 
No between meal snacks.  
Eat nothing that is not presented on a proper place setting at a table in front of you which excludes any plastic or paper. |