Also playing video games and watching tv shows helps.
Its all bread and circuses since the roman empire.
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2026
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How does cooking at home even fix grocery costs? I'm already doing that. It's the cost and quality of ingredients that's the problem, bit to mention avoiding any of the US products in anticipation of the next version of diarrhea-lettuce or cancer-beef.
I shower while brushing my teeth and then soap my body down after the 3 mins it takes. Shower time didnt get longer just more efficient
Unpopular take: This can be summed up as 'use less resources' and it has more to do with previous generations over consumption becoming normalized.
I believe we should live sustainably and modestly. But I also despise being preach to about sustainability and moderation by rich assholes who are the epitome of greed, gluttony and overindulgence. Good advice coming from an hypocritical, condescending jerk will not be well-received.
Most people on earth have never even had a chance to overconsume due to economic inequality. Only certain people in previous generations were even able to overconsume, and always a small minority of every generation.
How can any of these, except debt and maybe grocery costs, be summed up as "use less resources"?
What resources is an average individual "over-consuming" to make their housing more expensive and their commute more onerous?
It's an unpopular take ... they said it up front.
The term "average" is you adding words to the original comment that weren't there to begin with. At best "average" is too subjective and nebulous to be meaningful without you providing a very clear definition of your intended context, at worst, it's loaded terminology.
I don't want to imply that I know specifically what that person meant by over-consumption regarding housing and transport, however, it could easily be applied to situations like ...
~ The trend in some parts of the world to build ever larger houses despite people having smaller families / fewer children.
~ People choosing to live alone, even when they have other options available like living with family or having roommates (as per the image).
~ People living alone in general, but choosing bigger homes with multiple rooms / bathrooms that were intended for families and people with roommates, leaving the additional space / room largely unused.
For transportation, the overconsumption side of that is often based on the argument that people are buying vehicles when they don't need one, buying larger and less efficient vehicles than they should, driving solo instead of carpooling, or avoiding taking public transport when it's available. Specifically the argument about moving closer to work in relation to over-consumption is, and I'm guessing here, addressed more at people who choose to live further away from work for reasons like "they don't like that part of town" or because they'd rather drive than take public transport / walk.
In the USA, for instance, there has traditionally been a very heavy stigma against "poor people", and so for a certain percentage of people who actually are poor or very close to it, over-consumption is a mechanism they will employ to mask their economic status. For example, wearing designer clothes or at least knock-offs, buying a new expensive vehicle they can't really afford, moving to a more expensive neighborhood for appearance, driving to work instead of using public transportation or walking, etc.
Obviously we can all cherry pick anecdotes where these things don't apply and it's easy to assume that how things are where I live are the same all over everywhere even though that's not the case, so keep that in mind.
I dont think this is an unpopular take. You are spot on.
Only thing I’d add is:
Both the wealthy and Previous generations’ over consumption has been normalized. And in the case of the wealthy it has been glorified.
"cook at home" is a solution to grocery prices? WTF are you going to cook?
instant noodles with a side of disappointment?
Buy beans and fart your tears away.
I live close to work, and have never lived alone - but living close to economic opportunities costs more, not less. Not having to drive saves some money, sure, but probably not enough to make up for the difference in housing cost.
Cooking from scratch at home is more a quality of life thing, I do that so we can eat well & reasonably healthy. The more money we make, the more I cook from ingredients. Have a garden now, even - it's a luxury of having space for one, not a cost saving measure.
Nothing you can do on the expense side will ever make up for the depressed wages - productivity and costs have increased much faster than pay, and nobody can save their way out of that.
For real, I’m always impressed when home cooks can get it done cheaper than restaurants (who are buying ingredients at wholesale, cook everything in batches, etc). Most can’t. People look at me like I’m crazy when I say this, but there’s a reason working class people get so much takeout: it’s cheaper than cooking, when you factor in the time spent cooking.
Cooking from scratch at home is more a quality of life thing, I do that so we can eat well
again for people who weren't listening. most of my fun money goes into more expensive, higher quality foods or recipe experiments.
The thing that always gets me is: what if we’re already doing that and are still struggling?
That’s a rhetorical question, of course, because I know that the people who dole out advice like this don’t actually give a shit.
#GuillotineParty
That's then followed by a bunch of articles how geen Gen Z or Gen Alpha are ruining supermarkets and car dealers by biking everywhere and only eating rice and beans.
And then uninformed members of Gens Z and Alpha make reels about how Boomers and Millennials need to retire so they can get access to higher-paying jobs.
Culture war nonsense perpetuated to distract from any class-conscious understanding of why things suck.
The fun part is if you actually do enough of these things, it effects the economy negatively, so they'll find ways to force you to spend anyway.
Yeah now they've got their panties in a twist that we're not making enough new consumer slaves. I've got enough worries keeping myself alive, let alone bringing a kid into it.
Then they circle back like this generation is killing (name your industry) because of the above.
I don't get the grocery one. Surely the entire point of them is to cook at home? Otherwise you would be getting takeaways or something which isn't groceries.
I think they’re getting at cooking more or less from scratch rather than buying tons of processed garbage, but I had to reach far to arrive at that conclusion.
Like milling your own grain? If people are doing that, based as fuck.
i mean, i don't go that far (i'm a shitty baker and that would make me worse) but i could always use a new hobby
The main reason I haven't is that its cheaper to buy flour than grain. At least unless I am willing to order it in truly vast quantities. Found a couple of sacks of animal feed (barley) that are good priced but then delivery ruins any savings until you buy quite a few of them.
i've only done it once (i have a friend who insists her homeground flour is better. she's a good enough baker to know so i'm sure there's more than ego to her statement. she let me come over and try the equipment one day she was processing wheat). milling stuff just feels so satisfying. even just breaking out the mortar and pestle for spices makes a day better.
Instructions unclear. Ground gran instead.
!(Thank you, I've been waiting ages to find an excuse to post this screenie.)!<
How difficult is it to clean your gran grinder? Sounds rather messy.
i tried to google it but i'm stumped
Flour could be considered a processed food not a processed garbage. But typical american bread for example would be called "bread for toast" in my country and is considered a processed garbage.
you use shitty bread for toast in your country? or are you just talking about the prepackaged shelf-stable shit?
i discovered a couple years ago the reason i hated sandwiches growing up is i'm a bread snob and my mother used this awful potato bread
we have good bread here you just have to eat it when you buy it. i'll take you to my favorite bakeries (i used to be a bakery reviewer for a small periodical) and show you what you're missing. I'm not going to give you comparisons to any specific european food or location, i'm just going to tell you they're good enough i plan trips around eating at these places just because of their bread. i'm not defensive about bread at all i'm just hungry and looking for a good excuse to go to the pie shop in oregon.
I buy some good bread and some shitty shelf-stable bread because I feed 6 and I'm lower middle class. Good bread is awesome but like $15 a loaf. They're out here selling sliced half-loaves for $8. My wife and I both have two jobs so baking from scratch is not where I'm going to spend my time.
and i'm a shitty baker. there are four things i know how to bake. two specific cakes, pizza/calzones (they're practically the same thing) and empanadas. the "trick" for empanadas, or so i am told, is to buy your dough at the store. did i mention i'm a really bad baker. knowing how to do something does not mean being able to do something, and that's fun.
True, more people making bread is good. That happened here during covid, they started to run low on bags to put flour in and some improvised with alternative bags. We had enough flour but a lot of people started baking their own baked goods instead of buying baked goods.
few things bring people together the way good food does
The only way is to destroy wealth inequality, and the only way to do that is to destory the oligarch billionaire class.
Not humorous.