“Yup, cash is the best way quite honestly.”

With Senate hearings on the recent Target breach and the security of consumer data scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, discussion about what consumers can do on their own is likely to grow even louder.

A poll released last week by The Associated Press and GfK Public Affairs & Corporate Communications found that 37 percent of Americans had made an effort to use cash instead of credit or debit cards to pay for purchases as a result of the recent data thefts — almost as many as those who checked personal credit reports because of the thefts. (Just 29 percent said they had changed passwords or requested new cards.)

Even trying to use cash more often is a strange adjustment for a population that has become accustomed to the convenience of pulling out a little piece of plastic (the better to rack up rewards points) for purchases as small as a Diet Coke. Many people now swipe their cards with so little thought that they don’t even bother getting the receipt. Whereas cards were once reserved for big purchases, they have become acceptable for almost anything, including at formerly all-cash businesses like New York City taxis. More than a quarter of street food vendors now accept plastic, according to a recent study of food trucks and carts by Mobile Cuisine magazine, and 14 percent more say they will soon start.

With a variety of new forms of mobile payments — a television commercial for Chase’s QuickPay service shows how you can pay the teenage babysitter without cash — paper money has almost become an antiquated concept for some people, like a purse of gold coins.

Nicole McNamee of Germantown, Tenn., used a card for almost everything, even the $1 cups of coffee she routinely bought at the local McDonald’s drive-through. Then, last month, she and her husband learned of fraudulent charges — some $1,200 worth of purchases in Minnesota and California, including $400 at a Toys “R” Us on Christmas Eve — on her personal American Express card and a card he uses for his business.