Is the American diet really worse than it used to be?

[prairiewindmomma]

Just in case anyone is into nerdy math, my 6 qt instant pot uses about 1000 watts of power to run for an hour....or just about $.17 of electricity to cook two batches of beans turning a total of 4 cups of dried beans into 12 cups of cooked beans.  The $20 pressure cooker from the Indian market down the street will cook black beans in about 20 minutes, compared to 2 hours on the stovetop. 

Honestly, an inexpensive pressure cooker is one of the first things someone should scrimp for with limited funds--it's passive cooking, saving time, money, and energy. 

[Kassia]

11 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

 

Honestly, an inexpensive pressure cooker is one of the first things someone should scrimp for with limited funds--it's passive cooking, saving time, money, and energy. 

Ds3 uses his all the time to cook beans, rice, lentils, and throws in some frozen vegetables for inexpensive and filling meals.

[prairiewindmomma]

Just now, Kassia said:

Ds3 uses his all the time to cook beans, rice, lentils, and throws in some frozen vegetables for inexpensive and filling meals.

Yup, this is us a few times a week as well.  I don't have the time or energy to cook many evenings during health flareups and the instant pot keeps us from eating less healthy food.  I also really love tossing in chicken with a marinade and then putting some frozen veg over it as well.

[-----]

nm

Edited August 30 by kathyl

[Indigo Blue]

Seconding the Instant Pot usage, especially for health flare ups. It is so easy to eat cheap and healthy using those things. I have two, one larger and one small. I don’t mind using it over and over for very simple things. Just a pot of beans. Or quinoa. Nothing fancy. Bake a sweet potato in the microwave. Cut up fresh fruit. Steam some kale or broccoli. Easy. 

[Indigo Blue]

11 minutes ago, kathyl said:

So which pressure cooker would you (and anyone else) recommend?  I've never owned one and have no clue.

The Instant Pot can also be used as a slow cooker. I love this. 

[prairiewindmomma]

There's a tradeoff of money and space.

My personal preference is for ease, and for the safety of cooking in stainless steel.  I have two 6 quart instant pots.

The best deal right now, on quick perusal is from Target: https://www.target.com/p/instant-pot-6qt-9-in-1-pressure-cooker-bundle/-/A-83414556?ref=tgt_adv_xsf&AFID=google&CPNG=Appliances&adgroup=72-10  $80 (with free doorstep shipping) gets you an instant pot with the standard stainless steel pot, but also gets you an extra silicone ring (these need replacing every couple of years with frequent use), the stainless steel steam rack (so you can do pot in pot steaming) and a silicone egg rack. I haven't used that, but I do use my silicone veg steaming basket ($10-15 on amazon, usually) regularly.

Traditionally, people used non-electronic pressure cookers like this $35 one: https://www.amazon.com/Stovetop-Aluminum-Pressure-Cooker-Safely/dp/B0BJLDVTDR/ref=sr_1_21?crid=XZ6ZKAK274A9&keywords=pressure%2Bcooker&qid=1704663081&sprefix=pressure%2Bcooker%2Caps%2C191&sr=8-21&th=1  I find them fussy to mess with, and I get anxious about using them.  Culturally, though, millions of people use them and I would use it too if I didn't have an electric pressure cooker available.

There is an entire rabbit hole of recipes and youtube videos on using them. You can adjust it to whatever style of eating you use.

I use it the most in cooking meats from frozen, in making stews, in cooking rice & lentils, and in hard boiling eggs.

[KungFuPanda]

1 hour ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Just in case anyone is into nerdy math, my 6 qt instant pot uses about 1000 watts of power to run for an hour....or just about $.17 of electricity to cook two batches of beans turning a total of 4 cups of dried beans into 12 cups of cooked beans.  The $20 pressure cooker from the Indian market down the street will cook black beans in about 20 minutes, compared to 2 hours on the stovetop. 

Honestly, an inexpensive pressure cooker is one of the first things someone should scrimp for with limited funds--it's passive cooking, saving time, money, and energy. 

I’ve always used a simple stovetop pressure cooker with a rocker. I’m often tempted by instant pots, but this thing fits in the cabinet with the pots and I can throw it in the dishwasher. I still kinda want an electric one, but not enough to find a home for it.  I’ve always use this kind. You never really need to replace it. You might need to replace the rubber parts. My first set lasted 20 years. 
 

https://www.amazon.com/Presto-4-Quart-Stainless-Pressure-Cooker/dp/B00006ISG6/ref=mp_s_a_1_8?crid=PY2B4E3FE2MR&keywords=pressure%2Bcooker&qid=1704664685&sprefix=pressure%2Caps%2C72&sr=8-8&th=1&psc=1

Edited January 7 by KungFuPanda

[73349]

3 hours ago, Bootsie said:

The percentage of their income that Americans are spending on food has steadily declined over the past 60 years.  In 1960, almost 18% of a family's disposable income went to food (with the bulk of that being at home); Today, the average American family spends less than 10% of its disposable income on food--with about 1/2 of that being away from home eating. 

hi

The average household is now expending 30% on rent, making the food budget tighter. (Average for both rent and food is probably less helpful than data by income quintile would be.) Deciding to live indoors with running water and electricity is, for many people, deciding to be as cheap as they know how with food. But USDA subsidies aren't going to the produce section; cheap ingredients are wheat, corn, soy, dairy, meat from animals raised on corn and soy. Salt is cheaper than herbs and spices.

[Bootsie]

2 hours ago, KungFuPanda said:

actors in home grown produce? It used to be more common to have gardens and those gardens would produce fresh fruits and veggies consumed outside of this chart. 

. 

This would include only purchased food (I don't know if seeds would have counted in this amount or not).  But, that means that IN ADDITION to spending about 30% of income on food item a family was also spending time and effort on growing food.  So, for previous generations, providing for food consumed a significantly larger portion of a family's resources a century ago, or fifty years ago, than it does today.  If a family was growing its own vegetables, eating eggs for its chickens, eating home-canned tomatoes all winter, baking its own bread, not buying sodas or high-mark up processed foods, the basics that they were purchasing were very costly relative to their incomes.

[Corraleno]

Another vote for the InstantPot. I use it all the time for beans, brown rice, soups, chili, curries, etc.  Homemade lentil soups and dals, chili and other bean dishes, rice dishes, soups, steelcut oatmeal, etc., are all cheap, healthy, filling meals, and take very little time in the IP. And you can find an InstantPot recipe online for pretty much anything you'd normally cook on the stove.

I don't eat meat, but my kids do, and I can get a week's worth of meals for them out of a $5 Costco rotisserie chicken by cutting off all the meat and then using the carcass to make nearly a gallon of really good, rich broth for practically free. I keep a stasher bag in the freezer with veggie trimmings, mushroom stems, etc, and then throw those plus any past-their-prime veg in the IP with the chicken carcass and some garlic and herbs and a splash of vinegar. Set timer for 120 minutes, let cool, then strain into half-gallon canning jars. Most of the broth and the white meat goes into a huge batch of chicken soup; the dark meat gets shredded and used for burritos, added to pasta or curry, made into BBQ sandwiches, etc., and the rest of the broth gets used for homemade ramen and other noodle dishes.

[Bootsie]

14 minutes ago, 73349 said:

The average household is now expending 30% on rent, making the food budget tighter. (Average for both rent and food is probably less helpful than data by income quintile would be.) Deciding to live indoors with running water and electricity is, for many people, deciding to be as cheap as they know how with food. But USDA subsidies aren't going to the produce section; cheap ingredients are wheat, corn, soy, dairy, meat from animals raised on corn and soy. Salt is cheaper than herbs and spices.

How different is this from previous generations?  My father was reaching his teen years before his family had electricity and indoor plumbing; he lived in a two-bedroom house with five kids and two parents; until my mother was about 8 years old she and her parents lived in a one-bedroom apartment and shared a bath with the neighboring apartment; then her family moved to a two-bedroom/one bath house.  Yes, housing is now a larger portion of the average family's income--but the housing is MUCH different than housing was in previous generations.  The average family spent 2% of its income on entertainment in 1900--today it is about 5%;  The average family spent 13% on "other" in 1900--today that number is about 39%--that is the most drastic change.  Healthcare spending has inched from about 5% to 6% (with massive quality improvements) and apparel spending has dropped from about 14% to 4%.  

[Arctic Bunny]

4 hours ago, Heartstrings said:

Inflation has made me cut out my seltzer drinks, they are for special occasions only now.  I’d like a soda stream but I’m not sure it would be worth it.  

We love our soda stream! We keep two bottles of sparkling water rotating in the fridge. I use it to make my own adult sparkling vodka beverages. We use the syrups and squirt flavourings, but have so much more control.

[Bootsie]

The blue line in the graph below shows the inflation rate for fruits and vegetables in the US.  The red line is overall inflation The green line is annual increase in personal disposable income.  Over the past 50 years the increase in personal disposable income has outpaced the increase in fruit and vegetable prices.  

 

t

[73349]

2 hours ago, Bootsie said:

How different is this from previous generations?  My father was reaching his teen years before his family had electricity and indoor plumbing; he lived in a two-bedroom house with five kids and two parents; until my mother was about 8 years old she and her parents lived in a one-bedroom apartment and shared a bath with the neighboring apartment; then her family moved to a two-bedroom/one bath house.  Yes, housing is now a larger portion of the average family's income--but the housing is MUCH different than housing was in previous generations.  The average family spent 2% of its income on entertainment in 1900--today it is about 5%;  The average family spent 13% on "other" in 1900--today that number is about 39%--that is the most drastic change.  Healthcare spending has inched from about 5% to 6% (with massive quality improvements) and apparel spending has dropped from about 14% to 4%.  

Unfortunately, without electricity, tasks like seeking employment, completing homework, and maintaining body temperature in extreme weather are not necessarily possible; rare is the home built with a wood stove for cooking, the high school that expects only paper-based work that can be finished before the sun goes down, or the employer who wants people to just show up and fill out a paper application.

Housing is indeed much bigger than it used to be--I currently live in a lot more square feet per person than I grew up in--but that means it's even harder for people to afford to buy a home. Houses built more recently have gotten bigger because developers want more out of each, not because everyone can afford them. (My house, just over 1600 s.f., was built in the mid-1980s and is considered an "older home" in my county, which has had a population boom; even when we were looking in 2005, houses any smaller were very rare on the market.) Even setting aside the cost of land to build on, most places near employment have building codes and zoning laws that make it virtually impossible to just hammer together a little cottage and expand as finances permit, as was done in the past.

Health care is tricky to assess because a small percentage of the population needs a large percent of the care, because access and benefits vary dramatically, and because not having it affordable or effective sometimes kills people, so it eliminates their potential future spending--death or a cure having the same impact in that sense.

[Heartstrings]

2 hours ago, 73349 said:

fortunately, without electricity, tasks like seeking employment, completing homework, and maintaining body temperature in extreme weather are not necessarily possible; rare is the home built with a wood stove for cooking, the high school that expects only paper-based work that can be finished before the sun goes down, or the employer who wants people to just show up and fill out a paper application.

Indoor plumbing has also led to higher cleanliness standards.  Employers and schools expected people to bathe more often than the once or twice a week that used to be acceptable.  Hair and make up for professional woman for example.  Clothes are expected to be cleaner.  If one smelled in a way that was socially acceptable and common place in 1910 it would be an issue in 2024.  Time has marched on. 
 

In this country, in this time, we shouldn’t have to decide between electricity, running water and food, healthy or otherwise.    

[Heartstrings]

2 hours ago, 73349 said:

Housing is indeed much bigger than it used to be--I currently live in a lot more square feet per person than I grew up in--but that means it's even harder for people to afford to buy a home. Houses built more recently have gotten bigger because developers want more out of each, not because everyone can afford them. (My house, just over 1600 s.f., was built in the mid-1980s and is considered an "older home" in my county, which has had a population boom; even when we were looking in 2005, houses any smaller were very rare on the market.)

This is another example of individuals getting blamed for systemic issues.   

[ktgrok]

11 hours ago, Heartstrings said:

Cookware is crap now too.  Cheap cookware is worthless really quickly and the mid priced stuff isn’t much better.  A lot of people are cooking with old, worn out non stick stuff that’s chipped and not healthy on its own.  (Me, I’m some people).  That makes home cooking more difficult.  

YES!!! I'm going to have to start using my cast iron more because my favorite non stick pan just doesn't have the quality I need. It actually got knocked off the stove by a dog so now is also not quite flat. UGH. But cast iron is so freaking heavy. And I've got a glass top stove at this house and I'm afraid it will scratch that up. Of course, it's already scratched...so maybe I don't care. 

9 hours ago, marbel said:

For me, buying canned beans is the better way for me to make vegetarian soup, chili, etc.  Without them, I might resort to even more processed food!  And I am a person with leisure time to cook from scratch, and have time-and-effort-saving appliances, such as a pressure cooker. A person without those things is better off buying canned beans, low-salt if possible, than buying no beans at all. 💗

Plus, as someone who hated beans until adulthood, and still only likes a few kinds, I vastly prefer canned over the dried ones. I have texture issues and the canned are better for that. 

8 hours ago, Heartstrings said:

 

Dry beans also have a texture that takes getting used to. I can get my picky people to eat canned beans but they won't food that I make with dry beans because of the texture difference.

 

Yup. That's me, lol. 

[busymama7]

8 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

YES!!! I'm going to have to start using my cast iron more because my favorite non stick pan just doesn't have the quality I need. It actually got knocked off the stove by a dog so now is also not quite flat. UGH. But cast iron is so freaking heavy. And I've got a glass top stove at this house and I'm afraid it will scratch that up. Of course, it's already scratched...so maybe I don't care. 

Plus, as someone who hated beans until adulthood, and still only likes a few kinds, I vastly prefer canned over the dried ones. I have texture issues and the canned are better for that. 

Yup. That's me, lol. 

Cast iron has been ok on my glass top.  I've tried so many other things and it's the only thing that really works and with the added benefit of it getting iron into the food (and I am always deficient). 

[SKL]

Some things were better, some things were not better.

We used to have more home cooked meals, but they tended to be full of white carbs and fatty animal products.

We probably would have had more health problems, except that the "bad" diet was balanced out by a lot more physical activity on average, especially for kids.  We also didn't have constant snacking ... or really any snacking on a regular basis.  Fruit juice wasn't considered a staple.  We drank water between meals, and milk with meals.  (Sure, occasionally we'd make some kool-aid or jello to fight boredom in the summer ... in between running around sweating all day long.)

[frogger]

6 hours ago, Bootsie said:

The blue line in the graph below shows the inflation rate for fruits and vegetables in the US.  The red line is overall inflation The green line is annual increase in personal disposable income.  Over the past 50 years the increase in personal disposable income has outpaced the increase in fruit and vegetable prices.  

 

t

I do see this and agree partly.

I would say averages are not useful though. A single person without kids  generally should have more disposable income and a lot more people don't choose to have children so they are bringing up the average for entertainment, travel, etc. I'd be curious what the charts looked like for those with children versus those without. 

  A lot of things that are driving up the cost of having children are things like housing (required sizes, HOAs) , child care (with a lot of gov. mandates on licensing, child/caretaker ratios etc), car seats that don't fit in smaller cars, laws regarding allowing children home alone. In our area snow days have become common since the advent of remote learning days. If you don't have internet you don't get an education. Etc These are systematic changes that don't allow old patterns to exist and often they are pushed by laws or systems not individuals making choices for themselves. 

 

I also think a huge part of the increase in size of homes for example is mandated by law. If contractors cannot build multi family housing due to local land use ordinances then contractors build big expensive homes because that makes more money. Smaller condos, town homes, and 1 or 2 bedroom homes are in high demand which drives up the cost specifically of whatever the cheapest options are because people want cheaper options but the supply is restricted by local government, nimby neighbors and the like. Young people can't always get loans to build their own and land is often difficult to come by so they are often at the mercy of builders throwing up big mcmansions or paying crazy high prices per square foot for the in demand small, "cheaper" housing. 
I do think we often forget that things weren't always easier in the "good old days" so I agree with your premise somewhat but at the same time I do feel like many of the choices boomers had were taken away for younger generations and often by law. Or systems changed making things that once seemed frivolous, neccessary. It is complicated. 

 

[historically accurate]

8 hours ago, Heartstrings said:

This is another example of individuals getting blamed for systemic issues.   

I live in a mobile home, a low-income option. Our park requires 198 sq feet per person in the house, so for my family of 5 (at times 6 when family members lived here) we had to have at least 1000 - 1200 sq feet. Fortunately we moved into this one, as the other park in the town caps kids at 2 since they market themselves as retirement living. I had #2 & #3 after moving in here.

 

[KungFuPanda]

I vote that diets used to be healthier. First of all, food wasn’t served EVERYWHERE.  Secondly, people ate out much muck less often so diner fare of the time shouldn’t be confused with the regular diet. In the fifties people also cooked more from scratch and there were fewer, if any, fake foods.  You also have to consider soil health. The same apple grown on a factory farm is less nutritionally dense than an apple grown in the healthier, more organic soil you’d find in home gardens or local farms. More local eating also preserves nutrients.