Now, at the outset I'll say - this is not a representation of all healthy vs unhealthy food BUT It does give us some insight into how easy it is to prepare/eat some different healthy and unhealthy meals
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Firstly - cost. They actually all do reasonably similar - Big Mac meal comes in at $6 per person, pasta is cheapest at $4 per person, and steak comes in the highest at $8 per person
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If you chose a cheaper cut of meat for the steak, you could probably get that down to the same price as the Big Mac But here comes the first enormous issue - which is cheaper on externalities???
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What I mean here is things outside of the recipe - spices, cookware, stoves - as well as the TIME TAKEN TO COOK
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And here, we can see one of the biggest hurdles to eating healthily. The steak does much, much worse (McDonald's cook time is, of course, the best here)pic.twitter.com/uRUCyDEXC6
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The cookware is similar in our two dishes - pan, pot, salad bowl - but they BOTH require far more than the Big Mac
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There's also the spice issue - if you've got plenty of spices already, as well as olive oil and balsamic, the steak is easy. If not, that's another $15 out of pocket at the start
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In fact, if you include all the costs external to the recipe, the steak gets up to a whopping $11 per person, making it almost 3x the cost of the pasta and double the Big Mac
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If we then add in cooking/prep time, the steak is 40 mins vs the pasta's 20 mins and the Big Mac's ~0 mins Healthy is looking a lot more expensive now, isn't it?
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I can make pasta with cheese and red sauce for dinner in under 15 minutes start to finish, and only 1 or two pots to wash Making steak with salad takes minimum 20 minutes and leaves me with double the washing time afterwards
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But this crap is never even considered when we talk about the cost of healthy and unhealthy foods. It's always "well vegetables are cheap, just buy more of them"
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If you're working long hours, don't already own good cookware and have a fully-stocked spice-rack, cooking healthily is an ENORMOUS CHALLENGE
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Whereas a Big Mac meal will leave you full and happy for only slightly more than a basic pasta meal, and it tastes waaaaay better
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Next time you're talking about whether people can easily just eat healthy, realize that for many it's going to be a very expensive thing to do
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If we truly want to address obesity and make health equitable, making healthy food cheaper and more accessible is an important step
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But we have to remember that this isn't just about ingredients - it's a complex and multifaceted issue with many places we need to intervene
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NOTE: I used the US cost of a Big Mac. To compare properly, the Big Mac should be $9.50 upfront, making it the most expensive per person in terms of upfront costs
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This was a stupid mistake, but ultimately the point still stands - a Big Mac at no external cost is far cheaper than a healthy meal with many externalities built in
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End of conversation
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