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PonyPotato · 09-29-2008, 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by onesnowyowl

The point is that I--or anyone else for that matter--shouldn't have to take a multivitamin to reach balance. Additionally, multivitamins can get pricey. Eating cheap lard is disgusting. I suppose I could render my own, but that would take time and is kind of a pain in the ass, plus I'm betting my vegetarian boyfriend wouldn't care much for the inclusion of lard.

Balance is variety. You need to eat a variety of foods to get all the vitamins and minerals you need, and colorful foods besides, not just rice and beans. That is not going to happen on $25/week. I spend upwards of $20 alone on the produce my boyfriend and I use every week at the farmer's market, and it's cheaper to get it there than elsewhere. I wonder what people do when they don't have access to that resource. Yes, you can avoid getting the diseases associated with nutritional deficiency if you supplement, but again, why should we have to? What's wrong with our food supply system and the economics of food in the United States that people have to take vitamins to reach balance on a budget?

And what's wrong with our food that they have to supplement it with vitamins in processing it?

By the way, both Jeffrey Steingarten (The Man Who Ate Everything) and Michael Pollan have very interesting things to say about the state of food in the United States. In the 1990s, Steingarten actually attempted to cook meals according to the food stamp cookbook the USDA had out at the time. Oddly, the USDA put a lot of emphasis on cooking meat in said cookbook, which is expensive, versus embracing a more vegetarian diet, which is cheaper. Pollan makes the point I made above--if you eat a variety of whole foods, mostly plants, you can achieve a healthy, balanced diet. But trying to do so in the modern grocery store is not always feasible or cost-effective, given the prevalence of subsidized corn and soy in processed food products.

Yes, you could survive on rice and beans every day. But I seriously doubt anyone here could actually do it. I freely admit that I couldn't, nor would I want to. Admittedly, my biggest personal expense is food. I love food, and I want to enjoy what I eat. Eating the same thing over and over is not enjoyment of food, and I can't do it--I won't do it.

I said nothing about not being able to enjoy your food. I pointed out that you CAN have a balanced diet ("balanced" does not mean variable, perhaps to you, but not nutritionally) for very little money. I pointed out the simplest way of achieving such balanced diet. The point of the thread is to ask if you could feed yourself for $25 a week.

The poor people of this country are often the most overweight. Why? Because they can get "complete" meals via fast food restaurants for a lot less money than they would spend on fruits and veggies at the market. A cheap diet is generally not very enjoyable, but it CAN be complete in reference to your body's absolute needs.