54% of young Americans say food costs are the biggest strain on their finances
Over half of young Americans say that rising food prices are the most noticeable effect of inflation.
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While I like gardening, unironically advising people to grow their own food to cut costs is just bonkers.
It takes months to grow anything, and given the limited space, you can't grow much anyway. You'll be lucky to grow 20€ worth of food on your balcony while spending hours doing the gardening. That's not cost effective.
And that doesn't even count the cost of materials to get started.
Definitely not against gardening, me and my partners are in the process of getting our garden going in our new place, but dirt alone could easily eat up the cost savings if you have to build out your planters.
Yeah I've had gardens all the way up until covid when prices went bananas because it wasn't feasible anymore. I can buy from a farmers market for less than the materials/time/water. I need to build a gray water capture system.
Now I just grow herbs and tomatoes.
As I wrote in another comment: you can create your own soil with earthworms. You can get a small batch of worms in fishing supply stores for like 5€ (or collect them yourself), these guys turn almost any plant material into pure fertilizer.
If your balcony could support the load you could grow quite densely with hydroponic towers, but you won't ever recoup the costs. That method is also very little work beyond the initial compared to soil.
Yeah, sorry, no. Even if I had the space, when I get home from work at 1900 the last thing I want to do is more work. It's not like you can just plop some seeds into soil and do nothing until the harvest is ripe—I know, we had a decent family garden when I was a wee lad. Took a lot of work to keep it going.
If I worked 4 or even 6 hours a day—sure, I could add some homework to my day. But not when working 8 hours+commuting. And many people are working even longer days.
Gardening has its own associated costs with supplies and requires space
It's the cost of supplies and garden maintenance and see requirement vs the cost of food at the supermarket
It needs to cost less than the growable food you can buy at the store
You can get away with very little supplies, actually. Basically just a small shovel, the rest be salvaged.
Pots can be made from old plastic bins/containers, soil/fertilizer can be made from food waste using worms, seeds can be made from surprisingly many fruits/vegetables. Pumpkin seeds are right inside the pumpkin, potatoes and beans can be put right into the soil, even tomatoes can be grown from store bought ones.
And while it's a really cool hobby: you're right regarding the cost effectiveness. Unless you happen to have a significant plot of land, it won't make a dent in your grocery bill.
This is not great advice. Using random crap for planters can leech chemicals into your fruits and veggies. Also, you need seed-potatoes to grow potatoes you can eat. You cannot grow edible potatoes from what you buy in a grocery store.
"Random crap" is what's used in agriculture as well, if you buy a big plastic tub, it won't leech more into the soil than your coke bottle already did. There's only so much plastic that can leech out and planters can be used for years, the plastic you're using around your house gets thrown out in a week or two and replaced. Much higher chemical content there.
And you can absolutely use store bought potatoes, they are clones, there's no difference between seed and regular potatoes. At most, there might have been something done to prevent sprouting for a bit, but that's it. You can simply wait for them to sprout, if that's a concern. You know how I know? I've been growing "old" food potatoes in pots for years. Works just fine.
Plastic can leech plastic into your food, I know this personally from getting headaches from using soda bottles as water bottles
And my aunt gets headaches from 5G.
You're not getting headaches from water bottles. It's placebo (or nocebo, in this case).
Toxic effects of plastic on human health and environment: A consequences of health risk assessment in Bangladesh
Ram Proshad, Tapos Kormoker, Md Saiful Islam, Mohammad Asadul Haque, Md Mahfuzur Rahman, Md Mahabubur Rahman Mithu
International Journal of Health 6 (1), 1-5, 2018
Plastics are used widely everywhere in our life and without plastic, modern civilization would indeed look very diverse. This study focuses on the toxic effects of plastic on human health and environment and possible consequences of health risk assessment in Bangladesh. Plastics are essential materials in modern civilization, and many products manufactured from plastics and in numerous cases, they promote risks to human health and the environment. Plastics are contained many chemical and hazardous substances such as Bisphenol A (BPA), thalates, antiminitroxide, brominated flame retardants, and poly-fluorinated chemicals etc. which are a serious risk factor for human health and environment. Plastics are being used by Bangladeshi people without knowing the toxic effects of plastic on human health and environment. Different human health problems like irritation in the eye, vision failure, breathing difficulties, respiratory problems, liver dysfunction, cancers, skin diseases, lungs problems, headache, dizziness, birth effect, reproductive, cardiovascular, genotoxic, and gastrointestinal causes for using toxic plastics. Plastics occur serious environment pollution such as soil pollution, water pollution, and air pollution. Application of proper rules and regulations for the production and use of plastics can reduce toxic effects of plastics on human health and environment.
This is just a paper citing plastics affects on health in Bangladesh but it does demonstrate that plastic can have these effects
You are wrongly comparing scientifically proven effects of plastic with misinformation
Nope, you're simply wildly exaggerating the effects of the dosage you're actually getting.
That's like saying water causes cancer, because everyone with cancer drank water at some point.
You are not getting the minimum doses needed to get from a water bottle. And again, if you're getting headaches from a water bottle, that's your imagination. Period.
