Absurdism corner

Why?


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Hmm? Bro, you're strongly implying we're not already fat. Our agriculture subsidies are basically Communist-levels, so this really should be no surprise.
I don't think I am your brother, but my point was exactly what you underlined... It doesn't matter if we are already fat. I was drawing attention to how fat we are getting because of the low price of delicious, fattening, unhealthy food (so, good from the view of evolution helping us survive when food is scarce by us preferring foods that will let us store those calories for when we can't get them), while unprocessed, unmodified, fairly healthy stuff is more expensive, especially when prepared, compared to fast food and other junk food.
 
What you mean, the £1.99 price?
No joke, that's only daytime thing though, but if you regular you can get them to sell you it during nighttime too.
The £1.99 small Pizza and can of drink is common around town, when you get a bit further out some PizzaGOGO shops do it for £2.99 but the ones near me have to do £1.99 to stay competitive... There's another 3 Pizza shops withing 50 metres of it who all do same deal
Ha! A drink is another 1,50€ to 2,80€ on top and I'm only talking about the cheapest pizza delivery here, so you're already at something around 11€ for the smallest pizza with a drink, 10€ being the minimum order amount anyway.
I always wonder how they can sell anything with those prices since the quality isn't even great, but there seem to be enough people who buy at those prices, mostly tourists and the vast amount of immigrants from rich areas.
I don't know any native inhabitant of my town ordering pizza at all since they usually have quite low wages.
 
I don't think I am your brother,...

Oh, you're one of them? Disappointing.

It doesn't matter if we are already fat.

That's what I'm saying; if we're already fat due to our Communist-level food subsidies and poor dietary choices, then "how fat we're getting" is irrelevant.

I was drawing attention to how fat we are getting because of the low price of delicious, fattening, unhealthy food

All food is fattening if you eat it in certain quantities. Our bodies store excess calories, no matter what. I prefer to attest the blame on our rather deplorable eating habits, sedentary work/lifestyles (particularly in the cities), and mass-marketing to eat more (more food consumed means more money spent on said food, of course). Of course, the aforementioned subsidies play their part in worsening the problem, but to focus on that aspect is to miss the bigger picture and its many details.

For example, I could go to McDonalds (not particularly tasty, but bear with me) and order 2 undressed McDoubles after a workout and eat them after removing the buns. Very little carbs in the rather-cheap meat 'n cheese for the body to store as glycogen, plenty of protein for recovery, and the great deal of fat such a meal has will all be converted to ketones and be burned as energy (the body has trouble storing straight fat as energy in general, even more so if carbs aren't being burned). That carries more benefits for me than doing the same thing on a whim if I just randomly decide that I'm hungry.

I believe that's where the difference lies. The choices we make, not the framework we're given.

(so, good from the view of evolution helping us survive when food is scarce by us preferring foods that will let us store those calories for when we can't get them),

Actually, that's only half-right. We must store excess calories to survive, yes. However, as a species, we never relied on such an adaptation as bears did. Prehistoric humans were smarter and more adaptable than the rest of the Great Apes were at the time. When food got scarce, we found what else we could eat. When there's no more edible flowers, find other parts of the plant that's edible, if not other plants. Competitors taking your food sources? Eat them too. Now, we're the only animals that eat whales, birds, and mold.

What bearing does this have on the topic? Probably none, I just like pondering the notions of how we are.

while unprocessed, unmodified, fairly healthy stuff is more expensive, especially when prepared, compared to fast food and other junk food

Ehhhhh....depends. You could trade your liver and left eyeball for a couple pounds of round steak if you get it from Whole Foods, yes. And that's for the terrible, terrible quality beef Whole Foods sells. Where I live, a butcher shop that sells locally-sourced, good quality beef for less than the animal feed Whole Foods sells is barely over a mile away. Anecdote means nothing though, so take that for what you will.

Is that a problem for people in bigger cities? Probably. Or they lack the knowledge of the different food services in their city. Or they find it "less convenient." Or whatever pile of excuses they provide.
 
@tigerroast I mean that for many people the overall cost of completely natural food (and I was thinking mostly of plants) is cost prohibitive compared to genetically modified stuff, or readily available meat that is (factory) farm grown and pumped full of hormones and other stuff.

If you try to grow or gather your own it is still often more expensive (taking into account the time you spend on it) than those things. Heavily processed foods made from whatever is often pretty inexpensive too.

I may be wrong, and you can go to a restaurant and get a meal cheaper than going to McDonald's and getting a burger and fries for around $2.50, but I can't find them locally. I don't eat McDonald's, but it is still cheaper than going somewhere else. Probably cheaper than spending the time to go shopping, cook it yourself (including the price of everything needed to cook it), and clean up afterwards, too.
 
@tigerroast I mean that for many people the overall cost of completely natural food (and I was thinking mostly of plants) is cost prohibitive compared to genetically modified stuff, or readily available meat that is (factory) farm grown and pumped full of hormones and other stuff.

For plants that's distributed to consumers from mass-production, yes that's expensive unless the yields good enough for Big Agro to pass some savings on to the consumer rather than maximize profits (spoiler: it never happens). So yes, that's rather expensive.

There is a giant exception, though. Locally-sourced plants. Farmer's markets. You know how much a 4lb bushel of mustard greens cost me last time I went to the local farmer's market? $1.50. You know how much a 1.5lb bag of frozen mustard greens costs at my local grocer? $1.50. And that is just one example. Shiitake mushrooms, bushels of rhubarb, strawberries (the giant ones from Ponchatoula, not those tiny sugar dots in the supermarkets or those gross things that look like they take steroids), mayhaw jelly, what-have-you.

Even at the tiny Wal-Mart in Gretna (Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, I think it's called), they sell locally-sourced produce for cheaper than the mass-produced stuff. They inadvertently undercut their own stock by stocking the local stuff. Amazing.

If you try to grow or gather your own it is still often more expensive (taking into account the time you spend on it) than those things. Heavily processed foods made from whatever is often pretty inexpensive too.

To be fair, if you try to make your own anything rather than buy it, you often take on the costs of investing in capabilities to make whatever it is, as well as doing the labor yourself. Wanna grow some basil? Well, you need fertile soil to maximize your yields (you can make your own compost, but that may be too expensive if you already own a toilet), water that isn't full of chemicals, a pot to keep it in (as to avoid the trouble of land-sourcing and groundwater issues), and a place where it can get ~6hrs of sunlight a day. After you got that all sorted out, you then recuperate the costs over time with each yield of basil. If all of that cost you a mere $12 to start, and you yield 4lbs of basil over the lifetime of the plant, then just compare that to buying it in bulk (this is the cheapest I could find in 30s). $12/4lbs=$3/lb. Compared to ~$9.44/lb in the link I posted.

You save if your yields are good. You just take on the labor yourself, as well as the cost of maintenance and storage.

I may be wrong, and you can go to a restaurant and get a meal cheaper than going to McDonald's and getting a burger and fries for around $2.50, but I can't find them locally. I don't eat McDonald's, but it is still cheaper than going somewhere else. Probably cheaper than spending the time to go shopping, cook it yourself (including the price of everything needed to cook it), and clean up afterwards, too.

Heh. Locally, I could *try* going to Commander's Palace, which is New Orleans in a nutshell: only giving the APPEARANCE of luxury. Gotta dress like a political donor while sipping $.25 martinis to confuse the poor people.

I found that one way to crack the code is to buy bulk and freeze it, literally stretching your dollars over time. You could buy 7 Hot 'n Spicies for ~$11 where I'm at, but for that same price, 12lbs of chicken thighs, a small bottle of mustard, a small bottle of cheap honey (probably Goya), some rosemary, and curry powder can be acquired from Wal-Mart. Of course, the pitfall of that is the gas used to power the oven ain't free (and baking is the most expensive method of cooking), but that's a LOT of honey-mustard chicken, mane. 12lbs of honey-mustard chicken? Christ.


This is a lot of rambling about food costs from me. Perhaps too much. But, this thread is titled the Absurdium Corner, so what do you expect.
 
@tigerroast I mean that for many people the overall cost of completely natural food (and I was thinking mostly of plants) is cost prohibitive compared to genetically modified stuff, or readily available meat that is (factory) farm grown and pumped full of hormones and other stuff.

If you try to grow or gather your own it is still often more expensive (taking into account the time you spend on it) than those things. Heavily processed foods made from whatever is often pretty inexpensive too.

I may be wrong, and you can go to a restaurant and get a meal cheaper than going to McDonald's and getting a burger and fries for around $2.50, but I can't find them locally. I don't eat McDonald's, but it is still cheaper than going somewhere else. Probably cheaper than spending the time to go shopping, cook it yourself (including the price of everything needed to cook it), and clean up afterwards, too.

One of the main reasons why the mass produced food (especcially meat) is so cheap are communist level subsidies.
Here in Germany, eating vegan and bio makes you pay way more taxes and shuts you out from the ridiculous subsidies in the production chain.
Feeding and keeping animals is bloody expensive (even under bad living conditions of the animals) and most of those companies would have shut down a long time ago without the massive subsidizing since space is expensive and you need a bloody lot of food to grow a single pound of meat or a single litre of milk.
Milk from cows only has 7% VAT in stores here while Rice-/Oat-/Soy- and Almond-milk gets 19% VAT, same goes for cheese, butter, eggs etc... all the animal products are subsidized and get tax exceptions on top of it.
Our politicians are extremely conservative and want to keep the status quo at all costs which also means pumping money into things that do not nearly make enough profit anymore to even be able to exist the way it does.
 
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I wish almond milk was cheaper for me.
[doublepost=1462087048,1462086975][/doublepost]I keep thinking about getting a cow or goat when I move somewhere else.
[doublepost=1462087106][/doublepost]Then I worry they will be lonely...
 
Make it one of those things you need at all times.
I already do. Maybe I can get a better price if I get them in even larger quantities. I eat a lot of almonds and other nuts, and always have them around...but they cost so much. :(
 
If you consider buying large amounts of almonds especcially of American origin, I'd advise watching the documentary More than Honey first.
It's a good movie anyway.
No time right now, but I will watch it tonight or tomorrow (additional info about what I put into my body, and how what I do and buy affects other life and the rest of the planet is always useful). So far it is taking me hours to get caught up on recent discussions here. Trying to reply while using a stupid touchscreen device isn't helping...can't wait for the Pyra to fill my browsing needs when not using a full size computer at a desk.
 
additional info about what I put into my body, and how what I do and buy affects other life and the rest of the planet is always useful
Yeah, some vegan stuff (although not much) is actually pretty bad for this planet too, I have no illusions about that.
We always forget how our whole eco system depends on bees and how fragile they are, the almond production was one of the more tragic parts of the movie while the part with the fans of the "African killer bees" was rather hilarious.

Trying to reply while using a stupid touchscreen device isn't helping...can't wait for the Pyra to fill my browsing needs when not using a full size computer at a desk.
I've given up on using touch screens for typing. I really tried for a long time but the frustration just overwhelmed me, especcially when it comes to quoting, copying parts and editing stuff in the text.
 
Yeah, some vegan stuff (although not much) is actually pretty bad for this planet too, I have no illusions about that.
We always forget how our whole eco system depends on bees and how fragile they are, the almond production was one of the more tragic parts of the movie while the part with the fans of the "African killer bees" was rather hilarious.
I will skip the bees and honey discussion for now, as that can get pretty long. Here you have to seek out local honey, which seems odd.

I hope the video won't make me want to stop eating nuts. They are currently a major part of my diet. I suppose I could eat more animals, but even all of that is pretty bad...I guess I could go back to hunting and fishing, since hunting (when hunters are know what they are doing and care about it) is what I consider to be one of the most responsible ways to get meat. Long pig should be a more popular source of food.

I've given up on using touch screens for typing. I really tried for a long time but the frustration just overwhelmed me, especcially when it comes to quoting, copying parts and editing stuff in the text.
Other than my Pandora, none of my other devices have such a long battery life, and the Pandora sucks for lots of heavy browsing. You can always tell when I am using a touchscreen due to all the supposedly auto-corrected stuff that makes no sense, and all my edits to fix it. It also takes a lot longer to make posts due to how much I have to go back and fix.
 
Not particularly absurd, but I found it nice and soothing to watch, and couldn't think anywhere more suitable to place it.

Kung Fu motion visualisation, a few different techniques shown in the video.
Reminds me a bit of one of the old screensavers you used to get on Windows

 
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