Why do people eat bad food?

I don't have anything against McDonalds food either
Hell I would take McDonalds over some restaurants because I can make some restaurant food better than the people there
I can't make a big Mac tho because I can't get my hands on their ingredients
What I don't get is when it becomes a thing like ordering take out or going there every day
Do you have any idea how cheap and easy Asian food is to make?

I get what you're saying. My dad, for example, is super weird. He "boycotts" good restaurants for dipshit reasons and genuinely prefers the worst the worst the worst restaurants.

They just value things differently than you.

The food's sold in large packages. If l wanted one serving of spring mix I'd have to either get a family sized bag or buy a whole bundle of each type of vegetable. Both options result in a lot of leftovers.

Just eat the leftovers later that's what I do

because it's "hard and time consuming" at the beginner stage so people assume it will always be that way no matter what their skill level, that's why so many people are impressed even by simple dishes

>But why do people settle for less?
Laziness, convenience and just not giving a shit. Think about it: in order to eat well you have to not only learn to cook, but learn to shop as well as manage your fridge and larder so the stuff you buy doesn't go bad on you. That's a fair bit of mental bandwidth and time.

I'm in the same position as you, but I'm there because I'm into food and cooking as a hobby and don't want to settle for eating crap. But I'm also willing to spend an hour a day thinking about what to make, buy and spending the time actually cooking it. I'm willing to think about what's sitting in the fridge that needs to be used today and what I can make out of it instead of saying fuck it and ordering a pizza. For a lot of people that's way more effort than they're willing to put into feeding themselves when they live in a world full of ready to eat stuff they can just go buy. And what happens when you get used to eating that stuff is you get used to it. You stop noticing how bad it is. You actually start enjoying it. Next thing you know you're posting in threads about the best brand of frozen pizza and Taco Bell.
>This isn't about snobbery
I get that no one wants to be a snob, but as someone who is used to eating fresh food cooked from scratch every day I find it very hard not to look down on people who eat stuff like Kraft Dinner or Campbell's soup. Because that shit tastes awful to me, and people claim to love it. I can restrain myself from judging them as stupid or just not knowing any better, but I can't help but think their taste is all out of whack. Because it is. And what makes your taste get all out of whack? Eating lazy food all the time.

>implying I'm going to buy a bunch of tomatoes to puree when I can buy a can of tomato soup mix for 37¢
>implying I'm going to grind my own wheat when I can buy a box of 12 KD for $2
I mean enjoy your windmill and wasting money, I guess.
>inb4 anti-semite namecalling

That's funny because my wife bakes bread and does indeed grind her own wheat. The point is everyone decides just how far down the rabbit hole they're willing to go. I'm willing to go far enough down that things like soup mix and Kraft Dinner don't exist in my reality.

oyyyyy

let me put it into perspective for you, m8. I can pay $5, give or take, for lunch and dinner for an entire week. A bit same-y, but still. You pay what, $5 for the meat portion of one meal? I don't like wasting money, and to me, you're blowing money like it grows on trees. Not all of us can afford to throw money away like that.

It's another Shoah!

>Hey /g/,
So I've only really been coding for myself the past year and a half, or so. That's when I moved into my first apartment with my wife, and at first she would code and I would do some programming here and there, but at some point in the past year I fully eclipsed her skill and just enjoyed it way more than she did, so I took coding over.

I know I have a lot to learn, but like, man I've learned a lot? I can design a handful of functions exceptionally well (my meter stick is "would I pirate online , and be happy I did?") and I try new stuff all the time, and mediocre is about the worst I get.

But ever since I started to learn to code and program and improvise and know what algorithms to do what with, etc, I've wondered this--why do people use garbage tech?

Like, I can't think of anybody in my life who cares about coding as much as I do, or has as much skill and know-how as I do--and I don't have that much. It's mostly reading stuff and watching YouTube videos.

But why do people settle for less? Why do people buy weird, bad pasta tech?, why do people buy HDDs at the store, why do people buy iPhones, why do people not know how to parse, debug, or QA programs?

This isn't about snobbery or about poor people, because I'm a couple notches above shithouse broke all the time. But coding programs from scratch isn't nearly as hard as anyone makes it out to be. Why don't people care? Why don't so many people want to learn more, or learn anything about anything? It seems like a lot of people throw a bunch of garbage into a compiler (which are great devices, SOMETIMES) and are like "mmmm wow I made this so great". Why don't people give a shit about coding?

tl;dr It's not even that hard to learn a couple base skills to vastly improve what you're up to in the offoce. Why do people code garbage that isn't very good, night after night after night?

great post OP, no really A+, snowflake/10

>You pay what, $5 for the meat portion of one meal?
I don't eat a lot of meat and make everything from scratch. Most meals I make feed two for somewhere around $1.50. A $5 meal for two would be a splurge for me. It's not money I'm throwing away - it's time. I spend about an hour a day on food between shopping, planning, cooking and cleaning up afterwards.

That's still around $30 a week. Say you eat meat twice a week, how much do you spend, what meat do you buy? Also, you shop every day? I just buy the shit I need for a week all in one go on Sunday or Saturday. How do you do it, man, I never have enough time in a day and my "meals" are done in less than 10 minutes.

Everything that matters to you means nothing to someone else. And everything that means nothing to you means everything to someone else

My grocery bill is usually about $35 a week.But I'm able to work from home about half the time, so I get to cook my own lunches and almost always my own dinners. That helps a lot. The time you spend going back and forth to work is time I spend cooking.

I've noticed the same as you OP, people are always amazed at my "cooking skills" (I'm mediocre at best) because they have no idea how to do the simplest shit that I'd consider basic life skills.

Mostly I think it's just that people are absolutely lazy and have been raised to be so, that the idea of seeing something or coming up with something and then progressing to the thought 'I could make that' is totally beyond them.

At least in the US people have been raised since childhood to be helpless consumerist whores, incapable of doing anything for themselves. Women especially, men at least tend to have some idea how to prepare bbq if nothing else, but the whole 5th wave feminist shit makes it so women consider doing anything for themselves that might almost appear to be slightly related to some kind of gender role completely beneath them, but at the same time they'll keep the faintest scrap as if to assure themselves that it is in their domain. Like every girl I know has some "recipe" they know that they think is so special but it is almost invariably garbage and consists of using remade shit anyway.

And I think it is primarily Americans with the problem. All the international people I know, even if not great cooks, are willing to at least try and cook and usually do okay.

At some point you realize why am I wasting money on this when I can make it better at home?
I realized i have lower expectations for expensive takeout than for the food I make myself too, I can eat something I would have considered I ruined if it was made by me

I'm not the guy you were responding to but most of my meals are probably

I gradually went from eating microwave dinners cuz mom can't cook to being a passable cook myself, with little cookware cause broke.
I really think people overthink the whole cooking thing, as it is NOT hard nor demanding to make a good meal. Just buy things you like, think about what you can do with them, and go for whatever sounds good and/or appropriate. You don't need recipes, thermometers, or overpriced knives. Just try it till it's good.
But it seems like people don't trust themselves or don't know how to achieve what they want to do. But how hard is it to just try and see how it goes ?
My roommate is a good example. He has been living here for a year, but doesn't know what to do with fresh ingredients so whenever I don't make dindin he just goes to the store and buys a fro za.

Maybe it's just my location, but a pound of any beef runs me minimum $5, and that's the kind of stuff that's practically shoeleather.

That's why I stopped eating beef for the most part. Just not worth it.

...

Yeah must be location. I'm in Texas and beef brisket regularly runs anywhere from like $1/lb to $2/lb depending on the season. Granted a brisket is like 10lbs at the smallest. Most of the other beef (aside from liver) runs about $4/lb and up, even the shitty stew meat (which is why I usually use brisket for beef stew).

Chicken and pork can both be found for right around $1/lb though so that's the meat I eat the most, or liver, but I'm still vegetarian (except eggs?) most days for the sake of frugality.

Thank you Jesus for based Texas!

>>implying I'm going to grind my own wheat when I can buy a box of 12 KD for $2
>I mean enjoy your windmill and wasting money, I guess.

Why do people always use this shit example? Do they not recognise the difference between growing/grinding wheat vs baking bread with flour? I mean evidently you do because you mention the windmill.

Do you seriously not understand why an accomplished home cook would buy a bottle of soy sauce instead of mixing up and fermenting a 500 litre vat of it over a period of two years?

Where does this leap in logic come from? It boggles the mind.

hyperbole
[hahy-pur-buh-lee]

noun, Rhetoric.
1.
obvious and intentional exaggeration.
2.
an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as “to wait an eternity.”.

>implying coding is necessary to live for 99% of the population

Nice false equivalence fgt

Don't know what you're trying to say as the tomato soup and the wheat examples you gave were not presented as hyperbole in the slightest. If I grant benefit of the doubt that they were hyperbolic statements, then where lies the value in the argument? By the nature of being hyperbolic they are not applicable to the scope of the central point of the argument.

This. On this board (obviously) the idea that some people just don't really enjoy cooking or eating as much as others seems to be crazy. Look at Veeky Forums for example, for loads of people it's just something that needs to be maintained in order to keep living. Again, though, there's going to be far more people on this board who will find it impossible to wrap their heads around that idea and will just say "They're lazy" or believe that someone who doesn't value food isn't living their life correctly. People from Veeky Forums probably find it crazy that more people don't exercise and lift, seeing as it's not that hard, and it can add value and fulfillment to life. Soylent sells for a reason, there are people that just have different priorities and enjoy some staples of life more than others.

some people get to the point where they're either very tired or very very lazy, and generally stop giving a shit.

Good point. This seems entirely reasonable and well thought out.

I get what you're saying and I guess I've seen it, but most people I know cook and bake well. I work with a small company and all but one (a stupid old fat granny who is lazy and only eats store bought tacos and diet coke mostly) cook pretty good regularly. Boss/Owner and his wife brought in a fairly elaborate Italian meal the other day of lasagna, salad, garlic/olive dipping oil and tiramisu. I've been to Italy 5 times, and they did pretty good for US murrkins. Manager BBQs a lot and really knows how to do it. Co-worker my age range (27-30) is a proficient cook/baker from Mexico. I make exceptional pizza and BBQ, myself. My wife is very good with Mexican food (she's from there too) as well as the Oriental food she's been dabbling with due to internet knowledge. Most people in my life cook well and render restaurant dining totally pointless. I mean, if we feel lazy once in a while, we'll settle for dining out. But that is like 5% of the time. And most restaurants are disappointing compared to what we do at home. I mean a serious majority of the restaurants we give a chance to, turn out to be like... "why does anyone come here again??".

Short answer: Why do people eat bad food?

Fucking lazy plebs.

>People from Veeky Forums probably find it crazy that more people don't exercise and lift, seeing as it's not that hard, and it can add value and fulfillment to life

That is too vague. Are you talking about the ones with shitty metabolisms or food obsessions who exercise to be less fat, or the ones who are obsessed with muscle mass? From what I can tell of muscle heads, its all about ego and not being able to stop looking at their HOT BODS in the mirror or hoping others are looking. I guess this comes down to the reward being a quest for sex. Some use cooking for that but not long term at all. Cooking is far more rewarding, especially for those who don't have an agenda like "gettin laid wooo". Also, EVERYONE loves great food, and more people than some realize do not give a fuck how big your muscles are or how /toned/ you look. No one gives a fuck about how many pushups you can do. Everyone gives a fuck about how good a meal you serve them is.

How the fuck is cooking more rewarding when lifting and eating healthier actively improves your quality of life and let's you live a longer life? And it's not about which is better than the other anyway. It's about priorities. Some people value physical health over food and that's OK. We can't judge people and call them lazy based on their preferences, not everyone is a cook.

>EVERYONE gives a fuck about how good a meal you serve them is.
>implying

>From what I can tell of muscle heads, its all about ego and not being able to stop looking at their HOT BODS in the mirror or hoping others are looking. I guess this comes down to the reward being a quest for sex.

many people on Veeky Forums have advanced past that point, some people definitely start off with that mentality but a lot of people just lift for self satisfaction. That's where the "fit is gay" meme comes in.

I'm not implying it, I'm stating it as fact. No one wants to be served shitty food. Are you trying to foolishly refute that?

No one wants to be served shitty food but not everyone cares if you serve them MUH GOOD BURGERS either.

There's only so much time in a day. If I spend an afternoon baking cookies, then I can't do other things. I can't prioritize anything because ideally I would like to do it all.

I don't really see it as some kind of tradeoff though, because I don't consider it bad food. I like most anything I try. Whether I'm just not picky, or I have low standards, it works for me.

Fair enough.

Wow, it's almost as if other people are allowed to spend their precious time on hobbies other than yours. How unthinkable!

it's called tater tot hotdish u fuck

>precious time

Posted to Veeky Forums on Thanksgiving day.

I'm not american

Not everyone can be equally enlightened.

I mean imagine if everyone was -- who would be the slaves? There would be no civilization.

because they don't give a shit?
it's just fuckin food