Actually eat healthily for £1 per day • Hacker News Board

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#111

Post by itsybitsycoder » Fri, May 10, 2013, 4:39 PM UTC

jff wrote: post #102

itsybitsycoder wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, and this is true for many things, the poor are less capable of spending more money now to save money over the long term. E.g., if a pair of boots that will last 3 years is $150 and a pair of boots that will last 6 months is $30, the $150 pair of boots is a better deal because you'd have to buy $180 dollars worth of cheap boots to last 3 years. But if you only have $50 available to spend and you need new boots n…

Oh hi, fellow Discworld fan.

I didn't intentionally reference Discworld so I'm gonna assume I'm just doing it subconsciously now. Yeah, I love Discworld. Hi, fellow Discworld fan!

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#112

Post by jhaywood » Fri, May 10, 2013, 4:44 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #85

mtrimpe wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

king_jester was talking about the poor. I doubt telling poor people to want it more badly is going to have a huge positive effect.

Many poor are content with their condition, unwilling to take even basic steps to improve. Harsh as this sounds, and downvote-bait it seems, I've worked at helping the poor and found (to my dismay) most of them are in that condition because they refuse to choose to do better. Yes, they don't want it badly enough.

Make sure you're not confusing resignation with contentment.

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#113

Post by ctdonath » Fri, May 10, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

weiran wrote: post #7

This article (and many others like it) miss out an incredibly cheap and healthy source of food, growing your own vegetables.

http://www.mypatriotsupply.com will send you a can of seeds, 20 varieties, enough to cover an acre, "heirloom" (seeds from plants are re-usable next year), for $40.

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#114

Post by nsxwolf » Fri, May 10, 2013, 4:52 PM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #83

CodeMage wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of comment can only be excused by lack of experience. Try "making time" when, for example, you've got a job where you can't bring your food with you (and would have nowhere to heat it up even if you were permitted to bring it), a long commute and a family to spend time with. And I'm talking about a middle-class example. Now add being poor on top of that.

What job is this that you can't bring your food with you? I've worked in some pretty remote places in some pretty shitty environments all the way to middle of a metropolis with a bunch of suits and I've been able to always plan ahead and bring something to eat if I can't go out. If you can't heat your food up then don't pack something you need to heat up. If your food needs to be warm to eat and it doesn't go inside…

There seems to be a strange subconscious myth, in the US anyway, that you must have a "hot meal" every day or you are being nutritionally deprived somehow. I say subconscious because no one ever defends the point directly or explains what the benefit is.

This comes up a lot in political discussions of child hunger and school lunch programs. "X millions of children don't get even one hot meal a day!"

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#115

Post by goldmab » Fri, May 10, 2013, 4:54 PM UTC

mberning wrote: post #95

goldmab wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took me a little reading to figure out the agenda, but some key phrases like "obesity is a growth disorder" tipped me off. This is a Gary Taubes project. He is a writer of books in favor of low-carbohydrate diets, and he often badly misinterprets the scientific literature. He has a selection bias about which studies he thinks are worth talking about, so as to make it appear that low-carbohydrate diets are the answ…

If you think there are literally no legitimate nutritional scientists that agree with Taubes then you are woefully misinformed.

Thanks. I think a lot of them agree that low-carb approaches work for weight loss and some other outcomes, since that's what the science shows. But his "insulin hypothesis" is pure pseudoscience and I'm not aware of any papers about it.

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#116

Post by Hinrik » Fri, May 10, 2013, 4:58 PM UTC

Shorel wrote: post #74

ryeguy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with butter, oil, or dressing in moderation. If it makes a rather boring dish more interesting, it's worth it - none of those things up the calorie count too much.

Some oils are better than others. Palm and coconut oil are much better than sunflower or corn oil, in part because of something called the smoke point. And calorie count is not that important if you eat the right things. http://nusi.org/

Help me understand. What does the smoke point itself have to do with the oils being bad for you? Assuming all the oils you mentioned are unrefined, their smoke points are all over the map, so it isn't clear whether you're saying that a low smoke point is bad or that a high smoke point is bad (palm: 455°F coconut: 350°F, sunflower: 437°F, corn: 352°F)[1]

What I do know is that the more refined an oil is (and therefore less rich in flavor and nutrients), the higher its smoke point will be. The implication being that you should pick virgin/cold-pressed/unrefined versions when you don't need the high smoke point for your cooking. Is that what you were getting at?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#117

Post by Zenst » Fri, May 10, 2013, 5:02 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #90

Zenst wrote: post #61

Whilst it is nice people try and point out cheap options they ignore the following: 1) cost of running a fridge and freezer 2) calorie intake and how people are all different 3) large supermarket nearby and only you hanging around the reduced counter With that I'm sure a very short small inactive person could live well on this amount and intake but we are not all small inactive people. A few years ago I was in hospit…

A few years ago I was in hospital, I eat breakfast, dinner, evening meal and late night snacks and had seconds on every occasion. I was not overly active and bordering on totaly inactive. I slept lots as well. A few years ago I was in hospital, and they didn't let me eat at all for two weeks . No, not even [whatever gotcha you want to insert here]. Lost 10 pounds I didn't need anyway, and otherwise felt fine. Wasn't…

Not eating for two weeks and watching cooking programs is bordering on sadistic, though if you have a strong will then I'd call you a hero.

Sadly in the UK such volumes of rice for such prices are not available at the consumer levels. As for bread flour, thats impossible, least in the UK. But you are right that rice and bread are the cheapest form of calorie intake. And yes nutients are extreemly important, though how many people right even when they have the money is probably another area and seperate issue of concern.

I would be interested in seeing a chart of a typical food shop compared country by country price wise, certainly would be extreemly interesting. I do know when I was in America that food was easily half as cheap and twice the size than what I could get in the UK and I utterly loved it.

But I'll will say it - you are a hero for being able to go two weeks without eating AND watch cooking programs, but after the first few days I suspect it was easier to endure as your bodies metabolism adjusts. But not many people could endure what you endured as it takes some extreeme willpower and not everybody has that, or even close, there again some people have no choice. There again everybody is different - even identical twins.

So +1 from me for being able to go that long and watch cooking programs, certainly something I would not want to entertain as would many others.

[EDIT ADD] I had a look at todays prices of rice, and for the cheapest, including amazon and ignoring shipping cost aspects and I truely envy you being able to get rice so cheaply as for the amount you can get 50kg for in the UK you would just about be able to get 10kg for that price and that is using a exchange rate of 2:1 $:£ ratio.

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#118

Post by bch » Fri, May 10, 2013, 5:09 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #110

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think virtually everyone in the UK has the means to eat healthy if they really want to." For too many people this is simply not true. People living in poverty face a number of challenges to eating healthily. For example: - Cost. Fresh healthy food is becoming more costly due to exchange rate commodity price fluctuations. See [1][2]. - Access. If there are no shops nearby that sell fresh food (and this is becoming…

Cost: you're setting the standard of "fresh healthy" too high. I've got a can of assorted seeds, enough to sow an acre of all the veggies you need - $40, get busy. Assorted frozen veggies (flash-frozen minutes after picking, so yes they're fresh) are $1/pound; canned works too, and actual fresh is also available if you look with care. Access: you can arrange transport a couple times a month to someplace selling healt…

> I've got a can of assorted seeds, enough to sow an acre of all the veggies you need - $40, get busy.

Now all I need is an acre of land and time to tend it. Don't you think that's a bit ingenuous? It's like saying the parts for a laptop only cost $200. Now get them and start soldering.

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#119

Post by danielweber » Fri, May 10, 2013, 5:12 PM UTC

goldmab wrote: post #88

np422 wrote: post #77

Before we start talking about "eat healthily", please visit http://nusi.org/ , apply critical thinking - ask for references to published research papers. Be aware of the difference between observational and clinical studies and of course, always remember correlation does not imply causation. We, as in mankind, don't know very much about what really is healthy food.

It took me a little reading to figure out the agenda, but some key phrases like "obesity is a growth disorder" tipped me off. This is a Gary Taubes project. He is a writer of books in favor of low-carbohydrate diets, and he often badly misinterprets the scientific literature. He has a selection bias about which studies he thinks are worth talking about, so as to make it appear that low-carbohydrate diets are the answ…

I wish I had seen your comment earlier. The "what is healthy food" discussions are just as bad as language- or editor-wars.

And they totally ground these discussions. Instead of offering a bunch of options of cheap food, the various posters insist that you have to follow their whatever-plan first or else fuck everything else.

Cheap foods: Bananas. Eggs. Brown rice. Brown pasta. Red beans. Carrots. Sweet potatoes. Peanut butter. Whole-wheat bread.

There are some foods on there that aren't allowed under certain diets. That's okay.

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#120

Post by scarmig » Fri, May 10, 2013, 5:12 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #114

abduhl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What job is this that you can't bring your food with you? I've worked in some pretty remote places in some pretty shitty environments all the way to middle of a metropolis with a bunch of suits and I've been able to always plan ahead and bring something to eat if I can't go out. If you can't heat your food up then don't pack something you need to heat up. If your food needs to be warm to eat and it doesn't go inside…

There seems to be a strange subconscious myth, in the US anyway, that you must have a "hot meal" every day or you are being nutritionally deprived somehow. I say subconscious because no one ever defends the point directly or explains what the benefit is. This comes up a lot in political discussions of child hunger and school lunch programs. "X millions of children don't get even one hot meal a day!"

It's more about what cold meals stereotypically are--some processed cereal, two slices of wonderbread with some bread and ham in them--that drive that rhetoric. Sure, a cold corn and arugula quinoa salad is certainly much healthier than the vast majority of meals, hot or cold. But on average hot meals are likely slightly better.