@bob_the_fisherman Said 
Things are definitely different then. A lot of people say it is too expensive to eat healthy here, yet I can eat for a week on what a lot of families spend on one meal of takeaway food, simply because I eat healthy.
When I lived up north and was teaching there it was absurdly hot (it is as close to tropical as we get), and my food bill for a week was less than $30 because I basically lived on raw fruits and vegetables bought from a local market, with meat bought from a local butcher when it was on special (a lot of weeks I think my food bill was under $20). Admittedly I lived in an area where a lot of the food was grown, but even in southern states where less fruit is grown you can still get it cheap if you go to local markets rather than the major grocery retailers.
Why is fresh fruit and vegetables so expensive there? I knew you guys had a lot of cheap, bad junk food, but not that fresh food was expensive.
That’s also a huge fundamental systemic problem. We have a lot of food deserts. In that there is no where to buy fresh food. It’s all processed shelf stable stuff. You need a car to get to a market that sells it. Farmers markets have limited hours usually when most people are working and depending on how close the market is to the farm, depends on how “cheap” it is. My local farmers market is actually in the next village over, oven for 3 hours every Sunday morning. I’ve paid $5 for a gallon bag of spinach or kale.
Hmm. Now I’m certain non of that translates well to Australian. Damn the us and our stubbornness on measures
16oz of baby spinach is also $5 at Walmart. I just like supporting the farmer and his family and his spinach tastes better. It’s the one thing I miss with the rona going around. It’s harder to get fresh stuff. Though I did start growing my own.
I have access to a farm/rancher co op that delivers once a week. It’s certainly not cheap though. Easily average $60 a week in my box. Which is usually half gallon whole milk, 1 lb hamburger meat or chicken breast, 8-16oz of cheese, 2-4 fruit options (like pint of strawberry, blueberries, 10 apricots or other stone fruit.) more salad fixings. 5-6 small cucumbers, 20-25 grape tomatoes, a bulb of fennel, mixed greens, Brussels sprouts. And some root stuff. Beet, radishes, ginger carrots, onion, garlic etc Sometimes I get bacon, or other “specials” but thats the base.
I could feed my husband and I cheaper with dollar menus fast
Food. Or processed stuff like hamburger helper, Mac and cheese (and not get the grass fed well-treated beef) ramen noodles etc. beans and rice are cheap too. I happen to gain weight eating them and the husband doesn’t like beans. So it’s not the best healthy choice.
Fish is also incredibly pricey, as im no where near water. So everything is flash frozen and flown in. That raises prices too.
We do ok, but I know it’s a struggle for many. The less enconomically stable you are the more expensive it is to even get things. But we have a strong “do it yourself” mentality. With not a lot of community support
Jul 21, 2020 @ 10:19:31
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