[muzani]

It's the other way around. It won't work in expensive places like SF or NYC, because the people who move there are happy to pat paprika on a chicken and toss them into an air fryer. Or live on rice and beans.

Here there's some cultural pressure on people to cook for their families. Especially Asian moms. Someone feeding their kids McDonald's and frozen meals is going to be judged, but what's a parent who works 996 supposed to do? Though back when I was in uni, we'd take turns preparing dinner; I can see it working for students as well.

Cooking is also always cheaper than buying it off the shelf. We buy the frozen spinach despite it being 3x the cost of fresh spinach because we don't want to wash the sand out of spinach and then wash the sand out of the sink.

My problem is we have a bunch of stuff in the fridge. Prep is less about time, more about energy. I'm hungry, I don't want to peel carrots. We buy large batches of fish over the weekend and clean them up and prepare them, but they're in the sink 4 days a week and 2 of those days we just end up eating outside.

I think everyone wants healthy food as a core meal. We're talking something other than pasta with butter - the health ministry suggests dishes of 1/4 carbs, 1/4 protein and 1/2 veggies. But what choices do you have here? Nobody wants to retrofit their usual dishes to have less carbs and more veggies, lol. Cutting down on protein also cuts cost. Tim Ferris says eat the same thing every other day but most people don't do this, especially not kids. There are plenty of healthy options. Grilled veggies do taste great and so are things like minestrone. Burgers can pass the health food bar too.