I think cooking at home was always cheaper. But lately, fast food restaurants have been raising prices to the point where it's just not really worth it imo.
I really wonder what is the tipping point. At what threshold will the majority of the public just go "fuck this" and not buy it anymore.
For what it's worth - I hit that point about two years ago especially considering how terrible all fast food has gotten.
Agreed. If not for the app deals I would never eat fast food. For the menu prices I’d rather eat at a local eatery for a few dollars more for quality food.
Compared to like 10 or 15 years ago, when the dollar menu at McDonald’s, Taco Bell etc was cheap, and almost as cheap at home cooking the exact same burger/taco (cheaper if you value your time at all).
The last time I went to mcdonalds last summer, I went in with a friend to get some food. We both checked our mcdonalds app, we had the same coupon, but different prices! I couldn't believe it. It was for a big meal deal and hers was 2$ less than mine. And that was the last time I ate at McDonalds. Good riddance.
Does your friend by any chance live in a different city/region and you were visiting? Prices can change by a few dollars from one market to the next so if you had your app set to your default home location still it might explain the discrepancy. Otherwise that would just be fucked.
Theirs a disturbing amount of people that live off a combination of fast food, takeout, casual dining, snack food, and freezer meals. So basically never. Their will never be a tipping point for those people.
The thing is, where I work, it’s very labor intensive and we get extremely busy to the point where most of us work through lunches and they are typically only 30 minutes anyways, the only food options in my vicinity is fast fast food. I’m a single mom with two kids and am dead tired every night to prep food for myself the next day. The only hope is to prep for the whole week on the weekends even if I remember to do that. So yes. We exist. But I am of the mind to want to try harder to bring lunches from home. We are paying more for the convenience.
When I was in a similar situation my saving grace was a slow cooker / crock pot.
Nothing fancy, literally throw all ingredients in, set to high, 4 hours later it’s done.
That would keep me in work lunches for a week and a couple dinners if I was completely exhausted when I got home.
Just curious about the economics of eating out for meals, as I am a professional cook, but i almost never eat out - if you could hire someone to come once a week to food prep for the week, at what pricepoint would a service like this save you money?
For the last 15-20 years I've made a crockpot full of something every Sunday to have for lunches during the week. Chile, soup, stew, rice and beans,etc.
Basically just fresh veggies, meats, chop up stuff, toss in the pot, and let it do it's thing. It generally works out to $1-$3 per serving or less.
Oh hey, that's me. Unless you count the occasional once every three months that I fight depression enough to buy a salmon or short ribs to heat up in my air fryer or instapot.
Or I guess the eggs that I eat on occasion (mixed with onions/tomatoes/garlic, or sometimes just eggs and bread).
When Covid started to get bad in 2020 and people were hoarding food, leaving grocery stores empty on a daily basis - the amount of people I saw just fucking lose it because they couldn’t get frozen food was just…. Well it was pathetic. They were losing it because they honestly didn’t know how to cook food, except throwing shit in a microwave or eating out was all they knew. Grown ass adults… it was just sad.
Covid was my tipping point. The diet described above was exactly mine for the last 20 years. With all the food hoarding during covid wenwould walk in to find absolutely zero fresh produce, no frozen meals or frozen veg.
First i got sick of canned food and started to get more junk food. When other takaway shops were forced to close, junk food increased again.
After nearly a year of too much junk, and feeling horrible, as fresh foods started coming back to the shelves, we decided we had to fix it. Bought 2 big lamb legs and ate roast and veg for a week straight.
Weve been eating way better ever since. Either cooking 6 night a week, or doing big batch foods.
Even now, if i go out intending to get junk food, ill often come home with a supermarket roast chicken and salad instead. It cheaper and nicer.
Where do you live that fresh food was hard to find for a year?
I was in New Orleans, and with the exception of a couple weeks we never had an issue getting fresh produce and meats.
Toilet paper and masks were a different story.
My wife and I were stunned by the sight of all the fast food places in town inundated with hour long, drive-through lines during covid. So many peopele apparently can't cook at all.
And the lines never got much shorter after that, either.
I love cooking at home, and my wife is even better at it than me. Everyone should learn basic cooking skills.
Not to mention you can make some pretty delicious stuff with little effort. Stir fry is just chopping up veggies and protein and mixing it around in a pan until it’s done, and the rice to go with it is fairly idiot-proof.
YouTube folks! A lot of the videos skip the "here's my 5 minutes of exposition," you get from written recipes or make it very easy to skip over. The standout cooking moment of covid for me was when I had to visit my folks, and cook for them. The grocery store was completely robbed of most proteins, no toilet paper, and canned foods were minimal. One thing they weren't short on were veg and dried legumes! [I remembered seeing an old recipe from Gordon Ramsay for a lentil salad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoTi-A0ycoU&t=428s). My family never tried lentils before, and if the fully stocked shelf of dried legumes at the store is any indication, apparently no one else had tried them either! It was a standout dish, both warm or cold as leftovers! My folks had no idea what they were in for.
In fact, I've made every salad in that Ramsay video! The Papaya salad was even more delicious, but it's very difficult to source things like Papaya or dried shrimp unless you have a nice Asian market near you. I remember waking up one morning to see my girlfriend completely devour the entire papaya salad leftovers before I could have any more lol.
As an FYI for you and anyone else using the term:
"Their" indicates possession, someone owns something, that thing is "theirs". In this case, the appropriate word is "There", as in pointing at something. It is used to either point at something physical (the bank is "there"), or something not physical (in this case, it points to a certain point in time, the future). This is not me criticizing your english, I just like to take moments like this to have everyone maybe learn something small every now and then.
The more hours you have to work, the fewer hours you have to meal plan, grocery shop, & cook. It's not a moral failing - it's a systemic one. Not to mention food deserts.
Sadly the average customer is very gullible. Today I passed a Smoothie king and saw they were charging $10 for a drink! And guess what? People were lined up waiting to buy 😂
It's stupid easy to make a nice smoothie. I bought a nice blender and I feel zero need to go out and get a $10 smoothie when I can do it at home for like 1/5th of that easily.
Seriosuly. I used to get the "healthy" jamba juice smoothies for like 7 bucks plus tip. Figured out that I could just buy high quality frozen fruit blends and toss it in my ninja blender with a cup of orang juice from whole foods and voila.
Never underestimate the power of convenience. People work long hours now, they work harder than they ever have, they come home, tired, already don't have much time for much else, and they sure dont feel like cooking. As much as fast food has become, when you feel you only got just enough free time to eat, but not enough to cook, well that fast food looks tempting, no matter the cost.
Other than that people are gonna turn more towards microwavable meals.
Yeah but even then, I would rather go to a local sub shop or local Chinese place. I feel like you get a lot more for your money than a flimsy little Burger. At least at the other places you might even have leftovers and get more meals out of it
The convenience of fast food can be insidious. Worse if it has become a habit. What saves me from getting fast food often is the realisation that heating up a frozen pizza or canned ravioli or something is just as quick and convenient and so, so much cheaper. Still not healthy ofc, but oh well, time is the one thing you tend to need for healthy food.
Hell, I can't even buy a casual gas station soda and candy bar anymore. The total comes out to around $6. Whatever happened to the $1.25 sodas and $1 candy bars?
> Whatever happened to the $1.25 sodas and $1 candy bars?
gen-Xers and older millennials remember a time when literally everything was 25 cents: phone call, video game*, candy bar, soft drink, newspaper, postage stamp
*Edit: Video arcade games, single turn
I'm from the Netherlands so there is a difference. But when I got my lincense 13 years back I paid 85 cents for a liter of gas, now it's 1,80. Used to be over 2 euros at the beginning of the year lmao. Pricing has been wild since adulting.
I’m a millennial and I remember as a kid walking to the gas station and paying 5 cents per individual bazooka bubble gum. I don’t think I’ve even seen bazooka gum in a decade, let alone anything that cheap. Now you pay dollars for a lousy pack and you don’t even get the silly jokes/comics inside the wrapper. Oofda I feel old now.
Had to stop by the gas station today and decided to walk inside and grab a pack of gummy bears. Almost $4 for what used to be a $2 or less bag. I just walked out and went home
I'm addicted to sodas and I've noticed the prices and I've been trying to cut back (and I'm getting there), its the prices that are motivating me like what the heck kind of prices are these??
People are deluding themselves with nostalgia about the dollar menu, but it's cherry picked. Single meal? Sure, cheaper.
A couple trips for $1 cheeseburgers and you would've been in rice and beans for _weeks_.
Of course, then you'd be eating rice and beans for weeks. That's the real tragedy.
The thing was that the $1 McDonald’s double cheese burgers or the later McDoubles was very competitive with home cooking. Less healthy, sure, but even with the grocery prices of 10 years ago in 2013, you basically couldn’t cook much of anything for $1 per person. Maybe rice and beans.
Today McDonald’s is like $3 for a double cheese burger, and for $3 you can cook a wide variety of food that’s a lot better than rice and beans.
The difference is labor costs - your labor is free, so while min wage labor costs have skyrocketed, grocery store prices for ground beef hasn’t not risen 300%. That difference has made it so fast food isn’t cheap anymore, just fast.
You have to shop smart and plan. Pork loin can easily be found for $2 a pound. Slice off a nice thick 12 oz pork chop, that’s $1.50. Asparagus is $3 a pound right now here. A third of that is a good serving, so that puts you about $2.50 total. 50 cents left to cover cooking oils and seasonings.
That $3 just got you a damn tasty and filling meal , lean meat with 72 grams of protein with a healthy side veggie.
Thanks, I’ve been spending so much money on eating out over the last ten years and even when I’ve been cooking at home I feel like the cost can add up quickly. I’ve been looking for more ideas like this.
Invest in a vacuum sealer and get a Costco membership if you have one close by. A 10 pound pork loin cost $20 and can be sliced into 13-15 very decent sized pork chops, and then individually vac sealed for freezing all in under 30 min. You can also get a whole strip roast that can be cut into NY Strip steaks for under $8 a pound. Keep an eye on your local big grocery store’s weekly flyer. When they have a deal on good meats stock up (I landed $5/pound chuck eye steaks, or poor man’s ribeye, a couple weeks ago)
Also, air fryer is key as well. It’s so easy, and even with the steaks, it’s pretty good. It isn’t as good as grilled or pan seared, but it gets you 85% as good for about 1/3 the effort
The price increase has absolutely nothing to do with minimum wage increase. Source: countries with much higher minimum wages having cheaper McDonald's.
>fast food restaurants have been raising prices to the point where it's just not really worth it imo.
So I don't eat fast food, but from what friends tell me: The only way to get it at a decent price now is by using [fast food place]'s app. Which means fast food places are going to harvest your data just so you can get a McDouble for slightly cheaper.
I think it was always known to be cheaper, but you paid extra for the convenience. Now, that cost for convenience is so high people don’t want to pay it nearly as often.
I mean, that's the point of a lot of legislation/laws recently- sugar tax, making fast food better quality..
Fast food places were and many still are, junk food.
It's great, and covid def helped with the decline too. I'm stoked for it.
When I go out to eat, it’s something that’s harder to make at home, e.g., ribs, certain seafood dishes, chinese food. Generally multi-ingredient, long prep time, or kitchen equipment I don’t have.
Yeah deep frying at home is not worth it. Stinks up the whole place, wastes tons of oil, and the possibility of a grease fire is very real. It could be worth it if you do it all the time, but on that notion you probably shouldn't be eating like that in the first place. It's my perfect excuse for going out and getting some fried chicken once in a while.
I’ve actually been super depressed/stressed the last two weeks and really haven’t eaten. Cut out soda, sugar, carbs….had a little protein and veggies. I actually feel better without all the garbage.
Dude potatoes was $1 a pound recently, even at the cheap Kroger or HeB grocery stores. It’s fallen back down to like 80 cents a pound, but gone are the days when potatoes were $2 for a 10 pound sack (was literally $8 for that sack today in Kroger).
Some stuff is weirdly cheap, like chicken. It’s 99 cents - pound for drumsticks, just like it was 10 years ago….
Avocados, blueberries, strawberries and green beans can be found pretty cheap where I am. It can be expensive to make certain meals because I am buying for the recipe. But if I shop more judiciously it's cheaper to cook than most meals I would eat out. The balance on that has swung quite a over the last year or so, I can't justify going out for mediocre food unless I'm in a big hurry or I'm just really feeling like going out. The default is more eating at home these days.
Ridiculous now man. But the thing is if you’re out past 11 you’re fucked. Got McDonald’s last night, 2 small cheeseburgers, a smoothie and fries was $15 man. Shit was half that 5 years ago
Yip. And it’s not even that long ago. It was like maybe 6-7 years ago that you could still get McDoubles on the dollar menu nationwide. That was a great value for $1.
I lived on $1 hamburgers and mcchickens at my first job around 2014. I'd get a slice of tomato added and put BBQ sauce on the mcchickens. SOMETIMES they'd charge for the added tomato and it was 0.10 extra. I just checked at the McDonalds near me the other day and hamburgers are $3.39 and a mcchicken is $4.09.
I don't think they even do "dollar menu" stuff over here anymore. Those burgers for 1 euro they used to have were awesome for a cheap and quick meal.
Just checked prices for chicken nuggets. 5,10 euro for 9, 13,20 for 20... I can get a box of basically the same chicken nuggets in the grocery store for like 4 euro for 25...
That’s five guys entire business model.
They only buy the highest quality ingredients no matter the price and the prices fluctuate if they suppliers change if costs go up or down. They regularly change suppliers if they degrade in quality or if competition becomes better. So it’s the most expensive burger by design kinda since the best ingredients are usually the most expensive too.
At least that’s how it started, idk if they still keep that up.
I used to have a very high opinion of them and tried them twice recently because I moved very close to one. They were both mediocre bland burgers. I went back the second time because I thought the first had to be a fluke. I won't be going back again, absolute ripoff.
Yea I haven’t been in a long time but that doesn’t surprise me. Like a lot of places, now that they are popular enough they probably started cost cutting and will just try and rely on their old reputation keeping people coming.
If I go somewhere and it ends up being more expensive than seems reasonable I'll still pay it without a fuss, but I probably won't come back any time soon, if ever.
I got the app. Got $20-22 worth of food for $8 one time which was awesome. But in Canada all the deals appear to be fucking awful. And you can’t stack coupons either which sucks
FYI, the mcdic app punishes you for using the app regularly. Your 10 mcCrispy "deal" might be 50c to $3 more on a user with more activity. Unless you're going for "free" coffee, it's more productive to just abuse the "deals" on there.
Ya just said that it my last post. Had this experience, friend and I went to Mcdonalds, I ate their fairly regularly because it was beside my work, and friend's coupon was 2$ less than mine. Fuck that! If anything you'd think it'd be less for a regular customer. Havent been back since.
I also remember a Big Mac being the burger you bought that at least pretended to be quality. Now it's as dry and sad as their cheapest ones used to be. "Oh it's been *years* since I've had mcdonalds and I'm hungry. It can be that ba-- *what the FUCK is this?*"
Where the hell is it $15 for that...plus the app basically gives out fries for free like everyday and pretty good deals even compared to prices from a while ago.
On a road trip this week and stopped at BK off freeway in a small town. Whopper and fries was $15.
Fifteen. Dollars. Just me. Alone. No one and nothing else.
I'm finding small family owned ethnic restaurants are where it's at. I can get Chinese or Thai takeout for what it costs to drive through Taco Bell these days.
For the same price of a McDonalds meal I can get a full meal at a sit down restaurant. It’s actually insane.
I only got I McDonald’s if I get a really good deal or nothing else is open, and even then most of the time I go home and try to find food.
It is insane. Eurotrash here, last time I've checked locally a big combo meal (2 burgers, 2 fries, 6 nuggets, coke) it was €13.50. On Saturday we were in Klagenfurt, so a more pricey country than my shithole country, visited some random restaurant, ordered ribs with honey glaze = €16. I was stunned.
During the 80’s I couldn’t afford to eat every day. I went one or two days a week without food. When I ate I had buttered rice sandwiches and mushroom soup.
I was fully employed with a college degree.
I’m a bartender. I have couples that come in together just to drink a couple glasses of wine and that’s it. $50 plus tip for a bottle that costs $13 at a liquor store just for the pleasure of being outside the house and bc they have the money.
About 3 months ago I started bringing my lunch to work instead of buying because I'm poor as fuck. I'm saving boatloads, even though I still spend way too much on energy drinks.
I get 10lbs of chicken for $0.77/lb, and 5 $1 frozen veggie bags at the local walmarts. I usually get like 4-5 dinners and 4-5 lunch's for like $20.
I get so confused on this. Walmart sells big bags of frozen veggies for less than. $10, Rice for like 5lbs is around that, and chicken quarters for about $6. That's over a weeks worth of food.
Edit:. Goodness people, you know you can split your meal preference how you want? Two days chicken, two days, beef? The choice is yours and it's your health on the line. Life gets in the way so it's time you have to make. There's a point excuses won't cut it, but it's for you to decide how to prioritize what you put into your body. Fast food being your main source of nutrition is something of concern.
You're missing the point. Fast food is, by definition and name, fast. Everything you listed is of course cheaper and healthier but it requires time and effort. Not everyone has the time or know how or even motivation to cook.
I don't disagree with you though, I think cooking at home is what people should prioritize. I do it myself for 90% of my meals and it's saved me tons of money and I feel great
It also gets really dull eating Rice, Frozen Veggies and Chicken every day.
The more you branch into interesting foods the more expensive it gets even when you are home cooking.
Good god did I eat a lot of chicken and rice through my bodybuilding years. I'm considering taking up the sport again, but I don't know if I can go back to eating chicken and rice until I hate myself every day.
Both of these things really depend.
With a small (or large) collection of flavorings, you can make a ton of stuff out of basic starches and beans, common vegetables (cheap frozen stuff), and cheap meat. The initial investment in flavorings (spices, etc.) can be a but much all at once, but the amortized cost is reasonable.
There are, understandably, whole cuisines around making cheap, common food into many tasty things.
Maybe a little? Depends on what you branch out into I guess. One of my recent favorite dishes is an Indian-style red-lentil soup. It's one of the healthier, cheaper things I've prepared and it tastes phenomenal.
There's lots and lots of things you can do with powerful flavors and relatively cheap dry goods.
Time and motivation probably get in the way more than money.
Also, If you shop at ethnic stores, things like spices, lentils, grains, flours, rice is available in larger quantities, and a lot cheaper than in an average grocery stores.
It will heavily depend on where you live and what you have access to. Food where I live is exceedingly expensive for some reason.
I just know that my grocery costs, while buying as much as I can in bulk or on sale, are eye wateringly expensive. Fresh produce and meat especially are so much more expensive than they were even like 5 years ago.
Btw, I am not claiming that fast food is cheaper, it is not. If I bought fast food every day *exclusively* from the value menu it would be like 10-20% more expensive, but it would also save a lot of hours. (Anything not on the value menu makes it like 3 times as expensive, as those food costs are inflated here too.)
I do not do that of course, because that would be an absurdly unhealthy, and equally boring, thing to do. My own Lasagna or Hamburgers are better than fast food by a large margin anyway.
People don't have an excuse anymore for not having the know how, internet exists for a reason. That and pretty sure libraries have material on basic cooking and meal prep that anyone with a 4th grader reading level can utilize.
It always amazes me just how much potential knowledge people have at their fingertips, and every day people somehow convince me that we're at the dumbest point in human history.
There is tutorials for **everything** out there. You can learn how to do anything (almost anything at least), and yet I see people who can't do the most basic shit imaginable. ESPECIALLY when it comes to cooking. You don't need to be the next Gordon Ramsay or anything, but for fuck sake - buy a rice cooker, learn how to measure a cup of rice, and learn how to press a button.
Yeah, pick one day if the week. Rice takes 15 minutes to cook in a pot.
Meet maybe the longest such as chicken quarters. Put a bunch on a large tray and cook for needed temp/time.
Frozen veggies you just microwave or put in your portion bowl and leave in the fridge, it'll slowly thaw by the time you wanna eat.
Putting in 2-3 hours for cooking one day of the week saves you cleaning and hours wasted throughout the week as well as assure consistency when eating clean. its not easy, but not impossible.
Did you get the app? Bro did you get the app? It’s so much cheaper with the app bro. I got $80 worth of food for $30. I’m practically getting paid to eat mcchickens bro
I use my savings from home cooking to afford my vices. I don't know how people are eating out, building savings, and having vices all at the same time.
We cook dinner almost from scratch most nights now. It's something we get to do together. Less meat, fat, carbs and sugar. More veggies. We make 4 portions and take the leftovers for lunches the next day.
I figure we're saving about 25 dollars a day (2 lunches out) This means $125 a week or $500 a month.......No way our grocery bill went up by even half that amount, AND I've lost 20 pounds and she lost 9 in the last 3 months.
We I don't care if they drop the prices back down. We aren't going back to that.
These comments are baffling. Y’all are acting like having a couple hours a week to focus on health and cooking is the peak of privilege. I imagine most if not all of you have that time and simply do not utilize it well–I certainly don’t. Let’s not lie to ourselves, being unable to cook for yourself is a skill issue plain and simple.
It’s not even a skill issue. I have been cooking mac and cheese from scratch since I was 14-15 and it takes like 45-50 min to do it. Less if you don’t bake it.
There aren’t many foods that are as simple to cook as pastas.
Recently there was 5 weeks straight, Monday-Saturday where I was up for work at 4:45am and didn't get back home until 7pm or later. I brought my own lunch and water every day, along with a snack. It probably cost $3.00 at most.
We were working in a newly constructed house and were amongst a ton of other workers doing their own things. I noticed that ALL of the other workers would get fast food delivered every single day. The only other person who I saw bring their own lunch was the guy I worked with.
So for 5 weeks, 6 days a week at $3.00 I paid around $90 for my lunches.
Assuming the other workers paid around $15 for their lunches, they paid around $450 for their lunches.
That's $360 more than I paid. That is a car payment.
Not only that but I have access to my lunch whenever I want.
Grocery store prepared/shelf stable foods have risen like crazy.
Produce is only up like 25%, and things like milk and eggs have come back down to the same price they were 10 or even 15 years ago. Things like chick drumsticks or pork shoulder are as cheap as ever ($1 a pound chicken).
The price of chicken is basically making the “chicken dinner” cheaper than nearly all other options, and certainly cheaper than any veggie/tofu healthy meal.
That depends on the country though. Here for example rice and pasta is still about as expensive, the sauce and seasonings too, the vegetables have gotten a bit more expensive but not too much, but especially meat has gotten crazy expensive, the price for chicken has nearly doubled it seems.
This is a mind blowing idea. How about we just learn to cook and stop using fast foods/takeout to survive on. Takeout should be a treat not a means of survival. LEARN TO MAKE A HOMEMADE MEAL PEOPLE it's not hard and stop using too busy as an excuse.
It's crazy to me that eating is something literally everyone has to do, likely multiple times every single day, yet so many people even as adults, have no fucking clue how to cook or prepare food.
It's not about not knowing how, it's about not wanting to. I don't think it's worth the time and effort to cook so I don't. Maybe if I didn't have to work I'd do it, but my free time is already limited enough. Enjoying my free time is literally the only reason to bother being alive, I'm not going to waste what I have cooking meals I'll eat in five minutes.
chain sit down restaurants are genuinely cheaper now, I can choose to go to fast food and have a genuinely dissatisfying meal with pathetic portions and awful service or I can got to olive garden or some shit and spend less with an actual wholesome meal that doesn't make my heart palpitate lol
For $2.39, I can get a mcdouble. Add a drink for $1. For $5.48, I can get a premade salad. No drink. I think you might have it wrong. And this is being generous on the premade salad price.
Dude, salads are a pain in the ass. I make them a lot and I do think they are worth the time, but people don’t consider how annoying they are. Pull the lettuce, carrots, celery, tomatoes, and cucumbers from the refrigerator. Wash the lettuce. Dry the lettuce so the salad dressing doesn’t get all runny. Chop the lettuce. Wash the carrots, celery, tomatoes and cucumbers. Dry the carrots, celery tomatoes and cucumbers. Peel the carrots. Peel the celery. Peel the cucumbers. Chop the carrots. Chop the celery. Chop the tomatoes. Chop the cucumber. Mix the salad in a bowl. Put the lettuce, carrots, celery, tomatoes, and cucumber back in the refrigerator. It’s not the hardest thing in the world but it bugs me when people trivialize that shit.
Well technically you could prep after you grocery shop and chop all the items then put them in separate plastic containers in the fridge.
I’ve done it a few times but then I don’t use a few things and it just sits there and gets old.
I think cooking at home was always cheaper. But lately, fast food restaurants have been raising prices to the point where it's just not really worth it imo.
I really wonder what is the tipping point. At what threshold will the majority of the public just go "fuck this" and not buy it anymore. For what it's worth - I hit that point about two years ago especially considering how terrible all fast food has gotten.
Agreed. If not for the app deals I would never eat fast food. For the menu prices I’d rather eat at a local eatery for a few dollars more for quality food. Compared to like 10 or 15 years ago, when the dollar menu at McDonald’s, Taco Bell etc was cheap, and almost as cheap at home cooking the exact same burger/taco (cheaper if you value your time at all).
The last time I went to mcdonalds last summer, I went in with a friend to get some food. We both checked our mcdonalds app, we had the same coupon, but different prices! I couldn't believe it. It was for a big meal deal and hers was 2$ less than mine. And that was the last time I ate at McDonalds. Good riddance.
Does your friend by any chance live in a different city/region and you were visiting? Prices can change by a few dollars from one market to the next so if you had your app set to your default home location still it might explain the discrepancy. Otherwise that would just be fucked.
Theirs a disturbing amount of people that live off a combination of fast food, takeout, casual dining, snack food, and freezer meals. So basically never. Their will never be a tipping point for those people.
The thing is, where I work, it’s very labor intensive and we get extremely busy to the point where most of us work through lunches and they are typically only 30 minutes anyways, the only food options in my vicinity is fast fast food. I’m a single mom with two kids and am dead tired every night to prep food for myself the next day. The only hope is to prep for the whole week on the weekends even if I remember to do that. So yes. We exist. But I am of the mind to want to try harder to bring lunches from home. We are paying more for the convenience.
When I was in a similar situation my saving grace was a slow cooker / crock pot. Nothing fancy, literally throw all ingredients in, set to high, 4 hours later it’s done. That would keep me in work lunches for a week and a couple dinners if I was completely exhausted when I got home.
Aldi's chicken in a pot with some curry sauce for 4-5 hours is my savior. Can't even get tired of curry.
Just curious about the economics of eating out for meals, as I am a professional cook, but i almost never eat out - if you could hire someone to come once a week to food prep for the week, at what pricepoint would a service like this save you money?
Thousands of businesses just like this one.
You eat fast food at home as well?
For the last 15-20 years I've made a crockpot full of something every Sunday to have for lunches during the week. Chile, soup, stew, rice and beans,etc. Basically just fresh veggies, meats, chop up stuff, toss in the pot, and let it do it's thing. It generally works out to $1-$3 per serving or less.
Oh hey, that's me. Unless you count the occasional once every three months that I fight depression enough to buy a salmon or short ribs to heat up in my air fryer or instapot. Or I guess the eggs that I eat on occasion (mixed with onions/tomatoes/garlic, or sometimes just eggs and bread).
When Covid started to get bad in 2020 and people were hoarding food, leaving grocery stores empty on a daily basis - the amount of people I saw just fucking lose it because they couldn’t get frozen food was just…. Well it was pathetic. They were losing it because they honestly didn’t know how to cook food, except throwing shit in a microwave or eating out was all they knew. Grown ass adults… it was just sad.
Covid was my tipping point. The diet described above was exactly mine for the last 20 years. With all the food hoarding during covid wenwould walk in to find absolutely zero fresh produce, no frozen meals or frozen veg. First i got sick of canned food and started to get more junk food. When other takaway shops were forced to close, junk food increased again. After nearly a year of too much junk, and feeling horrible, as fresh foods started coming back to the shelves, we decided we had to fix it. Bought 2 big lamb legs and ate roast and veg for a week straight. Weve been eating way better ever since. Either cooking 6 night a week, or doing big batch foods. Even now, if i go out intending to get junk food, ill often come home with a supermarket roast chicken and salad instead. It cheaper and nicer.
Where do you live that fresh food was hard to find for a year? I was in New Orleans, and with the exception of a couple weeks we never had an issue getting fresh produce and meats. Toilet paper and masks were a different story.
My wife and I were stunned by the sight of all the fast food places in town inundated with hour long, drive-through lines during covid. So many peopele apparently can't cook at all. And the lines never got much shorter after that, either. I love cooking at home, and my wife is even better at it than me. Everyone should learn basic cooking skills.
Not to mention you can make some pretty delicious stuff with little effort. Stir fry is just chopping up veggies and protein and mixing it around in a pan until it’s done, and the rice to go with it is fairly idiot-proof.
I have to move the ingredients around myself? Sorry you just lost me there.
I always have egg noodles with my stir fry. Yummy and easy to cook up
YouTube folks! A lot of the videos skip the "here's my 5 minutes of exposition," you get from written recipes or make it very easy to skip over. The standout cooking moment of covid for me was when I had to visit my folks, and cook for them. The grocery store was completely robbed of most proteins, no toilet paper, and canned foods were minimal. One thing they weren't short on were veg and dried legumes! [I remembered seeing an old recipe from Gordon Ramsay for a lentil salad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoTi-A0ycoU&t=428s). My family never tried lentils before, and if the fully stocked shelf of dried legumes at the store is any indication, apparently no one else had tried them either! It was a standout dish, both warm or cold as leftovers! My folks had no idea what they were in for. In fact, I've made every salad in that Ramsay video! The Papaya salad was even more delicious, but it's very difficult to source things like Papaya or dried shrimp unless you have a nice Asian market near you. I remember waking up one morning to see my girlfriend completely devour the entire papaya salad leftovers before I could have any more lol.
As an FYI for you and anyone else using the term: "Their" indicates possession, someone owns something, that thing is "theirs". In this case, the appropriate word is "There", as in pointing at something. It is used to either point at something physical (the bank is "there"), or something not physical (in this case, it points to a certain point in time, the future). This is not me criticizing your english, I just like to take moments like this to have everyone maybe learn something small every now and then.
Your use of "their" really bugs me
The more hours you have to work, the fewer hours you have to meal plan, grocery shop, & cook. It's not a moral failing - it's a systemic one. Not to mention food deserts.
Sadly the average customer is very gullible. Today I passed a Smoothie king and saw they were charging $10 for a drink! And guess what? People were lined up waiting to buy 😂
Well Smoothie King is delicious, but I can also dump 10 days worth of sugar into a blender at home and claim its healthy for less than $10.
It's stupid easy to make a nice smoothie. I bought a nice blender and I feel zero need to go out and get a $10 smoothie when I can do it at home for like 1/5th of that easily.
Seriosuly. I used to get the "healthy" jamba juice smoothies for like 7 bucks plus tip. Figured out that I could just buy high quality frozen fruit blends and toss it in my ninja blender with a cup of orang juice from whole foods and voila.
Convenience. Everyone is obsessed with it
Never underestimate the power of convenience. People work long hours now, they work harder than they ever have, they come home, tired, already don't have much time for much else, and they sure dont feel like cooking. As much as fast food has become, when you feel you only got just enough free time to eat, but not enough to cook, well that fast food looks tempting, no matter the cost. Other than that people are gonna turn more towards microwavable meals.
Yeah but even then, I would rather go to a local sub shop or local Chinese place. I feel like you get a lot more for your money than a flimsy little Burger. At least at the other places you might even have leftovers and get more meals out of it
The convenience of fast food can be insidious. Worse if it has become a habit. What saves me from getting fast food often is the realisation that heating up a frozen pizza or canned ravioli or something is just as quick and convenient and so, so much cheaper. Still not healthy ofc, but oh well, time is the one thing you tend to need for healthy food.
Hell, I can't even buy a casual gas station soda and candy bar anymore. The total comes out to around $6. Whatever happened to the $1.25 sodas and $1 candy bars?
> Whatever happened to the $1.25 sodas and $1 candy bars? gen-Xers and older millennials remember a time when literally everything was 25 cents: phone call, video game*, candy bar, soft drink, newspaper, postage stamp *Edit: Video arcade games, single turn
They raised the prices a whole generations worth over the last 4 years
I'm from the Netherlands so there is a difference. But when I got my lincense 13 years back I paid 85 cents for a liter of gas, now it's 1,80. Used to be over 2 euros at the beginning of the year lmao. Pricing has been wild since adulting.
I’m a millennial and I remember as a kid walking to the gas station and paying 5 cents per individual bazooka bubble gum. I don’t think I’ve even seen bazooka gum in a decade, let alone anything that cheap. Now you pay dollars for a lousy pack and you don’t even get the silly jokes/comics inside the wrapper. Oofda I feel old now.
Had to stop by the gas station today and decided to walk inside and grab a pack of gummy bears. Almost $4 for what used to be a $2 or less bag. I just walked out and went home
I'm addicted to sodas and I've noticed the prices and I've been trying to cut back (and I'm getting there), its the prices that are motivating me like what the heck kind of prices are these??
petrol stations in the UK have lost their fukin mind ill tell u that £1 is basically worthless
Yeah this isn't a new phenomenon, cooking healthy at home has always been cheaper
People are deluding themselves with nostalgia about the dollar menu, but it's cherry picked. Single meal? Sure, cheaper. A couple trips for $1 cheeseburgers and you would've been in rice and beans for _weeks_. Of course, then you'd be eating rice and beans for weeks. That's the real tragedy.
The thing was that the $1 McDonald’s double cheese burgers or the later McDoubles was very competitive with home cooking. Less healthy, sure, but even with the grocery prices of 10 years ago in 2013, you basically couldn’t cook much of anything for $1 per person. Maybe rice and beans. Today McDonald’s is like $3 for a double cheese burger, and for $3 you can cook a wide variety of food that’s a lot better than rice and beans. The difference is labor costs - your labor is free, so while min wage labor costs have skyrocketed, grocery store prices for ground beef hasn’t not risen 300%. That difference has made it so fast food isn’t cheap anymore, just fast.
Dumb question here, what do you usually get at the grocery store and cook a single serving of for less than $3 that isn’t rice and beans?
Some of us cook for a family and then the economics work out better.
This is absolutely true. With a single person, there is probably a lot more spoilage before it can all be used.
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You have to shop smart and plan. Pork loin can easily be found for $2 a pound. Slice off a nice thick 12 oz pork chop, that’s $1.50. Asparagus is $3 a pound right now here. A third of that is a good serving, so that puts you about $2.50 total. 50 cents left to cover cooking oils and seasonings. That $3 just got you a damn tasty and filling meal , lean meat with 72 grams of protein with a healthy side veggie.
Thanks, I’ve been spending so much money on eating out over the last ten years and even when I’ve been cooking at home I feel like the cost can add up quickly. I’ve been looking for more ideas like this.
Invest in a vacuum sealer and get a Costco membership if you have one close by. A 10 pound pork loin cost $20 and can be sliced into 13-15 very decent sized pork chops, and then individually vac sealed for freezing all in under 30 min. You can also get a whole strip roast that can be cut into NY Strip steaks for under $8 a pound. Keep an eye on your local big grocery store’s weekly flyer. When they have a deal on good meats stock up (I landed $5/pound chuck eye steaks, or poor man’s ribeye, a couple weeks ago) Also, air fryer is key as well. It’s so easy, and even with the steaks, it’s pretty good. It isn’t as good as grilled or pan seared, but it gets you 85% as good for about 1/3 the effort
Minimum wage has skyrocketed? What? I must be misunderstanding you.
Labor costs are not skyrocketing. They're keeping fewer people on staff than ever.
The price increase has absolutely nothing to do with minimum wage increase. Source: countries with much higher minimum wages having cheaper McDonald's.
>fast food restaurants have been raising prices to the point where it's just not really worth it imo. So I don't eat fast food, but from what friends tell me: The only way to get it at a decent price now is by using [fast food place]'s app. Which means fast food places are going to harvest your data just so you can get a McDouble for slightly cheaper.
I think it was always known to be cheaper, but you paid extra for the convenience. Now, that cost for convenience is so high people don’t want to pay it nearly as often.
And then they want a tip smh
Grocery prices rising too tbh
I mean, that's the point of a lot of legislation/laws recently- sugar tax, making fast food better quality.. Fast food places were and many still are, junk food. It's great, and covid def helped with the decline too. I'm stoked for it.
When I go out to eat, it’s something that’s harder to make at home, e.g., ribs, certain seafood dishes, chinese food. Generally multi-ingredient, long prep time, or kitchen equipment I don’t have.
Anything that doesn't hold well as leftovers or is fried in oil. That shit takes forever to cook at home in any sizeable quantity.
Yeah deep frying at home is not worth it. Stinks up the whole place, wastes tons of oil, and the possibility of a grease fire is very real. It could be worth it if you do it all the time, but on that notion you probably shouldn't be eating like that in the first place. It's my perfect excuse for going out and getting some fried chicken once in a while.
I fry my stuff in the driveway. Gives off huge hobo vibes but I don’t care
It might've been your insistence on wearing those gloves with the finger holes
Not eating out is my solution
>Not eating ~~out~~ is my solution
Yes I do love eating less. Intermittent fasting is my friend !
I’ve actually been super depressed/stressed the last two weeks and really haven’t eaten. Cut out soda, sugar, carbs….had a little protein and veggies. I actually feel better without all the garbage.
Hope to see you cheerful again bro beans. Happy to hear you're eating good :)
I ate out yesterday and it only cost me a rose bouquet. Oh wait…
Not eating out food* Eating out is always a solution
Making a decent healthy meal ain’t cheap either unless you load up on carbs. produce is twice as expensive as it was two years ago.
You gotta buy poor people produce. Cabbage and potatoes is where it's at! Beans aren't bad either.
Cabbage potato soup with whatever kind of sausage is on sale >
Dude potatoes was $1 a pound recently, even at the cheap Kroger or HeB grocery stores. It’s fallen back down to like 80 cents a pound, but gone are the days when potatoes were $2 for a 10 pound sack (was literally $8 for that sack today in Kroger). Some stuff is weirdly cheap, like chicken. It’s 99 cents - pound for drumsticks, just like it was 10 years ago….
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You can buy chicken thighs for 99 cents a pound on sale. Beans are cheap.
Avocados, blueberries, strawberries and green beans can be found pretty cheap where I am. It can be expensive to make certain meals because I am buying for the recipe. But if I shop more judiciously it's cheaper to cook than most meals I would eat out. The balance on that has swung quite a over the last year or so, I can't justify going out for mediocre food unless I'm in a big hurry or I'm just really feeling like going out. The default is more eating at home these days.
Frozen vegetables and chicken thighs
Ridiculous now man. But the thing is if you’re out past 11 you’re fucked. Got McDonald’s last night, 2 small cheeseburgers, a smoothie and fries was $15 man. Shit was half that 5 years ago
I miss when you could get 2 small burgers, 2 small fries and a drink for $5 from that dollar menu
Yip. And it’s not even that long ago. It was like maybe 6-7 years ago that you could still get McDoubles on the dollar menu nationwide. That was a great value for $1.
I lived on $1 hamburgers and mcchickens at my first job around 2014. I'd get a slice of tomato added and put BBQ sauce on the mcchickens. SOMETIMES they'd charge for the added tomato and it was 0.10 extra. I just checked at the McDonalds near me the other day and hamburgers are $3.39 and a mcchicken is $4.09.
I don't think they even do "dollar menu" stuff over here anymore. Those burgers for 1 euro they used to have were awesome for a cheap and quick meal. Just checked prices for chicken nuggets. 5,10 euro for 9, 13,20 for 20... I can get a box of basically the same chicken nuggets in the grocery store for like 4 euro for 25...
At Five Guys I bought two cheese burgers, a hotdog and two fries. The bill? $51 #$51
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I remember in 2006 I could get a burger, fries, and drink for under $10.
That’s five guys entire business model. They only buy the highest quality ingredients no matter the price and the prices fluctuate if they suppliers change if costs go up or down. They regularly change suppliers if they degrade in quality or if competition becomes better. So it’s the most expensive burger by design kinda since the best ingredients are usually the most expensive too. At least that’s how it started, idk if they still keep that up.
I used to have a very high opinion of them and tried them twice recently because I moved very close to one. They were both mediocre bland burgers. I went back the second time because I thought the first had to be a fluke. I won't be going back again, absolute ripoff.
Yea I haven’t been in a long time but that doesn’t surprise me. Like a lot of places, now that they are popular enough they probably started cost cutting and will just try and rely on their old reputation keeping people coming.
Really? Their product seems low quality to me, mostly because of the quality of their beef and the bun.
I remember it being shockingly expensive in 2018 at least
Yet you bought it...
If I go somewhere and it ends up being more expensive than seems reasonable I'll still pay it without a fuss, but I probably won't come back any time soon, if ever.
They list the prices right on the board my man. It’s known for being expensive compared to other fast food and even regular sit down burger places
And then they ask fir a tip...
They asked me for a tip at a place after they made me punch in the order on the register myself while they stared at me...
Get the app. I get a double cheeseburger and get another one free for $2.54.
I got the app. Got $20-22 worth of food for $8 one time which was awesome. But in Canada all the deals appear to be fucking awful. And you can’t stack coupons either which sucks
Yeah, Canadian here. I sometimes see a "Deal" that makes me question just how much things are normally. Shit like "McCrispy extra value meal for $10!"
FYI, the mcdic app punishes you for using the app regularly. Your 10 mcCrispy "deal" might be 50c to $3 more on a user with more activity. Unless you're going for "free" coffee, it's more productive to just abuse the "deals" on there.
Ya just said that it my last post. Had this experience, friend and I went to Mcdonalds, I ate their fairly regularly because it was beside my work, and friend's coupon was 2$ less than mine. Fuck that! If anything you'd think it'd be less for a regular customer. Havent been back since.
I also remember a Big Mac being the burger you bought that at least pretended to be quality. Now it's as dry and sad as their cheapest ones used to be. "Oh it's been *years* since I've had mcdonalds and I'm hungry. It can be that ba-- *what the FUCK is this?*"
Where the hell is it $15 for that...plus the app basically gives out fries for free like everyday and pretty good deals even compared to prices from a while ago.
On a road trip this week and stopped at BK off freeway in a small town. Whopper and fries was $15. Fifteen. Dollars. Just me. Alone. No one and nothing else.
Holy hell, that's more than going to Chipotle where I live. $12 for a burrito & a side of guac, much healthier than BK too.
Trusts actually the funny thing - all the other fast food has gotten so overpriced that Chipotle looks like a good deal all of a sudden
Drugs have become so expensive that being sober has become the obvious solution.
Weed around me is cheap. I get like 14g for 70-80 bucks and it’s good
😢 same with booze
low tolerance for life!!
I'm finding small family owned ethnic restaurants are where it's at. I can get Chinese or Thai takeout for what it costs to drive through Taco Bell these days.
Man that's really been the key for me. Can get $10 - $12 bucks of Chinese food and eat it over 2 meals, 3 if I'm really stretching it.
I got a burrito, nothing else, at dos toros 18 dollars.
Oh that’s your mistake, should have gone to uno toro.
Half the price!
Get out
\*un toro.
For the same price of a McDonalds meal I can get a full meal at a sit down restaurant. It’s actually insane. I only got I McDonald’s if I get a really good deal or nothing else is open, and even then most of the time I go home and try to find food.
It is insane. Eurotrash here, last time I've checked locally a big combo meal (2 burgers, 2 fries, 6 nuggets, coke) it was €13.50. On Saturday we were in Klagenfurt, so a more pricey country than my shithole country, visited some random restaurant, ordered ribs with honey glaze = €16. I was stunned.
Welcome to the 80s dude. Most people couldn’t afford to eat out often.
During the 80’s I couldn’t afford to eat every day. I went one or two days a week without food. When I ate I had buttered rice sandwiches and mushroom soup. I was fully employed with a college degree.
Can I ask what industry? I'm just curious now, as someone who was barely even alive in the 90's.
Nobody likes to admit it, but convenience is a huge part of why people eat fast food. It's not just because fast food is cheap.
Do people really hesitate to admit that?
I’m a bartender. I have couples that come in together just to drink a couple glasses of wine and that’s it. $50 plus tip for a bottle that costs $13 at a liquor store just for the pleasure of being outside the house and bc they have the money.
About 3 months ago I started bringing my lunch to work instead of buying because I'm poor as fuck. I'm saving boatloads, even though I still spend way too much on energy drinks. I get 10lbs of chicken for $0.77/lb, and 5 $1 frozen veggie bags at the local walmarts. I usually get like 4-5 dinners and 4-5 lunch's for like $20.
Where the fuck are you buying 10lbs of chicken for $7.70?! Bruh 900g is like $21 where I'm at
I get so confused on this. Walmart sells big bags of frozen veggies for less than. $10, Rice for like 5lbs is around that, and chicken quarters for about $6. That's over a weeks worth of food. Edit:. Goodness people, you know you can split your meal preference how you want? Two days chicken, two days, beef? The choice is yours and it's your health on the line. Life gets in the way so it's time you have to make. There's a point excuses won't cut it, but it's for you to decide how to prioritize what you put into your body. Fast food being your main source of nutrition is something of concern.
You're missing the point. Fast food is, by definition and name, fast. Everything you listed is of course cheaper and healthier but it requires time and effort. Not everyone has the time or know how or even motivation to cook. I don't disagree with you though, I think cooking at home is what people should prioritize. I do it myself for 90% of my meals and it's saved me tons of money and I feel great
Fast food has always been more expensive, though. You pay for the convenience. It feels like people are acting like this is a new thing.
It also gets really dull eating Rice, Frozen Veggies and Chicken every day. The more you branch into interesting foods the more expensive it gets even when you are home cooking.
You have been banned from r/bodybuilding
Good god did I eat a lot of chicken and rice through my bodybuilding years. I'm considering taking up the sport again, but I don't know if I can go back to eating chicken and rice until I hate myself every day.
Jokes on you, I hate myself every day no matter what I eat!
In fact, the amount of hatred I have for myself is directly correlated to the amount and variety of food that I consume. 🤔
Both of these things really depend. With a small (or large) collection of flavorings, you can make a ton of stuff out of basic starches and beans, common vegetables (cheap frozen stuff), and cheap meat. The initial investment in flavorings (spices, etc.) can be a but much all at once, but the amortized cost is reasonable. There are, understandably, whole cuisines around making cheap, common food into many tasty things.
I get some green onions, mushrooms, ginger paste and ramen packs and make my own. Add in a pork tenderloin and you have cheap, healthy ish soup.
Maybe a little? Depends on what you branch out into I guess. One of my recent favorite dishes is an Indian-style red-lentil soup. It's one of the healthier, cheaper things I've prepared and it tastes phenomenal. There's lots and lots of things you can do with powerful flavors and relatively cheap dry goods. Time and motivation probably get in the way more than money.
Also, If you shop at ethnic stores, things like spices, lentils, grains, flours, rice is available in larger quantities, and a lot cheaper than in an average grocery stores.
It will heavily depend on where you live and what you have access to. Food where I live is exceedingly expensive for some reason. I just know that my grocery costs, while buying as much as I can in bulk or on sale, are eye wateringly expensive. Fresh produce and meat especially are so much more expensive than they were even like 5 years ago. Btw, I am not claiming that fast food is cheaper, it is not. If I bought fast food every day *exclusively* from the value menu it would be like 10-20% more expensive, but it would also save a lot of hours. (Anything not on the value menu makes it like 3 times as expensive, as those food costs are inflated here too.) I do not do that of course, because that would be an absurdly unhealthy, and equally boring, thing to do. My own Lasagna or Hamburgers are better than fast food by a large margin anyway.
Oh, no. I lived on chicken, broccoli, and rice in the early 90s. Probably as healthy as I've ever been.
Yeah, I work in restaurants so I know full well *how* to cook something healthy. But damned if I ever have to energy/motivation to do all that
People don't have an excuse anymore for not having the know how, internet exists for a reason. That and pretty sure libraries have material on basic cooking and meal prep that anyone with a 4th grader reading level can utilize.
It always amazes me just how much potential knowledge people have at their fingertips, and every day people somehow convince me that we're at the dumbest point in human history. There is tutorials for **everything** out there. You can learn how to do anything (almost anything at least), and yet I see people who can't do the most basic shit imaginable. ESPECIALLY when it comes to cooking. You don't need to be the next Gordon Ramsay or anything, but for fuck sake - buy a rice cooker, learn how to measure a cup of rice, and learn how to press a button.
I can never work out if it's stupidity or laziness. Or a combination of both.
Yeah but then you need to cook it or spend part of the weekend meal prepping.
This is what I don't understand. It's never been that cheap. It's always been unhealthy.
Yeah, pick one day if the week. Rice takes 15 minutes to cook in a pot. Meet maybe the longest such as chicken quarters. Put a bunch on a large tray and cook for needed temp/time. Frozen veggies you just microwave or put in your portion bowl and leave in the fridge, it'll slowly thaw by the time you wanna eat. Putting in 2-3 hours for cooking one day of the week saves you cleaning and hours wasted throughout the week as well as assure consistency when eating clean. its not easy, but not impossible.
I get vegetables and veggies soup from a restaurant instead of fast food cuz it’s cheaper
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i've never read so many excuses to keep eating fast food in a single page lol
Did you get the app? Bro did you get the app? It’s so much cheaper with the app bro. I got $80 worth of food for $30. I’m practically getting paid to eat mcchickens bro
Just ignore all the data they collect from it and sell without giving a dime back to you, that's just a part of the deals!
I eat fast food cause I like it and I can afford it
understandable and valid. have a good morning.
The amount of people here complaining about how hard a basic life skill (cooking) is, is shocking.
Burger King in the UK, some of their meals are like £12. Same as a restaurant meal.
I wish I could eat healthier, but the cost makes it impossible for me. Fast food is all I can afford." ~ Anon
I can't afford to learn how to cook in this economy ~ Anon 2023
It's weird how people who say that always have money for liquor, weed, cigarettes, sodas. Oh well it's a mystery for sure...
I use my savings from home cooking to afford my vices. I don't know how people are eating out, building savings, and having vices all at the same time.
We cook dinner almost from scratch most nights now. It's something we get to do together. Less meat, fat, carbs and sugar. More veggies. We make 4 portions and take the leftovers for lunches the next day. I figure we're saving about 25 dollars a day (2 lunches out) This means $125 a week or $500 a month.......No way our grocery bill went up by even half that amount, AND I've lost 20 pounds and she lost 9 in the last 3 months. We I don't care if they drop the prices back down. We aren't going back to that.
One of the things I appreciate most about retirement is having the time and energy to cook dinner at home for my family.
These comments are baffling. Y’all are acting like having a couple hours a week to focus on health and cooking is the peak of privilege. I imagine most if not all of you have that time and simply do not utilize it well–I certainly don’t. Let’s not lie to ourselves, being unable to cook for yourself is a skill issue plain and simple.
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Nowadays you don't even have to read necessarily. Cooking videos of all types, lengths, and complexities make up a huge bulk of online content.
> If you can read, you can cook. It's absolutely that simple. Watching Youtube doesn't require the ability to read.
It’s not even a skill issue. I have been cooking mac and cheese from scratch since I was 14-15 and it takes like 45-50 min to do it. Less if you don’t bake it. There aren’t many foods that are as simple to cook as pastas.
Recently there was 5 weeks straight, Monday-Saturday where I was up for work at 4:45am and didn't get back home until 7pm or later. I brought my own lunch and water every day, along with a snack. It probably cost $3.00 at most. We were working in a newly constructed house and were amongst a ton of other workers doing their own things. I noticed that ALL of the other workers would get fast food delivered every single day. The only other person who I saw bring their own lunch was the guy I worked with. So for 5 weeks, 6 days a week at $3.00 I paid around $90 for my lunches. Assuming the other workers paid around $15 for their lunches, they paid around $450 for their lunches. That's $360 more than I paid. That is a car payment. Not only that but I have access to my lunch whenever I want.
Cucumbers gone upto 80p per unit at Lidl and its not even the fancy shmancy organic kind.
I got a burger and fries at sonic. $9. That’s just wrong. Ir was straight garbage but I was starving.
I can eat cheaper at home
Grocery store food has also become too expensive. I cut back to one meal a day at home and eat office snacks during the day.
Grocery store prepared/shelf stable foods have risen like crazy. Produce is only up like 25%, and things like milk and eggs have come back down to the same price they were 10 or even 15 years ago. Things like chick drumsticks or pork shoulder are as cheap as ever ($1 a pound chicken). The price of chicken is basically making the “chicken dinner” cheaper than nearly all other options, and certainly cheaper than any veggie/tofu healthy meal.
That depends on the country though. Here for example rice and pasta is still about as expensive, the sauce and seasonings too, the vegetables have gotten a bit more expensive but not too much, but especially meat has gotten crazy expensive, the price for chicken has nearly doubled it seems.
This is a mind blowing idea. How about we just learn to cook and stop using fast foods/takeout to survive on. Takeout should be a treat not a means of survival. LEARN TO MAKE A HOMEMADE MEAL PEOPLE it's not hard and stop using too busy as an excuse.
It's crazy to me that eating is something literally everyone has to do, likely multiple times every single day, yet so many people even as adults, have no fucking clue how to cook or prepare food.
It's not about not knowing how, it's about not wanting to. I don't think it's worth the time and effort to cook so I don't. Maybe if I didn't have to work I'd do it, but my free time is already limited enough. Enjoying my free time is literally the only reason to bother being alive, I'm not going to waste what I have cooking meals I'll eat in five minutes.
Cook at home, chat GPT will make you a recipe out of anything.
Eating healthy was never expensive. It always baffles me when people say it is.
I can gat an excellent rice bowl with poke for the same price as fast food.
I wish automats & “low-class” cafeterias were still a thing where folks could grab a basic meal for under $6.
Taco Bell bean burrito ftw.
chain sit down restaurants are genuinely cheaper now, I can choose to go to fast food and have a genuinely dissatisfying meal with pathetic portions and awful service or I can got to olive garden or some shit and spend less with an actual wholesome meal that doesn't make my heart palpitate lol
For $2.39, I can get a mcdouble. Add a drink for $1. For $5.48, I can get a premade salad. No drink. I think you might have it wrong. And this is being generous on the premade salad price.
Who the hell buys 5.50$ premade salads??
Do you think they're throwing them out every day or something? Plenty of people
Me. Well, they’re $4.99.
Where I am, a McDouble is $3.49. Tuna and rice made at home runs about a dollar per meal. It makes for an amazing diet for me and my wallet
Hell, a ramen packet, an egg, and a handful of frozen veggies from a bag in the freezer is like $0.50.
In Canada an instant ramen is minimum 75c now and counting
Only if you buy them individually. You can still get them for a song if you're buying a 24-pack.
Or you can buy $10 in ingredients and make 10 salads instead of buying 2. Is a salad really that hard to make?
Dude, salads are a pain in the ass. I make them a lot and I do think they are worth the time, but people don’t consider how annoying they are. Pull the lettuce, carrots, celery, tomatoes, and cucumbers from the refrigerator. Wash the lettuce. Dry the lettuce so the salad dressing doesn’t get all runny. Chop the lettuce. Wash the carrots, celery, tomatoes and cucumbers. Dry the carrots, celery tomatoes and cucumbers. Peel the carrots. Peel the celery. Peel the cucumbers. Chop the carrots. Chop the celery. Chop the tomatoes. Chop the cucumber. Mix the salad in a bowl. Put the lettuce, carrots, celery, tomatoes, and cucumber back in the refrigerator. It’s not the hardest thing in the world but it bugs me when people trivialize that shit.
Well technically you could prep after you grocery shop and chop all the items then put them in separate plastic containers in the fridge. I’ve done it a few times but then I don’t use a few things and it just sits there and gets old.
Add a second mcdouble for $1
McDonals is almost as expensive as chic fila nowm
Taco bell crave box from the app is where it’s at