We have made a ton of progress on this in my lifetime.

When I went to elementary school, we were taught the “four basic food groups”. (And believe me, as bad as the pyramid was, it was MUCH better than that!)

I showed this to my best friend who is Dutch and she appeared shocked that it took us so long.  Apparently over in Holland they’ve had this for ages: http://www.voedingscentrum.nl/nl/schijf-van-vijf/schijf.aspx

I am definitely glad it says protien now instead of meat, now we just have to do something about that dairy.

The old system is really just a triangle, not a ‘complicated’ pyramid.

The only thing confusing is putting vegetables on the same tier with fruit, and ‘dairy’ on the same tier as ‘meat’ even though the servings logic should tell you vegetables should go below fruits. Given the power of both the beef and dairy lobbies, it looks like the two were equated when probably meat should have been just under ‘fats and sweets’ - fats and sweets seemed not to make the cut on the plate.

Listening to the reports on NPR, I assumed it would be like a pie chart where the sections all come together at the center.

Instead this makes it sorta/kinda look like all the ‘food groups’ are all roughly equal.

This seems dumbed down, and less informative. Couldn’t they have at least spelled out the percentages? Instead the green square is slightly bigger than the orange square.

What was really in need of change was the ‘servings’ stuff. Why not actually measure it in ounces?

Farm and food lobbies have really done a number with ‘servings’ - like there’s two ‘servings’ in a 12 oz can of soda. Really?

Best thing we could do to improve American diets would probably be stop subsidizing big corn and big meat lobbies (Micheal Pollan would probably say they are one in the same).

@ Dilan Esper - Yeah I remember being told to eat something like 2-3 servings of meat and 3-4 servings of dairy per day. I feel gouty just thinking about trying that.

On the whole, the plate metaphor is a big improvement over the old pyramid scheme in terms of clear communication. But I’m not sure it represents progress and enlightenment with regard to the depiction of dairy products. The visual message is that you should drink milk at every meal. The dairy industry got a way better deal than the meat industry, here. “Protein” could be anything from tofu to legumes to Kobe beef, but “Dairy” off to the side in what appears to be a big ol’ glass, sends only one message.

This seems dumbed down, and less informative.

I bet that was deliberate, preferring “intuitive” to “informative” and that in order to reach a wider audience they’re avoiding complexity.

I totally agree with you wrt “servings”, though that’s improved since the 1994 regulation of food labels.

I like the plate- percentages tend to make people’s eyes glaze over, and this can be put on signs and billboards and still convey the right meaning.

I’m not going to follow it, of course.  Vegetables are gross, and meat and bread is delicious.  But at least choosing the manner of my death is informed, instead of out of ignorance.

The food industry is responsible for a lot of shitty, underhanded policy—but I don’t blame them for standard serving sizes that seem small relative to what the average person eats. The small serving sizes reflect two basic truths about humans: i) Caloric needs vary widely, ii) We all hate doing fractions.

There was a rant the other day on Boing Boing about what a travesty it is that a single serving of bread is one standard slice, when everyone knows most people eat two slices at a time. Even if that’s true, it’s easier to keep track if 1 slice=1 serving, as opposed to 1 slice=1/2 a serving. With the one-to-one rule an open-faced sandwich=1 serving, a regular sandwich=2 servings; and a club sandwich=3 servings of bread.

Psychologically, smaller standard servings are also good for portion control. There’s a well-documented phenomenon called “unit bias” which induces people to eat as much as they consider to be a standard serving, regardless of their internal hunger cues. We can’t precisely tell how hungry we are, and once we put something on our plates, we are culturally and biologically predisposed to polish it off. If we call two slices “1 serving” people will be more likely to serve themselves two slices, even when they would have been satisfied with one.

The overemphasis on grains in the food pyramid also seems like a cave to the food industry to me.  I’m not trying to advocate Atkins, but where, other than in the poorest of third world countries, is it a really great idea to have half your diet dedicated to grains?  I don’t even know how to incorporate that many grains into my diet; I’d have to sacrifice (more nutritious) fruits and vegetables to make that work.

I eat dairy because I like it, but it’s not an essential part of the diet by any means.

Yogurt and many forms of cheese are very good for you.

@keshmeshi—it’s also true that back when we got started on this nutrition stuff that there was a lot of stupidity masquerading as science, which never got labeled as “some random stuff I was doing” and instead was used to shut down competing research.

This is actually a huge deal, and it’s another sign of how good a President Obama can be when he’s not obsessing over punishing the “undeserving.”

The plate is a huge improvement, but it still causes people to think really silly things.  Like this:

where, other than in the poorest of third world countries, is it a really great idea to have half your diet dedicated to grains?  I don’t even know how to incorporate that many grains into my diet; I’d have to sacrifice (more nutritious) fruits and vegetables to make that work.

First, the nutritional needs of Americans aren’t any different from people in underdeveloped countries.  Certain ethnicities can process certain enzymes differently than others (lactose being the most obvious example), but by and large, if people in third world countries are eating a grain-based diet, so should people in the first world.

Second, most of the time, grains are integrated with the vegetables.  This plate is suggesting that most people should eat a heap of quinoa/rice/pasta mixed in with some vegetables and nuts/beans, which, as said above, is healthy for all humans.

Off topic but way too hi-larious not to post. The Onion runs an article on Planned Parenthood’s new “Abortionplex”:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/planned-parenthood-opens-8-billion-abortionplex,20476/

Which antis think is for reals. Satisfied ‘plex customers then create a Yelp page analyzing the pros/cons of abortion’s Mall of America:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/abortionplex-topeka

It is to laugh.

@stubbles: I’m not clear on why I should be copying the eating habits of groups of people who live 30 years less long on average than I do.

I’d think I’d want to copy those of the folks living 5-10 years longer—i.e. the Japanese, Koreans, and Europeans…

@vitaminC : If you look in the early reviews of AbortionPlex, Amanda’s review is in there. (As is mine!)

That isn’t even the immediate old food pyramid, it’s the predecessor. The one replaced was the horrible “MyPyramid”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPyramid

I like the new plate, but I think it would be visually easier to interpret if all the portion wedges met in the center of the circle. As it is, it’s hard for me to interpret how much of each type of food I should eat. But I’m guessing they were scared the pieces would look to much like pie then, and would somehow lead people to eat more pie.

It’s a sucky solution.  By eliminating ‘sparing’ fats and sugars, they’ve basically fallen for hiding it.  Same with dairy.

@Lindsay: Of course, none of that applies to the practice of including more than one serving in a single non-resealable drink container, which is ludicrous.

@ Lindsay #5 - To be honest, I completely overlooked the whole glass of milk on the side and thought dairy was implicitly included in the protein section of the plate.

The lactose intolerance argument can apply to any of these groups.  If you want to cut portions on foods people can’t eat, we’ll be left eating ... well, I’m not sure. 

1/100 people have celiac and even more are gluten intolerant.  Eating a million servings of grains is an uphill battle (and an EXPENSIVE one, let me tell you!)

People with digestive disorders have trouble digesting fruits and veg.  You have to cook the shit out of them or peel everything or eat canned stuff.  I guess applesauce is a fruit, technically, but eating so many servings of baby food isn’t terribly appealing.

Some vegetarians find that they get very sick when they don’t eat meat.  They do everything “right” and then have to go back to eating meat (and then get shit from other veg-ans for failing at veg life).

And we already covered the lactose intolerance.

Two of these apply to me.  Probably 3, since I feel more logey when I don’t eat animal protein.  So my plate is a little skewed.  I eat a lot of dairy and what I can tolerate/afford of the other groups.  If I followed the recommended version of this plate (either the FDA’s or Amanda’s) ... yeah, it would not be good.

I like it, actually—yeah, the percentages are a little difficult to interpret (it looks to me like protein and fruits are the same, and vegetables and grains are the same, but I have no idea from this picture how those compare to dairy), but they’ve got a couple of good things on here. 1) all the categories are categories of food you can actually get good stuff out of.  2) everything’s basically shown on the same plate, suggesting it should all get mixed together and eaten at once.  This isn’t a “think about how to get enough of this, then add in how to get enough of this, then this” approach, and it doesn’t give them impression that certain categories are nutritionally more important, whereas pyramids are pretty inherently hierarchical.

Then again, I grew up with Canada’s Food Guide .  Which has the rainbow thing going for it, and got handed out in school about a zillion times.

How many Americans who don’t already know to eat well have any clue what “protein” is?

Also, the visual of Dairy is confusing. Does it mean it’s optional or that it’s a necessary part of a meal the way a beverage would be?

Yeah, I’ve read that “6-11” daily servings of grains was a direct cave to the farm industry.

Not what was recommended by the nutritional experts involved—those who’d been consulted were shocked by the ultimate pyramid—but added after the corn and grain lobbyists got around to stuffing that turkey.

When that new food pyramid, heavy on grains, came out, I tried, I really tried. Briefly. After all, it was supposed to be “healthy.”

I found it both impossible to stuff myself with that much starch, and because it turned out I’m gluten sensitive, exceptionally unhealthy for me.

(And possibly not healthy for anyone at the far end of 11 servings a day.)

“Of course, none of that applies to the practice of including more than one serving in a single non-resealable drink container, which is ludicrous.”

Agreed. Totally ludicrous. But it’s really in the industry’s interest to nudge up our cultural expectations for portion size so that we buy more food. “Supersizing” is one of the most profitable marketing tactics ever devised. There’s interesting cross-cultural research that shows that a “single serving” prepackaged portion in France is usually considerably smaller than a “single serving” of the same product for sale in the U.S. Interestingly non-food single use packs aren’t reliably larger in the U.S. than they are in France.

That pie chart’s fantastic. It even does the right thing by slicing quadrants into horizontal and vertical bars, instead of the angles-from-center distribution that is harder to visually digest. I guess it implies dairy should be included, but my eye hardly even noticed to be honest.

...I think at a basic level most people know “protein” is a meat thing. They might ask around and learn that there are non-meat protein sources.

1 - how much veggies? as much as your grains

2 - how much protein? less than the amount of veggies

3 - how much fruit? as much fruit as meat. easy to remember

4 - fruits and veggies are half. half is easy.

5 - how much dairy? it’s not part of the plate pie chart. and the milk-glass shaped icon has the super-important effect of de-emphasizing cheese.

I think I might actually try to follow this and see how I do.

Meh, I don’t like the plate. I would rather have seen the pyramid revamped by removing fats/sugars, a better depiction of protein, etc. This plate implies that every meal needs to have each of these food groups and that’s just not going to happen for a lot of people. I’d rather see a chart that shows people how to aim for a well balanced diet over the course of a day. That would make it easier to account for a breakfast of oatmeal and a piece of fruit as a snack later.

By putting dairy off to the side, the plate visually represents how we should approach it.

I disagree.  It should be included with protein; full stop.  Milk is not necessary, the nutrients found in it are, but hey can be obtained through a number of other sources.  And I say that as a DiL of dairy farmers who really likes cheese and yogurt.

It’s less confusing and gives the viewer a much better idea of how much of each kind of food to eat.  The pyramid was a bit confusing on this front.

It may be less confusing for you, a person who uses pie carts regularly.  The original pyramid was aimed at children, children who had recently spent a lot of time playing with blocks and were unlikely to have ever seen a pie chart.  This is still the most important audience IMO.

Instead of seeing fats and sugars as part of the diet,they should be relegated to treats.

Fats/oils most certainly should not be treats.  They are required for a healthy diet, especially for growing children and anyone recovering from certain types of injuries.  Sugars, separate from that already in fruits and vegetables; sure.

Children play with blocks, eat cake, and generally have access to multicolored plastic toys that fit together.  I’m not buying the pie chart = unreasonable meme.

Certain ethnicities can process certain enzymes differently than others (lactose being the most obvious example)

Lactose is a sugar. Lactase is the enzyme we produce to digest lactose.

How many Americans who don’t already know to eat well have any clue what “protein” is?

I’m doubtful that anybody who is not a biologist knows what a protein is. The level of science fail among people who know how to eat well is high, it’s just that they fail in a different way than people who don’t know how to eat well.

MyPlate is a visual heuristic. It’s a graphic rule of thumb for what a healthy meal should look like. It’s a good teaching tool because it directly relates the ratios of the food groups to the experience of eating. The pyramid was confusing because it tried to summarize all the foods you should eat in a single day, without giving people a sense of what that would look like at any given meal.

I’m okay with taking out added fats and sugars as a group. Of course, fat is an essential part of a healthy diet, but you can get your fats from proteins, fruits and vegetables, dairy/alternates. Almost any vegetable or grain dish you’ll be served has at least some added oils in it. Most people don’t cook, so telling them there’s an added group of visible fats and sugars they should be serving themselves in addition to their normal diet is probably not the best advice. Most people are getting all the fat and sugar they need built into their other foods, either in the foods themselves, or added in preparation.

Punditus Maximus, it was actually a pyramid rather than a simple triangle; one of the teaching tools used for pre-school and k/1st grade was a literal pyramid of blocks.  We had one in my K classroom.  The fitting together toy is a good point though.  The portions still look off tome, by the way; better, but still off.

The new design is absolutely terrible, because the government failed to take the opportunity to demonstrate proper silverware settings!  Apparently the government wants us to all be heathen savages who eat everything with one (apparently white plastic) fork.

Besides, they even got the foods wrong; everyone with any edumacation at all knows that a properly balanced diet simply takes from the four main food groups of sugar, salt, caffeine and cholesterol.

I do like the plate better. It’s graphically much simpler and easier to read. And it puts food recommendations into a concrete context: what you should literally put on your plate.

I still kind of cringed at the attempt to require a glass of milk, though. I’m one of those white European-descent people who used to drink a lot of milk, but around age 19 or 20, I stopped being able to digest it properly. I can occasionally eat small amounts of yogurt, cheese, or ice cream, but my digestive system is never very happy about it. A glass of milk would just make me sick.

I know lots of people have this reaction, and worse, starting in childhood. So milk as the only beverage option in school lunches just seems mean. And now milk as the only beverage option for the officially FDA-recommended balanced meal…

I mean, yes, milk has nutrients and it’s certainly better than a supersized Coke. And yes, obviously it’s possible to replace it with other drinks/foods that provide calcium and vitamin D. But I’m just iffy about more “You need milk to be healthy!” propaganda. It’s a fine choice if you like it and can digest it. But should milk be specifically pushed as a necessary food for everybody?

@ Dana - where does booze fit in?

It’s unquestionably an improvement over the food pyramid. Dairy being separate from protein is bullshit, but it’s not a new problem and is I think the only real problem here.

Hopefully this will get implemented in some format where people can go “what the fuck is protein,” click on it, and get some suggestions for protein-rich foods. Realistically it will probably link to meatwank, but hey.

Also, serving sizes are a load of bullshit. I recently ate a packet of (actually pretty healthy) food that consisted of one, non-resealable 280 mL packet and had serving size information per 125 mL. Go fuck yourself in hell, assholes. When I become dictator of the world, all serving size information will meet the following requirements:

(1) It is either the whole package, or at most 1/4 the package. None of this bottles that have 2.5 servings. Fuck you.

(2) If your food does not have a clear, simple way to divide it into servings (eg, a lasagna with 8 servings and markings on the container for where to cut it into 8ths, or something like that) it can be tsp, tbsp, quarter cup, half cup, or cup. Fuck you, I don’t give a shit how much fiber is in two and an eighth cups of your shit.

(3) If your food comes in non-resealable containers, a serving size is the entire container. Fuck you.

@ UmaroVI

I’d do all of that, plus require being at least 16 years of age to consume soda, and ban any breakfast cereal that has sugar (or corn syrup etc) added to it.  I know that sounds a bit fascist, but look at the childhood diabetes rates and tell me it isn’t necessary.

I’m doubtful that anybody who is not a biologist knows what a protein is.

In a technical sense? Sure. In the sense of “the stuff that generally comes from meat but some nuts too”? Yeah, I don’t think so. Among others, anyone who has done pretty much any kind of sport, and certainly anyone who has done any kind of weight-training (and not just hardcore bodybuilding) will be familiar with the concept.

I’d also enforce a ban on any statements about the health value of food, other than factual numerical information about its content. None of this “Healthy Low Fat Vanilla Ice Cream Yogurt - Probiotic Health Guarantee” bullshit.

Two of these apply to me.  Probably 3, since I feel more logey when I don’t eat animal protein.  So my plate is a little skewed.  I eat a lot of dairy and what I can tolerate/afford of the other groups.  If I followed the recommended version of this plate (either the FDA’s or Amanda’s) ... yeah, it would not be good.

I’m with you, wafflemonkey. I’ve cut out gluten (and most grains right along with it) bumped up myveggie intake, only do fruit sparingly, drink water or tea or coconut milk, took out most dairy except for cheese (you can take the girl out of Wisconsin…) and eat grass-fed, organic meats as a source of protein since any other source - beans, tofu, etc. won’t cut it for me nutritionally on my workout regimen (CrossFit) Which isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy tofu or beans - I just don’t eat them as my main source of protein.
This isn’t to say that I don’t let thing slip- popcorn at the movie theatre sparingly, a cupcake, etc. But this suits my nutritional needs, helps me build muscle strength and doesn’t leave my stomach eating itself.
The idea of “eat real food” is, I think a good one (even better if you can make items yourself - you know whats in it and if you want to eat a cookie or have some ice cream you’ve gotta make them first - I’m super lazy/tired most of the time at the end of the day when I crave them so I’ve cut down on cookies & ice cream too - but, again, this works for ME - maybe not others) , but even still I needed to learn to cook some of the veggies in lotsa different ways and use them in lotsa different ways (cauliflower rice is one of my faves).
However, I’m spending more money on this diet now than I used to and I’m lucky that it’s something I can afford to do right now.
While I think that the plate is a step forward I still don’t think that it really helps out people who do not know how to eat and don’t have much desire to learn whether through economics or plain old tiredness/convenience.
But expect the right to get all up in arms about “the gummint telling you how to EAT!!!111!!” in 3…2…1..
(some CrossFit people are like that about food recommendations too… annoying)

The idea of “eat real food” is, I think a good one (even better if you can make items yourself - you know whats in it and if you want to eat a cookie or have some ice cream you’ve gotta make them first - I’m super lazy/tired most of the time at the end of the day when I crave them so I’ve cut down on cookies & ice cream too - but, again, this works for ME - maybe not others)

A bag of Chips Ahoy cost 2$, you have a container to dispose of that is almost unrecycleable, and you may be exposed to ingredients that you’re probably better off keeping out of your body.

If you can bake a batch, you spend a lot less than 2$, and you have the satisfaction of knowing you can make something tasty as well.

Works for me.

But expect the right to get all up in arms about “the gummint telling you how to EAT!!!111!!” in 3…2…1..

Obama team unveils exciting federal logo to make you eat less of what you like and more of what you don’t

If you can bake a batch, you spend a lot less than 2$, and you have the satisfaction of knowing you can make something tasty as well.

Unless you already have a well-stocked kitchen, a batch of chocolate chip cookies will probably cost you well over $2. Around here: vanilla, which most people who don’t bake regularly generally don’t keep on hand, will cost you at least $3 for the small bottle of the store brand; the one-batch sized bag of Toll House chips (which is the one with the recipe on it) is about $4.50, or the store brand is another $3.25. Flour, two types of sugar, salt, baking powder, butter, and eggs all add up too.

Making your own dough does mean you can bake up half a dozen and freeze the rest to bake later, though, instead of having an open package that you have to eat fast or they’ll go stale. Higher quality ingredients also tend to make food more satisfying, so 1-2 cookies might feel like “enough” rather than 3-4. I find the same thing happens with ice cream - even Haagen Dazs is enough better than Dreyers/Edys that my “serving size” is half what it says on the package, and I love making ice cream but I only do it when I know I can give most of it away, because otherwise I wind up tossing 7/8 of the batch once it’s freezer-burned beyond recognition.

All of which of course assumes that you have the privilege of affording the ingredients, time, equipment, freezer space, and learning curve if you’ve never made that recipe before.

Unless you already have a well-stocked kitchen, a batch of chocolate chip cookies will probably cost you well over $2. Around here: vanilla, which most people who don’t bake regularly generally don’t keep on hand, will cost you at least $3 for the small bottle of the store brand; the one-batch sized bag of Toll House chips (which is the one with the recipe on it) is about $4.50, or the store brand is another $3.25. Flour, two types of sugar, salt, baking powder, butter, and eggs all add up too.

I think that even a non-baking household might have salt in the kitchen cabinet, and you don’t have to use a lot of chips to get a good chocolate chip cookie, I’ve gone down to 50% on that one.

You forgot the water and soap to clean up afterwards as well.

The chocolate chips alone would be more than $2.  A batch of home made cookies tends to be a lot more cookies than a container you buy though.  Also, if you aren’t buying big sizes, the unit costs of flour, eggs, milk, etc go up and so does the cost of your cookies.

When I bake choc chip cookies, I tended to make double or triple batches using the one batch amount of chips, but upping the nuts to compensate.  Nuts are expensive.  I also will sometimes make a double batch of oatmeal cookies and through the chips in there rather than in traditional choc chip cookie recipes - more fiber and protein that way, and less wheat gluten.

throw, not through. damn

1.  Worst thing about the plate that I see, quoting Lindsay: “The visual message is that you should drink milk at every meal.”  Off to the side, in its own unique container.  That suggests a glass of milk at every meal.  Yuck.

PS where’s the water we’re supposed to be drinking 8 glasses a day of?

Very clever and sneaky how the dairy folks got that on in there.  How badly would Tyson or Perdue have wanted a chicken-drumstick shaped spot on that plate?

2.  Going from “meat” to “protein” is a HUGE victory for overall health for several reasons IMO.

Also, if ppl don’t know what “protein” is (seriously???) they can GOOGLE it or ASK and find out; which they will do because they have SEEN IT HERE (or that’s the point as I understand it.)

I thought the “8 cups of water a day” was one of those myths that someone sort of suggested one day and then just got picked up by everyone? That it has no science to back it up? 

Am I misremembering?

Dark Avenger, you’re mocking the idea that people would have to specially purchase the items on that list, but of those items salt and eggs are actually the only ones present in my kitchen with any regularity. So, when I’m occasionally possessed with the urge to bake chocolate chip cookies (which does happen every blue moon), it really does cost me *way* more than $2. And I’d have to then continue baking with much more regularity to make up the cost of the flour, sugar etc. over time. In fact, I’ve personally found the start up cost of getting a well stocked kitchen going to be one of my biggest barriers to cooking more regularly, and to making more interesting meals. Anything outside my very limited staples repertoire (spaghetti/rice/potatoes/couscous or similar with some sort of vegetable and/or spaghetti or soy sauce and maybe cheese thrown on top, or perhaps eggs), inevitably requires an investment in spices, bags of beans, flour, other sauces, broth, whatever (not to mention pots, pans, baking sheets, knives, and other kitchen implements, which in roommate/rental situations seem to be endlessly disappearing), that I then have to commit to using up to justify the up front cost.

Why wouldn’t you just buy the biggest bag of chips, flour, salt, and shortening that you can store?  Unless you’re never, ever going to bake again, it won’t go bad in years.  Literally.

I know it takes time and money to invest in storage space and containers, but really!  You’re not living in a snapshot of time.

I don’t understand why anyone would buy the sizes they have at most grocery stores unless they’re seriously rich.  Over the last ten years I’ve collected screw-top bins for my spices, grains, and flours, and now only buy them in bulk increments… Twenty pounds of white rice lasts us a year, so we buy it once a year.  It’s not like it isn’t grown the same way and is stored somewhere in the meanwhile.

If you don’t keep flour in your kitchen, you don’t bake, and it’s your own damn fault you’re whiny.

PS, I buy bags of garbanzo flour to replace regular flour when I make cookies for my gluten-free friends.  It’s no problem.  (just don’t eat the raw flour, it tastes extraordinarily green!)

Because if you live in rentals and you buy things in those sizes then now you have to move 20 lbs of rice, flour, beans, oats, a spice rack etc. along with the rest of your belongings when your rent goes up at the end of the year. On public transportation or in a borrowed car (my methods of moving), that is a serious pain. I usually don’t even move furniture - I get it free or near free on craigslist and give it away again when I move. Not to mention finding space to store those bulk items in a shared kitchen (my previous and current houses each had five 20-30 year olds living in them. Fridge and cabinet space is at a serious premium). Also, why is not baking the same as whining? The entire point is, given someone who doesn’t bake on a regular basis, it’s not going to be cheaper to bake a batch of cookies than buy a pack for $2 on the rare occasion you want one (and if it really is a rare occasion you want one, then taking up baking just to fill that urge is rather overkill).

Another real reason I have had to (repeatedly) throw out flour, cereal, and at times basically the entire contents of the kitchen - moths. They were a huge problem when I lived in New England, despite lots of investment in apparently airtight containers (we started theorizing that the eggs were actually coming in the flour, and just hatched after some set amount of time).

Dark Avenger, you’re mocking the idea that people would have to specially purchase the items on that list, but of those items salt and eggs are actually the only ones present in my kitchen with any regularity.

Actually, I was mocking the notion that people would have to buy salt and granulated(white) sugar, I understand that if you don’t bake, having to get the ingredients(did someone mention milk?  I bet those cookies turn out interesting) like eggs, baking powder and flour, and the rest could be a bit costly.

Having said that, the marginal cost per batch of the baking powder and 5ml of Vanilla extract is small per batch,  but the former will last a long time under the right circumstances, and the latter will last indefinitely in the fridge, so I don’t see those as high barriers to performance.

One thing nobody seems to have noticed is that I said “If you can”, which some seem to have taken as an imperative comment(IF YOU WANT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES YOU MUST MUST MAKE THEM FROM SCRATCH!), which wasn’t my intent.

Also, there is the sense of accomplishment of eating and enjoying ones’ own work, which can’t be measured in dollars and cents, but that’s a discussion for a later time.

Also, there is the sense of accomplishment of eating and enjoying ones’ own work, which can’t be measured in dollars and cents, but that’s a discussion for a later time.

If it’s a discussion for a later time, why do you keep bringing it up?

As others have pointed out before, not everybody likes to cook, and not everybody who can cook enjoys it or gets ‘accomplishment’ or ‘satisfaction’ out of it. Seriously, this is perhaps the second most annoying thing about foodies: the inability to comprehend that anyone might not get profound spiritual joy out of preparing something from scratch. Really, truly-o, many people do not find it delightful to prepare meals, anymore than everybody enjoys sewing their own clothes or changing their own oil or scraping mildew out of their own showers. Please learn the distinction between “I enjoy being able to do X” and “If you are able to do X, you will enjoy it.”

And really, homemade chocolate-chip cookies are not all that goddamn good for you, either, so it seems a little silly to fuss over people who buy the premade stuff.

As others have pointed out before, not everybody likes to cook, and not everybody who can cook enjoys it or gets ‘accomplishment’ or ‘satisfaction’ out of it.

And for the third time, I prefaced it with IF YOU CAN, not YOU MUST DO THIS OR YOU ARE TOO STUPID TO LIVE.

“If you can bake a batch, you spend a lot less than 2$, and you have the satisfaction of knowing you can make something tasty as well.”

If you can bake 10 batches, you spend a lot less than $2 per batch. If you’re baking one batch, you spend a lot more than $2.

Dark Avenger @56: Yes, and then after the preface, you went on (again) about the “sense of accomplishment” one would automatically derive after baking one’s own cookies instead of buying them. The problem is not that you ordered anyone to bake cookies. The problem is that you apparently can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t prefer to bake cookies if they could, rather than buy cookies made by somebody else, and truly don’t understand that the reason many people decline to bake cookies is not I CANNOT but I CAN BUT I WOULD RATHER EAT GLASS KTHX.

And the earlier comment about ‘ingredients you probably don’t want in your body’ - well, again, a chocolate-chip cookie is not exactly a little circle of healthy, whether or not you or the Pillsbury company made it. Organic artisanal butter will fuck up your arteries plenty.

(I say all this, by the way, as somebody who loves to cook and finds it easy.)

And the earlier comment about ‘ingredients you probably don’t want in your body’ - well, again, a chocolate-chip cookie is not exactly a little circle of healthy, whether or not you or the Pillsbury company made it.

I was being sarcastic.

Because if you live in rentals and you buy things in those sizes then now you have to move 20 lbs of rice, flour, beans, oats, a spice rack etc. along with the rest of your belongings when your rent goes up at the end of the year.

Screw moving.  Buying in bulk requires having to store that bulk somewhere, and you may or may not have room to do so.  Our last apartment was sorely lacking in storage, especially in the kitchen.  20lbs of rice?  I had nowhere to keep that!

There’s not much cost savings in a 10 lb bag of rice vs. 20 lb, so it wouldn’t have much difference if you had, JN.