Tasty and healthy need not be pricey
Perhaps the Arizona abortion chaos, which resets women’s reproductive rights way back to 1864, drowned out the news of inflation in the country. CNBC reported that “consumer prices rose 3.5% from a year ago in March, more than expected”.
In the grand scheme of things, 3.5 percent inflation is not that bad. But, we have been so conditioned by low inflation rates that we experienced for quite some time, that we get spooked by any number that is higher than 2 to 2.5 percent.
Inflation is about a basket of goods, which analysts then desegregate and tell us which goods and services are way pricier, versus others that are holding steady or have even become less expensive. Food is one of the favorites: Not merely for analysts to talk about, but even more for politicians. Especially politicians who are currently outside the government: They yell and scream about how difficult it has become for a family to put food on the table, and how life will be better if people elected them to power instead.
But, for a while now, we have not experienced any food-related inflation in our household. Well, except for the brief while when eggs were in shortage. If I didn’t correctly time my visit to the German grocery store in town, then I was bound to see empty shelves. But, that soon eased, and we are back to asking ourselves, “food inflation?”
CNBC reported:
Meat, poultry, and fish prices having gone up doesn’t affect our household because it is a rare day in a month that we ever venture into those products. Day in and day out, it is vegetarian food that we cook and eat.
The other day I made a vegetable korma, which we also shared with a friend who is a subscriber here. The name of the dish makes it clear that it is vegetable korma. She liked it so much that she wanted the recipe.
Ha!
I don’t do recipes. A little bit of this and a little bit of that is how I cook. So, I sent her a lengthy narrative instead, in which I noted about spices to add: “I have no idea how to describe the quantities. You add them per your taste. How is that for a recipe!”
In this vegetarian existence, we have not experienced any food price shock. Our favorites like garbanzos and lentils and peanuts and everything else seem to be as inexpensive as they were a while ago. If anything, it always shocks me that one Honeycrisp apple costs about the same as a can of garbanzos. President Biden doesn’t want to do anything about this. I bet he is all in with the Honeycrisp lobby!
Back to the CNBC report about price increase in food away from home. Eating away from home—dining in the restaurant or to-go—is also a rare event in our household.
I wonder if vegetarians who mostly eat at home do not feel any inflation?
Perhaps inflation is not a sufficient incentive for people to cook and eat vegetarian food at home. Or, mostly vegetarian. There are at least two other compelling reasons that I can offer.
Consider the (un)holy dietary trinity of calories, fat, and sodium. Julia Child said that butter makes every dish taste better. It does. But, it is also a lot of fat going into a dish, right? Or, consider the fantastically tasty “French fries” at McDonald’s. I am drooling as I think about those thinly sliced, crisply fried, and salted potatoes.
As my grandmother used to say, restaurants want to serve you tasty foods, while mothers want to serve you tasty foods that are also healthy. But then if restaurants serve the kind of foods that I cook at home, well, the business will close down in no time!
Cooking vegetarian foods at home means less worry not only about inflation but about the ill effects too. I have blogged about this a lot. I mean, a lot. Here’s an excerpt that I quoted in a post from a while ago that will interest you too:
People who cook at home are conclusively healthier, consuming less sodium and fewer overall calories than people who mostly eat out. Cooking at home is better for the planet: it avoids the single-use plastics and paper goods that delivered food usually comes with, and with just a bit of creativity with leftovers, home cooking can be entirely free of food waste. Cooking is being studied as a promising tool for improving mental health, and even as a method for eliminating unhealthy behaviors such as smoking. And no matter what restaurant you order in from, there’s always a home-cooked meal that can be made for less money.
And if you cook and eat vegetarian dishes, then you are doing your part in the fight against climate change. As Vox explains, the meat industry is one of the largest contributors to global warming:
The tens of billions of chickens, pigs, cows, and other animals we raise and slaughter for food annually account for around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from cow burps, animal manure, and the fertilizer used to grow the corn and soy they eat. More than one-third of the Earth’s habitable land is used for animal farming — much of it cleared for cattle grazing and growing all that corn and soy — making animal agriculture the leading cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss globally.
Deforestation causes emissions itself, but it also represents a missed opportunity to sequester carbon. If that land were “rewilded,” or retired as farmland, it would act as a carbon sink, sucking massive amounts of climate-warming carbon out of the atmosphere. But we keep clearing more and more forestland, especially in the Amazon rainforest and elsewhere in the tropics, mostly for beef, pork, and poultry.
Cooking and eating vegetarian dishes is a win-win-win in the three dimensions of money/inflation; health; and climate change.
Last night, at our friends’ home, we had vegan pasta primavera with creamy garlic cashew sauce. It was a winner, we told her.
What vegetarian dish are you gonna cook today at home?