by kaiwenwang | 2025-07-04 22:15:51+00:00
Sorry in advance if this seems rude. Going to context dump a lot of stuff below:

My opinion is based on the real world as I've lived it. I cook for myself. I highly recommend https://www.centurylife.org/ for anyone else learning to cook.

Have also deeply thought about types of cookware: from glass to ceramic to clay, have experimented with clay pots such as RÖMERTOPF (not worth it), dutch oven is fine to pressure cookers, or German cookware such as Fissler that has spot welded and presents a neat design compared to riveted cookware common in the US.

If you go to almost any supermarket (Costco, Publix, Kroger, Whole Foods, HMart), the majority of foods people eat are derivatives of what I said.

Whereas recipes in the past were limited by the locale, we are now limited to the cities we have transportation options to.

If you're in a suburb of one of the major metropolitan areas, this doesn't apply. In small cities of the United States, people might only have Walmart, Amazon, Dollar Generals. So people have to cram into cities as the availability of goods is limited.

There are only a few suppliers for things---there is not unlimited choice from free market competition, a wall of supermarket cereals look different but the ingredients are fundamentally the same. I can't get good cuts of meat such as bone-in shoulder easily. Nor can I get it cut at a butcher because USDA guideline has limits on outside meat.

Food is only 3 categories: fats, carbs, or proteins.

Let's consider proteins: The major meat I buy from Costco is the Australian grass-fed lamb import. The Sprouts has lamb, but it's been sitting on the shelf for a long time. The factory farmed pork, chicken, fish, and feedlot beef give me symptoms of malaise.

Almost all processed foods are using canola oil, vegetable oil, sunflower oil, etc.--the polyunsaturated fats are shown to highly depress metabolism, despite what the USDA guidelines say.

For carbs, most of the wheat is chemically bleached with "Oxides of nitrogen, Chlorine, Nitrosyl chloride, Chlorine dioxide."

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B...

The wheat and the corn give me symptoms because I am fairly aware of my body's reactions. Some person might be extremely unhealthy and live in a slum (from my perspective) and say that they're fine, and we would both we right because each perspective is relative to an individual.

Many are increasingly unable to afford to even transport oneself in the United States without a car or gasoline because of the suburbanization of infrastructure yet cities are increasing in price.

The internet affects the real world because federal laws, which be written in places far away from where you live, affects people's behaviors and how they can do things.

You categorize me as a surface-level thinker prone to the emotional dramatics derived from the internet not having deeply thought about the reality and nature of things, but I would hope that the above comment dispels such preassumptions.

Seemingly widening inequality and inability to land meaningful jobs as a lived experience for people I know makes my concerns reasonable and truthful based on lived experience (young 20s).