Anyone with a family strictly eat out or don take out?

[Anonymous]

I never did get into cooking plus my family is ultra picky. Costs more but just easier, makes everyone happy to just pick up take out especially since there are healthier versions.

[Anonymous]

We do this Thursday through Sunday and sometimes in sports nights.

[Anonymous]

What are some of the things you pick up that are healthy? Looking for ideas

[Anonymous]

How much money do you spend on this? I'm sure you could do it fairly healthily, but your food costs must be huge! I'd blow our food budget doing this.

[Anonymous]

Yeah I'd like to hear examples of healthy take out -- and your average weekly spend.

[Anonymous]

We eat out way more than we should but with covid we aren't doing much so take out is our excitement.

[Anonymous]

I feel like I could eat healthy takeout and enjoy it, but the $$$ would kill me. Plus, I do like cooking (though I'm in a funk and don't like it this week).

[Anonymous]

You must have a much bigger budget than we do! No way we could afford that much takeout. And I feel like when we do takeout, my kids eat far fewer vegetables than when I cook at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah I'd like to hear examples of healthy take out -- and your average weekly spend.

DP but I have a major Whole Foods prepared food habit. It’s pretty healthy depending on what you get. I try not to calculate my Whole Foods spending.

[Anonymous]

I have been spending waaaay too much money on takeout, but some of the healthier meals are family meals where you control the sides. We’ll order the salmon dinner from Bonefish Grill and get steamed veggies and salad or mashed potatoes. Full disclosure: it also comes with chocolate chip cookies. 😔 We do takeout from salad places where we control the ingredients and dressing. Silver Diner has some under 600 calorie meals that are good. Some meals aren’t super healthy, but they’re not burgers and fries either; my kids like parfaits with Greek yogurt, granola and fresh fruit. I really need to get back to cooking, but my marriage imploded and I lost a parent, so life hasn’t been “normal.”

[Anonymous]

Cava Grill, salad places, even Chipotle if you're willing to risk it, can be ordered in healthy ways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have been spending waaaay too much money on takeout, but some of the healthier meals are family meals where you control the sides. We’ll order the salmon dinner from Bonefish Grill and get steamed veggies and salad or mashed potatoes. Full disclosure: it also comes with chocolate chip cookies. 😔 We do takeout from salad places where we control the ingredients and dressing. Silver Diner has some under 600 calorie meals that are good. Some meals aren’t super healthy, but they’re not burgers and fries either; my kids like parfaits with Greek yogurt, granola and fresh fruit. I really need to get back to cooking, but my marriage imploded and I lost a parent, so life hasn’t been “normal.”

I'm so sorry for your loss. Sending your family my best wishes.

[Anonymous]

We usually eat out Friday dinner-Saturday dinner. Sometimes a random Sunday lunch or crazy sports evening through the week.

I don't think we have enough options in my town to eat out every night.

It's definitely more expensive than it used to be. Also, I have teen boys who never seem to be full. Gone are the days when we could get 2 large pizzas for our family of 6 and still have leftovers. Now it's more like 4 pizzas and if you want some leftover, you better hide it well in the fridge.

[Anonymous]

The foods themselves may be healthy, but the ways in which they are packaged and prepared give me pause. Some restaurants are making changes, thankfully.

https://interestingengineering.com/people-eating-home-cooked-meals-have-lower-levels-of-harmful-chemicals-in-their-bodies

https://saferchemicals.org/retailers-committing-to-phase-out-pfas-as-a-class-in-food-packaging-and-products/

https://cen.acs.org/materials/coatings/PFAS-paper-food-packaging/99/i36

[Anonymous]

No, but we do takeout a LOT IMO.

Both DH and I enjoy cooking, but we also enjoy eating the things that take too long or are too complicated for us to eat on a weeknight. We also just have one (ES) kid, so I feel like it's not AS spendy for us relative to home cooking.

We used to eat out frequently, but haven't since COVID. We've just replaced a lot of that with takeout (only 1x/week in 2020).

We always get takeout on Friday nights, and somehow usually end up getting some sort of food on Saturdays as well-- prepared food from the farmer's market, or we're just out all day and tired and grab food on the way home. So there's tons of leftovers available Sunday.

When we're pretty busy, we'll get it midweek, too, and that will often also be enough for leftovers the next night.

So that could mean only actually cooking 2 nights a week! Or even one night, and eating those leftovers the next.

It's wild to think about, but I don't think it's putting us in the poorhouse. On a week where we do takeout Fri/Sat and Weds and have leftovers Sun/Thurs, we are spending about $90-110 on takeout + $10-15 on cooking ingredients, and getting 7 dinners for 3 people + probably a lunch and snack here and there.

Except for the sodium, I'm sure, I don't think our takeout is much less healthy than what we cook. 3x takeout is probably sushi + Vietnamese food + pizza.