
No country has embraced prepackaged food as much as the United States.  - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/business/04metrics.html?ref=business
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spazmaster
I've just started watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution series on ABC and
it's quite shocking to see so much prepackaged/processed foods. This trend is
happening everywhere, but nowhere as much as the States. I really hope movies
like Food Inc., the new ABC series and articles like this will reverse that
trend.

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tptacek
There is zero chance Food, Inc. is going to change anything. Agree with it or
not (and I'm very sympathetic), it is neither cost- nor time- effective to eat
in the way that Food Inc. suggests. Normal people do not have access to a
supply chain that provides cost-effective and palatable protein from local,
"responsible" producers. For a lot of families, the 6 pack of Tyson chicken
breasts _is_ the fancy, careful dinner.

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elptacek
Carboxymethyl cellulose! This article is good, but flawed. There are no
conclusive studies that link higher intakes of fat to higher rates of heart
disease... but higher intakes of fat AND carbohydrates are a different story.
Read this: [http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-
Scienc...](http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-
Science/dp/1400033462)

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jister
It is because in the US, it seems that people don't have enough time to do all
the things they want to do in a day. Most of them eat, drink, put their make,
etc etc on the way to work.

This is just an observation though.

Relax anyone?

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yummyfajitas
I don't buy this explanation. In my personal experience, the people with the
least time are the most likely to eat well.

Consider programmers, quants, bankers, and other such overworked types.
Observing their shopping baskets at Fairway (upper west NYC) suggests they eat
mostly fresh products.

On the other hand, you have poor people, the vast majority of whom don't work
at all. They have nothing but free time. Observing their shopping baskets (in
Harlem or Jersey City) suggests they eat lots of packaged foods.

I suspect laziness is a better explanation for packaged foods than free time.

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pkulak
I'd say it's cost, not lazyness. And also the fact that there aren't any real
grocery stores in poorer areas. I'm way lazier than most poorer people, but
eat only fresh food that I make myself.

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yummyfajitas
_I'd say it's cost, not lazyness. And also the fact that there aren't any real
grocery stores in poorer areas._

This is simply not true. Fresh food is available in both the poor areas I
mentioned (and is cheap), people just don't buy it. It's not overpriced
either, on a per-meal basis (rather than a per-calorie basis) it tends to be
cheaper than prepackaged crap.

When I lived in Harlem [1], I noticed an interesting fact. There was almost a
perfect correlation between the contents of a shopping basket and the
appearance of the person carrying it. Poor looking people ate prepackaged
crap, yuppies ate fresh food.

[1] For those unfamiliar with NYC, Harlem used to be a terrible neighborhood.
It became safe under Giuliani/Bloomberg and yuppies have moved in because it's
cheap. The neighborhood is now roughly 50% yuppie, 50% local.

~~~
kellishaver
Eating fresh foods isn't necessarily more expensive, but there's the common
misconception that is and many people just don't take the time to find out
otherwise. Often times, people who try it end up spending more, too, because
they're not used to it and don't make a full committment to it, so all that
fresh produce they bought sits in their fridge and goes bad, taking a back
seat to the pre-packaged stuff they bought along with it. So there's another
thing that can be seen by them as driving up the cost. They end up wasting a
lot of food and thereby wasting a lot of money.

What a lot of them don't realize as well is that healthy food is more filling
than pre-packaged crap. Your body is getting all of the nutrients it needs
with less food, so you don't stay hungry all the time or need huge quantities,
so you can actually buy less food.

Also, many people in poorer communities who are, for example, on food stamps,
will get their $250 in food stamps at the beginning of each month of whatever
and they think they need to go out and buy $250 in groceries with it right
then, because they're on a limited budget and they think this will be an
easier way to see what they have/need and balance that budget. So they buy
pre-packaged stuff, because they can throw it in the cabinet and it will still
be good 4 weeks later, or 6mo later, just in case they lose those food stamps
or that minimum wage job.

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TorKlingberg
I wonder why prepackaged foods are always so bad. If I make a big homemade
meal, I can put some of it in the freezer. Then I can take it out and
microwave it later and it is still a good meal. It stays good quite long in
the freezer too. Why can't I buy something like that? Sure there are ready-
made meals marketed as "healthy", but it usually just means smaller portions
and no taste.

I think the reason is that since you cannot tell what went into a packaged
meal, the producer has every incentive to replace good ingredients with
something cheaper, and hide it will coloring, flavors, etc.

~~~
tptacek
Because producers A/B test their food, and rapidly find that (a) things that
increase shelf stability at the price of freshness _don't_ cause consumers to
buy less, and (b) things that increase increase perceived sweetness,
saltiness, and unctuousness _do_ cause consumers to buy more.

In any mainstream market there's room for a cost leader than operates at
atypical economies of scale, and for several narrow-line high price niche
producers. People who shop at Safeway aren't going to pay $10 for frozen
pilaf. You're either going to be driven inexorably towards cheap, highly
shelf-stable, highly marketable products, or you're competing at Whole Foods.

Cooks Illustrated finds this all the time when they test ingredients. They
don't always pick the sweetest (say) tomato sauce, but the hyper-organic
natural brand with no additional sweetener often comes in last. And that's a
test panel of chefs.

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rms
By unctuousness did you mean umami?

~~~
tptacek
No, more like "fatty mouth feel", which sounds much worse than "unctuous".

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mark_l_watson
All about marketing: this is big business, so a _lot_ of money is spent
pushing the convenience life style.

I have a difficult time relating to this however since cooking is a favorite
activity of mine and my wife. We just got home from a trip so yesterday I made
up a shopping list of fresh food that my wife picked up and in the afternoon I
made Pad Thai with 6 different fresh vegetables from our garden and our local
market.

Cooking is a lot of fun, and I can't understand why people can not make it a
priority.

~~~
spazmaster
I love cooking too, but my wife couldn't care less. It's not everyone's hobby!
(sadly)

~~~
kellishaver
I absolutely hate to cook, but I have found it's much easier to grab some
fresh fruits/veggies and a handful of nuts or make a decent sandwich on whole
grain bread than it is to heat up some microwave something. I think that's
another misconception some people have. Fact is, you don't have to do a lot of
cooking to eat healthy. Eating your fruits, vegetables and whole grains raw is
healthier than cooking them and requires no more effort than a quick rinse in
the sink.

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stretchwithme
Its just the spinning of that tray in the microwave has us mesmerized is all.

