

Ask HN: How do you spend on food? - exit

Do you eat out more than you cook your own food?<p>How much do you spend weekly?<p>I'm slightly puzzled that ordering out is more expensive than cooking for ones self. Shouldn't centralized preparation be more efficient?
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bluesmoon
I balance it more or less equally. Lunch is generally at the office cafeteria,
so I won't count that. Weekend lunches are kitchen experiments, so think of it
as lab work and don't count it either.

Breakfast is typically cereal, or toast and marmalade, but on weekends I might
do scrambled eggs, or pancakes and if my girlfriend's around, we might do
something like <a
href="[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poha_%28rice%29>Poha</a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poha_%28rice%29>Poha</a>);
or <a
href="[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upma>Upma</a>](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upma>Upma</a>);
or something else fancy, but it's always at home.

Dinner is where the trade-off happens. I'll cook at home one or two days and
eat out three days. So what happens with the remaining two days of the week?
Leftovers from the two days that I do cook.

When I eat out, I end up spending not less than $10 on a meal. If I cook at
home, I spend maybe $10 for two and a half meals. Why the difference? From
what I can tell, there are several reasons...

At home, I cook once and cover several meals. I have no wastage because I
refrigerate leftovers and eat them the next day. I decide what I'm gonna cook
before I buy the ingredients. Each dish a restaurant makes has to serve one
person. They buy the ingredients in advance and hope to break even on what
they use. More often than not, then end up with wastage that they must throw
away. This is factored into the menu.

The restaurant also needs to pay rent for their premises, pay salaries and
follow health guidelines. You could factor your house rent into your meals, in
which case it should shoot each day's meal up by $30 or more. You could also
choose to pay yourself whenever you cook, pushing it up another few dollars,
and as far as the health code goes... you decide.

~~~
exit
(there's also the cost of refrigerating your own meals)

even with rent and salary overhead, it still surprises me that some buffet-
oriented system (which eliminates the one-dish:one-person problem you
described, and reduces staffing) hasn't made eating out vastly cheaper.

the only thing cooking at home seems to have going for it is that most people
are not otherwise productive with their time in the evening anyway.

that and the "homemade" connotation - which i suppose translates to something
real if you have a family, in terms of time spent together.

------
fezzl
As a college student, I spend about $20 for food per week. Rice, eggs, and
beans are dirt-cheap and they keep me full. Not sure if they're nutritious
enough, but I'm alive -- that's good enough for me.

------
bombs
I follow a strict diet plan, which involves eating the same thing every day.
It lets me eat cheaply, because I can buy in bulk. I spend $25 a day.

I eat a lot too, because I like good food. I might eat out every second or
third day and spend $100 a meal, including drinks.

I could save money by cutting down on going out, sure, but it's a small price
to spend for the enjoyment of the food and the company and the environment.

~~~
exit
what are you eating every day at $25?

~~~
bombs
A _lot_ of fruit, vegetables, oats, chicken and beef.

