What does Veeky Forums spend the most money on, food-wise? Do you keep a budget?

What does Veeky Forums spend the most money on, food-wise? Do you keep a budget?

Pic related, had no idea that vegetables were really that expensive. Holy tits.

Canned soup or chicken salad sandwiches.

Do you live in America? There's a reason poor people are fat an unhealthy: good healthy wholesome food is out of their price range.

There aren't any government subsidies keeping the price of cabbage down.

Yeah, I'm in America. I also don't eat meat, which makes me a bit pissed at the current distribution of subsidies. There's no reason that a single heirloom tomato should cost as much as a pound of steak, ffs.

>Heirloom

Stop buying marketing terms then dumbfuck, and get to gardening.

Don't even know where to start with that, but the main reason is availability. Ever drive through the hood? There's like 5 fast food joints to every bodega.

There's a legal standard for what can be called heirloom though

I'm pretty good with the food budget, but spend way more on alcohol.

A separate but still valid issue is taste. People seek out hipster "heirloom" vegetables because they're dissatisfied with "normal" vegetables. Tomatoes taste like shit, carrots taste like dirt, apples have the internal consistency of baby food -- but damn do they all LOOK PRETTY ON THE SHELF.

It's a straight supply and demand thing as much as it is a subsidy thing. There's more fast food to go around, keeping supply high and price down. Industrial agriculture has become a system of entrapment and enslavement to megacorporations, keeping supply of "heirloom" vegetables low and prices high.

It's still better to grow your own, instead of paying a premium for a color in a supermarket.

Unless you live in an area with fertile soil and have a plot of land you're allowed to plant on, and even then, it's pretty hard to grow tomatoes cheaper than they cost in the store.

I live in an apartment so I can only plant in windowsills, which works fine for herbs like rosemary, thyme, dill, basil, and even certain salad greens and green onions, but tomatoes take up a lot of space.

>Stop buying marketing terms then dumbfuck

They taste different. There's a real, qualitative difference between types of tomatoes.

I usually buy the cheapest tomatoes I can find, but if I'm going to be eating something for which tomatoes are an integral part of the flavor, it's nice to have good tomatoes.

My point was more that it's a bit ridiculous that a vegetable, fed water for a few weeks, could cost more than a pound of a giant mammal that had to eat tons of grains and be watered/housed for months before being slaughtered and butchers and cut and shrinkwrapped. Just intuitively, it makes no sense.

The only veggies I buy are from the chinese market or on sale. It's just that bad in murrica

>it makes no sense.
supply and demand my friend.

I think meats are subsidized a metric fuckton.
I'm not complaining though.

regardless of cost home grown tomatoes are infinitely more tasty than store tomatoes

also tomatoes take to container gardening ridiculously well

probably beer

>also tomatoes take to container gardening ridiculously well

They just get big, my windows only have so much space, unfortunately, and I'd probably save more money by replacing the tomatoes with some more herbs or salad greens due to how long tomatoes take to grow.

Heirloom are a fairly niche market, granted, but the price is a lot of a reason for restricted supply, not the other way around. If all beef subsidies were removed, it would render steaks so expensive that you'd see them like the heirloom tomatoes of meat, and wonder why we don't just eat ground beef.

>They just get big
So keep them pruned so they don't get too big or grow varieties that don't get overly large.

>If all beef subsidies were removed, it would render steaks so expensive that you'd see them like the heirloom tomatoes of meat, and wonder why we don't just eat ground beef.

How much does steak cost it the US? It`s about $11/lb for anything decent in Canada, so good vegetables are almost free by comparison.

A scotch fillet steak is about $40 a kilo in Australia and a good porterhouse is $30 a kilo

Steak ranges between about $7 and $18 or so per pound, depending on the cut and quality. Without subsidies, that price would more than double. Vegetables, by comparison, are barely subsidized, if at all.

If hamburger was suddenly $10+/lb and the price of fresh fruit and vegetables was more than halved, you can bet the obesity figures would look different.

Skirt is about $18-20
Ribeye is $25-30
Tenderloin is around $35

I'm talking about decent stuff, from a good butcher, dry aged (with the exception of the skirt). Not grocery store garbage steak.

I don't think the obesity figures would look that different. the demographics of the people that go out protesting and rioting would be the thing that changes if beef prices doubled and fresh produce prices halved. most people don't want to change.

Those prices are a bit steep.

You can get good quality prime steaks from the butcher counter from any halfway decent supermarket. Sirloin is usually about $6-7/lb, NY strip is about $10/lb ribeye for $12-14/lb. around here.

If you want to wear your fedora and buy dry aged meme steaks for $30/lb, so be it.

>dry aged
of course it's steep

and you shouldn't be using premium stuff as a frame of reference for general prices

they're fat and unhealthy because theyre stupid and lazy, not because theyre poor

True, Europoor here though, but just yesterday two lowlifes, a fat woman and her alcoholic husband, were at the cash register before me and using their last money on the card to buy shit... What did they buy, Mars bars, beer, chips, soda, stupid shit like that. So they just pissed away the rest of their money on shit that is nutritionally empty AND expensive per calorie.

Go for frozen produce (green beans, broccoli, etc whatever is more expensive fresh), and cheaper shit like potato, cabbage, carrots, and onion.
Bulk buy rice, oats, dried beans, and lentils and store them frozen or in airtight containers.
Buy cheaper meats, or smaller amounts or second choice meats like neck or tongue.
Learn how to cook dishes that share ingredients through the week, and use the leftover ingredients of one dish to use in the next.
Grow your own herbs, tomatoes, and cucumbers, you can also easily grow spinach, and some other things. Grow tomatoes UP, instead of OUT to save horizontal space and prune as needed.

Eating healthy isn't hard, or expensive, you just have to know what you're doing. With some upfront cost for a somewhat cheap digital pressure cooker cooking time goes down as well.

Poor people are fat because unhealthy food is convenient. If you end up doing the math, you can get a much higher amount of food and better quality for quite a bit less than the unhealthy frozen or fast food options.
Plus they buy chips and soda pop and all that garbage which is wildly expensive if you're on a budget.

My sister is poor, and buys kraft mac n cheese, frozen foods, cereal, and all this unhealthy shit then complains when she's got no money. I've tried time and time again to show her how to make extremely easy, fast (or hands off) meals for cheap but she says it's "too hard" and "too much effort". This is the reasoning of a lazy person stuck in a rut of unhealthy habits. Not someone who can't afford good food.

Cheap healthy eating should be in a sticky, as it gets asked so often. I was surprised on how much money I saved after I finally started to cook for my self and eat healthy food.