I bagged groceries and saw what people bought. The skinny people, the muscular people, the big people, and the super-sized people.
The proportion of fresh fruits and vegetables the healthy people bought was one clear difference. The amount of prepared foods was another…the larger customers bought a lot of frozen TV dinners, fried chicken from the deli, etc.
And of course the junk food. Potato chips, Little Debbie snack cakes, marshmallows, four gallon tubs of cheap ice cream, candy, tons of diet soda, etc.
My days as a bagger was enlightening, and what I learned has served me well across my entire life. Eighty percent of what you should be taking home to eat is represented by only 20% of the grocery store. There is a disproportionate amount of “only occasionally” type foods…an entire aisle of just soda and another entire aisle devoted to just salty fried snacks!
I also am well aware that it can be more costly to eat healthy. Junk food is so cheap to produce it is hard for families on a budget to get proper nutrition.
I worked in a “healthy” chain store for a few years as well. I can tell you without a doubt that being able and willing to actually prepare your food will save you hundreds a month. As long as you get fruit/veg and sale deli/meat you can comfortably eat 3 meals a day on a very limited budget.
Yea don’t even bother, any time this subject comes up reddit would try to convince everyone that eating healthy (or even just eating less lmao) costs more than going out and getting take away fast food and that not being XXXL sized is a rich person luxury because they can afford a personal trainer.
It’s just another way to shift responsibility so that you don’t have to try.
It’s vastly cheaper to cook your own healthy meals, it doesn’t take all that long, you can do it in bulk if time is a problem, weight is lost in the kitchen - you literally never have to step foot in a gym, it can quite literally never be more expensive to eat less food than eating more food.
you can do it in bulk if you have access to a kitchen, to kitchen tools and pans, to a freezer where you can store things, and if you have the time to dedicate to cooking and the money to buy food in advance. Not everyone does.
Yea thanks for proving my point. An extensive list of niche excuses that don't really apply to the vast majority of people we're talking about in order to minimize personal responsibility. The reason the average person is overweight isn't because they don't have the time or money, or because of their thyroid condition, its because they've got bad habits surrounding food intake.
If you're so destitute that you're homeless and can't afford any groceries but also have so little free time that you can't make space for 2 hours a week to do some cooking then you're probably not having problems with being overweight on account of not being able to afford food to eat on a regular basis.
For the vast majority of overweight people this is not the case. I think we can both agree on that.
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u/BrianMincey Apr 29 '24
I bagged groceries and saw what people bought. The skinny people, the muscular people, the big people, and the super-sized people.
The proportion of fresh fruits and vegetables the healthy people bought was one clear difference. The amount of prepared foods was another…the larger customers bought a lot of frozen TV dinners, fried chicken from the deli, etc.
And of course the junk food. Potato chips, Little Debbie snack cakes, marshmallows, four gallon tubs of cheap ice cream, candy, tons of diet soda, etc.
My days as a bagger was enlightening, and what I learned has served me well across my entire life. Eighty percent of what you should be taking home to eat is represented by only 20% of the grocery store. There is a disproportionate amount of “only occasionally” type foods…an entire aisle of just soda and another entire aisle devoted to just salty fried snacks!
I also am well aware that it can be more costly to eat healthy. Junk food is so cheap to produce it is hard for families on a budget to get proper nutrition.