every time someone says “just cook it’s not that hard” i lose a little more faith in humanity. I’ve spent >14 years cooking as a hobby and for health/finances but “just cook” to me sounds just like
“just fix your own car”
“just paint your own walls”
“just grow your own food”
“just homeschool your kids”
“just sew your own clothes”you can absolutely do these things yourself! but it’s also become socially acceptable, socially expected even, to outsource these kinds of specialized tasks to specialists.
“but everyone needs to eat!” yeah, everyone needs clothes too and we don’t expect people to make their own anymore because we collectively decided we wanted everyone to spend more time at work instead.
“just install linux bro, it’s not that hard”
you can absolutely do these things yourself! but it’s also become socially acceptable, socially expected even, to outsource these kinds of specialized tasks to specialists.
It’s not just a social issue. When we consider the planning and shopping and prep work and cleanup, cooking is (like most of the tasks you listed) enormously time consuming. Lots of people have so little free time in their lives that regularly cooking their own meals just doesn’t make sense.
Cooking freezable meals in bulk can help, as can taking turns with someone else in the household (if there is anyone else). But the time cost is still significant.
Where do you buy pre-made spicy pancakes? 🤷♂️
Sounds like a nut allergy
There’s a reason, in the US, that few people make their own clothing, despite being the one good that we haven’t figured out a way to completely remove the human labor aspect of it.
TL:DW JoAnn’s Fabrics became a monopoly, and imploded due to Private Equity restructuring them. This means that fabric, and even raw fiber, is now harder to source. It also meant that even while JAF was in business, it was cheaper to buy premade clothing than make your own since sometime in the 1970s.
The same thing has happened with food suppliers, though the big 4 haven’t imploded, yet.
No one was making clothes even before that. It was an extremely niche hobby. Just like gardening and home canning and countless other homestead-type skills. People just don’t have enough time to do all that and work a full time job and raise kids.
In the old days when all of those skills were in full practice, people lived on literal homesteads and that stuff was their full time job. They also taught all their children how to help with it and basically ran the household like a small factory for producing food and clothing.
I remember as a little girl asking my mom to sew me a dress “because then we don’t have to pay for it,” and her explaining to me that fabric isn’t free, and it’s not even cheaper than clothes anymore. I was so disappointed and bewildered. Today, I’m still disappointed.
She also taught me how to make bread and I asked her if it was cheaper than store bread, so we sat down with grocery store receipts with the price of flour etc. and worked out that our recipe came to about $0.50/loaf (in ~2007). We didn’t factor in the cost of labor, heating gas, electricity for the bread machine, etc. but it was one thing we enjoyed knowing costed less than even the cheapest bread at the store.
I still make bread, but am afraid to do the math again.
To be clear, the big 4 food suppliers I’m referring to supply restaurants and other commercial food companies, not grocery stores. Those four are why every damn restaurant in the US tastes the same. We legally aren’t allowed to buy from the farmer’s market or grocery stores as our normal supplier. If it is a one off thing then we can go to the grocer for some onions or whatever.
ah yes the free market enabled by small government 🤦♀️
I completely agree with you. I think what the US needs is more readily available AND relatively healthy food options. As a European, walking through the isles of an American grocery shop is utterly depressing.
Everybody should at least know how to cook basic meals. It’s an essential survival skill. Being a car mechanic or a professional educator is not the same.
other essential survival skills include:
- finding and sanitizing water
- building fire
- hunting, foraging, and growing food
- building shelter
- making clothing
- treating minor illness and injuries
~100 years ago, most people either know how to do most of these things or had an immediate family member who did. Today, that’s no longer true.
It probably would be better if we all still usually knew how to do all these things (at least in my opinion). But we collectively decided that it was more important that most people just know enough to keep themselves and some kids alive between shifts at work.
Just because a bunch of us have the blessing of the ability to cook food doesn’t give us license to expect all our fellow citizens to do it when we have actively encouraged them not to need this skill anymore.
I’m lucky that my mom taught me basic sewing repair, and I really wish most humans knew even basic sewing because of how staggeringly wasteful modern fashion is. But most people would call me crazy if I started insisting that everyone should know how to sew and that people who don’t are inferior, irresponsible, etc.
Even if they didn’t, how likely am I to convince more people to sew if I come out swinging with insults?
Are you seriously advocating that people shouldn’t bother to know how to make food for themselves? Because instead of suggesting we bring back home ec, get better wages and be less insulting to people who can’t cook, which would ask be improvements to everything, you’re saying we should throw in the towel.
I’m not at all saying to throw in the towel. Quite the opposite. I just want people to be more understanding and less judgmental so we don’t push people even further away from learning self subsistence habits like cooking.
Stop being poor, buy real food, why didn’t anyone else think of this years ago.
Rice and dried beans and veggies are still pretty cheap, for now at least.
If you can get them.
I’m lucky to live somewhere where I have a selection of supermarkets that I can walk to which all stock fresh foods for reasonable prices, sounds like you’re in a similar situation.
In America they have loads of these “food deserts” (old article now, but it’s gotten worse) where the only place you can buy food without having to drive an hour, is a Dollar General store that only sells shelf stable, processed rubbish. There’s no amount of money you can spend in those towns to get anything fresh, not that the residents typically have much to spend anyway.
Those residents also can’t often afford to live anywhere else, or they’d have already moved; so they’re kinda of stuck in a situation that’ll make their lives worse with very little they can do to remediate it themselves.
Pretty sure you can buy rice and beans at dollar general? I have to go off search engine previews though, because the website doesn’t work for me (and I don’t live near any)
Edit: missed they said veggies, I guess that’s where the issue is. But canned veggies are better than a lot of other foods you could be buying, even if they are “processed”.
Don’t forget lentils!
They’re a great source of protein.
Not nearly as cheap as they used to be. Vegetables are getting expensive.
yes, but they don’t taste good and take more time to prepare than processed foods. they require time and skill to make them tasty and they veggies go back super fast.
cooking, let alone good cooking, is a skill that you acquire with a lot of time and patience and practice. most people are not willing to put 100s of hours into a thing. they will try a few times, it will taste like shit, and they will give up.
So what tastes good then? Does it start with Mc and ends with donalds?
If you can’t get yourself to like veggies beans and rice, clogged arteries are always an option.
Farro is my go-to cheap meal. Bags of 10 minute farro at Trader Joe’s for less than $2.
farro fucking rules. such a nice bite to it!
I think part of the problem is people aren’t taught how to cook anymore, either by family or by schools. They’ll SAY “Oh, I don’t have time.” and that may be partly true, but you get down to it they don’t have the knowledge or practice that takes the time out of it.
If you don’t know what to do in the kitchen, yeah, fast food, ready to eat, prepared pre-packaged food is it.
I personally think society should be set up so that everyone doesn’t have to cook. Look at Japan for instance
Someone linked here to an article about inflation in US some time ago. It was talking about an older lady that couldn’t make cookies any more because the pre-made cookie mix she uses has different size now and her recipe doesn’t work. It was just mind boggling to me. Cooking and baking is not that difficult. I’m just an IT guy and I can bake. You just follow the recipe, it’s not rocket science. If older generations can’t follow a cookie mix recipe I don’t even want to imagine what young people eat.
And more on the topic. I do check ingredients on most things I buy and if I can’t find something without preservatives I just make it. Yesterday I was making tortillas for tacos because the ones in stores have lots of additives. It’s really simple but definitely more difficult than cookie mix recipe.
All the Boomers’ recipes were designed to use boxed, processed ingredients. Think green bean casserole with Campbell’s® Cream Of Mushroom Soup and French’s® Original Crispy Fried Onions, for example. “Modern” “convenience foods” were all the rage when they were growing up and it shows.
In USA right? My grandparents (which would have been boomers if I’m not mistaken) here in Europe have never been seen using that kind of crap. They were doing their cans and crap and all kind of horrific preservation methods but they always did 100%. They, and my parents as well, had cooking courses in school. They were also very much into foraging, hunting, fishing… all due to living through and after the war.
My grandmother was a great cook and also liked to cook, but she still needed my grandfather to do the very basic math to convert the recipe ratios in function of the amount of guests. She wasn’t stupid, she just left school at 13yo to help in the house and the only math that she did after that was counting.
All that to say: It’s not because it’s easy for you, that it’s easy for everyone.
I think the level of basic education in US is another issue and it’s possible both have impact here. My mother only finished primary school in some tiny village in the middle of nowhere in communist Poland and still has broad general knowledge, likes to read books and yes, can scale recipes without issues.
I’m not from the USA, neither was my grandmother. Irregardless of that, even if we were from the USA, my grandmother would have left school decades before the USA education system fell behind that of other Western nations.
My grandmother also read books and a non stupid daily news paper, but she still couldn’t do basic arithmetics. It wasn’t about intellect, sometimes it’s opportunity and exposure, or maybe the unique wrinkles in our brain. There’s all sorts of people, not everyone is able to do the same things, so grow some empathy.
Anyway, I don’t think math is that important here. I remember a TED talk I saw about cooking. It was talking about the decline of cooking at home in US and how when when people (well, women specifically because traditionally they do most of the cooking) are not good at cooking kids start associating home made meals with bad food and eating out with tasty food. Where I’m from, 30 years ago eating out was not a thing. As a kid I didn’t understand what restaurants are for (“I guess some people are traveling and can’t cook?”). I know how to cook, all my friends know how to cook, their kids know how to cook. So when I’m reading about old lady using pre-made cookie mix and not knowing how to follow a basic recipe it tells me that culture of cooking died there long time ago. Math is a secondary issue here.
That lady is 1 person, there’s no indication that she’s representative of the USA population as a whole. To see 1 person and then assume that everyone else in her country must be like her, is a very stupid generalization. Your opinion is based on prejudice, not reason. So far you’ve shown a tendency for victim blaming, a lack of empathy towards individuals that are left behind & prejudice towards all US Americans. Should I assume from that that all Poles lack empathy, and are full of prejudices about other people? Of course not, because you’re only 1 person and therefore too small a sample size to make a sweeping generalization like that.
Yeah, I’m also sexist and racist because I don’t cite data all the time.
That 1 lady is just an example. We’re commenting below an article about overly processed food, we keep hearing about food deserts and low food quality in US (lot’s of this stuff can’t be even exported to Europe). You want some data? Here: https://www.gallup.com/analytics/512897/global-cooking-research.aspx
EU is were people cook the most. US ranks somewhere in the middle. US is also the dominant market for frozen and microwave ready meals. No idea why would you assume I’m basing my opinions on a case of a single lady. It’s just weird. I’m not going to back up everyone comment with full bibliography. You can just assume most people know more then they have time to write down in a single comment.
most people can’t follow directions. let alone do fractional math conversions that are required for converting recipies.
I’m pretty sure the new recipe in printed on the box. You can also look up new recipe that doesn’t use the mix and just follow it. What I mean is that is someone only knows one recipe by heart and is unable to learn a new one it means they can’t cook and if old people can’t cook then well… the skill of cooking in the society must be completely gone by now.
you are making assumptions that people can do what you can do, or that they are willing/want to do it.
they can’t/don’t.
other people aren’t you.
I’m not assuming people can cook. My whole point is that they can’t.
Yeah, I hit the same thing with a chocolate cheesecake recipe of mine. It calls for a 12 ounce bag of miniature chocolate chips.
The “good” brand chips are all 10 ounce and 20 ounce bags now. Fortunately I found a store brand that was 12 ounces.
I do have a kitchen scale so it would have been possible to buy the 20 ounce bag and measure out 12 ounces…but still!
They’re also afraid to cook due to their lack of experience and their dependence on ‘good food’ made by someone else.
I’ve dated people who basically told me my cooking was shit because it wasn’t fancy restaurant quality. and they only eat ‘quality’ food. then complain how they are broke all the time spending $200 a day eating out.
stupid and insane.
most people don’t want to cook because it takes effort and time. they are lazy.
devils advocate: do most people not make their own clothes because it takes effort and they’re lazy?
most people don’t make their own clothes because they don’t have access to the material resources to do so. they dont’ have sheep, or cotton plantations at home, let alone to make thread, and the weave it into cloth. then we have to die, cut, and sew it. most people who do make their own clothes buy fabric rolls and just do the cutting and sewing parts. it’s a hobby.
they have access to raw food. the only thing they don’t do is the farming.
I would argue that most people don’t make their own clothes mainly because the time and effort required to make clothes is VASTLY disproportionate to the time and effort required to buy clothes.
For food, it’s the same. Learning to cook palatable meals from ingredients (anywhere on the preprocessed spectrum not just raw) requires a lot of learning and often new kitchen equipment.
Especially if you’re truly starting from 0, as in no cooking knowledge was taught to you by family or community and you didn’t inherit any equipment.
Why should we expect people to sacrifice the time, money, and energy that their job is demanding more and more of from them as time goes on? Is cooking really different from all the other domestic skills that are no longer expected to be known by at least one household member?
More importantly, if encouraging cooking really is a more efficient way to improve average nutrition, why are we so quick to scoff at people who don’t know this skill, instead of acknowledging the myriad of reasons they were discouraged from acquiring it and using that knowledge to help us campaign more effectively?
(not saying you specifically were scoffing but def other people in this thread and people I’ve discussed this with IRL have, including myself in the past)
because learing to cook is way easier and cheaper than becoming someone who makes clothes. like orders of magntitude.
cooking for yourself requires a few pots and pants.
i scoff at them because the people who refuse to cook are often the ones for whom it would require minimal effort. but they act like it’s some cruel undue burden. and then they also WHINE that ubereats is so expensive. you can’t have it both ways.
The point isn’t that cooking is hard to learn. It’s that it’s harder to learn than continuing to eat convenience food. But it’s still not the easiest thing and therefore not realistically going to be people’s default unless we encourage them by somehow making it worth their while.
For some, just spreading awareness of how much healthier it is can be enough. For others, they’ll need systemic changes like access to healthier ingredients, metal health treatment, and jobs that don’t exploit them so harshly that they have no leftover energy to cook.
cooking for yourself requires a few pots and pants
Yeah, you can start out with just pots and pans to make pasta, rice, beans, boiled or stir fried pre-cut vegetables, and other simple things. No knife and cutting board, no whisk, no cheese grater, no vegetable peeler, sure you can cook but it’s going to be challenging. Now you’re asking someone to go from being able to microwave a fully assembled frozen meal in 3–5 min, which they’re used to doing, to making a meal from ingredients with a substandard set of tools and little to no experience.
By the time they’re done cooking they’re going to be tired and frustrated by the result. If they’re lucky they’ll have the motivation to keep trying, building skills, and purchasing more equipment.
If they’re unlucky, they’ll see people on the internet belittling them for lacking a skill and tool set that not everyone gets handed to them by family and circumstance.
It costs you minimal effort to not be judgmental and discouraging to an entire category of people comprised of widely varying individuals whose circumstances you know nothing about. But you’re acting like that’s some cruel undue burden.
Such a lovely paywall, yes it is.
CNN, really?
This article is for subscribers only. Do you subscribe to CNN?
I don’t, but I do have bypass paywalls clean. Sorry, I didn’t realize CNN had subscriber-only content.
CNN produces slop as much as fox does. if you are buying overprocessed food its on the customer. buy veggies, rice,meat and make it yourself.
