Saturday, April 08, 2006

Why poor people can't always afford to cook from scratch

I had a discussion recently with someone who was insistent that poor people wouldn't be poor if they could only learn how to cook in bulk and from scratch. Unfortunately, my interlocutor didn't realize or accept that poverty can be a barrier to cooking from scratch.

Here's a rough outline of the hurdles one must overcome to be able to cook from scratch:

1. Do you know how to cook from scratch? If not, where can you learn? I tend to get recipes from the internet, but people in poverty often don't have internet access. Cookbooks are expensive. Are cookbooks available at your local public library? Maybe, maybe not. Is your local public library even accessible? Or would it cost you two bus fares to get there and back? Since you don't have internet access and can't search the catalogue from home, it it worth using two bus fares to see if they even have cookbooks, and if they do, would they contain useful recipes that are within your price range and skill level?

2. Do you have the equipment to cook from scratch? Does your stove work? Does your fridge work? Landlords of low-cost housing don't always keep their appliances in good repair. Is your kitchen clean enough to cook safely, or is it infested? Cleaning products and insectcides cost money. Do you have a big-ass pot? Do you have a spoon for stirring? Do you have a strainer? A cutting board? Tupperware for saving all the extra portions? Do you have a working sink where you can wash the dishes and dish soap and a cloth or sponge or something? All these things cost money. Do you have rubber gloves? Is washing the dishes without rubber gloves worth making your hands all stiff and cracked, thus making it more difficult to do the manual work involved in your job?

3. Do you have the ingredients? Do you have enough money together at one time to buy them? Can you get them home? Is the supermarket within walking distance? If not, can you carry all the ingredients yourself in one trip? If you're poor you don't have a car, so you're limited to what you can carry. If you can't carry it all in one trip, that's two more bus fares, or cab fare, or the expense of getting it delivered. Can you store all the ingredients? Do you have a working fridge and enough cupboard space? Do you have big plastic or metal containers to seal the bread and flour so the vermin doesn't get it? If not, you'll need to buy storage stuff too, so your bulk food doesn't go to waste.

4. Is cooking something new worth the risk? How confident are you in your cooking abilities? How likely is it you will mess up? How badly might you mess up? Would the result be inedible? If you mess up, can you afford to let all this food go to waste? Can you afford the electricity to do the cooking and the water to wash all these dishes? Can you afford the electricity and water to do a small trial run, and then cook in bulk once you've perfected it?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Probably just as importantly, the working poor may just not have enough time in the day to spend an hour or more dicing and cooking, and an hour or more cleaning up on a regular basis. If you work multiple part-time jobs to make ends "meet", you often don't have much in the way of contiguous blocks of time. How are you supposed to cook supper from scratch when you leave work at 5pm, and are due across town for another shift at 6:30?

Busy professionals have a similar problem, but they can swing buying meals on the run.

Your interlocutor is simple.

Anonymous said...

I hasten to add that it can be cheaper to eat fast food than it is to go to the grocery store and buy groceries. You can get a day's worth of calories for 4$ at McDonald's; try doing that at A&P.

impudent strumpet said...

I agree with you completely.

I left those points out because I have had this discussion with this interlocutor before, and I know they would argue that a) people should stop being so soft and skip a meal if they don't have time to cook before the end of the shift, or b) show some planning and initiative and pack up enough food for the day at the beginning of the day. And I know that if I'd pointed out the superior caloric value of fast food, I would have gotten into an absurd discussion about the economics of beans and potatoes. This interlocutor can understand things better in the terms of lack of start-up capital, so I made this post to record my position so next time this ridiculous subject comes up, I can just provide a link rather than have another tedious discussion.

Thank you for your comments! I'm always happy to meet another person who doesn't think everyone's problems would be solved if they'd just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and toss some root vegetables in a pot!