ready to eat hot food is a luxury. it’s not groceries. groceries is stuff you have to prep and cook. if you want stuff you don’t have to prep, or cook, it’s generally going to cost you more, in either value or quality.
it’s just that whole foods and other groceries normalized the concept of hot ready to eat meals being served in grocery stores. that was never a thing 20+ years ago. when i was a kid they had a tiny hot bar, and it was shitty. now my local whole foods 1/4 of the store is devoted to this type of product. and it’s hugely profitable because people value convenience.
is international travel a luxury or a necessity? where I live, people think it’s the latter and if you aren’t traveling multiple times per year, they think you are living in poverty. that is regardless of finances and many people are going into debt to travel because they know it’s not socially acceptable to not travel. i know 28 year olds making 30K a year who are dropping 5-10K a year traveling.
people’s frames of reference for what a ‘necessity’ in 2026 is not exactly objective.
Ready to eat hot food that is cheaper than the ingredients to make it, is not a luxury.
Especially if it can be refrigerated and made to last for over a week, used to supplement other foods such like chicken quesadillas, chicken soup, broth and chicken salad.
Having to prep and cook is such a narrow minded way to look at things, and a way to look down at what people do to survive.
Does the fact that I can just bite into a tomato and eat it without preparation or cooking make it not a grocery? Hell, I can even do that with oatmeal if I’m down on protein and fiber.
Exactly. Additionally a lot of low income families lack the knowledge of how to properly prepare a chicken, or the equipment to do it well. When the difference is 20¢ a pound for an already seasoned and prepared bird its not really luxury prices. Luxury is like some $50 chicken wrapped in gold bullshit topped with exotic flower pistols.
These aren’t properly prepared chickens. They are McChickens. They are fast food that is full of artificial crap to make it taste good.
Low income people eat a lot of fast food because it’s an affordable luxury for them. That doesn’t mean it’s not a luxury, or that it’s a good choice to make a regular part of your diet. Especially due to the long affects.
One of the first things you figure out when you get out of being poor is that paying more for food is not a luxury, it’s a necessity for a higher quality of life overall. I got this lesson in college, which was the first time it was regularly available to me.
when I was 14 years old and eating shitty food everyday, I thought healthy food was ‘gross’ and ‘crazy expensive’. I was wrong. I was just poor and trapped in a poor person’s mindset and had no idea about long term costs because i was consumed with getting things as quickly as possible for as cheap as possible.
These aren’t properly prepared chickens. They are McChickens. They are fast food that is full of artificial crap to make it taste good.
I literally used to make these. It was my fucking job to make them. They are literally just the whole chickens sold in the deli, the package removed, seasoned with a mixture of things like paprika, garlic salt, pepper, cumin, etc, rubbed down by a worker, and stuck into a rotisserie heater.
That’s it. That is literally it. They’re not manufactured any different. You could make the same thing at home for twice the cost since the cooked chickens are cheaper than the raw chickens. There is nothing devious or sinister behind the scenes. There are no extra hormones or microchips stuck into them. I was asked to go grab X amount of chickens from the shelf, season them, cook them, then put them in their containers and put them on display.
Your ability to make a mountain out of a grain of sand needs to be studied for how unhinged some human beings are.
Again, you worked for Hannaford. That’s a higher quality more expensive store. You worked for one store under one process, YEARS ago no doubt.
Practices change. Food science changes. etc. It’s not sinister, it’s business. It’s objectively the fact that store bought chickens from Coscto and the like are full of fillers.
You keep going on and on aggrandizing your own very limited experience. “When I was young… when I was poor… when I was in college… after I wasn’t poor”. Do you hear yourself?
This might come as a shock, but not every low income person has the same opportunities you did or the same resources. Just because you found a path out doesn’t give you license to oversimplify the many situational nuances that come with being poor, nor did it give you some special knowledge to lead you to think you’ve somehow solved poverty.
I’m glad you’ve bettered your financial circumstances, but you seem to have lost something else important along the way.
I grew up in a poor community and watched lots of people throw their lives away. They had just as much opportunity as I did, oftentimes, they had more than I did.
Being poor sucks, but nobody is coming to save poor people. They have to save themselves. That’s how it’s always been and how it will always be. Thinking that someday someone will come lift you out of poverty is the most surefire way to stay in it forever.
Call it self-aggrandizing if you want, but the reality of the world is harsh. And yeah it sucks, because the funny thing about working your way out of being poor is that poor people hate and resent you for it and start blaming you for their problems and demanding that you owe. I remember when I got my first job out of college and my old high school friends working minimum wage jobs at home started asking me for money and calling me a selfish greedy asshole for not giving it to them… the same one who dropped out of college because it was ‘too hard’.
jerking yourself off on the internet about how you feel for people isn’t empathy. it’s emotional masturbation. it’s the equivalent of watching a porn clip online and thinking you’re a sex expert now.
empathy is when you try to understand other people’s experiences and relate to them. not just feel bad about them and pat yourself on the back for being a ‘good person’ because you met your quota of feeling bad for other people today, unlike all those horrible other ‘bad people’ who don’t sit around feeling bad.
the ironic is your feelings being felt does nothing to help anyone, not even yourself. it’s actions that matter. I took action and improved my life and continue to do so every year of my life and refuse to let setbacks and misfortunes define me or prevent me from acheving things. Many people however, sadly, do not do that. They sit around their entire lives and complain about how hard they have it and how unfair life is and how if only someone would help them everything would get miraculously better.
Ironically this attitude isn’t confined to the poor at all. Many rich people I have known are just as guilty of their self-imposed misery and poverty. The issue is their inability to be responsible for themselves.
I agree that a rotisserie is closer to fast food, but I was saying most low income people are lacking any food education to make a properly prepared chicken. Most low income prople who are suffering the effects of dollars a day making a difference also lack the education of the why, where, and how they can prepare equivalent priced meals that are better for them. To some this is all they know.
I also got a lesson in college, a privalidge that you and I were able to afford that some prople genuinely never got the opportunity, and those people are the ones truly suffering from the effect of “luxury” rotisseries.
I know that. I have had partners and friends who were like this. Just because someone is all that you know, doesn’t mean isn’t a self-defeating self-impoverishing cycle of choices.
Just because a choice is easy and convenient and seemingly cheap doesn’t make it a good choice. There are other choices, even if you don’t know they exist. Especially with the internet in everyone’s pocket. What is stopping someone from just looking up a recipe?
I think you misunderstand the general state of people suffering from the effects of companies forcing this upon us. For you and I it is as simple as look up a recipe and do it, some people truly do not know. They don’t know to look for something else. They dont know if something is unhealthy.
Nobody forces me to cook, nor do they force me to go buy fast food. Those are choices I make.
Even if I perceive fast food as my own choice, that doesn’t mean I am correct. I am wrong. It’s on me to fix my mistakes.
When I was 12 I thought McDonalds was the GREATEST food in the world. Most kids do. I didn’t know it was unhealthy. But they are wrong. And it was on me to grow up and learn that McDonalds was terrible for me and should be avoided rather than celebrated.
Similar, what are we to do about Alcoholics? Condemn alcohol companies? Ban them? Or do we put the onus on them to heal themselves?
ready to eat hot food is a luxury. it’s not groceries. groceries is stuff you have to prep and cook. if you want stuff you don’t have to prep, or cook, it’s generally going to cost you more, in either value or quality.
it’s just that whole foods and other groceries normalized the concept of hot ready to eat meals being served in grocery stores. that was never a thing 20+ years ago. when i was a kid they had a tiny hot bar, and it was shitty. now my local whole foods 1/4 of the store is devoted to this type of product. and it’s hugely profitable because people value convenience.
is international travel a luxury or a necessity? where I live, people think it’s the latter and if you aren’t traveling multiple times per year, they think you are living in poverty. that is regardless of finances and many people are going into debt to travel because they know it’s not socially acceptable to not travel. i know 28 year olds making 30K a year who are dropping 5-10K a year traveling.
people’s frames of reference for what a ‘necessity’ in 2026 is not exactly objective.
Ready to eat hot food that is cheaper than the ingredients to make it, is not a luxury.
Especially if it can be refrigerated and made to last for over a week, used to supplement other foods such like chicken quesadillas, chicken soup, broth and chicken salad.
Having to prep and cook is such a narrow minded way to look at things, and a way to look down at what people do to survive.
Does the fact that I can just bite into a tomato and eat it without preparation or cooking make it not a grocery? Hell, I can even do that with oatmeal if I’m down on protein and fiber.
Exactly. Additionally a lot of low income families lack the knowledge of how to properly prepare a chicken, or the equipment to do it well. When the difference is 20¢ a pound for an already seasoned and prepared bird its not really luxury prices. Luxury is like some $50 chicken wrapped in gold bullshit topped with exotic flower pistols.
These aren’t properly prepared chickens. They are McChickens. They are fast food that is full of artificial crap to make it taste good.
Low income people eat a lot of fast food because it’s an affordable luxury for them. That doesn’t mean it’s not a luxury, or that it’s a good choice to make a regular part of your diet. Especially due to the long affects.
One of the first things you figure out when you get out of being poor is that paying more for food is not a luxury, it’s a necessity for a higher quality of life overall. I got this lesson in college, which was the first time it was regularly available to me.
when I was 14 years old and eating shitty food everyday, I thought healthy food was ‘gross’ and ‘crazy expensive’. I was wrong. I was just poor and trapped in a poor person’s mindset and had no idea about long term costs because i was consumed with getting things as quickly as possible for as cheap as possible.
I literally used to make these. It was my fucking job to make them. They are literally just the whole chickens sold in the deli, the package removed, seasoned with a mixture of things like paprika, garlic salt, pepper, cumin, etc, rubbed down by a worker, and stuck into a rotisserie heater.
That’s it. That is literally it. They’re not manufactured any different. You could make the same thing at home for twice the cost since the cooked chickens are cheaper than the raw chickens. There is nothing devious or sinister behind the scenes. There are no extra hormones or microchips stuck into them. I was asked to go grab X amount of chickens from the shelf, season them, cook them, then put them in their containers and put them on display.
Your ability to make a mountain out of a grain of sand needs to be studied for how unhinged some human beings are.
Again, you worked for Hannaford. That’s a higher quality more expensive store. You worked for one store under one process, YEARS ago no doubt.
Practices change. Food science changes. etc. It’s not sinister, it’s business. It’s objectively the fact that store bought chickens from Coscto and the like are full of fillers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/06/opinion/sunday/costco-chicken-animal-welfare.html
You keep going on and on aggrandizing your own very limited experience. “When I was young… when I was poor… when I was in college… after I wasn’t poor”. Do you hear yourself?
This might come as a shock, but not every low income person has the same opportunities you did or the same resources. Just because you found a path out doesn’t give you license to oversimplify the many situational nuances that come with being poor, nor did it give you some special knowledge to lead you to think you’ve somehow solved poverty.
I’m glad you’ve bettered your financial circumstances, but you seem to have lost something else important along the way.
I grew up in a poor community and watched lots of people throw their lives away. They had just as much opportunity as I did, oftentimes, they had more than I did.
Being poor sucks, but nobody is coming to save poor people. They have to save themselves. That’s how it’s always been and how it will always be. Thinking that someday someone will come lift you out of poverty is the most surefire way to stay in it forever.
Call it self-aggrandizing if you want, but the reality of the world is harsh. And yeah it sucks, because the funny thing about working your way out of being poor is that poor people hate and resent you for it and start blaming you for their problems and demanding that you owe. I remember when I got my first job out of college and my old high school friends working minimum wage jobs at home started asking me for money and calling me a selfish greedy asshole for not giving it to them… the same one who dropped out of college because it was ‘too hard’.
They might just hate self righteous dickheads with no empathy. From the context I have it’s impossible to tell.
jerking yourself off on the internet about how you feel for people isn’t empathy. it’s emotional masturbation. it’s the equivalent of watching a porn clip online and thinking you’re a sex expert now.
empathy is when you try to understand other people’s experiences and relate to them. not just feel bad about them and pat yourself on the back for being a ‘good person’ because you met your quota of feeling bad for other people today, unlike all those horrible other ‘bad people’ who don’t sit around feeling bad.
the ironic is your feelings being felt does nothing to help anyone, not even yourself. it’s actions that matter. I took action and improved my life and continue to do so every year of my life and refuse to let setbacks and misfortunes define me or prevent me from acheving things. Many people however, sadly, do not do that. They sit around their entire lives and complain about how hard they have it and how unfair life is and how if only someone would help them everything would get miraculously better.
Ironically this attitude isn’t confined to the poor at all. Many rich people I have known are just as guilty of their self-imposed misery and poverty. The issue is their inability to be responsible for themselves.
I agree that a rotisserie is closer to fast food, but I was saying most low income people are lacking any food education to make a properly prepared chicken. Most low income prople who are suffering the effects of dollars a day making a difference also lack the education of the why, where, and how they can prepare equivalent priced meals that are better for them. To some this is all they know.
I also got a lesson in college, a privalidge that you and I were able to afford that some prople genuinely never got the opportunity, and those people are the ones truly suffering from the effect of “luxury” rotisseries.
I know that. I have had partners and friends who were like this. Just because someone is all that you know, doesn’t mean isn’t a self-defeating self-impoverishing cycle of choices.
Just because a choice is easy and convenient and seemingly cheap doesn’t make it a good choice. There are other choices, even if you don’t know they exist. Especially with the internet in everyone’s pocket. What is stopping someone from just looking up a recipe?
I think you misunderstand the general state of people suffering from the effects of companies forcing this upon us. For you and I it is as simple as look up a recipe and do it, some people truly do not know. They don’t know to look for something else. They dont know if something is unhealthy.
And that is their own fault.
Nobody forces me to cook, nor do they force me to go buy fast food. Those are choices I make.
Even if I perceive fast food as my own choice, that doesn’t mean I am correct. I am wrong. It’s on me to fix my mistakes.
When I was 12 I thought McDonalds was the GREATEST food in the world. Most kids do. I didn’t know it was unhealthy. But they are wrong. And it was on me to grow up and learn that McDonalds was terrible for me and should be avoided rather than celebrated.
Similar, what are we to do about Alcoholics? Condemn alcohol companies? Ban them? Or do we put the onus on them to heal themselves?