a boring dystopia
late stage capitalism
Anyway poor people don’t buy Kellogg’s, it’s overpriced. Poor people buy the generic cereals that come in those huge plastic ziplock resealable bags. Not only do they cost less but they have more intelligent useful packaging and the quality is fine too.
Don’t do this, you’ll be malnourished. Grains aren’t a particularly good food group.
Potatoes don’t require much prep, are generally cheap and filling, and will be much better nutrient wise. I’d still recommend rice and beans though. Canned beans work if you have no means to cook.
I seem to remember there being issues historically with poor people relying on potatoes as their food source
Yeah being on the genocide list of the English had more to do with that than the taters
Potatoes are also really easy to grow. If you ever forget about your potatoes and they sprout or you leave them in the sun and they get green, you can put them in a pot and grow fresh potatoes.
Fava beans are also extremely easy to grow.
“Fava beans are also extremely easy to grow”
They also pair nicely with liver and a nice chianti.
Potatoes grow well in shade. Fava beans can grow in containers just fine, but may need a balcony. I would also get a short variety. A lot of things can grow in a window sill.
There’s also guerilla gardening, where you plant on an abandoned plot. Potatoes are great for this because they’ll basically grow on their own as long as they aren’t overtaken by blackberries.
Beans are cheaper dry than canned though. If you have the patience you can start them in a slow cooker before you go to work.
Garlic, onion, and peppers go miles in making beans taste good while also being cheaper.
I’m wondering now though whether the cost balances out because dry beans require a lot more energy to cook? I know they need at least an hour on the stove, whereas canned beans you can just add to a chilli etc straight away
Pressure cooker is the way for dry foods. Mine will do split peas lentils and mung bean stew in 12 mins.
I think time to cook food has become a luxry in the eyes of the so-called “invisible hand”. It’d be rad to find someone in the community with the time to cook huge pots of the stuff and pay them for the rice 'n beans.
Cereal is expensive, people arent buying it because its cheap, theyre buying it because the invisible hand demands their cooking time.
Rice often contains too much heavy mettals. Canned food contains too much BPA.
that’s probably why most recipes ask to wash rice before boiling… im certain this works great… if your house’s water-pipes were not made of lead hahaha…haha… sigh ._.
My understanding is that this is related to whether it’s American grown in fields previously used for cotton and other non-food crops due to pesticides… foreign rice should be ok?
Potatoes don’t require much prep
You have to peel and cook them, though. That’s a pretty big hurdle for people who would consider regularly eating cereal for dinner.
I do like instant mashed potatos, though, and they’re fairly cheap.
I’m talking people on survival mode, as I mentioned at the end of my very short comment just eat canned beans from the tin with no facilities to cook. Also you don’t need to peel potatoes, you can microwave them also, or bury in a fire if you don’t have electricity and are using one for heat.
Cereal is a scam, it’s expensive and nutritionally pointless.
A lot of people here are missing the fact that cereal doesn’t require any additional cost, time, and/or effort to store and prepare (in a desperate situation you might even have it with water or dry if you can’t access milk).
So while rice or potatoes might be a better meal, and the ingredients cheaper to buy (but not when you factor in cost and time of cooking), they may still not be an option for some.
For those who have never really been it - it’d blow your mind how expensive it is to be poor in so many different ways (a feature of capitalism, of course, not a bug).
Yeah, that is an excellent point. The time to actually prepare rice and beans comes at a premium when you’re working multiple jobs to make ends meet.
Right, that’s why fast food is thriving despite everyone knowing what shit it is - it fills a hole fast and cheap enough, and you’re not using any of your own energy - physically from the utility, but also physically, and mentally, from yourself to prepare it (and before that you have to refrigerate ingredients or keep them frozen so you have to own and pay to run a fridge/freezer as well as an oven or toaster or hob, and before that you have to shop for ingredients, it all takes money, time, and energy of every kind).
The problem isn’t how people go about trying to survive (like eating cereal for dinner), it’s the people making billions off of the industries and institutions that require workers be in such a desperate state in the first place.
I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but rice takes 15-20 mins in the microwave (if done right it’s perfectly fine) so it’s just seconds of button pressing and then walk away to do whatever else you need to and I buy canned beans that are already cooked so all you need to do is reheat them.
The hardest part for some is learning not to hate eating leftovers. I never had this issue so it comes easier to me, but my easy weekly meal (it’s just me so it’s simpler) is canned vegetables, canned beans, and a chicken breast all the the slow cooker with some basic seasoning. I can add whatever I want afterwards to change the flavors so it’s not always the “same.” I really don’t spend any time over an oven unless I want to.
All that said I imagine this gets 100000x harder when kids are involved, but luckily for me I’m pretty much the least desirable man on earth so I don’t need to worry about procreation lol
15-20 minutes is a long time when you have a 30-minute gap between your two jobs.
Beans from a can, champignons from a glass, bit of corn from a can. Put it on a tortilla with a bit of salsa for flavor. I add some flax seeds cause they are supposed to be good for your intestinal health. Obviously this tastes better when you take some time to prepare it in a pan, but it’s cheap, very filling and takes a few minutes to prepare at most. I like to eat it cold on hot summer days.
Yeah I know!
Not enough money to pay your bill it will cost you 75-90$ for being broke.
You buy small portions cause you can’t afford bulk, it will cost you more in small portions.
You are alone ! No family rebate for you. You can’t buy a home, well rent will cost you more than a mortgage.
Etc…
You can get a rice cooker for $20. Then, you can make rice and beans (with beans from a can) with virtually no effort.
You can also go from there if you have more time/money. Add cheese, hot sauce, salsa, avocado, make tacos, etc.
But I’ve survived many a meal with just rice from a rice cooker and a can of beans, and it’s far more nutritious and has left me feeling far better than eating cereal would.
You can get a rice cooker for $20
If you need $20 dollars spare as the first step, and to continue to use electricity to power the thing as the second - it isn’t accessible. Also - did it even cross your mind that if they could afford it, they would get one? It’s not like rice cookers are this secret tool only a select few know about…
Seriously, I get that it can be hard to imagine conditions we haven’t personally experienced, but it can’t be that hard to understand what “dirt poor” actually means, nor to accept that poor people aren’t poor by choice, nor are they surviving on cereals because they have better options they’re just not utilising as well as you think you would in their shoes, which you are not, and clearly have never been, in.
A box of cereal is like $6 and all sugar. It will provide 3-4 bowls of cereal for that price, with no actual nutrition. If you can afford a box of cereal a day, you can live on instant noodles instead for like 3 days and have the 20 for a brand new rice cooker. Or just go to the thrift store.
Cereal is not a poor person food. It is not nutritious, cheap, or filling. It is an expensive box of sugar. I get that it can be hard to imagine conditions we haven’t personally experienced, but it can’t be THAT hard to do basic math and put yourself in that situation for one second to understand that eating cereal for every meal is not cheap or sustainable.
Thanks for assuming a ton there, asshole.
I have been there. I have scraped together coins I could find to buy a single pound of dry pasta, to eat it plain. Repeatedly.
Money is not such an issue for me these days, but depression is. I know how hard it can be to do the minimal steps to make food.
I understand how precious time, money, and energy can be. I have eaten cereal and the like for plenty of meals I shouldn’t have, and have always regretted it.
There are better options.
A $20 rice cooker is the same as like 5 boxes of cereal. If you are too money pressed, but have some time, one can likely be found nearly free at a thrift store or yard sale, or you can cook rice or pasta in a pot instead.
If you don’t have access to a cooking surface, we’re getting to houselessness territory, which is a huge problem and is affecting far too many people, but is beyond just being poor or not having time.
Edit: And if all that is too much, you can eat cold beans from a can. I have done this as well. It’s not great, but it’s a better option than cereal still.
That’s $20 brand new. If you get it used you can find some either for free or next to nothing. I don’t think it’s a cost thing, I think it’s an accessibility thing.
Also, Kellogg isn’t a budget cereal brand. If you’re so poor you can’t afford a few dollars for a ride cooker then you shouldn’t be buying Kellogg. Actually, nobody should be buying Kellogg because it’s all the same cereal except for marketing.
Mine was a slow cooker with lentils and I would just refill as needed. Lentils, salt, pepper, tomatoes, onions, garlic, cilantro and if I’m feeling fancy/rich cook up some bacon to chuck in there. Minus the bacon it took like 5 minutes to chuck everything in there and leave it to cook. This was my poor college days where I just rented a room and had a part time job. Shit sucked.
Related: Sam Vimes ‘Boots’ Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness
https://terrypratchett.com/explore-discworld/sam-vimes-boots-theory-of-socio-economic-unfairness/
Hey guys, I have an idea. Let’s go punch him in the cock.
You have cock punching gloves? Also your username is only raising more questions.
for cash-strapped families
Is Kellogg’s cereal even cheap at all?? I’m not in the US so I could only imagine but I’d guess it’s not, is it?
Fun fact: if you were to drink a cup of gasoline, it would have enough calories to sustain you for the rest of your life!
Cereal is actually weirdly expensive nowadays. You can do much better for less.
It’s cheaper than good cereal, but more expensive than the identical store brand
And compared to dinner?
I’m asking because if I was “strapped for cash” I’d always go for cooking something rice or potato based myself, rather than buying already processed and packaged food, a most likely overpriced brand no less!
I think it’s partly that any home cooking is more difficult and time consuming than it. I have cheap and easy meals I do but they’re less feasible than cereal. Except dipping bread in pesto that’s dirt cheap and easy as fuck
It’s cheaper than a traditional dinner probably… But yeah might as well get the cheaper cereal.
I’m betting it would actually be cheaper to cook something like rice and beans than it would be to eat cereal.
