A recent column in the Washington Post pulled zero punches about why its author believes that obesity in the US isn’t just about “junk food”:
The reason people don’t buy vegetables is usually not because they can’t afford them (although, of course, that does happen). It’s mostly because people just don’t like them very much. And there’s a recent study out of Duke University that offers strong evidence that price isn’t the issue.
At least not the only issue. And what that study shows is actually different from just “people don’t like vegetables.”
Published earlier this year in JAMA Internal Medicine, the study involved patients with type-2 diabetes. Some were given an $80-a-month debit card to spend on produce and legumes (beans, lentils, peas). Others formed a control group. After a year of tracking participants’ health, the research team found that just 30% of the debit card group used at least 80% of the benefit. Ultimately, there were no meaningful differences between the groups in blood sugar, BMI, or blood pressure control.
“A produce prescription subsidy alone,” the authors concluded, “did not improve outcomes.”
That word “alone” is critical. The study didn’t show that people don’t want to eat better or that they don’t like or want healthier food. It showed that without any other support — such as how to turn the raw ingredients into healthy meals — money for healthier food wasn’t enough of an incentive to make a difference.
That’s a much more solvable problem than “people don’t like vegetables.”
Sure, personal preferences can play a role. A narrow palate or sensory issues, for instance, can genuinely make certain foods difficult to eat. That should never be dismissed. But using this subset to explain a population-level problem is a stretch. What’s more, it seems to let everyone else off the hook, including the food industry, public health systems, and the social forces that have quietly dismantled the traditions of home cooking and family meals.
That loss is often a bigger factor in food choices than is often recognized. But hand someone a bag of unfamiliar vegetables and no context on how to use them, and the result is hardly surprising. Think of a show like My 600-Lb. Life and how it shows patients trying to follow their new diet with a meal of boiled and unseasoned chicken tenders with iceberg lettuce and slivered carrots doused in ranch dressing, then repeating that they don’t like “healthy” food.
Simply, cooking is a skill. It’s not a hard one, but when it’s not reliably shared within families, the learning curve steepens. Convenience food often fills the gaps. Trader Joe’s, among others, has built an empire out of readymade foods from an ever-growing range of global cuisines. Opening a package or heating up a box or bowl feels easier especially at the end of a long day. And when even that feels like too much, there’s always takeout.
Competing with this kind of a food environment requires more than just access to fresh produce and other healthy fare. It requires the knowledge and confidence to turn them into something that tastes good. And a sheet pan of well-seasoned, roasted vegetables can be just as fast as a drive-thru (and more satisfying) — once you know how to do it.
The Bay Area is a living argument against the idea that vegetables are inherently unappealing. The culinary traditions of our many ethnic communities have made extraordinary vegetable-forward meals for many, many centuries, with techniques and flavor profiles that transform humble ingredients into genuinely craveable dishes — from Indian dal to Peruvian locro de zapallo; from Vietnamese rau xào to Ethiopian misir wat; and everything in between.
We’re also lucky to have so many opportunities to learn cooking skills, both virtually and through live classes around the Bay.
YouTube alone contains enough high-quality instruction to take a complete beginner to a confident home cook. For free. Channels such as Downshiftology, Pick Up Limes, and Clean & Delicious are popular choices for novice cooks who want a plant-forward approach. Other channels that focus less on recipes and more on basic kitchen skills — from Binging with Babish to Home Cook Basics to Gordon Ramsay’s basic skills videos — and can be an even better way to start.
Of course, there are structured, fee-based options online, too. Sur La Table, for instance, offers virtual classes starting at $39 per household. (In-store classes are available, too!) Udemy has individual courses covering everything from kitchen basics to Vietnamese techniques, often at significant discounts. MasterClass, at around $10 a month, features courses from culinary heavyweights including Alice Waters, Thomas Keller, and Niki Nakayama. It’s a little more aspirational, but it can be really motivating.
If you want or need something even more structured, there are some terrific options across the Bay Area. Here in Fremont, Parks and Recreation offers a variety of cooking classes in their programming, with scholarship assistance available for qualifying residents.
Kitchen on Fire in Berkeley teaches hands-on cooking classes, working mainly with organic, local ingredients, and offering everything from single sessions to a 12-week fundamentals series.18 Reasons, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, also offers a wide variety of cooking classes, from basic kitchen skills to specific cuisines. They also hold free community classes around the Bay for food insecure households and others in need. Also in San Francisco is The Civic Kitchen, which is set up as a place for home cooks to learn, while Oakland’s Preserved hosts classes largely focused on preserved, fermented, and handmade foods.
Or search for individual courses locally through a site like Cozymeal.
Learning to cook matters not just because it opens the door to more enjoyable meals, but because what you cook with matters as much as how you cook it. Whole foods — vegetables, legumes, whole grains, quality proteins — carry not just isolated nutrients but the full matrix of cofactors, fiber, and phytonutrients that work together in ways that processed foods just can’t replicate.
This is especially relevant for oral health: the same dietary patterns that drive systemic inflammation, blood sugar dysregulation, and gut disruption are the ones most closely linked with gum disease and a greater risk of decay.
Eating well isn’t a separate concern from your dental health, after all. It’s part of the same picture.
