That’s so true. When all you do is talk about everything you can’t do or don’t have, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Thank you for reading and for your kind words!
I could not love this more if I tried!! I recently started (then paused, bc kids haha) a YouTube channel called Becca's Real Food Kitchen based on everything you just talked about. Finding money, skills, and time to cook real food. I do it, 3 meals a day, with two under two at home, and on a restricted diet. It can be done!! Bravo
I sure hope you get back to that Youtube channel one day—we need more of that! I have 3 under 4 years old and I do it too. Yes, it's hard but I'm with you, it's possible and so worth it!! The best part is watching my children learn things like the difference between protein and carbs and even the ingredients needed to make bread. It just swells my heart up to think about them as adults one day making bread and roasting a whole chicken for their own families because of all the time they spent with me in the kitchen ❤️ Bravo to you, mama!
I’ve never really bought many UPFs. But I noticed massive savings when I started making my own granola, muesli bars, crackers, bread etc instead of buying. Not to mention the huge health (and taste and environmental) benefits! I think the time scarcity argument is possibly more valid but it really isn’t that hard once you get into the rhythm of things. Look forward to your follow up post next week.
Love that you brought up the taste benefits—from from scratch really does taste so much better than UPFs and I think most people notice! Also, to your point about getting into the rhythm of things—that is huge. It used to take me SO much longer to prep and bake sourdough bread, for example, but after so much “practice” I can whip it together while I’m picking up the kitchen and pop it in the oven while I’m making breakfast—so quick and easy but it does take those reps of practice. Thank you for reading!
Yesss. I love this post so much. Your words are very inspiring. I've written before about my own great-grandparents story of growing up on farms, and yet they were sickly. When they started teaching themselves about nutrition and eating whole foods their family healed themselves. I grew up poor and my mom almost always bought whole foods and cooked from scratch. We rarely ate out and only had soda and sweets for holidays and birthdays. Convenience foods are so expensive like you point out - $$$ wise and to our health.
Wow. What an in-depth article with lots of practical tips, and myth-busting too. My partner and I took a cooking class 10 years ago with a chef from Nepal. He opened our eyes to how economical it can be to buy things like whole chickens and to use all of the meat for a few days worth of meals. Same with produce. He was big on only buying things in season and that didn't sit on a boat or a truck for days and days. He used a lot of ingredients that he purchased at reduced price because they were "imperfect" or oddly shaped or slightly miscoloured. Things labeled "seconds" too. All of which tasted exactly the same (and in most cases came from the same tree or garden) as the "perectly" shaped ones that sell at a premium price. Your article also reminds me that buying things in a grocery store that are out of season is really a relatively new and novel thing. My parents who are in their late 60s remind us now and then that when they were kids, they didn't go to the store to buy lettuce in the winter here in rural Ontario. Lettuce was a summer vegetable. Winter was time to dig into the preserves in the fruit cellar and to eat up those root vegetables that could be kept in cold storage for long periods of time.
I love so many things in this comment—thank you for sharing about your experience with the chef. The in-season mentality has really freed me to stop feeling guilty about not serving my family ALL the fresh produce in the winter months—I remind myself that if it’s not growing outside right now, then our bodies don’t NEED it right now. Thank you for reading!
Loved this. It's interesting how making food from scratch used to be something that lower class people did and it was the rich who had their food pre-made (whether by eating out frequently or buying early versions of processed foods as a convenience), but now that's completely flipped in the culture's eye. Shopping carts full of processed foods and soda are now largely associated with people who are poor, as are fast food restaurants like McDonalds, even though all of this stuff is now SUPER expensive — not like in the 90s and early 2000s when you could go to McDonalds for just a few dollars!! It's so common for people to think making your own food (and esp. making things homemade like bread/bread products, tortillas, stock, etc) is a rich person thing...when that's how working class people have gotten by for generations!! We've been buying more processed foods lately due to my pregnancy and it being difficult to me to cook with first trimeter nausea, and I've really seen how much more expensive it is. Nothing beats buying only the basis: protein, veg/fruit, grains/legumes.
This is so insightful and so true. We’ve also had to eat out a little more lately because I’m 5 weeks postpartum and we don’t have family around and it’s just PAINFUL how much one family meal costs out (and we have very young children—I can’t imagine eating out with bigger kids who need bigger meals!). Cooking at home is truly better in every which way.
This is all so helpful! I’ve recently discovered a love for cooking from scratch and it really does save us so much money, plus I get the peace of mind of there being way less processed foods in our diet. Thank you for all of these tips and encouragement!
What a gift for you to enjoy something that saves your family money and keeps them healthy! I’m truly so thankful when I think about the fact that I actually LOVE to cook (especially since learning about quality ingredients that just make food taste so much better than fast foods). And I do think more people would love to cook if they just gave it shot, learned how to do it well and incorporated fun rituals into it
People also need to stop saying that you have to be Anglo-Protestant to have food privilege. I’m actually kind of tired of that rhetoric! Also a child of immigrants and my HK immigrant parents didn’t even have that many ultra-processed seasoning sauces at home when I was growing up. No hoisin and oyster sauce maybe once in a blue moon. And I don’t think we ever finished the bottle. We had soy sauce and chili paste. Okay, we had ketchup as well but I don’t think the bottle was ever used up before it expired. And it was for me. They didn’t even buy ground meat! My grandmother would delicately chop meat if we ever needed it. Dead serious!! As an adult and parent, my freezer is stocked full of frozen vegetables and fruit. I also buy super sized frozen chicken parts (they’re plain and uncooked) and plain frozen fish fillets.
Good article. And true. We never ate processed food as kids, because it was too expensive! I shaved over $100 off our grocery bill per week by going back to those skills of cooking and baking from scratch (and from the garden, including preserving). However. I only achieved this because I switched to working for wages part-time and in a more flexible job, and had spent the previous few years building up the garden to the abundant bursting of delicious food wealth it is now. And, I already had these skills. I do acknowledge the difficulty of doing these things if you don't know how to do them, simply finding the mental energy to learn is hard when you're also working every hour under the sun. I had to learn a few things and brush up on some others, but my mother had given me a solid foundation in household management on a budget.
This is an inspiring read that will help spread the truth!
We can buy a giant sack of carrots, a bag of baby potatoes, an entire package of ground beef, and a dozen eggs- all for less than one meal at McDonald’s. And even if it cost a couple more bucks, it would make two solid meals instead of one crappy one.
Thank you, Johanna for sharing your family’s and your own experiences🧡cooking at home and from scratch is a time commitment but it’s a worthwhile commitment to our health that pays dividends🧡🧡
When I became a single mom, with 3 kids at home , ages 17, 15, 10 I determined I was going to eat healthy. I worked part time and had some child support, but was not rolling in money. Averaged $2200/ month, with $1400 of that going to rent and utilities.
I followed a lot of the things in this post. Was just better all around. We were healthy, and did not miss the junk. I now try to encourage others I see in stores, with carts of junk, to try cutting just one thing and substituting it for real food.
This is inspiring and excellent! I think sometimes we get focused on all we can't do instead of on what we can. Thank you for sharing!
That’s so true. When all you do is talk about everything you can’t do or don’t have, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Thank you for reading and for your kind words!
I could not love this more if I tried!! I recently started (then paused, bc kids haha) a YouTube channel called Becca's Real Food Kitchen based on everything you just talked about. Finding money, skills, and time to cook real food. I do it, 3 meals a day, with two under two at home, and on a restricted diet. It can be done!! Bravo
I sure hope you get back to that Youtube channel one day—we need more of that! I have 3 under 4 years old and I do it too. Yes, it's hard but I'm with you, it's possible and so worth it!! The best part is watching my children learn things like the difference between protein and carbs and even the ingredients needed to make bread. It just swells my heart up to think about them as adults one day making bread and roasting a whole chicken for their own families because of all the time they spent with me in the kitchen ❤️ Bravo to you, mama!
I’ve never really bought many UPFs. But I noticed massive savings when I started making my own granola, muesli bars, crackers, bread etc instead of buying. Not to mention the huge health (and taste and environmental) benefits! I think the time scarcity argument is possibly more valid but it really isn’t that hard once you get into the rhythm of things. Look forward to your follow up post next week.
Love that you brought up the taste benefits—from from scratch really does taste so much better than UPFs and I think most people notice! Also, to your point about getting into the rhythm of things—that is huge. It used to take me SO much longer to prep and bake sourdough bread, for example, but after so much “practice” I can whip it together while I’m picking up the kitchen and pop it in the oven while I’m making breakfast—so quick and easy but it does take those reps of practice. Thank you for reading!
love that you linked to this week's post. Excellent work.
Yesss. I love this post so much. Your words are very inspiring. I've written before about my own great-grandparents story of growing up on farms, and yet they were sickly. When they started teaching themselves about nutrition and eating whole foods their family healed themselves. I grew up poor and my mom almost always bought whole foods and cooked from scratch. We rarely ate out and only had soda and sweets for holidays and birthdays. Convenience foods are so expensive like you point out - $$$ wise and to our health.
Thank you so much for reading and sharing your experience. It’s so good to hear about other families who had the same experience!
Wow. What an in-depth article with lots of practical tips, and myth-busting too. My partner and I took a cooking class 10 years ago with a chef from Nepal. He opened our eyes to how economical it can be to buy things like whole chickens and to use all of the meat for a few days worth of meals. Same with produce. He was big on only buying things in season and that didn't sit on a boat or a truck for days and days. He used a lot of ingredients that he purchased at reduced price because they were "imperfect" or oddly shaped or slightly miscoloured. Things labeled "seconds" too. All of which tasted exactly the same (and in most cases came from the same tree or garden) as the "perectly" shaped ones that sell at a premium price. Your article also reminds me that buying things in a grocery store that are out of season is really a relatively new and novel thing. My parents who are in their late 60s remind us now and then that when they were kids, they didn't go to the store to buy lettuce in the winter here in rural Ontario. Lettuce was a summer vegetable. Winter was time to dig into the preserves in the fruit cellar and to eat up those root vegetables that could be kept in cold storage for long periods of time.
I love so many things in this comment—thank you for sharing about your experience with the chef. The in-season mentality has really freed me to stop feeling guilty about not serving my family ALL the fresh produce in the winter months—I remind myself that if it’s not growing outside right now, then our bodies don’t NEED it right now. Thank you for reading!
Loved this. It's interesting how making food from scratch used to be something that lower class people did and it was the rich who had their food pre-made (whether by eating out frequently or buying early versions of processed foods as a convenience), but now that's completely flipped in the culture's eye. Shopping carts full of processed foods and soda are now largely associated with people who are poor, as are fast food restaurants like McDonalds, even though all of this stuff is now SUPER expensive — not like in the 90s and early 2000s when you could go to McDonalds for just a few dollars!! It's so common for people to think making your own food (and esp. making things homemade like bread/bread products, tortillas, stock, etc) is a rich person thing...when that's how working class people have gotten by for generations!! We've been buying more processed foods lately due to my pregnancy and it being difficult to me to cook with first trimeter nausea, and I've really seen how much more expensive it is. Nothing beats buying only the basis: protein, veg/fruit, grains/legumes.
This is so insightful and so true. We’ve also had to eat out a little more lately because I’m 5 weeks postpartum and we don’t have family around and it’s just PAINFUL how much one family meal costs out (and we have very young children—I can’t imagine eating out with bigger kids who need bigger meals!). Cooking at home is truly better in every which way.
This is all so helpful! I’ve recently discovered a love for cooking from scratch and it really does save us so much money, plus I get the peace of mind of there being way less processed foods in our diet. Thank you for all of these tips and encouragement!
What a gift for you to enjoy something that saves your family money and keeps them healthy! I’m truly so thankful when I think about the fact that I actually LOVE to cook (especially since learning about quality ingredients that just make food taste so much better than fast foods). And I do think more people would love to cook if they just gave it shot, learned how to do it well and incorporated fun rituals into it
People also need to stop saying that you have to be Anglo-Protestant to have food privilege. I’m actually kind of tired of that rhetoric! Also a child of immigrants and my HK immigrant parents didn’t even have that many ultra-processed seasoning sauces at home when I was growing up. No hoisin and oyster sauce maybe once in a blue moon. And I don’t think we ever finished the bottle. We had soy sauce and chili paste. Okay, we had ketchup as well but I don’t think the bottle was ever used up before it expired. And it was for me. They didn’t even buy ground meat! My grandmother would delicately chop meat if we ever needed it. Dead serious!! As an adult and parent, my freezer is stocked full of frozen vegetables and fruit. I also buy super sized frozen chicken parts (they’re plain and uncooked) and plain frozen fish fillets.
Well said. Carry on and keep writing!
I will!! Thank you for reading ❤️
No…less. Stop buying junk food and teach your children to eat real and good food
Good article. And true. We never ate processed food as kids, because it was too expensive! I shaved over $100 off our grocery bill per week by going back to those skills of cooking and baking from scratch (and from the garden, including preserving). However. I only achieved this because I switched to working for wages part-time and in a more flexible job, and had spent the previous few years building up the garden to the abundant bursting of delicious food wealth it is now. And, I already had these skills. I do acknowledge the difficulty of doing these things if you don't know how to do them, simply finding the mental energy to learn is hard when you're also working every hour under the sun. I had to learn a few things and brush up on some others, but my mother had given me a solid foundation in household management on a budget.
This is an inspiring read that will help spread the truth!
We can buy a giant sack of carrots, a bag of baby potatoes, an entire package of ground beef, and a dozen eggs- all for less than one meal at McDonald’s. And even if it cost a couple more bucks, it would make two solid meals instead of one crappy one.
Thank you, Johanna for sharing your family’s and your own experiences🧡cooking at home and from scratch is a time commitment but it’s a worthwhile commitment to our health that pays dividends🧡🧡
When I became a single mom, with 3 kids at home , ages 17, 15, 10 I determined I was going to eat healthy. I worked part time and had some child support, but was not rolling in money. Averaged $2200/ month, with $1400 of that going to rent and utilities.
I followed a lot of the things in this post. Was just better all around. We were healthy, and did not miss the junk. I now try to encourage others I see in stores, with carts of junk, to try cutting just one thing and substituting it for real food.
Wow, YOU are an inspiration. Thank you for sharing your story ❤️ we prioritize what matters most to us, don’t we? Way to go, mama 👏🏽