[windowsrookie]

I live in the Midwest. If you drive past the suburbs, the only restaurants available are fast food burger, fried chicken and pizza chains, with a subway thrown in (I don't consider subway healthy). Obviously it's not profitable to own a healthy restaurant out there, but why? Is it a lack of healthy eating education? Is it a "harder" life and junk food is a reward? Or is it cost?

If it's cost, healthy home cooked food is as cheap or even cheaper than unhealthy fast food. But so many people I talk to think it's cheaper to get fast food. If you have a shred of common sense you can make really tasty and cheap healthy food at home.

[corrral]

In broad swaths of the midwest, the outside isn't especially attractive, if it's not outright ugly. Minimal elevation change anywhere in sight, little visible rock outside road cuts, very few—and all unimpressive—waterfalls, slow, muddy, gross streams and rivers. And the landscape may well be like that for hundreds of miles in any direction.

Then, on top of it, the weather's miserable 9 months out of the year. Oppressively hot & humid, or bitter cold. You're inside, you're in a pool/manmade-lake, or you're eagerly counting the minutes until you can get back to one of those places. Because of the first paragraph, incentive to brave the elements and go outside anyway, is practically zero.

IOW our natural environments and climates also discourage outdoor activity, pretty damn effectively.

[EDIT] Oh, and regarding this:

> Obviously it's not profitable to own a healthy restaurant out there, but why? Is it a lack of healthy eating education? Is it a "harder" life and junk food is a reward? Or is it cost?

It's a combination of cost and population density, mainly. Food culture plays in, but it's a feedback-loop sort of situation, not the case that food culture's purely driving the problem. Restaurants that optimize to avoid ingredients that spoil fast can charge less. Healthy ingredients tend to spoil faster than unhealthy ones (not universally true, but broadly so, especially for fruits and veggies). Higher prices (relative to local competition) mean a smaller customer base, which increases the population density required to support a restaurant.

[nightski]

That sounds depressing! But it's not my experience at all in the Midwest. I love the seasons. Summer can get a little hot, but there is still a lot to do around here. Winter is very fun to from cross country skiing, to fat tire biking, bonfires, and snowmobiling. I go out regularly in anything as low as -30F to -40F as long as I am dressed properly. Then we get Fall/Spring which are very special.

Honestly I've been to SF a lot and I find California down right dreary and boring!

Many in our area are farmers and they are a lot tougher than your post suggests.

The truth is healthy food is insanely expensive. We spend over $1000+/mo for two people. I know families with kids that eat on less than half that by eating less healthy.

[corrral]

> Many in our area are farmers and they are a lot tougher than your post suggests.

Heh, I come very directly from extremely country stock, so I'd never disparage their hardiness.

... However, even the farmers are rocking fancy trucks and climate-controlled combines & tractors with GPS guidance, these days :-)

AFAIK you still have to step out of your air conditioning to shoo loose cattle back in their pens, or mend a fence, though.

[otter-rock]

Not every agricultural operation is diversified like that. I don't have a great source, but this one is kind of ok if you flip back and forth between the maps. They have a better map that only works on desktop, and they have the raw data too.

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2017/Online_...

[jltsiren]

My Finnish perspective on cold. Our seasons are not as extreme as in the Midwest, but our culture has adapted to cold winters by necessity.

The winter clothes you wear when traveling from one indoor place to another are not appropriate for extended outdoor use, and the other way around. Many people need years or even decades to accept that they have to dress differently for the outdoors. Until that, they often think that cold temperatures are automatically unpleasant.

Freezing temperatures are rarely a problem as such. Wind and humidity can make them a problem. Inland forests tend to be more pleasant than open coastal areas in the winter.

Darkness makes everything much worse. Snow makes everything much prettier.

Finnish residential areas almost always have forests with walking trails nearby. I haven't been to the Midwest, but my impression is that American urban planning doesn't like leaving large undeveloped areas everyone is free to roam near developed areas. That often leaves the residents with nowhere to go by foot.

[corrral]

> Finnish residential areas almost always have forests with walking trails nearby. I haven't been to the Midwest, but my impression is that American urban planning doesn't like leaving large undeveloped areas everyone is free to roam near developed areas. That often leaves the residents with nowhere to go by foot.

That's the case where I am. 15 minute bike ride to reach the nearest park of any kind. There are no publicly-accessible forests within reasonable walking or biking distance (20+ minutes by car, largely on highways) and the ones that exist are few, tiny, and crowded because there's very little else around to do outside, as far as being-in-nature sorts of activities.

Most of our forests were destroyed decades ago by agriculture, and when we build housing developments we take all the plants off the land first, destroying any surviving trees and even stripping much of the topsoil (yes, seriously).

The nearest large region of sort-of-OK outdoor space we have is about 5 hours away by car. It's comparable to the worst parts of the Appalachian Mountains. You're looking at 12+ hours of driving to reach anything better than that.

Winter's definitely nicer than Summer, here. Uglier, but nicer. You can always wear more clothes. There's no beating the humidity, except to go indoors or get in water. Plus the mosquitos and ticks aren't out in Winter.

It's a little better if you own some rural land. At least you can go plink cans with a rifle or mess around on four-wheelers. Our forests have a way of developing nasty, thick, poison-and-thorn-filled underbrush that make them pretty miserable to be in if they're truly undeveloped, but if you manage to get some land with some trees on it and don't mind using some light-weight farm equipment to create and maintain some walking paths, that can be an alright time in Spring and Fall.

[m_mueller]

Wow, what a shame! I guess when there is too much land, politics don’t appreciate it anymore? But I think it should be reverseable - in Central Europe, forests got pretty much eliminated in pre-industrial age to get firewood. But since then there was a pretty significant reforestation. Well managed forests can be fairly profitable - you can get high quality food for furniture and housing, have family activities there etc. Around here, people of all political colors are big on hiking, doing some outdoor grilling or going to forest playgrounds. Plus, nowadays there is also a significant financial incentive in the form of CO2 certificates. Couldn’t that tip the scale towards reforestation?

[jimmygrapes]

Perhaps the restaurant selection reflects that most people in the region don't eat out? I too live in the general area of the "Midwest" (not really but close enough), and everybody I know cooks at home far more than they eat out, and more/better restaurants wouldn't change that behavior much since we are all poor. The problem then becomes what is cooked at home, and how much is eaten, and those aren't great. It's not for lack of available ingredients (although prices of "better" ingredients tend to play some role, like I'm not going to buy an "organic" bag of dirty carrots for 3x more than the regular dirty carrots from the same brand in the same package). In my unstudied and ignorant opinion, it comes down to a cultural thing, specifically a line of recipes and behaviors stemming from the Depression era. "Eat everything on your plate" is a common refrain, even when the plate is too big and too full. The same sort of calorie dense foods are made, but as scarcity decreased, gluttony increased, and that part simply hasn't gone back down yet.

[namelessoracle]

"healthy home cooked food is as cheap or even cheaper than unhealthy fast food"

Is it? You can get a double cheeseburger, small fries and a large soda (the worst part arguably of the whole meal health wise) for 4 dollars at McDonalds. You can skip the fries, and get 2 double cheeseburgers for the same price. The McDonalds app will often give you a large fry for free for the 4 dollar purchase.

Whats the comparable food you can be making for 4 dollars at the grocery store?

Cooking only helps when you can get economy of scale going. And only when you can use up all the ingredients you can bought effectively. Also you need the energy to make the food, if you are getting up at 7am to get your kids to school, then pick them up at 6 (when after school ends) and get home at 630, and then need to cook for 30 minutes, then another 15 to get dishes and everything put away. Your looking at not even being "done" with "work" until 715pm when you started the day at 7am. Acting like the time to cook and clean is free is not productive.

[windowsrookie]

I'm not going to list a whole bunch of recipes, there are many websites that have cheap healthy meal plans.

But for example...

1lb ground 90/10 turkey $3.69 1 bag of frozen mixed veggies $1.99 1/2 of a 1lb bag of rice. $.60 2 tablespoons of oil. ~$.05 1 tablespoon of soy sauce ~$.10

Total: $6.43

Throw rice plus water in a pan for 30 minutes. Add turkey, veggies, rice, ~2TBS. of butter/oil, 1TBS. of soy sauce. Done. Healthy fried rice. High in protein, healthy carbs/fiber from the rice and veggies, and low in sugar.

Should feed at least 3 people, all cooked in one pan and only requires 5 minutes of prep work. For $6.43. That's less than your one $4 meal at Mcdonalds costs, and it's significantly healthier (it has actual vegetables!). If you're just one person, It can be saved for later and re-heated in the microwave in 1 minute.

[vorpalhex]

American palettes are screwed up. Most people wouldn't eat a meal of a simple salad, some lean protein and a multigrain carb.

[mjevans]

American "salads" are BS.

  * BS Leaf (some worthless lettuce)
  * Mostly filler of BS Leaf
  * Poor in vegetables
  * Poor in seeds / nuts
  * Frequently small or cheap protein
  * A 'shelf stable' dressing for flavor

Yes, I've _considered_ making a salad at home, but by the time I buy ingredients I either have to eat the same for half a week in a row to try to use them up before they go bad, or just outright overpay.

No, I can't go out and just buy one. Most places (there might be 1 or 2 out of like 30-40 restaurants 'car drive') near me only make a 'BS salad'.

What I could really use is a sort of 'ghost kitchen' that takes relatively simple recipes based on bulk ingredients that are in stock at fair prices and makes a meal. Or maybe even just reusable snapware packs individual ingredients at sane sizes.

[bluedino]

Casual dining chains have hilariously high calorie "salads"

Clocking in at 1,570 calories: Applebee's Oriental Chicken Salad With Crispy Chicken

[tomjakubowski]

Not really true in my experience, unless you're talking about side salads at typical restaurants. At a "main salad" kind of place, you can do a lot better in terms of greens, nuts, dressing options. Look at the menus for chains like Sweetgreen or Simply Green

[mjevans]

I haven't seen any of those near me, are they regional?

[TheCoelacanth]

Not regional, but limited to a relatively small number of major metro areas[1]

[1] https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports/Sweetgreen-USA/

[vorpalhex]

At home, I keep a spinach/kale mix, dried fruit and several different nuts.

Vegetables and cheeses tend to rotate every week.

I often times do my protein on the side but that's preference.

I currently have a love affair with Kewpie's onion and garlic dressing but normally go for some olive oil and vinegar, a pinch of salt and black pepper.

[jjtheblunt]

i'm from the chicago area (nice suburban part) and totally agree.

I suspect it's also something like 5x cheaper to compose healthy meals 5x healthier at home, IF one has a home in which such can be done.

[bluedino]

Guess what - thirty years ago the restaurants were all fries and burgers and we weren't overweight. We just eat out more, the portions are larger, and we love huge sugary drinks.

[BeFlatXIII]

It's faster to get fast food than to cook at home. In the usual nuclear family, that's probably what they default to when both parents are working full-time.

[Yes, it's possible to make food in bulk on the weekends. There is no need to spam that helpful suggestion in the replies.]