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Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

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Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#51
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t buy half and half cream very often. I did not know that for a basic product they were selling items that aren’t just milk and cream. Ignorance on my part? Sure, but there is over a hundred different things I buy. It would be doing a audit everytime I go shopping.

>> doing a audit everytime I go shopping Well, yes . You should be thinking about what you purchase and what goes into your body. Once a product is vetted, you should be able to keep buying it with only periodic refresher checks at the ingredients.

Even if it says milk the quality still depends on what they fed the cow that produced the milk. How much Palm oil was in the cows diet and what effect does that have on the milk. Even things like was the milk taken from an infected/inflamed utter?

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#52
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where am I getting $50 for a bread maker Save up? Buy it from a thrift shop? Whatever it is, it's cheaper than your previous assertion that breadbaking is impossible without a $300 stand mixer. > Why am I motivated to spend my scarce money on making my own bread? To save money and eat better. Again I take your point. Being poor is mentally taxing and is the result of many things having gone wrong in one's past. Oft…

Just save up, bro. lol I literally witnessed someone just a couple days ago try to pay for some food at my corner store with EBT, was told by the cashier it wasn’t accepted, so she emptied her basket of all the stuff she wanted and bought a single food item. Except the item was $6 and change, and she only had 5 single dollars in her wallet. So the cashier out of sympathy just took the $5 and let her have it. The fuck…

> The fuck your mean, save up?

Advice that doesn't work for everyone isn't automatically useless.

What else can a person in that situation do? I'm not asking what we as a society can do for them (plenty). I'm asking what they can do themselves, if they want to do something (and many don't, because poverty is exhausting, like I already acknowledged).

Poverty has solutions on an individual level and on a societal level. I won't judge anyone who can't or won't implement the individual choices to themselves get out of poverty because I don't know them or their situation. Even as a massively privileged person I struggle to make good personal lifestyle choices. Everyone's doing the best they can at that moment.

But equally, ignoring the existence of those choices is unhelpful.

> I’ll just point to the obvious high cost of fresh fruit and vegetables

I completely agree. It's a travesty. We should subsidize more vegetables and less corn and soybeans.

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fresh kind from the grocery store bakery with no preservatives costs more and goes bad faster. Lesson #1 when you become an adult, bread goes into the freezer when you get home so that it doesn't go bad.

Frozen bread is useless! I would put bread in the refrigerator though.

What is a toaster?

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#54
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fresh kind from the grocery store bakery with no preservatives costs more and goes bad faster. Lesson #1 when you become an adult, bread goes into the freezer when you get home so that it doesn't go bad.

Okay, so what am I doing about the fact that buying anything in the produce section costs a lot? The dollars per calories basically makes no sense if I’m on an extreme budget. I can buy a pack of strawberries that will last the family a day or two for $5+ and has a total of 200 calories in the entire package and we go hungry, or I can buy something processed that’s calorie dense. Or I can buy something calorie dense…

> rice and beans that takes a lot of time to prep and make

Have you ever heard of batch cooking?

A one time investment in an instant pot solves that issue, I can get a huge batch of brown rice ready in 30 minutes, and they will last a whole week.

Beans probably work similarly with the instant pot.

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#55
post #38
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever food stuff comes up it becomes very apparent that most people are super ignorant about food prep. I get the vibe it's mostly on purpose so folks don't have to prep food and can just order stuff or buy cheap. Idk, but it's very normalized nowadays to know absolutely nothing about cooking/baking. Its a weird status symbol thing, maybe? I'm not saying folks make a conscious decision to never learn how to cook o…

This ignorance comes from a barely-regulated advertising industry and an inadequate and highly unequal education system, which is a lot of the point I’m trying to make. Don’t lose sight of what it’s really like to be poor. Being poor means having very little time, and mostly thinking about survival. Learning to cook from scratch is a real hobby and something of a luxury. This isn’t the pre-industrial era where peasan…

Did they have vegetables, grains and some kind of meat? (Beef, chicken, fish?)

Tortellini are common, yes, but I wouldn't consider a grocery a food desert because of that. Food desert is the grocery never having stock of more basic things, like milk, oil, meat, that's a real food desert, and I've seen that happen in a high inflation country.

Re: Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply (2025)

#56
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An automatic breadmaker costs less than $50 and makes perfect bread every time for 30c of flour and electricity. It takes 5 minutes to set up and you just wake up to fresh bread. That's less time than you'd waste going to the grocery store every day. I take your point about everything else, but bread is the wrong example.

I work two part time low wage hourly jobs, where am I getting $50 for a bread maker? Plus the Great Value white bread is 99 cents, and the packaging tells me it’s healthy. Why am I motivated to spend my scarce money on making my own bread?

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