Do you agree with race realism?

Obama didn't blow the housing bubble that destroyed the finances and lives of new black homeowners. Bush, Greenspan and Wall Street did.

 

Cheap and Easy. Both.

 

No, we've proved such food is not cheap compared to scratch cooking. It's absurd and disingenuous to claim it even could be, given the economics of the case.

 

Where's the proof. Perhaps I missed it.

 

See post #798. Do the math. I didn't do it for you because I wanted you to obtain the result for yourself, using the prices you know are correct from your own local supermarket shopping. If you are not able or willing to do such simple arithmetic, I will do it for you, using my local prices. But if I do, you will have to accept the result and admit that you are objectively wrong. Clear?

 

I'll take $4 and 4 burritos and 4 minutes of cook time as cheaper and easier to feed 4 people.
A pound of Hamburger alone today will cost you $5.

 

The short cooking time is a convenience, not a cost, and you can't heat four frozen burritos in four minutes. How much do the burritos weigh?

Not me. You are waaay overpaying for hamburger. How much hamburger is there in the four frozen convenience burritos?

 

https://www.walmart.com/ip/All-Natural-80-Lean-20-Fat-Ground-Beef-Chuck-Roll-3-lb/15136794

Here is cheap hamburger. $3.33/lb.
And that is just 1 ingredient in a burrito.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Tina-s-Red-Hot-Beef-Burrito-4-69-oz/49238683
$0.30 For this burrito. A little over a 1/4 of burrito.

 

That's more reasonable; but here's one at $2.78/lb:

https://www.walmart.com/grocery/ip/All-Natural-73-Lean-27-Fat-Ground-Beef-Roll-5-lb/15136795

I have to say that price -- works out to ~$.064/oz -- surprises me. The reviewers seem to agree: one said competing brands cost three times as much; another said it was without a doubt the best bargain in the store. But more than one also said it was not available, or their local store does not stock it. El Monterey seems to be a much more normal and reliably available economy brand, starting at around $0.09/oz for the basic item, or a little more depending on the type and flavor.

Anyway, I've done a little calculation based on Walmart's prices for ingredients. I figured it out based on 20 burritos, because I didn't have an intuitive feel for how much of each ingredient I would use to make just one. The total is 94oz, which is equivalent to 20 Tina's burritos, which would cost $6:

32oz Great Value white all-purpose flour @$.02/oz = $.64
16oz tap water to make tortilla dough = $0
- 2oz tap water evaporated in cooking tortillas = $0
8oz GV dry pinto beans @$.05/oz = $.40
16oz tap water absorbed in cooking beans = $0
8oz chopped onion @$.035/oz = $.28
8oz All Natural 73% lean ground beef @$.17/oz = $1.36
6oz Mazola corn oil @$.075/oz = $.45
1oz Morton's salt @$.07/oz = $.07
1oz GV chili powder @$.33/oz = $.33
~2kwh electric power for cooking @$.10/kwh = $.20
___________________________________________________
94oz of homemade scratch burritos = $3.73, of which more than 1/3 is the beef

So the cost of scratch burritos with beef is a little more than half the cost of the very cheapest frozen ones, and if you leave out the beef and use more beans and onions, the cost is well under half the cost of the cheapest frozen ones:

32oz Great Value white all-purpose flour @$.02/oz = $.64
16oz tap water to make tortilla dough = $0
- 2oz tap water evaporated in cooking tortillas = $0
10oz GV dry pinto beans @$.05/oz = $.50
20oz tap water absorbed in cooking beans = $0
10oz chopped onion @$.035/oz = $.35
6oz Mazola corn oil @$.075/oz = $.45
1oz Morton's salt @$.07/oz = $.07
1oz GV chili powder @$.33/oz = $.33
~2kwh electric power for cooking @$.10/kwh = $.20
___________________________________________________
94oz of homemade scratch vegetarian burritos = $2.54, or less half the cost of the very cheapest frozen brand, and less than 1/3 of the cost of the typical widely available bargain brand (El Monterey).

Clear?

 

Wow. You did some good work here.
But for that $6 of frozen burritos, it is 20 burritos, there abouts.

Will you get 20 from your home made burrito?
What is the labor time to do that from scratch?

Very good work.

 

I live in what is considered a food desert. It is a dense urban area. The nearest grocery store is over two miles away. There is a Dollar General and Family Dollar store approximately one half mile away. They are within walking distance and I pass a McDonald's and a convenience store/gas station on the way. They each carry nonperishable food. Canned goods, canned meats and any food you can put in a box or microwave, in other words highly processed food stuffs. There is no "fresh food"anywhere in my area. That is the way it is in many poor urban areas.

 

I agree and saw this regularly when I lived in poor areas in the US.
Sadly people don’t want to invest in putting stores in these areas due to high levels of theft and fear of looting.

 

Yes, 20 Tina's, and 20 (or equivalent weight of) homemade scratch burritos.

If I make them the same size as Tina's (4.7oz). El Monterey's are a little bigger: 5oz.

Call it three hours. Roll the dough and cook the tortillas while waiting for the beans to cook. The time consuming part is cooking the 20 tortillas, because unless you have two frying pans, you have to do them one at a time. That's an hour right there. In practice I would probably make 16 slightly bigger (~6oz) burritos because 4.7oz is a bit small to be a full meal for most people, it's easier to divide the dough into 16 equal parts than 20 equal parts, and it takes less time rolling the dough and cooking the tortillas if you make fewer but bigger ones.

 

I've never heard of anything like that here in Canada. Even in the poorest urban areas, you are never more than a few hundred meters from a supermarket. Of course it is different in rural areas.

 

You can find this problem in every state and some cities are starting to fight back:
"Recently, Fort Worth passed a new ordinance to regulate where new small box retailers, primarily “dollar stores,” can open in the city.

This regulation requires that the stores be at least two miles from an existing “dollar store” and must offer fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy products in at least 10 percent floor area of the store.

Mesquite, a suburb east of Dallas, also passed a similar regulation of these stores in 2018. Tulsa, Oklahoma and Birmingham, Alabama have also passed similar ordinances.

A report issued in 2018 by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance encourages cities to consider passing these regulations. It claims that “dollar stores” are crowding out full-service grocery stores and have “exacerbated the problem of food deserts and further eroded the economic prospects of vulnerable communities.”
https://thetexan.news/forth-worth-ordinance-attempts-to-regulate-dollar-store-operations/

 

2 miles away?? Oh my! I never realized that the millions of Americans who live 15 miles or more from a grocery store were living in such hardship. Oh the oppression!

 

And they say conservatives are fascist. I guess liberty and freedom mean nothing anymore.

 

Thank you for your comment. It is a clear example how little knowledge or empathy certain, dare I say white, people have of the working poor, for the elderly, or those that use public transportation. They are to be laughed at and diminished because of their social status by the right it seems. How Christian.

 

Saying that not having a grocery store within two miles of you equates to a food desert is laughable. I suppose that the government should mandate Kroger to build a supermarket next door to you. But if the government is going to mandate that for you, they need to mandate that for every citizen. And do you see how ludicrous that is? As for Christians, I suppose Jesus could give you some fish and some bread to save you that two mile trip, but he hasn't done that for quite some time now.

 

Feeling compelled to comment on a subject that one obviously knows nothing about is laughable. Communities should be legitimately concerned about the health of its citizens and take steps to improve it as Fort Worth is trying to do. Healthy citizens in the long run will save tax payer money.

 

I have been quite poor in my life (and I am white and we experience poverty too) and have had to travel miles to find a grocery store but I also understand why an entrepreneur would not want to invest in a store in an area where theft is high and looting is a very real possibility.

 

Living two or more miles away from the grocery store isn't uncommon across the country. I live more than two miles away from one and I wouldn't be surprised if most of the American posters here were outside your two mile limit, but I've never thought of it as a hardship or something that was keeping me down.

Explain why this is a big deal to you, because to me, it seems ridiculous.

 

I keep thinking about how so many in the world travel even farther for water that is not even necessarily safe to drink.
Two miles is at most a 45 minute walk. Public transport is usually available.
I don’t quite understand the outrage.

 

The entitlement mentality has gone off the rails. That the government should take care of every citizen's wants and needs is not what was originally intended. I suppose you are correct though, I don't know much about the entitlement mentality because I have never had one. I have always been of the mindset that individuals and families should take care of themselves and not expect the taxpayer to do that for them. In the long run, self reliant and self responsible citizens will save taxpayer money. A government mandate that dictates where a store must build and what products they must carry is not freedom.

 

Theft, never mind looting, is simply not a significant economic consideration for the grocery business here in Canada, even in the poorest areas. At all. And I would guess it is not in other advanced industrialized countries in Europe, Australia, etc., let alone Japan, Taiwan or South Korea. And some of those countries have pockets of real, deep poverty. What is so different in the USA?