People buy garbage premade food because either they cant, or choose not to cook for themselves. This "ohh the poor people at the walmart just dont have options" is frankly disinformation.
If you are working two jobs to make ends meet, I imagine it becomes much more difficult to squeeze in the time to make a nice fresh lasagne.
I think the “food desert” issue can sometimes be overblown, but equally this nonsense idea that anybody who isn’t cooking from scratch is just stupid or lazy needs to die. It’s an absolutely perennial pet argument from some quarters and it just skips over so many complexities.
I have worked with and spoken to people dealing with these challenges over in the UK. A constant problem is the challenges people face in getting access to time, equipment and resources aside from food itself. How do you cook a lasagne if you work 14 hours? If you don’t have an oven? If you don’t have a refrigerator?
It really saddens me to see such surface-level, knee-jerk dismissal of complex problems.
What really shocks me is people have latched on to lasagna like it some insanely unachievable thing. Lasagna is a cheap and easy meal to make. I find it baffling that we have gotten to the point where a baked pasta dish is now "too hard" for people.
>> If you don’t have an oven? If you don’t have a refrigerator?
Is that really a problem for most people. Most of my family is on some kind of government assistance or in government housing, all of them have Ovens and Fridges.
Nobody thinks lasagne is “too hard” and you have not really read the responses.
I have literally no doubt whatsoever that there are people out there with all the time, knowledge, energy and equipment to cook themselves nice food, but who survive on ready-made or other more expensive food sources.
The problem is that every single discussion about this topic ends up with responses ignoring that it’s way more complex than “people who don’t make lasagne are lazy”. It’s a particular kind of facile that seeks simplistic solutions of complex issues.
This comes up as a public conversation at least once a year in the UK, when some politician inevitably says “I can feed a family of 12 for two pounds a day on fresh produce I collect from the bargain bin!” Meanwhile there are two million people in the UK living without a cooker.
It doesn't matter how cheap or easy it is. It's easily an hour of prep work followed by an hour of cooking. Add in dishes/cleanup and you're at nearly 3 hours for the simple "baked pasta dish". Now go shop for that and make it after finishing your shift at your second day job. After 14 hrs of working and 3 hrs preparing/serving/cleaning dinner you can go straight to sleep and get 7 hours until the next day starts all over again.
Compare that to boiling water, throwing macaroni noodles in for 8 minutes, and stirring in a "cheese" packet. I can tell you which one I'm going with after a work day at two separate blue-collar jobs.
If you are working two jobs to make ends meet, I imagine it becomes much more difficult to squeeze in the time to make a nice fresh lasagne.
I think the “food desert” issue can sometimes be overblown, but equally this nonsense idea that anybody who isn’t cooking from scratch is just stupid or lazy needs to die. It’s an absolutely perennial pet argument from some quarters and it just skips over so many complexities.
I have worked with and spoken to people dealing with these challenges over in the UK. A constant problem is the challenges people face in getting access to time, equipment and resources aside from food itself. How do you cook a lasagne if you work 14 hours? If you don’t have an oven? If you don’t have a refrigerator?
It really saddens me to see such surface-level, knee-jerk dismissal of complex problems.