To clarify:
ProtonMail. I don’t hate it, but their choices in what to monetize is bizarre to me, like the ability to make more folders than three, you have to pay to have more folders. Also, it’s not a perfect mail system, you’re going to not get or be able to send 100% of mail because there are mail services people or businesses use that simply don’t register when using ProtonMail.
In an age where there are tons and tons of things out there that is a subscription, paying for the ability to have more features that have been normalized would turn off some people.
Healthy eating.
It’s so much more expensive and effort than the mainstream stuff. Its easy enough to cut back on the junk foods, but the cutting out the processed “essentials” is harder.
This is only true if you have fallen into the trap of not understanding what healthy means.
Eating healthy can actually be very cheap, you just won’t get to eat the things that societies thinks are exciting or the most delicious. You won’t be getting “I can’t believe it’s not meat” and the latest type of chia seed detox bullshit.
You can eat rice, lentils, onions, carrots, potatoes, oats, chickpeas, beans, tomatoes, bananas, and some dairy products and keep your meal prices down to less than a dollar while filling all nutritional requirements.
A basic Indian Dahl on rice works out to significantly less than a dollar per serving if you buy the ingredients in more than single use packages, 500 calories, 17 grams of protein, 8 grams of fat, and 80 grams of carbs for $0.75 is pretty fucking healthy.
Two servings of oats and a banana for breakfast? 50 cents, for again around 500 calories, 17 grams of protein (mostly the oats), and 7 grams of fat. You could splurge on a bit of yogurt and keep it under a dollar easily.
In terms of “effort” if you consider cooking 10 portions of Dahl for an hour and then freezing them individually to be too much effort, you don’t actually care about the cost of eating, you’re just too lazy.
Sure the staples are pretty easy, but a head of iceburg is a dollar while all the stuff with some nutritional value costs $3 for less per pound.
Going to the store with produce that isn’t already half dead, so it will last the whole week costs more.
Going the store multiple times a week for fresh produce costs more in gas and time (and “extra” buying). I end up with lots of fresh meals at the start of the week, but towards the end its all frozen or canned vegetables, which is a lot of salt.
Buying the juice, or any snack, not full of high-fructose corn syrup costs more.
Fresh bakery bread costs $5+, while a loafs cost $1-2. A loaf of wheat or multi-grain bread costs around $3.
It all adds up, and yes I am lazy.
You still don’t get it.
You don’t need to eat Lettuce to be healthy, you’ve been taught to think that way but it’s not even close to the truth.
Do you think that people 100 years ago had fresh produce all the time? That’s not how it worked for most of human history and they definitely ate healthier than we do now.
Frozen vegetables don’t have extra salt. Canned sometimes does but a) salt isn’t unhealthy and b) you can rinse them to get most of it off if you wanted.
Juice is not healthy. That’s pure marketing bullshit. It’s almost as bad as soda.
Your mindset is wrong. You expect what society has told you to to do. That’s expensive because our society is built around selling you shit you don’t need.
This exactly!!
We became vegan a couple years ago and we save so much money by each ng the way you mentioned.
Basically every meal includes a bean, a green, a grain , and whatever extra veggies and or additional protein (the beans already have plenty though) like tofu of seitan.
People often think its expensive to be vegan because they focus on meat replacements and processed foods. They don’t realize when you cut that, its so much cheaper.
I think the Omega-3, Organic and whatever trendy label they use now is all a scam.
Omega-3 offers like, a slight advantage, just a slight. Nothing grandstanding if you primarily shop for that stuff.
Organic is basically companies saying “oh, we treat these a little more carefully than our mainstream line”. When, you know, they could just fucking do that process for ALL of their foods.
Yeah, I don’t care for the labels, I just try to pay attention to ingredents.
Like, which ones?
Everyone’s essentials will differ, for me it its things like canned veggies, jarred sauce, frozen veggies, canned soup - basically easy meals or sides to easily make dinner after work.
Yes, most of that is healthier than a TV dinner, but fresh is still better (and tastier).
I could learn to can or pickle my own, but that’s not with out its own difficulties.
Ah, I see. I thought you meant like heavily processed when you used the word “processed” but you meant the “something has been done to it” kind of processed :D
For what its worth, frozen stuff is usually equally as healthy as fresh stuff. I use like 90% frozen stuff because I’m lazy and don’t want to walk every other day to the shop, that is over 400 meters away from me. Lately my favorite snack has been to roll some frozen green beans in oil, salt and pepper on them and throw them into the oven until they are brown.
I’m also extremely lazy to cook. Now that I don’t have a girlfriend to cook for anymore, I just throw some stuff into the pan/pot, let them be there for 30-40minutes, mix it up with rice or quinoa and stuff that in my mouth. Takes very little effort, pretty cheap and because I keep a semi low heat, I don’t have to keep my eye on the stuff all the time so I can go bother people in IRC and not worry about burning anything. If I have extra time, I use the slow cooker thing I have, throw shit in there and leave it be for a few hours.
Yeah a lot of frozen vegetables are fine, especially when cooked in a casserole or something, but not on their own.
I know it’s not practical to avoid all processed stuff, not that I want to, and a lot of it is healthy enough. It’s just all the stuff with reasonable amounts of salt/sugar/etc and still tastes good tends to cost more. (even then you have to be careful, a lot the stuff marketed as healthier really isn’t. Exhibit A; Diet Soda)
It seems protein is the latest trend, a lot of stuff is highlighting how much protein they have in them. Protein is great, but I’ll get that from the regular sources not a dense candy bar or meat stick. Gosh even some milks (that aren’t specifically protein drinks) are highlighting protein content now lol.
These days I feel its important to remember that doing some is better than doing nothing. I sometimes feel like I’m being screamed at for not being vegan enough, not eating healthy enough, not recycling enough… I do all those things as much as I possibly can. But I guess thats just a consequence of online social media virtue signalling, everyone is trying to out do everyone else by screaming into the void about how well they are doing with not eating bacon or whatever the fuck is the latest trend.