Busy folks who have no time to cook eat shit. This is my personal opinion, not a statement of fact. The contemporary grocery store experience is bizarre and surreal to me, with the long lines and carriages heaped with goods, it's more like preparing for Armageddon then feeding oneself. I am aware of places like Walmart and Costco, but I never shop at these palaces of domestic supply, surely that comes as a surprise to no one.
Food is gross. This in not my opinion, this is a statement of fact. It grows out of dirt and picked by the lowest paid labor or it is killed, skinned and stripped from sinewy bone. The appearance of sanitation or cleanliness is an illusion. Milk comes from sore and infected cows tits, eggs come from a chickens ass, and bacon is a chunk of a pig cut from the fatty outer layer of its skin. Don't distress this fact - people are gross too. Teeth are designed for tearing through flesh and mushing it up, then it enters the body where acids and enzymes go to work on it and leech out nutrients. When that process ends, we shit what is not useful into the toilet. Any sign of sanitary or humane application to this is self-deception. The bright colors and inventive packages are designed for the specific task of distracting your mind from the facts about what you are about to eat. I am at relative peace with the sheer nastiness of food. I prefer to buy it from a cardboard box on the floor, a hastily crafted table or even out of the back of a truck, but it is very important to me that I am able to see, touch, and taste my food before I buy it. When food is put into bags and boxes and stripped of its functional appearance - there is something inhumane about that. If you are going to eat chicken or a chunk of cow it dishonors the value that beast offers when it is called another name or packaged with a cartoon likeness.
I live on the third floor. Not that I am lazy, but I simply can not justify carrying all that boxed up food up three flights - not to mention discarding it all means carrying it back down to the dumpster. It is a matter of pride for me to generate as little waste as possible so I avoid heavily packaged items, opting to refill my peanut butter from that cool ooze machine at the market and baked goods from the *gasp* Bakery.
There is an economic principle known as "Value Added," which I will explain thus using the subject of potatoes. Besides being a popular word to misspell, it is a staple of my diet. I pay about a dollar a pound for the spudsy treats that are trucked down from Maine, they end up in my soups, fried in oil with some salt, or smashed cruelly into oblivion before they end up in my stomach. The same amount of potatoes ushered into an industrial process will yield a frozen, bagged french/freedom fry product that will sell for about two dollars and fifty cents. Another version of the same food would be the semi-fancy potato chips, albeit more vigorously fried, their price per pound increases to nearly four dollars per pound of potatoes. This practice extends to all foods in all directions. The more complex the food, the greater effort of production - the greater the cost. Buying food in its natural form and then preparing it yourself saves energy from the cooking, packaging and shipping. Besides, packaged food is the logical destination for "Grade B," eggs and other deformed or maligned crops. The price is lower, plus you have some control over quality. We've all got that crazy purple potato chip or one with a Virgin Mary on it.
I use ingredients. Storage of several small, fresh items replaces endless cupboard space filled with boxes, bags, and packages of nonsense food. There are no food dyes, no chemical additives or preservatives, and everything is honest. No deceptive monosodium glutemate disguising something un-natural tasting, no petroleum derivitives, because food is gross enough.
