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Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017)

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Re: Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017)

#91

Post by taurath »

abeppu wrote: post #34

A "demography is destiny" aspect to this: Since households are smaller (we marry later or not at all; have fewer children), those who do cook are cooking for fewer mouths, which leads to more time spent per meal consumed. 5 single people cooking and cleaning for themselves put in substantially more time than a one person cooking/cleaning for 5. Also there's some amount of waste from scaling down recipes originally wr…

On the other hand, if you have a ton of roommates, the chances you have the same schedule is quite low.

Re: Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017)

#92

Post by sombremesa »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #53
sombremesa wrote: post #8

I have another statistic: 0% of Americans love doing laundry. So why is Tide still in business?

raises hand meekly I like doing laundry. I find it relaxing/meditative.

Ah, the curse of not enough significant figures.

Re: Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017)

#93

Post by dreamcompiler »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #40
impendia wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who doesn't enjoy cooking all that much, I've noticed this too and been distressed by it. Restaurants, almost uniformly, serve unhealthy food. There are exceptions to this, but they don't seem to be all that popular. When I go out to eat with friends I am often stuck eating something heavier and less healthy than I would like. Is there some good reason for this?

99% of my dinners' vegetables are pre-heating the oven to 350-400, putting aluminum foil on a cookie sheet, and coating Vegetable X in salt, oil, and pepper, and cooking for 15-20 minutes. It's basically 0 cleanup and you're eating whole, unprocessed vegetables. Our bodies are built for that sort of diet.

Brussels sprouts and cauliflower, to name just two, are outstanding when cooked this way.

Re: Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017)

#94

Post by bane »

madengr wrote: post #29

How do other countries compare, specifically Asian, urban areas where street food is ubiquitous?

I can speak to South Korea a bit. There's basically a few things to consider about South Korean food culture:

1 - there's a phenomenally low female participation in the work-force (at least among OECD countries), which translates to a wife or mother doing most of the cooking at home. This is changing slowly, but still a dominant fact-of-life for most Koreans. So the default idea of a meal is "home cooking". Korean house-wives still maintain a broad set of cooking skills and can produce huge varieties of menus, often of healthy and filling meals. Soups of various kinds are among the most common type of meal, served with rice and sometimes noodles.

2 - for various historic, geographic, and cultural reasons, Koreans share of proteins has been lower than say, an American or European might expect in their diets. The bulk is made up of fresh and pickled vegetables, and rice as the main starch. Proteins are heavily sourced from the sea and come in a huge variety of critters, and are often supplemented or replaced with some kind of tofu. Of course Koreans eat beef, chicken, pork and so on. But it tends to be more expensive and less ubiquitous. You'll find some kind of sea creature in nearly everything you eat unless you're eating Buddhist temple food (which is also delicious and vegetarian). This is also changing, and as a result Koreans are getting taller and heavier. But there's a small cultural bias against very meat heavy meals and many South Koreans will describe the typical American-style meal as "greasy".

3 - somewhat paradoxically, restaurants are ubiquitous. In Seoul, you might find a dozen or more restaurants within an easy walk of where you live. They come in huge varieties, are often very narrowly focused in menu and offering, are intensely competitive, and are often not terribly expensive. Importantly, they frequently try to provide a "home-cooked" meal replacement and the kitchens will often be run by older women with not much more training than the average house-wife and will produce food that has similar flavor and nutritional characteristics. In market areas, you can find traditional styled soups with rice and unlimited basic side dishes (kimchi, etc.) for $5-7 and walk way stuffed.

4 - there is of course lots of street food in Seoul, but it tends to sit near very busy business districts or in markets. More importantly, there's a very big class of foods and restaurants that cater to "food you eat while you drink alcohol" and that tends to be fried, salty, meat or starch heavy, spicy, greasy and generally fairly unhealthy. It's also increasingly common to eat when not drinking and includes foods like fried chicken, instant noodles and so on. These are often upped with cheese and other such high-calorie add-ons. Most Koreans recognize this is trash food intended to be eaten while getting trashed, but to be honest, it's about as good for you as the average American diet is.

All that being said, the average Korean eats a much healthier diet than the average American. Most Koreans will have a well developed sense of taste for veggies and seafood and this starts very young. Here's a video of 30 days of school lunches https://youtu.be/0Kq_d0TUKS4

Re: Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017)

#95

Post by Melting_Harps »

Truly love? I'd say its even less than that, and of that 90% many of them cook for a living, for various reasons.

I'm one of the former, I've come out of retirement as a chef twice, I did Agriculture because I wanted to see it from its entire process, because I can't be happy (or at least not have a massive sense of wanting inside of me) not being around food in some capacity. I thought IBM's food safety would be a good compromise... but, then here we are.

I'd say the US as a whole has a consume-only relationship with food, which skews the entire paradigm and leads to a disastrous logistical nightmare that entails losing 50% of all food produced.

There are enclaves of Food hubs in the US, but its relationship is not one of wanting to create but to be served by those who do, and it ranges from: immediate gratification to being a status symbol. And most who do work in said Industry, and they may even have a culinary schooling background, don't love food but instead love the lifestyle it can offer--Bourdain sadly, but accurately, highlights this in Kitchen Confidential and several of his series' about the hard boozing, drug-addled 'chef life.' I'm glad to say I got over that very early on in my first phase back as a University student.

Whereas in much of Europe (excluding places like Germany and UK), and from what I've seen in parts of Asia outside of China as well, food is the basis for which to take a break and unwind and enjoy the simpler pleasures of Life. Sitting at a table with friends and family is the reward for a day's work, and justifies why you even get out of bed. Dinner lasts hours after the meal has taken place as you converse and entertain each other.

To my surprise Swiss cusinese is essentially just party food, meant to be shared and interacted with and if you are lucky to experience at someone's homes the norms of just feeding each other and pouring each other food is very apparent and intoxicating.

My favorite food cultures are reflected in my repertoire: Italian and Japanese.

Both take humble ingredients and have a long History if making something extra-ordinary. it comes from an affinity for food that goes beyond just loving to cook, but a deep relationship with how the Earth and how its grown and what grows around you. Most of the best stuff from both cuisines doesn't travel well, and forces you to eat locally and seasonally to really appreciate it. A

nd the painstaking elaboration that follows is incredibly time-consuming: think 80 hour work weeks in the heavy seasons as the norm, not the exception, this can only come from a deep love for food.

It is with this in mind that customer is and always will be secondary, regardless of whatever narrative is sold to clientele. Which is why I don't think it lends itself to the US' commodification and consumerist driven culture. They make like it in a hypothetical and abstract way, but they will seldom live it.

> Forget Neuralink, I wish someone would pioneer a way for me to pour Soylent directly into my stomach. Eating is fun socially, but it's just another inconvenience otherwise.

See what I mean.

Re: Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017)

#96

Post by leecarraher »

People fall into 3 categories is a pretty course classification. There are hot prepared meals, cut prepared meals you still need to cook, microwave meals, raw ingredients and everything in between. Meanwhile stores have been reducing waste. Someone is buying the stuff and it isn't accounted for by just the 10%. My guess is that the past decades economic windfall just means we are eating out more than the previous decade. Eventually economic downturn will make eating out prohibitively expensive for many, and they will rediscover their "love" or more likely somewhere on the spectrum of cooking appreciation.

Re: Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017)

#97

Post by bane »

I've taken up cooking the majority of our meals in the last couple years. Before that we ate out almost exclusively. It started as a goal to just eat healthier, to know more about what was in our food and to simply eat fewer unpronounceable chemicals.

I used to hate cooking, but now that I'm into it, I'm really enjoying the development of the various skills that come along with it: from picking fresh veggies to basic knife skills. I've slowly been ramping up the complexity of the kinds of meals I'm able to make. I'll spend a bit of time every week trolling various youtube cooking channels to find new menus I think I have the skill to make or have one or two new things that I can reasonably learn without introducing any "use only for this recipe" ingredients.

I don't think I'll ever get into meal prepping, I like too much variety in my diet. I've found a few channels that have meals at a variety of skill levels from "I can do that in my sleep" to "this is going to take some intense study to get right".

It's been an incredibly rewarding experience and we've gone from freezers full of microwave meals to empty freezers and a fridge packed to the gills with greens and other raw ingredients. I've come to feel a great sense of pride when hitting the checkout line at the grocery and every single ingredient in the cart is raw and unprocessed -- and most of the cart is full of veggies.

Bonus: since my wife is Korean, I'm also learning to cook stuff from her culture and it gives me two menus full of recipes I can draw from when making the week's meals.

Re: Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017)

#98

Post by chadcmulligan »

I like cooking but not every night - so I just cook up a big batch of stuff and freeze it. Lots of recipes here for anyone so inclined - https://www.reddit.com/r/MealPrepSunday/

If you like salads I've found I can just slice up a big batch and it will keep for a few days in the fridge - just keep the dressing and sliced tomatoes off until you serve it.

Re: Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017)

#99

Post by Animats »

The article mentions "microwave assisted thermal sterilization". That's useful. Most of the advantages of food irradiation without the PR problem. This apparently came from US military R&D, which is now able to get sandwiches and pizza into MREs. Most foods can now be packaged for a long shelf life.

Re: Grocery Industry Confronts a Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking (2017)

#100

Post by Stratoscope »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #39
sonofaplum wrote: post #24

I've been seeing a nutritionist to try to help with weight loss and his emphasis has been on a healthy plate, which is a plate that is half vegetables, a quarter protein, a quarter starch or grains. Even at nice restaurants, it is extremely difficult to order meals that fit these proportions, and, as you move down the quick service spectrum it gets harder and harder. By the time you arrive at fast food, its difficult…

I never understood why vegetables are difficult to get as a "fast food" format. With salt pepper oil and heat, they can be very tasty. There has to be a huge market for Jack in the box equivalent for healthy eating. Most of the existing fast casual chains miss the mark. Chipotle comes to mind, but it's still mostly grains and protein and still lacking in vegetables, beyond the optional pico de gallo for your burrito.

You don't have to get a burrito at Chipotle. Try my salad recipe:

Salad with no dressing (you don't need their sugary dressing when you have salsa).

Black or pinto beans.

Optionally, a bit of brown rice, but they will give you too much unless you ask for only a sprinkle of it.

Onions and peppers.

Chicken or whatever meat you like.

Corn, pico de gallo, and medium salsa.

Guacamole. "I know it's extra."

And some of the chopped lettuce at the end of the line, especially if you're getting it to go. "So the guac doesn't stick to the lid."

Now you have mostly vegetables, some meat, some beans, and not much in the way of grains. And it makes two full meals!

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