this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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A lot of people here are missing the fact that cereal doesn't require any additional cost, time, and/or effort to store and prepare (in a desperate situation you might even have it with water or dry if you can't access milk).
So while rice or potatoes might be a better meal, and the ingredients cheaper to buy (but not when you factor in cost and time of cooking), they may still not be an option for some.
For those who have never really been it - it'd blow your mind how expensive it is to be poor in so many different ways (a feature of capitalism, of course, not a bug).
You can get a rice cooker for $20. Then, you can make rice and beans (with beans from a can) with virtually no effort.
You can also go from there if you have more time/money. Add cheese, hot sauce, salsa, avocado, make tacos, etc.
But I've survived many a meal with just rice from a rice cooker and a can of beans, and it's far more nutritious and has left me feeling far better than eating cereal would.
If you need $20 dollars spare as the first step, and to continue to use electricity to power the thing as the second - it isn't accessible. Also - did it even cross your mind that if they could afford it, they would get one? It's not like rice cookers are this secret tool only a select few know about..
Seriously, I get that it can be hard to imagine conditions we haven't personally experienced, but it can't be that hard to understand what "dirt poor" actually means, nor to accept that poor people aren't poor by choice, nor are they surviving on cereals because they have better options they're just not utilising as well as you think you would in their shoes, which you are not, and clearly have never been, in.
A box of cereal is like $6 and all sugar. It will provide 3-4 bowls of cereal for that price, with no actual nutrition. If you can afford a box of cereal a day, you can live on instant noodles instead for like 3 days and have the 20 for a brand new rice cooker. Or just go to the thrift store.
Cereal is not a poor person food. It is not nutritious, cheap, or filling. It is an expensive box of sugar. I get that it can be hard to imagine conditions we haven't personally experienced, but it can't be THAT hard to do basic math and put yourself in that situation for one second to understand that eating cereal for every meal is not cheap or sustainable.
Is there a word for mansplaining to poor people? Because that's how that came off.
nah I've been eating from bins poor and you can also just eat beans from the can cold. I'm not saying you'll love life but you can survive around a year before serious deficiencies and it's much much much cheaper per calorie than cereal.
Importantly it also has proteins so you can actually keep working/moving around etc. You can basically only sell your body (begging, stealing, sex work, or labor) at that point so you need it to work.
Rice is bulk and calories but stale bread from supermarket bins is free and can be eaten cold. Steal bolt cutters from the back of a car at a job site and you're golden for getting into supermarket bins.
I didn't even grow to that poor, but knew people who ate worse just because the battle of everyday life took every last ounce of gumption they had.
Luckily my ma knew about food and cooking, so we did alright, but I had a lot of little friends who were totally totally lost when it came to feeding themselves.
Hell right now I know middle aged men pulling six figures who are hurting nutritionally, and it's like impossible to educate them to a better way to take care of themselves, despite money not actually being an issue
Yeah, I guess I was lucky in some ways because my family coming from Polish invasion survivors meant that I was raised with a strong emphasis on healthy peasant food. My grandparents in particularly always made sure we ate heartily, so when I was on my own for a bit and had to survive I knew that I needed crap like veggie stews and not instant noodles.
When I went to uni it was baffling sneaking in to the student accomodation to visit my girlfriend and seeing rich kids with literal fucking scurvy and shopping carts full of pasta and mince + instant noodles. Like friends, please eat a carrot.
That's a great last sentence, I might start using.
Friend please eat a carrot.
Nah it's like $4 max or you go with generic, and it sure as shit is more then 3-4 bowls lmfao
Even generics are more expensive than that now a days. It's like 5 plus taxes for the small box or generics.