@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.
