Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I tried one. It tasted like a soggy pizza roll that you buy frozen in a box at the grocery store. Based on monicalups comment, they may be better when they are hot and fresh, but I'm still skeptical.

A NY tasting is certainly in order - count me in!

@Oakland Aaron: Ohohh. Pizza Burrito. Sounds like something I could make at home. But BrianPrestonCampbell is probably right in saying it's an oversized Pizza Roll. That or a cylindrical calzone.

ChristineB -- I was about to say Cafe Istria too! I just love it. My college dorm is only a block away. All of their baked goods are great too.

I haven't been impressed with Dolcezza at all. The Gelato Bar in the National Gallery of Art was surprisingly good, though. Maybe my expectations of Dolcezza were just too high.

Frost Gelateria in Tucson, AZ is pretty good.

Along not entirely dissimilar lines, the downtown Oakland branch of local gooey dough/over-topped chain Mr. Pizza Man has had a threatening sign up for a few weeks: "coming soon: pizza burrito."

@monicalups: Kono Pizza is the item I was referring to when I said I first saw this concept four years ago. It's what I linked to in this post. Cool stuff. Cannot wait till it makes it here to NYC.

DÄS_ÜMLÄÜT! Word! A commenter after my own heart!

OMG. i had to JOIN, JUST so i could comment on this! i'm always amazed at how television tells us how we should be eating "fresh, local, green, organic" or whatever the latest buzzword is that season, but they never mention how much more EXPENSIVE it is!!! OMG. i grew up on WIC, which is kind of a food-stamp program where you get vouchers for "essentials" which include dried cereal milk eggs and canned "juice". lately it's been reformed somewhat, but guess what? beggers CAN'T be choosers! you got to pick from LIST of items of things that WIC would cover! that's just ONE example, i'm sure others here have similar stories of their own. let's just say i had no IDEA cheese was NOT supposed to be ORANGE until i got to college! (God bless those boston hippies, lol)

on another note, we DID get fresh roadside peanuts, peaches and watermelon, corn and tomatoes it WAS GA afterall. that was the one time of year us city slickers could get fresh, good fruit and veg at rock bottom prices. =)

I agree . . . government subsidies. Breathe. Breathe. Not going to get all worked up today . . .

Though I find the cost-per-calorie method suspect, the higher price of quality fresh food is a reality no matter what way you choose to look at it, and as others have mentioned, it's hugely in part to Farm subsidies for big corn, soy and grain. An older NYT article by Michael Pollan explains it simply and clearly.

I'm a bit shocked by the comments asserting that people could afford to eat better food if they'd just work a little hard, do a little gardening, sacrifice a little more. That's incredibly naive on so many levels. First, it assumes that everyone of a certain class isn't working their hardest already, that everyone is capable of gardening, and that they haven't already sacrificed all they could. Those are some pretty big assumptions. Then it fails to take into account that, sure, some do have the option to buy healthier foods at a greater price, but the fact is that a good deal of this nation is entirely ignorant about nutrition, so how would they know that there's any benefit to paying more when they can get their entire meal, already fixed for them, for a buck 99? You can't put the responsibility on those who don't have the knowledge to even be aware that they're making the wrong choice.

And then, socio-economic issues aside, it's just counter to logic that foods that require the least amount of cost add-ons, like processing and packaging would cost the most. It's an artificial economic system that not only hurts all of us, but also hurts developing countries who can't stay competitive with the US's subsidized pricing.

Sorry for the long winded rant, but this topic hit a person sore spot of mine...

I dunno, this is like the same people that argue that people "have to" shop at Wal-mart because they can't afford not to. People managed to afford things before Wal-Mart came along, and at least the kids' toys were filled with lead.

There was a time when all these processed foods were not available, or at least when eating them was not the norm, and families went through very tough times and didn't starve and the kids didn't all look like linebackers. Are you going to tell me times are tougher now than in the Depression? Come ON. My grandmothers, both of them, could have given a lot of lessons about how to stretch food, buy dried beans and soak them, make "spaghetti sauce" out of ketchup, how cheap it is to make your own bread or yogurt or whatever. I work 2 jobs and it only takes a second to pour beans into a crockpot and cover with water and when I come home, voila, beans. Freeze half, eat half. I grew up very poor. We NEVER would have wasted money on pop and junk like that because my mother could figure out how expensive processed foods really are, and how much cheaper she could make things that were on the shelf that would produce 3-4x as many meals and without all the preservatives and chemicals.

Ed: What do you think about the report? Possible corrective measures?

The NYTs brought up a significant point: it is doubtful that people with low incomes weigh the per-calorie costs of pears and a bag of potato chips and choose the latter since it costs less. No more than wealthy people do, I imagine, when skipping the farmers market where they sell ripe, local Magness and heading to Whole Foods, instead, for thick-cut slices of Fingerlings brushed with extra-virgin olive oil, coated with fleur de sel from off the coast of Brittany before baking.

However, the businesses that sell food to people with low incomes make conscious choices about cost and inventory.* It's more expensive to ship those pears from Washington across the country to New Jersey than it is to transport packaged food, even potentially fragile potato chips. They require extra work in the produce department, if not as much as a head of lettuce or tomatoes. Then there's the matter of shelf life.

Overall, it's a lot more expensive to sell raw, unpackaged ingredients than it is to sell processed foods. From what I understand, profit margins for major supermarket chains are bad enough as it is compared to other types of businesses; imagine what it is like for a small, independent grocer or the convenience store on the block that stocks milk, cans of soup, frozen pizza and Twinkies.

The marketing of processed foods is cited as a major issue by Expat Chef. Pepsi is familiar.** Last night I picked up some shallots and the cashier asked me if they were beets. Parents don't cook. Their parents didn't cook. Fewer people bother to prepare meals anymore or pass on the skills they do have to their children. Their repertoires are limited and often inspired by preferences shaped by fast food franchises. Grocery shopping and cooking are chores, not creative outlets nor adventures. It's like doing laundry.

Therefore, healthful raw ingredients are not necessarily on the shopping list. When they are, they are there out of a sense of duty and not because they're valued for their taste. Just one more thing you gotta do even though you'd rather eat gooey, hot pizza with cheese baked into the crust. How else could mealy, waxed Red Delicious apples be sold? The bargain bags of randomly selected winter fruits for 88 cents a pound? The stuff scientists at UC-Davis have bred to ship well and store long instead of taste good? If that's all you've known or had, how could you possibly care about the peaches whose producer Alice Waters has helped make famous among a certain set?

*In the early 1980s, a food co-op close to an Ivy league university took over a supermarket in the middle of a low-income neighborhood. They sold their usual inventory, lots of bulk items, but also Coke, ketchup and items they thought might attract nearby residents. Prices were set according to perceived nutritional value in hopes that they would get the Wonder Bread consumer to start baking whole wheat loaves himself. Not too effective.

**Another possible answer: marketing. Look at what POM has accomplished in selling young antioxidant-loving smokers on the pleasures of pomegranate juice so that the rest of us can now buy the fruit itself. Brand kale. Have some hot, unscrawny Hollywood vegan star in an ad campaign featuring a catchy song with lyrics that instruct you in its preparation and power as an aphrodisiac.