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

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#151

Post by namdnay » Fri, May 10, 2013, 7:08 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…

An acre of land, a scrap wood fire.... Are you for real? We're talking about poverty in the UK here, not your frontier life fantasy.

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#152

Post by sliverstorm » Fri, May 10, 2013, 7:08 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #76

king_jester wrote: post #29

Eating cheaply is really difficult to do for the folks with the least amount of money to spend on food, as working is counter to the things that make eating cheaper: cooking your own meals, shopping or growing cheaper foodstuffs, having appliances to store items for longer periods or cook dried items, being able to plan meals out in advance, etc. That is the reason why convenience foods are popular. A lot of advice s…

A lot of advice stories about eating cheaply often fail to achieve that goal because it is hard to do and requires a lot of effort. This is a recurring sentiment which speaks volumes about our culture. Complaints of "hard" and "a lot of effort" belies how incredibly rich this society is, that the notion of just making pasta or growing vegetables is somehow prohibitively difficult - not because it's inherently so hard…

Of course people used to work much harder to prepare their food. We've replaced harvesting your own food with working to pay for your food. The complaints of preparing a full meal being difficult are coming from a context of somebody who already spent 8+ hours working for their food that day, not somebody who is just being lazy.

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#153

Post by Zenst » Fri, May 10, 2013, 7:11 PM UTC

papsosouid wrote: post #148

Zenst wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://swns.com/news/woman-lost-14-stone-gastric-bypass-5000... http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/4660129/Ive-had-f... Just from lazy google look from the first page search, there are medical conditions and let us not ignore that not everybody is the same size without being overweight. Yes spoke to doctor, not common but not unheard of and no desire to go into my personal medical history to win a argument on…

You explicitly stated that you did not have anything like a parasite or missing organs, remember? Pretending you are suffering and "being made out to be a freak" because someone pointed out that your estimate was wrong is incredibly childish and absurd. You are normal, you are just acting like a baby because you want to claim you have some one in a trillion undiagnosed (and mysteriously un-noticed by doctors while in…

I'm not claiming anything, other than you are a troll.

I stated originaly my experience and you called me a lier, then you said it is impossible and I proved you wrong, deal with it.

My estimates are not estimates and you just can not accept that people are different than you, I pitty you and those you touch.

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#154

Post by a_c_s » Fri, May 10, 2013, 7:11 PM UTC

fpp wrote: post #132

Before even going into the side-effects of such a diet let's just have a look at the numbers used: Olive oil (extra virgin)(price per kg quoted) 3.30 (price per kg actual) 6.39 (weekly quoted) 1.96 (weekly actual) 3.80 Yellow split peas (dried)(price per kg quoted) 1.16 (price per kg actual) 0.98 (weekly quoted) 1.62 (weekly actual) 1.37 Bananas (price per kg quoted) 0.68 (price per kg actual) 0.68 (loose / leftover…

Did you read the full article or just the data?

1. The author assumed NO sales.

2. Aside from bananas everything else will easily last a full week. If you wanted to say you are only shopping once a week then that means you either are willing to eat very ripe bananas by the end of the week (some people do this), or if you are like me then you would have to just eat bananas the first part of the week and not eat them the end of the week.

3. Including transportation costs is beyond the scope of a diet - the author already minimized costs by limiting things to a single supermarket (as opposed to the original article which would have required multiple trips to multiple stores to track sales and get deals).

4. The assumption that there is no waste is explicitly discussed by the author as a drawback that needs to be addressed in subsequent iterations

(Edit: formatting)

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#155

Post by namdnay » Fri, May 10, 2013, 7:12 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #81

adeaver wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that everyone has time to do 'X' if they only wanted it bad enough is complete BS. For people that work two jobs, have a family to take care of, commute several hours, have a sick spouse and sleep there is no more time in the day. No matter how badly you want it. Unless you or the author of Rework know of a magical formula to make the day longer than 24 hours or how to operate on little to no sleep.

If surviving on that arrangement doesn't work, change the arrangement. Move somewhere with a cheaper standard of living. Reduce expenses to where one spouse can stay home. Find another job closer. Unplug the TV already. Seriously. Yes, if you want it badly enough you'll do it. I moved 1000 miles, changed jobs twice, worked 2 jobs at once for years, have a family to care for, cut the commute from 2 hours to 15 minutes…

Do you have a five step plan?

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#156

Post by DanBC » Fri, May 10, 2013, 7:13 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #68

DanBC wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mention some things that are under debate. Those things are not part of "healthy" eating, they are important for "optimal" eating. Fat is not returning with a vengeance. Common sense advice has not changed particularly much over the past twenty years. There are some things - dietary cholesterol isn't seen as evil (but the foods it's in are). But other stuff - replacing fat for sugar (replacing a real salad dressi…

"Common sense advice has not changed particularly much over the past twenty years. ...There are some things - dietary cholesterol isn't seen as evil (but the foods it's in are)." No, definitely false. Dietary cholesterol has definitely been considered a bad thing and for the last 30 years people were told to avoid it, by heart doctors, in the form of avoiding cholesterol in your diet, in that specific terminology. It…

Please read my comment again. You rant about cholesterol. Cholesterol is an example I give of advice that has changed. You appear to misunderstand that very simple point I made.

> Low fat diets have been advocated for decades now without a word given to what the fat was replaced with, because the fat was considered So Obviously Bad it didn't matter, anything was better.

No, this is wrong. Calm dieticians have been suggesting that people cut down fats, but not replace those with weird sugar-foods. You'll be able to point to very many untrained, unscientific, 'clinical nutritionists' who give weird advice. But I've already said that cranks exist and have always given weird advice.

Salt is still harmful, btw.

> The dietary consensus is in fact undergoing significant change

It really really isn't.

"Don't eat too much. Eat less red meat; eat more fruit and vegetables. Reduce the amount of fats, sugars, and salt that you eat. Reduce the amount of processed foods (especially some processed meats). Try to eat more fresh food."

That's been the consistent message for many many years now.

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#157

Post by ellyagg » Fri, May 10, 2013, 7:14 PM UTC

13b9f227ecf0 wrote: post #80

king_jester wrote: post #29

Eating cheaply is really difficult to do for the folks with the least amount of money to spend on food, as working is counter to the things that make eating cheaper: cooking your own meals, shopping or growing cheaper foodstuffs, having appliances to store items for longer periods or cook dried items, being able to plan meals out in advance, etc. That is the reason why convenience foods are popular. A lot of advice s…

Potatoes and sweet potatoes are very cheap and you can practically live on them, in perfect health. Generations of Irishmen, Kitavans, and Peruvians have. This claim that you can't eat healthy on the cheap is silly. Eating just potatoes & butter & a few eggs a day and you could probably go years before having problems. The prep time argument is also silly. A sack of potatoes will keep for a month and you can boil or…

Indeed, the old Irish diet of milk and potatoes was pretty darn healthy. If you're trying to eat healthily, cheaply, and with a reasonable cognitive load, it's hard to go wrong with eggs, milk, and potatoes. Poor people can do this. Eggs and milk get you all the important macrominerals and fat soluble vitamins and potatoes are nature's multivitamin/multimineral. Nothing else can really touch these for depth and breadth of essential nutrients:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2864450/2

They scale well, so even if they're not the only things you eat, you're at least assured of not being acutely deficient of anything. Plus, it's easy to prepare lots of yummy things from them.

Now, if you're concerned with maximum longevity, you should try to add as many fruits and vegetables a day as you can to suck up phytonutrients/antioxidants.

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#158

Post by DanBC » Fri, May 10, 2013, 7:26 PM UTC

frou_dh wrote: post #66

dgabriel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all have different goals, but interesting meals are certainly near the top of my priority list, especially since I eat with my family and meal times are more than just a way to fill a hole.

For most people, I imagine a decent-sized subset of appealing meals can be very satiating at the same time. p.s. wtvanhest: Not sure what you have against blue cheese. Hopefully not "dietary fat makes you fat because it's calorie dense" because that would again be anomalous 80s thinking that ignores satiety effects and runs with a 1-dimensional model for something as complex as nutrition and aggregate consumption beh…

Calorie dense food "hiding" in salad needs small amount of caution.

So long as you're aware of what you're eating it's fine.

If you can't understand why you're still 17 stone you might want to look at whether you're having a blue cheese dressing on a salad but counting that snack as 0 calories, which is something a surprising number of people do. They have their 3 meals, which come to something like 2,000 kCal per day, but they don't count all the other snacks they eat.

Satiety is important, but it's still calories in vs calories out.

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#159

Post by RBerenguel » Fri, May 10, 2013, 7:26 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #126

ctdonath wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it boggles your mind. I too shared the mindset susceptible to "I can't". Amazing how being dead for a few hours can change your perspective on such things. It must be done. Do it. Eradicate "I can't" from your vocabulary. Cut out all superfluous activity & costs. Unless you're in fact passing out onto the floor, you have the energy and time to do it. Yes, every day. I'm so far past tired and overwhelmed that t…

Do you know what happens when you break your leg but keep walking on it without going to a doctor? It keeps causing damage, until that damage is irreparable and there's a bone hanging out of your useless leg. That's pretty easy to visualize, yeah? It's harder to imagine the same thing going on but mentally. It's hard to see the true damage that repeated exposure to stressful situations causes to your mind and psyche.…

I just got here in passing, and I have to admit I'm kind on the side of ctdonath here. Currently, I'm working 3 jobs (one is 6 hours a day, the other two are two projects I'm working on that are 2-4 hours a day, total.) In addition to this, I'm finishing my PhD (or trying, time is scarce lately) but I still find the 10-15 minutes it takes to open the gas stove and prepare some sauteed vegetables, the 10 minutes it takes to prepare a lettuce and lots-o-more-things salad, or the 5 minutes it takes to prepare crispy bacon.

The "cooking for hours" mentality is bullshit. With the rest of your points I can agree (as well as I agree with ctdonath's points,) since there is no universal truth in what people are doing with their time, and how much they can endure. But with the waste of time cooking takes, I just can't. It's false. I've cooked 3 course meals for 8 people on special occasions (so it's more elaborate than usual) and only in this case it took me more than 30 minutes to do it. It was 1h30. Of course this may seem like a lot, but I don't do custard everyday and it takes quite a long time.

*Edit: misspelled OP's name (sorry)

Re: Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

#160

Post by np422 » Fri, May 10, 2013, 7:32 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…

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2012.... , the one I'm linking to is a preprint but it was published in Obes Rev. 2012 Aug 21.

The latest review of all major trials of low carb diets show improved weight AND improvement of all major risk factors for heart disease.

There is no accepted explanation to why as of yet.

But the bottom line is that the advice on healthy food that "actual nutritional scientists" readily hands out today have very little real scientific support in clinical trials.

I think nusi has an approach that most of us will find acceptable. First we do real scientific experiments and then we base our recommendations on what is healthy food based on the data and knowledge we gather.