[HN Gopher] McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
___________________________________________________________________
McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 139 points
Date : 2025-11-21 17:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| barbazoo wrote:
| > "Happy Meals at McDonald's are prohibitively expensive for some
| people, because there's been so much inflation," Josephson said.
|
| I find the phrasing odd. It is _because_ corporations have raised
| prices that inflation has increased. Rising prices aren 't a
| result of inflation.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| No, inflation is a monetary and political phenomenon. Companies
| cannot set prices arbitrarily, in particular not the fast food
| industry which faces what is probably the strongest competition
| on the planet. The entire restaurant industry does not collude
| on the prices of burgers.
|
| In this particular case it's wage-push inflation. The lowest
| quintile of workers has seen very strong wage gains among other
| reasons because of tight labour markets and minimum wage
| legislation, which on the consumer side prices a lot of people
| out of the service economy.
| nawgz wrote:
| > Companies cannot set prices arbitrarily
|
| [Source required]
|
| Edit: how are you downvoting me? Go look at corporate profit
| margins now, 10 years ago, and 40 years ago.
|
| If you believe you can hand wave with simplified BS like
| "Supply and Demand" you probably have some heavy reading on
| price elasticity to catch up on.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| That's a nice excuse from the executives, but it doesn't
| align with reality. McDonald's profits have been rising every
| year. [1] If those dastardly minimum wage workers and their
| fat paychecks were putting even the slightest bit of pressure
| on struggling McDonald's, the expectation would be some sort
| of reduction in profit. But it's the total opposite. Profits
| are outpacing whatever losses they're (not) experiencing from
| whatever supposed wage increases they have.
|
| [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mcdonald-q3-2025-profit-
| sales...
| jameslk wrote:
| What are McDonald's profits adjusted for inflation?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| McDonald's net margin doubled from 16% to 32% in 10
| years.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonal
| ds/prof...
| skinnymuch wrote:
| You're repeating generic right wing-ish talking points. Yet
| profit margins have increased. If your reasoning was correct,
| profit margins wouldn't be increasing as they are.
| dingnuts wrote:
| .. no, corporations raise prices in response to the falling
| value of the dollar which has been occurring predictably since
| 2020 when the money supply was increased 20% (remember the
| "printer goes brr" memes and the "stimulus checks")?
|
| Make more money supply -> money is worth less -> prices go up
|
| simple stuff
|
| I guess the next step is: blame corporations, nationalize them,
| see it causes economic problems (we're here), and then repeat
| (Trump promises $2k checks to everyone, this is coming soon)
| pgalvin wrote:
| OTOH, no company or item exists in a vacuum. If McDonald's
| suppliers have increased prices, and their employees expect
| higher wages due to inflation, then McDonald's must increase
| prices or eat the cost (unsustainable in the long-term). Does
| this only contribute to inflation? Yes. But so does every
| worker who wants higher wages - unfortunately everybody in the
| chain has such little influence on the wider economy that they
| must simply prioritise themselves.
|
| This is an overly simplistic view, of course, not least because
| it presumes good faith, but that is really my point: the
| economy has too many moving parts to simply say "you're to
| blame for inflation because you increased your prices".
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The inflation boom was caused by the free money handed out to
| everyone. Inflation is inevitable when the dollar is devalued.
| izacus wrote:
| Why are you ignoring the more-than-doubling of McDs profit
| margins here?
| lysace wrote:
| The cost increases are real: beef, wheat, labor. Some of it is
| from inflation during the covid period, some it is from the
| Russia-Ukraine invasion causing havoc in fuel and grain supplies
| globally.
|
| There is currently a beef shortage in Europe (of sorts). The
| reason is that buying cow feed has gotten too
| expensive/unpredictable.
|
| I think people generally underestimate the global impact of
| shutting down production in Europe's bread basket, Ukraine. There
| is a reason Russia wants this land. It's, as usual, a war for
| natural resources.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| We should consume a lot less beef. Wages haven't caught up with
| inflation in a long while, I'd hope McDonalds paying more would
| trigger a nationwide increase in wages (I know, too
| optimistic).
| roywiggins wrote:
| I'm not sure that's true about wage growth, especially at the
| low end:
|
| https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/
|
| > In stark contrast to prior decades, low-wage workers
| experienced dramatically fast real [inflation-adjusted] wage
| growth between 2019 and 2023
| shkkmo wrote:
| Your source lists wage growth during that period as 13.2%
|
| Meanwhile inflation over that period is significantly
| higher at 19.18%.
|
| So, no, low end wage growth has not kept up with inflation.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That says "real wage growth" of 13.2%. IOW 13.2% on top
| of the 19.18% for nominal wage growth of >33%.
| roywiggins wrote:
| 13.2% _real wage growth_ , not nominal wage growth. Real
| wage growth is what you get _after inflation is
| subtracted out of nominal wage growth_. 0% real wage
| growth would be keeping up with inflation.
| pluralmonad wrote:
| Agreed. Sheep are a much more sustainable ruminant and we
| should all shift that way. I always heard it was spoiled cans
| of mutton fed to GIs that killed Americas taste for sheep.
| More importantly, we should stop eating food shipped in from
| far away. Not as easy as it sounds.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I bought some canned corned mutton (from Australia, I
| think) recently on a whim when I was at a caribbean foods
| store, and it was incredibly delicious. Not much in the way
| of gamy flavor (which I don't hate), and more tasty than
| corned beef. I think this is the recipe I used:
| https://www.alicaspepperpot.com/guyanese-style-corned-
| mutton...
|
| That stuff wasn't cheap but I'm gonna make two cans worth
| next time, since my guests absolutely devoured it.
|
| I live in Oregon where I know we have tons of sheep (you
| can see them when you're driving on I-5); would be great to
| get stuff like this with local sheep!
| roywiggins wrote:
| Shipping is really a tiny proportion of the environmental
| cost of food, especially meat.
| lysace wrote:
| Meat-based proteine is important in so many different ways.
|
| Yes, it is possible avoid meat and still have a child develop
| well. It was also possible to install Linux on your PC in
| 1991/1992. Most people couldn't, but the really smart (or
| special) ones could.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I meant beef specifically, not meat in general. Our
| ancestors didn't eat bovine meat every single day like we
| do now. Plus cows take up lots of grazing ground, and I'm
| not happy about how they're treated worse over time because
| we keep eating more of them, and that requires more and
| more cruel ways of supplying that beef.
|
| Chicken and sheep seem to be more sustainable. But either
| way, I think it is good for our health to rotate the types
| of meat we eat and lower the portions a bit? But it's
| easier said than done for sure.
| lysace wrote:
| Ok. Just noting: Realistically, your concerns are not
| going to change the eating desires of actual humans in
| the real world.
|
| So the plan is a beef tax, then?
|
| Here's a reality check from Sweden:
|
| https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/svenskarna-dissar-
| kottska... (the public service broadcaster)
|
| https://www-svt-
| se.translate.goog/nyheter/inrikes/svenskarna...
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I think just raising awareness is enough. Trends come and
| go. People are drinking a lot less milk these days than
| in the 80's or prior for example. But on the flip side,
| ozempic and similar weight loss drugs are probably
| promoting over-consumption now.
| twoodfin wrote:
| I'm trying to be illustrative through glibness here, but...
|
| If consumers can't afford the prices required to pay a
| restaurant's labor living wages, then perhaps they're not viable
| customers of that restaurant.
|
| Minimum wages above the market-set rate are a form of price
| control. The distorting effects of price controls--in this case,
| contributing to shortages of low-margin restaurant meals--are
| economically inevitable.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| It is quite the juggling act: you have employees demanding to
| be paid more, the cost of goods/inflation steadily rising,
| while customers wanting everything to be cheaper.
|
| Something has to give somewhere, the challenging part would be
| to know where.
| reppap wrote:
| Don't forget company leaderships and stock owners taking more
| and more profit out of companies than ever.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Take 100% of their salaries and profits and it would make a
| negligible, likely unnoticeable difference in this issue.
| zepolen wrote:
| Amazon made $311B in 2024, they employ 1.5 million
| people.
|
| That's $200k an employee, on top of what their regular
| salary is.
|
| McDonalds made $15B and employ 150k people, that's $100k
| per employee.
|
| So no, not negligible in the slightest.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Are you under the impression the only expense a company
| has is payroll?
| zepolen wrote:
| Profit is after costs+investments removed, not just
| payroll.
| zaphar wrote:
| Where did you get the $311B number? Because I get a net
| profit of $59.25B which is only 40k per employee. This
| assumes that the company doesn't need to keep any profit
| for future usage which may or may not be case depending
| on how big their war chest is. Not to say that 40k
| couldn't be life changing for many of the Amazon employee
| but the 311B number seems to be pulled out of thin air.
| zepolen wrote:
| You're correct, it's wrong. I googled it, guessing AI
| just hallucinated that.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| According to AI, they paid 5.3 billion in dividends and a
| have about 2 million in employees.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| I'm not sure if there's a more sophisticated way of doing
| this. But just looking at revenue vs net income for 2024
| suggests McDonald's operates at about a ~33% margin.
| reppap wrote:
| I'm not suggesting everyone would be a millionaire with a
| more egalitarian distribution of wealth. But, to suggest
| America's skyrocketing inequality has nothing to do with
| the poor being unable to afford a burger is a bold claim
| to make.
|
| Because if the wealthy are not extracting their fortunes
| from American companies, what then?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| That's been said forever, but only ever said.
| SSchick wrote:
| How about executive compensation?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| That would make everything maybe 1 cent cheaper, so it's
| not really significant.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Yea whenever the idea of a company's profit is under a
| microscope, people often reflex to exec "greed" but it's
| typically because it's easier to blame a fictional disney
| villain, than it is to dig into the root of the problem.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It would however have second-order effects; having less
| wealthy people would drive down rents/etc. If the wealthy
| just keep getting wealthier you'll end up in a situation
| where the wealthy just trade between each other out
| because of higher margins and the working class has
| nowhere to buy things.
| twoodfin wrote:
| Markets are the best mechanism ever invented to resolve that
| challenge to maximum aggregate benefit.
| acdha wrote:
| There's an entire academic field studying ways in which
| it's not that simple. Housing, employment, and
| transportation are somewhat famously areas where markets
| need help due to information and power disparities.
| standardUser wrote:
| True, but to prevent those restaurants from hiring
| children, feeding us poison, and dodging all taxes the
| market must be regulated. And we're back to the same
| discussion we've been having for 150 years - how do we best
| regulate markets.
| sylos wrote:
| Maybe the mcdonald's stockholders can have a few less yachts
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I think the bigger issue is the 500 mil/quarter stock buybacks
| and the several million compensation packages for the
| executives than the burger flipper wanting enough money to make
| it worthwhile to leave their house.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| McDonald's is a franchise. Franchise owners bear the burden
| of employee and goods costs.
| anticorporate wrote:
| Franchise owner also bear the burden of franchise fees,
| which pay for these exorbitant executive compensation
| packages.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| And they've been complaining for decades at this point
| that corporate is failing them. Not enough new products,
| bad business and advertising strategies, store renos, the
| list goes on.
|
| The burger flipper making a lot more money is doing a lot
| more for their franchisee's than the executives are as of
| late.
| boringg wrote:
| The exec comp is a rounding error compared to the other
| costs of the business.
| JPKab wrote:
| The numbers are interesting when you run them.
|
| https://chatgpt.com/share/6920afb3-5f84-8008-827d-907e5f0a0a.
| ..
| xeonmc wrote:
| Can you afford McDonald's food if you work at McDonald's?
| dangus wrote:
| You usually get a free meal per shift if you have any sort of
| half decent owner at basically any fast food restaurant.
| rixed wrote:
| So, that's a "no" since that meal costs less that it would
| if bough over the counter?
| dangus wrote:
| I'm just going to sidestep this and point out the
| stupidity of this comparison.
|
| Does it magically prove I'm making a bad salary if I
| can't afford my employer's product?
|
| Is a five star general making a bad salary because he
| can't afford a nuclear submarine?
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| When I worked in fast food, they gave you a meal allowance,
| but it didn't really matter because I would grab a hamburger
| patty right off the grill and chow down. God damn, now I'm
| getting hungry.
|
| Supposedly you would get fired for doing it, but when the
| managers accused me of doing it I would just deny it with my
| mouth closed while still chewing, and the managers would do
| it too.
|
| They probably have cameras now or something. Those were the
| days.
| dangus wrote:
| I don't think this is very related to what's actually going on
| here.
|
| It used to be that fast food was always cheap. But now, fast
| food is a broad market that's aimed at a wide variety of
| demographics.
|
| McDonald's just so happens to be closer to the "premium" side
| of the market. They have a strong brand and don't have to be
| the cheapest fast food restaurant on the block. People don't
| buy McDonald's because it's cheap.
|
| There are plenty of fast food restaurant chains that still
| mainly serve lower income demographics.
|
| Rally's/Checkers, Church's Chicken, Popeyes, Sonic, and maybe
| you could even count Arby's, or Taco Bell depending on what
| you're ordering.
|
| Some of the bigger brands like McDonald's do have some deals to
| be found but you'll need to be on their apps hunting for them.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| You are correct.
|
| But how do we address the wealth inequality in America?
| rixed wrote:
| Is McDonald still a labor intensive shop? Last time I visited
| one I had the impression that it had become vastly more
| automatised: you order on a machine, and most customers just
| grab a bag from their car before they drive away.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Wage is not a determining factor for McDonald's pricing and has
| nothing to do with that.
|
| They successfully converted from a neighborhood fast food shop
| into a new chain of automats with almost no staff once
| touchscreens got cheap enough and the necessary software could
| be suitably amortized. They ditched the employees, minimized
| community features like playplaces and tables, dropped the low
| margin dollar menu that many poorer people relied on, and
| focused on getting higher-margin products with better
| photography to busy professionals with brand attachment.
|
| Trying to turn this into the tired debate about minimum wage
| just distracts from a discussion about what's actually
| happening to this brand.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > Minimum wages above the market-set rate are a form of price
| control. The distorting effects of price controls--in this
| case, contributing to shortages of low-margin restaurant meals
| --are economically inevitable.
|
| The article cited analysis which said California's $20 minimum
| wage increased fast food prices 2% approximately.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| Perhaps this is a good thing? Are people eating healthier home-
| made foods now?
| jswelker wrote:
| Anecdotally... No they are not. My middle school daughter says
| many of her friends just eat ramen packets every night.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| So even crappier food. The people have to be blamed for this
| at some point. Lower income Indian and East Asian families
| cook fresh food every night that probably costs less than
| $0.50 a plate. Beans, lentils, rice, eggs, pork and chicken
| can take you very far.
| kakacik wrote:
| But if people cook more (like its typical in european folks
| around Mediterranean), who will then do all the necessary
| TV watching and doom scrolling on social cancers to make
| them feel even more miserable and inadequate?
|
| Btw that portion you mention won't be 0.5$, more like 2-3$
| if if balanced and healthy enough. Tons of rice as is still
| very common in south east Asia ain't very healthy neither.
| But its sorta proven once folks start to cook for
| themselves more, they cook healthier than preprocessed junk
| food. And I don't mean some exquisite stuff, spending even
| 10-20 mins ever second evening can provide enough for whole
| family.
| jswelker wrote:
| I'm not saying the people aren't to blame, but no one is
| blameless in the cultural decay. If US natives learned to
| live like immigrants, many ills would be solved, dietary
| and otherwise.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Some people aren't taught how to cook (though I suppose
| they could jump on YouTube these days). And for those who
| are, at the very lowest incomes, they may not have a
| working range or oven. While a cheap microwave can be had
| for under $100, the cheaper plug-in stove tops don't last
| if used daily.
| f1shy wrote:
| Also those people may not have time or energy to learn
| cooking by looking youtube. From an armchair, with good
| economic position and time and money for hobbies anyone
| can learn to cook by yt. But man I know some families
| where both parents (when there are 2!) come completely
| exhausted after 10 hs of hard work.
|
| We changed the quality of food on our home. The amount of
| money and time invested was much more than we expected.
| Everthing from a decent equipped kitchen, with enough
| room, knives and other tools are needed... I lived once
| in 15 sq meter flat... I can tell you, is _difficult_ to
| cook in a kitchenette.
| ponector wrote:
| >>> decent equipped kitchen, with enough room, knives and
| other tools are needed
|
| But you don't need too much to cook a healthy food. One
| pan, one pot, one knife and a spatula. Yes, not
| everything could be cooked with such setup, but tons of
| healthy cheap food.
| shagie wrote:
| The per person time commitment and food options for
| cooking for one is difficult. I would contend it's
| _harder_ to cook a balanced meal for one person than it
| is for a family of four.
|
| Buying things with portions for single servings has a
| premium on the price. Buying things at family size
| portions means that you _have_ to have that for four
| nights in a row otherwise you 've got wasted food (that
| is more expensive than the single portions).
|
| For example, I've got a wok and can do a reasonable stir
| fry. Going and getting chicken for it meant that I had to
| get a pack of four chicken breasts... and I need to cook
| it before they spoil in my refrigerator. The vegetables
| (broccoli, pepper, carrots) were a bit better for keeping
| but you tended not to have one or two carrots unless you
| shopped the more expensive organic section. You get a 1lb
| bundle of carrots... and a _lot_ of times, I 'd end up
| throwing out some at the end of the week.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MealPrepSunday/ just isn't
| something that I can do and stay sane.
|
| I _can_ get a 3500 calorie deep dish pizza from Little
| Caesars for $15 ... and that 's a good two days of
| caloric intake right there (there are even less expensive
| ones - I'm a fan of Detroit style). Four meals for $4 per
| meal. I think it was $12 when I was unemployed for a
| while a couple years ago.
|
| I still have difficulty with grocery shopping portions
| for single servings and getting enough variety. I
| currently have a meal delivery / ready meal subscription
| that sends boxed raw ingredients that are 2 minutes of
| prep for a toaster oven and is about $12 per meal (600 -
| 800 calories). It's less expensive than door dash, the
| local diner, or the sit down casual dining and is
| portioned for cooking for one (and a lot healthier than
| four meals of pizza).
|
| ... However, being able to pay that much per meal isn't
| something that people who are getting priced out of McDs
| are able to do.
| ponector wrote:
| Or you can cook for 4 people and simply freeze 3 portions
| for later.
|
| Same about veggies, you can get a frozen mix of veggies
| and cook with it.
| shagie wrote:
| That's the idea behind meal prep Sunday... and you get
| things like https://www.reddit.com/r/MealPrepSunday/comme
| nts/1p365m1/ten... or https://www.reddit.com/r/MealPrepSu
| nday/comments/1ov08r8/get...
|
| That is certainly cheaper than individual and gets
| benefits from the scale. It isn't something that everyone
| can do (or tolerate eating the same thing every day for
| the next week).
| dyauspitr wrote:
| No, this is just the definition of excuses. It's very
| cheap and easy to cook and everyone in many parts of the
| world cook after 10 hour work days. It's not the end of
| the world or really even optional if you want to be cost-
| effective and healthy. There's only so much blame you can
| shift to society because this is staunchly within the
| realm of personal control.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Not knowing to cook is a personal failing. Like you
| mentioned cooking basic things is something you can pick
| up in one session of doomscrolling on TikTok these days.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Anecdotally, a pressure-cooked pot of beans can take over
| 40 minutes to knock together. So it is not that simple.
| esafak wrote:
| Only if you lack the planning skills to soak them in the
| morning or the night before. Besides, hydrated canned
| beans are perfectly affordable.
| f1shy wrote:
| Like if the single mum living of a minimum wage has time
| and energy while dressing the 2 kids to not forget such
| things.
|
| Sorry I know such people that I profoundly admire. I feel
| is just unfair such a comment. I have enough time and
| little stress in my life, I can plan what I'm going to
| cook the next week. But I could never criticize that
| people for not being able to.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Critique isn't necessarily just mean spirited. It's
| rather difficult to know what you don't know, and so many
| people do awful things without knowing there are
| alternatives.
|
| The example he gave of beans is perfect. They can be done
| almost completely passively, are healthy, and dirt cheap.
| Add some rice, a meat, and you have a delicious dirt
| cheap meal that takes probably less than 5 minutes of
| active effort, and also has minimal cleanup time as well.
|
| Like this article had some quote about somebody in it
| spending $20 at McDonalds for some drinks and bemoaning
| there being nothing healthier. That's simply ridiculous.
| And if somebody told them that and explained why - they
| could very possibly dramatically increase the quality of
| this person's life.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| All your comments are painting yourself as a victim and
| it's really irking me. I also feels like you're making a
| mountain out of a mole hill. This is not rocket science.
| It's cooking stuff. It's cheap and easy and you should be
| able to do it after 10 hour work shift.
| izacus wrote:
| You really need to stop being such a shortsighted techbro
| and assuming you know anything about other people's
| lives.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Planning ahead is the #1 problem for people with
| executive dysfunction, many of whom work in IT.
| bombcar wrote:
| If we replaced half of schooling with simple planning
| courses and classes half the world's problems would be
| solved.
|
| Of course, it'd crash the consumer market so of course
| it'll never be done.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Let me introduce you the concept of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
|
| Instead of blaming people, perhaps it is better to look at
| the systemic factors that we can change to help people who
| are already playing life on hard mode.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| That same pattern of the poor eating instant noodles is
| true in Asia as well.
|
| The origin of a number of those products is US food aid.
| Governments in the 60s and 70s set up facilities to convert
| the wheat they were getting into a product people would
| eat.
| f1shy wrote:
| I do not think this is exactly true. People may stop eating
| junk outside. But having a healthy balanced diet is more
| expensive than buying junk and eating at home; and not only in
| money, but more importantly (maybe) in time. Cooking takes time
| and effort, which families with both working parents may
| struggle with. Please do not forget often those people have
| more exhausting and abusive jobs.
|
| I know from first hand, how difficult can it be in that
| environment with limited money, time, and energy to go to the
| grocery store often, buy fresh things, and cook. It is much
| more convenient to buy things that go in the freezer, when they
| are in offer, and throw them into the oven when arriving home.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The problem is that people don't know how to cook. Something
| like pressure cookers (or crock pots where appropriate) are
| amazing for this sort of scenario. There are endless recipes
| you can find online that are toss a few ingredients in, wait,
| eat. Easy clean up, and delicious. I increasingly think
| cooking should be a part of basic education for everybody.
|
| Stuff like rice, beans, and chicken breast are extremely
| cheap, and most of the way towards a balanced diet by
| themselves. And cookers are like magic - just toss a bunch of
| stuff in, some spices, and it will come out amazing. I like a
| bit of yogurt as my fat, but you can go way cheaper - just
| toss some lard in there, it'll taste great.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| i'm interested in using my pressure cooker more. Do you
| have a favorite recipe?
| somenameforme wrote:
| This [1] is amazing, and also prep freezes extremely
| well. There are so many great recipes online, just search
| - it's also referred to as an instant pot in many places.
|
| [1] - https://kristineskitchenblog.com/honey-garlic-
| instant-pot-ch...
| badc0ffee wrote:
| I agree with most of what you're saying, but here in
| Canada, chicken breast is so not cheap.
| doubled112 wrote:
| About $5 bucks per skinless boneless chicken breast where
| I'm at in Canada. That's $20 in just the chicken for a
| meal if you happen to have a family of four.
|
| I swear my growing boys have hollow legs. How do you eat
| more than I do?
| ta12653421 wrote:
| Thas fucking cheap! LOL
|
| Chicken well raised and fed, is usually good starting at
| around 30-40 EUR / kg. I supermarkets selling 1kg of
| chicken for 4-5 EUR / kg - I would not touch this.
| ta12653421 wrote:
| The one who downvoted me obviously has a problem with
| high quality food.
|
| Animals held and then sold for 4-5 EUR per kg is pure
| shit. Period. I would rather eat groceries instead.
|
| Most people have no idea what high quality meet is
| because they buy their stuff always at large chains -
| remember: None of the sustainability-interested local
| farms sells to any of those supermarkt chains. You have
| to GO there to get your stuff.
|
| Such animals you can also eat without having remorse.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| The folks that this article is about are not the sort of
| folks who can afford EUR18/lb for protein. In the US, at
| least, cheap chicken can often be identified as it cooks
| up with a woody texture or suffers from a variety of
| visual defects. Out here I can't think of any farms
| selling chickens directly to consumers. More well
| regarded farms like Petaluma Poultry do, in fact, sell to
| the big chain grocery stores and that's closer to $5/lb
| for a whole "organic" chicken.
| Libidinalecon wrote:
| This is total nonsense.
|
| There is the thermodynamics of calories in and out. Then
| there are micro nutrients.
|
| Everything beyond that is bullshit marketed to suckers.
| phil21 wrote:
| Costco has been 2.99/lb for chicken breast about as long
| as I can remember now here in Chicago. It's only
| sometimes better priced than the local supermarket, but
| the quality is consistent and price stable.
|
| If I have spare time on a weekend it can be picked up far
| cheaper in bulk from a food services supply store. 2
| weeks ago when I last walked through the cooler section
| it was sitting at $1.29/lb in 40lb cases. Costs maybe 10
| cents per food saver vacuum bag or so to freeze them in
| packs of 2-4 each.
|
| A lot of folks are price takers and have forgotten how to
| comparison shop or buy on sale and stock up. These were
| skills lost over the past few generations - likely since
| stores thought they were competing on price far more than
| they actually are. Covid taught them the average consumer
| simply isn't as price sensitive as the business classes
| teach you, and have engaged in aggressive price
| segmentation.
|
| I don't bother buying most shelf stable or freezable
| products these days unless it's on a very large sale -
| which I've found tends to happen roughly quarterly for
| most things. Beef is the current exception, but we buy a
| half cow from a local farm and eat off that for a year or
| more.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Not everyone lives near a Costco. Not everyone is a fan
| of the environmental cost of their cheap chickens, or
| whatever. When I lived in San Francisco there was a
| Costco but it was more inconvenient to get to via Muni
| than most of the alternatives. Their parking garage is an
| absolute zoo. If I have spare time on a
| weekend it can be picked up far cheaper in bulk
| from a food services supply store.
|
| Not everyone has the _luxury_ of being able to store
| perishable items in bulk. Personally I struggle a bit to
| store a whole chicken in my fridge. Six and a half pounds
| (what you 'd have to buy to get Costco's $3/lb price) is
| quite a lot. And if you want to cook that chicken first
| and then freeze it, you run a high risk of it just
| tasting weird.
|
| I just checked around and for boneless, skinless chicken
| breasts: Sprouts $7/lb. Safeway
| $7/lb (more if you don't want the chlorine treated
| stuff). Trader Joe's $7.50/lb (but they've gained a
| reputation for nasty, woody chicken). Whole Foods
| out of stock. Lucky's $8.50/lb. Mollie
| Stone's $8.89/lb. Berkeley Bowl $9.59/lb. US
| Foods Chef Store $3.75/lb for *twelve pounds*.
|
| At least out here there's a lot less variability than
| you're claiming, unless you're buying enough to fill your
| entire fridge/freezer.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Not knowing how to cook isn't the main problem. Really poor
| people don't have time to cook and don't have _any_
| disposable income to buy a luxury like a pressure cooker,
| so this is fantasy. Really poor people are on SNAP (which
| doesn 't cover a lot of fast food) and food banks (which
| provide random/useless stuff like unhealthy ultra processed
| food, dented canned food like canned corn and tomatoes, and
| random produce that requires a lot of time to use).
| adrian_b wrote:
| A good microwave oven is extremely cheap, about the same
| as the food for a few weeks.
|
| I eat only food cooked by myself from raw ingredients, in
| a microwave oven. Previously I was cooking with
| traditional methods, but some years ago I have eventually
| discovered that I was misusing a microwave oven only for
| reheating, when it can be much better be used for
| cooking.
|
| In most of the cases, I cook everything that I eat
| immediately before eating it, which rarely needs more
| than 20 minutes for cleaning/peeling/paring/slicing
| vegetables, cooking in the oven and washing dishes.
|
| This is short enough. If I would go out to eat somewhere,
| I would loose much more time than that. The only thing
| that I do not cook immediately before eating is meat, as
| depending of its kind it may need up to 30 minutes of
| cooking in the oven, so I cook all the meat for a week
| during the weekend and I just reheat it and combine it
| with the garnish in the other days. When you cook for a
| large family, you can cook all the food for a week, for a
| few hours during a weekend day, and you can reheat the
| food in less than 5 minutes in all the other days.
|
| You can even bake bread very quickly and with excellent
| results in a microwave oven. When I want bread, I bake it
| immediately before the meal. Cooking at home and using
| only raw ingredients results in a cost for food that is
| frequently even 10 times less than a similar dish would
| cost from a supermarket, while being more healthy due to
| the use of high quality ingredients without any dubious
| additives. Even for bread, home-made bread is about half
| of the price of supermarket bread. Eating in a restaurant
| is of course much more expensive than buying processed
| food from a supermarket, so the difference in cost is
| even higher.
|
| Therefore I agree that most poor people spend too much on
| food that is also unhealthy, and that is because they do
| not know how to choose wisely what they eat and how to
| cook that quickly and inexpensively. I believe that these
| are essential survival skills that should be taught to
| everyone in elementary school, but, even if I had a much
| better education than most, that did not help me, so I
| have learned most of them only when old and after a lot
| of failed experiments.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Microwaving fresh bread... _WHAT??_
|
| You gotta drop a recipe or something, that is fascinating
| adrian_b wrote:
| You can use a traditional recipe, e.g. wheat flour + 75%
| water by mass + salt + either yeast or baking powder
| (e.g. for 500 grams of flour either 7 grams of instant
| dry yeast or 10 grams of baking powder), then you knead
| the dough for a few minutes (until the dough becomes
| homogeneous, elastic and sticky; after you do it a few
| times it becomes very easy to recognize the moment when
| you have kneaded enough) and when using yeast you leave
| it for an hour to grow.
|
| Then you bake for a time depending on the oven and on the
| amount of bread. I normally make breads from 500 grams of
| flour, which need about 13 minutes @ 1000 W. The
| advantage of a microwave oven, besides the short time, is
| that after you have determined the right time through
| experiments it will be always correct.
|
| For baking you must use a glass vessel with lid, to
| prevent the bread from being too dry. The vessel must be
| much bigger than the dough, at least twice bigger,
| because the bread will grow tremendously and it will be
| very fluffy.
|
| The alternative to traditional bread is to make
| unleavened bread, which can be made even faster and I
| actually like its taste more.
|
| Even with a traditional recipe, unleavened bread will
| grow a lot at microwaves, due to the expansion of
| embedded air and water. It can be made to grow more,
| almost like traditional leavened bread baked in a
| traditional oven, by increasing the amount of water in
| the dough. Instead of using 75% water as in traditional
| bread, you can increase the amount of water to around
| 120% by weight. With so much water, there is the
| additional advantage that the dough becomes very thin, so
| there is no need to knead it, you just have to mix it
| very thoroughly for a few minutes with a spoon or with an
| electric mixer.
|
| Such an unleavened dough with excess water can then be
| baked in a glass vessel without lid, also for 10 to 15
| minutes. With unleavened bread, you can have delicious
| bread in less than 20 minutes from start to finish.
|
| For improved taste, you can add to the dough various
| spices or seeds, either whole or ground. You can also add
| a sweet filling when you desire it.
|
| Microwave-baked bread normally does not have the burned
| crust, but if you desire it many ovens have an infrared
| lamp that can be used for this purpose.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Thanks for the infodump. This sounds insane to me but I'm
| 100% going to try it.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Unleavened bread is trivial to make in this way. You
| weigh the water and the floor in the baking vessel, you
| mix them, then you bake.
|
| Leavened bread is slightly more tricky, because you need
| to know how to knead.
|
| For kneading dough made from 500 grams of wheat flour
| (high-protein flour, which is usually sold as "bread
| flour"), I use a big glass bowl and I knead with a single
| hand, while keeping the bowl in the other hand. This is
| much less messy than when kneading in the way used for
| big amounts of dough. At the beginning, kneading consists
| mostly of opening and closing the hand through the dough,
| while at the end it consists mostly in pulling the dough
| upwards, which becomes very elongated while one end of it
| sticks to the kneading bowl, then pressing again the
| dough into the bowl.
|
| At the end of kneading, the dough becomes extremely
| sticky, so I keep ready a so-called "pie server" that I
| use to remove the dough from the hand that has been used
| for kneading, and for aiding in the transfer of dough
| from the kneading bowl to the baking vessel. The same pie
| server is also useful after baking, to detach the hot
| bread from the baking vessel.
| jdibs wrote:
| I'm not American but my perspective here from Europe is
| that what most poor people I know have an abundance of is
| time.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Are you interpreting "poor" as "unemployed"? The OP was
| talking about people who are employed full time but at a
| low level job (at a shop, or as a janitor or something
| like that).
| jdibs wrote:
| That definition of poor would make the majority of people
| poor.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Yes, exactly. There's a lot of poor people.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I think this really mischaracterizes the modern poor,
| especially in developed countries. It's not uncommon to
| see poor families with things like recent model phones
| worth hundreds of dollars, designer clothing/shoes, and
| the like. In many ways these are the sort of traps that
| keep people in poverty. Or referencing this article
| itself, apparently they decided to go eat at McDonalds
| and managed to spend $20 on two coffees and one coke. I
| mean that'd break the budget of just about anybody
| outside of well into the upper edge of middle class.
|
| And a pressure cooker is not a luxury, nor is it
| something that's outside anybody's price range. On Amazon
| it looks like they start around $20. And the whole point
| is that it takes basically 0 time, and saves a ton of
| money, and even time, relative to things like eating
| outside the house.
| mc32 wrote:
| Also, if people cam scroll on their phones and tables
| hours-on-end, then they can cook for an hour but scroll a
| little less.
| rini17 wrote:
| I'm afraid home cooking is the first victim of "big tech"
| strip mining our attention. When you are hooked it's too
| difficult to plainly keep concentrated on the
| cooking/cleaning process and on procuring of individual
| ingredients. No matter how easy it is, still needs
| capability to deal with messy physical stuff. And it's too
| easy to get demotivated by mediocre result.
|
| An harbinger of things to come, widespread crippling
| executive dysfunction.
| ponector wrote:
| You can have a balanced diet based on frozen meat, fish and
| vegetables. Add there pasta, beans, rice, oats, etc.
|
| Also I'm pretty sure they are spending more time on social
| media than cooking.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| Hmm.. I see your point. Grocery stores do have a lot more
| unhealthy foods than fast food I suppose. Lots of snacks and
| drinks. Even sugary breads, canned food,etc.. But because
| you're not eating out, it feels healthier.
| phil21 wrote:
| More expensive? Absolutely not. Never has been and is
| unlikely to ever be true.
|
| More difficult? Time consuming? Requires practice? Yes.
| Usually overblown though on all fronts, considering the types
| of families that seem to find ways to make cheap meals
| compared to those that do not in my experience.
|
| Fast food (and prepared/junk foods) are low friction and
| convenient. Cheap is not a metric they compete within.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Cooking your own food can generally be more expensive then
| anything mass produced because efficiency is usually better
| in centralized setups, but this depends on the meal.
| Including the time it takes, you will never beat eg. a
| bakery for more cost efficient bread.
| Libidinalecon wrote:
| The idea you can't eat a healthy and cheap diet is just
| absurd.
|
| This is exactly how I eat. Lean chicken breast is some of the
| cheapest protein. Eggs have come back down to be a good deal.
|
| Oatmeal, sweet potatoes and rice are cheap. Olive oil is
| cheap.
|
| Walmart has frozen kale in a bag for $1.50.
|
| People don't eat healthy because they don't want to eat
| healthy. It doesn't taste as good and is not as much fun.
|
| My weekly grocery bill is not that much more than cost of
| eating one meal from door dash.
|
| In term of taste, of course it sucks compared to door dash.
| For me, that is a feature and not a bug or else I would over
| eat and it wouldn't be a healthy diet.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Cheap isn't just money to buy ingredients, but also the
| time to prepare them. If you are working two 8 hour shifts
| a day, your time and energy for cooking a real dinner might
| be limited.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| Where do you live that chicken breast is cheap? It's about
| PS7/kg for the crummy water filled breast here in UK
| baiac wrote:
| Can't really say about the UK but the cheapest options
| here are in order 1) frozen chicken leg quarters and 2)
| an entire chicken (fresh, not frozen) which you have to
| break down yourself. Both options are around 3-3.5EUR/kg
| mac-attack wrote:
| Let them eat home cooked meals?
| somenameforme wrote:
| I feel like this whole article is seeking to 'maximize
| engagement', which I'm using as a lofty euphemism for trolling
| its readers.
|
| ------
|
| Mariam Gergis, a registered nurse at UCLA who also works a second
| job as a home caregiver, said she's better off than many others,
| and still she struggles. "I can barely afford McDonald's," she
| said. "But it's a cheaper option."
|
| On Monday morning she sat in a booth at a McDonald's in MacArthur
| Park with two others. The three beverages they ordered, two
| coffees and a soda, amounted to nearly $20, Gergis said, pointing
| to the receipt. "I'd rather have healthier foods, but when you're
| on a budget, it's difficult," she said.
|
| Her brother, who works as a cashier, can't afford meals out at
| all, she said. The cost of his diabetes medication has increased
| greatly, to about $200 a month, which she helps him cover.
|
| ------
| jihadjihad wrote:
| > The three beverages they ordered, two coffees and a soda,
| amounted to nearly $20
|
| I don't live in CA, but this just seems insane? Even in
| "captive" locations like airports etc. where prices for stuff
| are higher than a typical brick-and-mortar location, I don't
| even understand how two coffees and a soda could approach $20.
| If they'd DoorDashed it, sure. But those numbers don't make
| sense.
| swatcoder wrote:
| You're probably imagining two black coffees, and all three
| drinks being of modest size like medium.
|
| But if you turn those into "specialty" coffees and upsize
| them, and then add ~10% sales tax, it's very plausible that
| the price was closer to $20 than $10.
|
| Between prices inflating and people's tastes being pretty
| unmoderated and indulgent for a long while now, the total
| cost of "everyday" expenses adds up quick.
|
| Even the simple black drip coffee drinks that have basically
| no material or labor cost are priced at $2-4 in a lot of
| places now because people have become so dependent on the
| habit of treating themselves to one, and often a very large
| one, that they've become price insensitive and easily
| exploited by any coldly calculating business.
| buran77 wrote:
| > if you turn those into "specialty" coffees and upsize
| them, and then add ~10% sales tax
|
| Right off the bat, it's McDonalds, there are no "specialty"
| coffees. And the sales tax is irrelevant, what matters is
| what comes out of the pocket.
|
| $20 for McD-quality coffees and soda is insanely expensive.
| It puts it above places like Starbucks which makes no sense
| because there's a Starbucks literally 50m/150ft away from
| that very same McD.
|
| Pictures of the menu at the closest McDonald's to MacArthur
| Park show the coffees at ~$4 and sodas at ~$2-3 all large,
| which is a more realistic number but still only around half
| the quoted amount.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Huh?
|
| Of course there are "specialty" coffees at many
| McDonald's. Well over a decade ago, recognizing the
| margin and admitting the public interest in sweet,
| creamy, coffee drinks, they began a shift into direct
| competition with Starbucks, et al and offer a full menu
| of Americanized espresso and blended coffee drinks. Like
| at Starbucks, these easily run over $5 for the large
| sizes, and they're widely available.
|
| Because of both brand loyalty, or because they also want
| other things from McDonald's that Starbucks don't carry,
| it's a extremely successful and profitable product
| segment for them, even when a Starbucks is "literally
| 50m/150ft away".
|
| https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/mccafe-
| coffees....
|
| https://www.mac-menus.com/mccafe-menu/
| esseph wrote:
| One of my kids favorite drinks from McDonalds has been an
| iced mocha for roughly a decade
| bombcar wrote:
| McD's made a huge push into the "upscale coffee" market
| about a decade ago (e.g., competing directly with
| Starbucks) and it's paid off.
|
| The gas stations that did similar are also doing well.
| The era of Irma's coffee is past.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > black drip coffee drinks that have basically no material
| or labor cost
|
| Raw coffee prices have been rising for a while now[0], and
| I assume even in the US people are more attuned to decent
| coffee.
|
| And I kinda hope producing countries get enough power to
| get better deals (thus increasing coffee prices further...)
| as they're usually getting shafted pretty hard.
|
| [0] https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/coffee
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| > simple black drip coffee drinks
|
| I visited London last year and was surprised & disappointed
| that the McDonalds across from the Trocadero did not have
| any such thing as simple black drip coffee (to which I
| could add half-and-half). The closest I could come was
| "flat white", which I never heard of before in the U.S.
| shagie wrote:
| It does seem a little bit high... but "two (large) coffees"
| comes in at $5.20 each and a large soda is $3.20
| https://www.mac-menus.com/#McCafe-Coffees - that's not
| California prices though. Without additional costs (and how
| much more is it in CA) we're at $13.60 there. Add another $1
| to each item for a guess of pricing and sales tax and round
| and you're at $20.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Those are close to Starbucks prices so I imagine McCafes. You
| can get a mediocre McD coffee for $1.
| partiallypro wrote:
| In 2005 McDonald's net profit margin was ~12%, today it's ~30+%.
| Obviously that doesn't account for the entire price increase and
| wouldn't make that much of a difference...but worth noting.
| twoodfin wrote:
| Yes, they have progressively become a higher-margin business,
| which necessitates moving up market to consumers who will pay
| those margins.
| ta12653421 wrote:
| 10 USD is still the magic barrier, Id say?
| jswelker wrote:
| My lower middle class family of 4 kids was raised on $1 McChicken
| sandwiches through my teen years. I don't know if there is an
| equivalent today.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Value menus still exist: https://www.eatthis.com/restaurant-
| chains-with-most-affordab...
|
| But meat is more expensive than beans and rice.
| lisbbb wrote:
| The problem for me is that I can't eat a lot of rice due to
| digestive issues with it--it just backs me up like glue even
| when I drink tons of water. I don't think rice is a very good
| type of food, honestly. Beans are fine, good fiber and
| protein. Rice, nah.
| DANmode wrote:
| Does this happen with Jasmine rice?
|
| If no: check for MTHFR gene mutation.
|
| American rice is often washed in folic acid - don't ask me
| why - and that's toxic to MTHFR mutated individuals.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| The folic acid helps prevent certain complications early
| on in pregnancy.
| DANmode wrote:
| As long as you, or your child, aren't one of the 60%+ of
| people who can't properly break it down.
|
| In that case, all of the "enriched" bread, folic acid,
| certain forms of vitamin B, will be difficult to process
| (often causing problems).
|
| https://www.mygenefood.com/blog/mthfr-and-folic-acid-
| build-u...
|
| Folate, folinic acid: _those_ are safe to take, and pass
| through, for the entire population.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| You need to add salt and butter to rice when its cooking.
| carefulfungi wrote:
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/gros...
| jrm4 wrote:
| It's very odd there are few comments in the realm of, "Maybe
| McDonald's has grown to be bad at 'fast-fooding.'"
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Yes. You can still get over 2000 calories at Taco Bell for $8
| (this would be five of the Cheesy Bean and Rice burrito, my
| personal favorite). Even a Cheesy Double Beef burrito for the
| meat lovers can get you over 2000 calories for just over $11
| for four. And their box meals will throw in a drink for a
| decent price. You can spend a lot more, but you don't have to.
|
| This isn't meant as a Taco Bell commercial, just a comparison
| to todays McDonald's.
| shoddydoordesk wrote:
| You can also get 2000 calories by eating an entire box of
| supermarket donuts, but that doesn't make it a good idea.
| trentnix wrote:
| Taco Bell's prices are absolutely through the roof, too. I'm
| not seeing the "decent price" at my local TB that you're
| seeing.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Thanks, it's actually been a few years since I've been to
| one.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| I don't think that person is right. If you're price
| sensitive and don't just look at the default [combo]
| prices then Taco Bell is still elite and known for giving
| you cheap ways to get calories.
|
| They always have a combo that's cheap and rotates
| monthly. And like you said they have a few cheap value
| food like Bean and rice burrito which is also one of my
| staples.
|
| Also you're supposed to use the apps if you're price
| sensitive. I work outside all day and couch surf without
| access to a kitchen. I never look at the actual menu of
| any place if there's an app available. Apps also let you
| see prices between different locations.
|
| However almost everyone I see go to any place in the real
| world is always buying stuff just looking at the default
| menu prices.
| aboringusername wrote:
| Agreed. Food now is made to order, rather than being ready and
| waiting (likely to reduce stock waste). Last time I went there
| was hardly a queue, wasn't rush-hour (was quite dead actually,
| few staff, fewer customers).
|
| Food still took 15 minutes, fries were cold, the main meal was
| nice but was overall disappointing for the eye-watering cost
| compared to days gone by.
|
| And a few guys collecting for delivery which has split their
| focus from in-resturant customers.
|
| Can see why people have moved on.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Ha, saw my points on this comment go up, then down.
|
| Y'all some sheep.
| FerretFred wrote:
| I can only speak for the UK but for quite a while now, McD's has
| become an uninviting experience, with miserable staff, menu
| screens that visibly tell you to hurry the f*k up and choose the
| product. Not to mention customers vying with delivery drivers for
| orders. I think the problem applies to all-income customers.
| detritus wrote:
| Also, PS4.20 for a Double Bacon & Egg McMuffin is just ... no.
| Why?
|
| I could swear it wasn't that long ago it was under PS3.
|
| For a fiver I can get a better 'real' Bacon & Egg bap from an
| independent.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I paid PS5.09 for a sausage and egg mcmuffin meal with coffee
| and a hash brown this morning. I think that's pretty
| reasonable, especially for London.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I have quite a lot of difficulty eating out once you start
| cooking at home, because think of what you are buying:
|
| - one English muffin (is it called an English muffin in
| England?)
|
| - one slice of cheese
|
| - one egg
|
| - one slice of ham
|
| - one cup of coffee
|
| - one hashbrown
|
| PS5.09 for that? Obviously when you buy from a restaurant
| you're paying for their labor, rent, electric, and much
| more so it makes sense - McDonald's franchisees tend to
| operate on single digit profit margins even at that cost.
| But mehhh, still. And then the food you end up buying is
| packed full of preservatives and other additives and
| artificial ingredients.
| walthamstow wrote:
| It was hot and tasty and delivered near-instantly to my
| car at 6am. There's no way the fair price for that is
| less than a fiver.
|
| If you've never lived here, I'm not sure you can really
| say what PS5 is or isn't worth anyway.
| stavros wrote:
| Yeeeeah I had a PS4.50 coke yesterday. Getting a meal for
| that price is pretty good, even if meal is in quotes.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| The price for each of those at my local supermarket when
| buying the low quality option in bulk:
|
| English Muffin: 70C/
|
| Slice of cheese: 40C/
|
| Egg: 40C/
|
| Slice of Ham: 50C/
|
| Hash browns: 40C/
|
| Coffee: $1?
|
| In total $3.40. PS5.09 for that in hot, prepared form
| ready to eat sounds _cheap_ to me, not expensive.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| I calculated how much I spend on food, shopping at Lidl
| in the EU in a mid range expensive country, and I pay
| about 3 euros per day.
|
| That's about the same as $3.40, but for 4 full meals (one
| of those is smaller than the others)
|
| Admittedly I've optimized my menu.
| knowitnone3 wrote:
| but you don't say what you buy because eating only
| potatoes really is cheap
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Dude you're not even trying, why buy muffins and eggs
| when you could grow wheat, grind flour, raise chickens
| and get eggs for free, slaughter your own pigs and cure
| the bacon yourself... because labour costs nothing and
| convenience has no value amirite?
| somenameforme wrote:
| I find it bemusing that so people are simultaneously
| extremely agitated by high prices but also completely
| disinterested in doing anything except paying them. With
| this mindset it's not particularly hard to guess which
| direction they'll trend in over time, even if the world
| wasn't going nutters.
|
| I mean these things are not difficult to make. They even
| freeze _extremely_ well, and then you toss them in the
| microwave for a couple of minutes while you 're getting
| ready and they're done. And the food you create is not
| only much cheaper, but also way healthier and also higher
| quality. When you go to a McDonalds you're getting the
| cheapest possible find they can source on a global level.
| The only reason they dropped pink slime [1] is because
| they were outed using it on television.
|
| Incidentally that was a long time ago and while Wiki is
| quiet unclear it seems that the USDA chose to reclassify
| back as simply ground back in 2018. If it's been
| rebranded and remains legal, that's probably what people
| are now eating, again, at least in the US - as it's
| deemed unfit for human consumption in Canada and the EU.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime
| walthamstow wrote:
| I don't know where you get the assumption that people who
| eat McDonalds can't or don't also cook their own fresh
| food from scratch.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I did not say that. I was responding to a person who
| engaged in banal snark implying that making food for
| oneself is a herculean task, but it all depends on what
| you're making, and things can be extremely stream lined.
| In the case of what we're talking about (mcmuffin stuff),
| you can even cook and freeze them in arbitrarily large
| quantities and it's way cheaper, healthier, and even
| faster since it's in your freezer instead of having to go
| out.
|
| I do think that the fast food (or even eating out in
| general) starts to lack any real selling point for
| households that are capable of cooking, and so this is
| probably going to weight the customers, especially
| regulars, of these sort of places away from households
| that do cook. I suppose you'd argue time is the selling
| point, but one can even remain competitive on there with
| things like pressure cooker meals. There are even one pot
| rice cooker meals which are also great.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| I think it's from living in the world and actually
| meeting people.
| dingaling wrote:
| PS5.09 is about 25 minutes work at National Minimum Wage (
| PS12.21 per hour ), about 5.6% of daily income at NMW and
| standard working hours.
|
| A bacon & egg McMuffin provides 336 kcal, which is 13% of
| an adult male's RDI. So on a purely kcals:price level it
| does seem to provide decent value.
| walthamstow wrote:
| For PS5.09 you get the hash brown, so it's 500+ cals. It
| costs 25 mins of paid labour and it also saves N minutes
| of domestic labour if one were to have similar hot
| protein+cals at home. High-income people tend not to
| understand this part, they'll say you can eat beans and
| rice for nothing.
| ben_w wrote:
| On the kcal/PS basis, Tesco biscuits (for Americans:
| cookies) are more than an order of magnitude better, 487
| kcal/100g, PS0.22/100g, about PS0.15 for as many kcal as
| that McMuffin: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-
| GB/products/290329100
|
| On the basis of an actually balanced diet, boiling a pot
| of water and adding lentils, rice, and value frozen veg
| on a timer, are likewise. Which is of course why that's a
| staple diet in parts of the world much poorer than the
| UK.
| pixl97 wrote:
| You sure it's still a fiver and not up to 7.
|
| Even going to the grocer the price for raw goods is way up.
| ta12653421 wrote:
| ...well, wait: At McDonalds this is a high price for bad
| quality - in a good restaurant it may be cheap :-)
| f1shy wrote:
| My experience is that quality in McD is rapidly declining. We
| may agree was never a Michelin star restaurant. But I remember
| being more or leas enjoying the food. Now I just can't. Maybe
| I'm getting older. But I would swear the quality is much worse
| now than say 5 or 10 years ago.
| esseph wrote:
| Seems to be exactly the same quality at least here in the US,
| that it has always been.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| In some ways the rest of the world's McDonald's are simply
| plummeting to the low quality of those in the US.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| As of ~1 year ago, American-fast-food-in-France was still
| noticeably better than -in-America.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Austria resident checking in - since I moved here I
| noticed the quality of McD's is way, way better than in
| the UK. And apart from the regular menu being a whole
| different experience, you've got great quality coffee and
| cakes. It's a whole world of difference.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| Here in Sweden they changed their recipes a few years
| ago. I can't stand the Big Mac now. Previously it at
| least felt kind of fresh although low quality. Now it has
| a weird freeze dried sensation to the vegetables :/
| stavros wrote:
| Here in Greece, we have so much good quality street food
| that McDonald's is street trash by comparison. I don't
| consider it food, there are only about eight or nine
| restaurants in the entire country and I think most people
| go there because of the novelty.
| throaway123123 wrote:
| Please don't let Greece get too wealthy, the quality
| street food will get pushed out and replaced with
| overpriced yuppie food that all gets sourced from the
| exact same company!
| lisbbb wrote:
| My family and I ate at one this evening. My son wanted to try
| to the McRib. I'm not sure he loved it, but it looked fine.
| My wife and I both had the $5 McValue meal, and we got a free
| medium fry because it was Friday. We shared one of the drinks
| because I'm not supposed to be eating lots of sugar. Some
| McD's don't have a drink station in the public seating area
| anymore, but the one we go to does. All in all, it was not a
| bad meal for like $15. I don't see any degradation in their
| quality at all. I think that quality is highly dependent on
| which one you visit and how well it is managed.
| phil21 wrote:
| I've had McDonalds twice in the past 12mo. Once locally
| just because I was for whatever reason craving it, once on
| a late night last minute road trip in the middle of nowhere
| midwestern USA.
|
| Hasn't seemed to have a discernible quality difference
| since back when I ate it regularly a decade ago.
|
| Prices noticeably up, but I refuse to use the app and am
| willing to pay extra for the privilege.
| im3w1l wrote:
| For me it's the competition. So many competing chains and
| independent burger joints have sprung up and spoilt me. For
| 20%-30% more than mcd prices I can get something way way
| better.
| tiew9Vii wrote:
| > My experience is that quality in McD is rapidly declining.
| We may agree was never a Michelin star restaurant
|
| That's the thing with McDonalds.
|
| You could go in to any store no matter where you was and know
| you got a consistent level of hygiene, cleanliness, good fast
| efficient service and while not gourmet food you knew the
| food you was going to get was a consistent standard. It was
| the reliable, dependable safe option in a list of unknown
| options. McDonalds was McDonalds know matter where you was.
|
| Now it's no longer clean as they got rid of all the staff
| replacing them with screens. Stores are generally filthy with
| mess everywhere.
|
| There is no consistent service as they got rid of all the
| staff and replaced them with screens that sometime work,
| sometimes don't, often out of paper for receipts/order
| numbers.
|
| It's no longer fast as you need to mess about with broken
| screens, and repeatedly declining up sell options each step
| of the way vs giving a order at the counter and being done.
|
| The quality now varies from store to store
|
| It's no longer cheap. For the price of a McDonalds, in
| Australia I can go in to a Pub/Hotel and get a better meal if
| i get a special.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| The last time I was in a McD (this year), it smelled
| faintly of feces, and yep it was a mess. It really did put
| me off going to any other McDonald's. I know that's one
| experience but prior ones had been trending in that
| direction.
| api wrote:
| The problem is they're in an uncanny valley. They're too
| expensive for low income customers and their food is too
| shitty to compete with other things you can get for the
| same price. Starbucks will give you food that's similarly
| priced and much tastier and healthier. McD is disgusting.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I'd say you've just grown up and experienced decent food now.
| McDonald's is marketed to children and caters for the child-
| like palate: sweet, salty and acidic, like tomato ketchup.
|
| When I grew up in the UK in the 80s/90s we ate typical
| British food. Potatoes every day, boiled veg, baked beans,
| beige protein things. Back then it was possible to have
| "Chinese" or "Indian", but it's all total shit: overly sweet,
| not spicy, greasy as fuck bastardised rubbish. Nowadays I can
| actually find real Indian, French, Italian etc. that is
| actually delicious. It's difficult to imagine going back to
| beige stuff I grew up on.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I think this is under-appreciated. The technology of food
| has progressed immensely in the last decades! Even recipes
| from the 90s don't hold up as well, because home cooks have
| access to more knowledge, techniques, tools, ingredients,
| foodstuffs. And of course if you look at photos of food and
| typical dining from the 80s you can sort of spot a
| difference visually as well.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The app drives me _crazy_ on the occasions I do have to use it.
|
| Picking fries brings me to a one-item category where I can...
| pick fries again.
|
| Latency during the order process is insane, and then they add
| animations and little popup alerts throughout that actively
| interfere with me getting my all-important order code while I'm
| sitting like an asshole in the drive-through.
| tzs wrote:
| Yeah, the McD app is ridiculous. For some items it gives me
| an add to order dialog and then an add to bag dialog (I might
| have the order of those two swapped). I'm not sure what the
| distinction is between adding to the order and adding to the
| bag.
|
| It also has some ridiculous restrictions. Nearly every week I
| take advantage of their in-app deal for free medium fries on
| Friday if you spend at least $1 on other stuff. I make a
| sandwich at home, order a couple cookies plus the free fries
| in the app, then go pick them at the McD that is about half a
| mile from my home.
|
| Occasionally though instead of making a sandwich I decide I'd
| like to use my McD reward points to get a free burger. But
| you can't get both a rewards points item and a deal item on
| the same order.
|
| I end up doing a rewards points order for a free burger,
| picking that up at the drive through, parking, then doing a
| cookies plus free fries deal order, and going through the
| drive through again to get that.
|
| What's the point of not allowing both a rewards item and a
| deal item on the same order? If the rule was you could only
| use one reward or deal per day, then it would make some
| sense.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| That's funny
| b212 wrote:
| Loved that story!
| stavros wrote:
| Why do you go through the drive through twice instead of
| just pretending to be the next car as well?
| silisili wrote:
| At least from my perspective, COVID broke everything. People
| are more awful, quality is more awful, and prices are way up. I
| dread even eating out anymore as I fully expect to overpay for
| bad food and service.
|
| There's an argument to be made that inflation is ultimately the
| driver of all three complaints, but boy did that all happen
| seemingly overnight.
| conception wrote:
| Both are tied together. The stock market didn't double during
| Covid because we were making more. The US printed a lot of
| money. A lot.
| ta9000 wrote:
| The secret is to eat out less often and spend more when you
| do. Service is fantastic still at higher end restaurants.
| graemep wrote:
| Probably varies where you are, but in the UK (especially
| outside London) there are lots of places you can have
| reasonably good food an service at a decent price. A lot of
| pubs with good food now, for example.
| goku12 wrote:
| > I dread even eating out anymore as I fully expect to
| overpay for bad food and service.
|
| I don't know if HN is the place to say this. But, it's just
| infinitely better these days to cook your own meals. With
| some modest initial investment and planning, you can minimize
| the average time and cost of doing it, while still having
| access to a reasonaly healthy and delicious menu, though
| slightly repetitive. But if you really want to indulge,
| setting aside a couple of hours will give you dishes that
| taste way beyond anything you can afford from outside.
|
| Some people are natural born chefs with an intuitive
| understanding of tastebuds. But if you're like me in that
| you're clueless about it, there are still some exceptional
| recipes you can steal online. I treat cooking more like
| chemistry, insisting follow exact measurements and time. It
| still works out really well for me. You might even tweak the
| recipe over 4 or 5 repetitions to your at most satisfaction.
| Anybody who hasn't given it a try really should, at least
| once.
| ctchocula wrote:
| You can't finish your comment without sharing some of your
| favourite recipes =P
| goku12 wrote:
| Practically anything you can find online videos for are
| better than their counterparts from low end restaurants.
| I have a lot of favs, but most are regional dishes that
| are not very well known internationally. Pastas are an
| exception. Cakes too taste a whole lot different and much
| richer when you do it.
| auggierose wrote:
| Yup. Something really simple and cheap, and definitely not
| worse in nutrition than McDonald's: Buy a pack of chicken
| legs, marinate them to your liking (for example: olive oil,
| salt, pepper, smoked or unsmoked paprika, onion powder,
| garlic powder, chicken or veggie bouillon cube), let them
| sit for an hour. Put it into the oven for 50min to an hour
| at 160 degrees Celsius. Cook rice on the side. After
| chicken legs are done take them out, and mix rice into the
| juices. Add some ketchup if you like. Put chicken legs back
| on top. Bake for max 4 minutes at 200 degrees. Enjoy.
|
| Now, that will take you about 2 hours to make in absolute
| time, but the actual time to do this is very little, a few
| minutes.
| goku12 wrote:
| I wasn't expecting a recipe as a reply here, but I
| appreciate it. Sounds easy and delicious too.
| auggierose wrote:
| Oh, forgot the lemon juice in the marinade.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Yet the price of good Parmesan has basically doubled since
| Covid?
|
| It's so expensive now we ration its usage.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It always was? These discussions imply the existence of a
| large class of people subsisting primarily on restaurants
| and takeout, who surely are only a few percent of the
| population?
|
| Restaurants are for special occasions. McDonald's is, or
| used to be, a cheap "treat", or standard food for
| travellers.
| GOD_Over_Djinn wrote:
| Absolutely. I feel bad for young people growing up in this
| broken world. They will never even know what was taken from
| them.
|
| I realize that I'm probably going to get dogpiled for saying
| it, but I think that the response to COVID (ie lockdowns) did
| far more damage than the disease itself.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Genuine question: do you think that the lockdowns had such
| long-lasting effect on people as to explain the problems
| described above?
|
| Why would a few months of a "bad idea" induce decade-long
| changes?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It wouldn't. The response to COVID merely accelerated the
| changes that were happening due to changes in the
| population age histogram.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Why would a few months of a "bad idea" induce decade-
| long changes?
|
| I don't know about how COVID-19 was handled in the USA,
| but in Germany it rather was " _many years_ of bad idea
| ".
| bragh wrote:
| It wasn't a few months, it was a few years of back-and-
| forth political and corporate shenanigans with a new
| narrative every few months that the $CURRENT_THING crowd
| happily ran along with.
|
| January 2020: there is nothing to afraid of, the new
| disease is mostly harmless and affects only the elderly
| and immunocompromised. Closing down borders is
| xenophobic. March 2020: do not go outside unless
| critically necessary and if you violate the rules, we
| will severely punish you May 2020: it's fine to have
| large public gatherings for BLM protests.
|
| February 2020: masks do nothing and actually are harmful
| unless you are trained to use a mask, do not buy any
| masks. April 2020: wear a mask if you go outside, or you
| kill everybody else. Your own fault that you don't have a
| mask.
|
| Summer of 2020: look, it's actually so great that we are
| all working remotely now, the nature is healing, all the
| emissions are so much reduced, this is the new future!
| Summer of 2023: everybody back to the office, real estate
| is suffering. People who joined during COVID time? Your
| contract is now altered, pray we do not alter it any
| further.
|
| The promises around vaccines, printing money and "loans
| for struggling businesses" are even more stories of their
| own. Beats me why after a few years of these kind of
| shenanigans people would generally get tired of other
| people.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I certainly got tired of the people who decided the
| answer was to become antisocial and not even try to
| mitigate the risks, and then shame anyone who did. Lost a
| bit of my faith in humanity. Well, more than a bit, I
| think.
| bragh wrote:
| And all those years could have been avoided by treating a
| new unknown disease as it should have been treated
| instead of trusting China's word on it. Go figure.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Yep, and all the while Fauci leading the 'investigation'
| (i.e. cover up) while he knew exactly that he had gone
| around Obama to keep funding gain-of-function research.
| Fauci is a truly nefarious odious person. Look in to his
| role in the AIDS crisis with ATZ.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| >I certainly got tired of the people who decided the
| answer was to become antisocial and not even try to
| mitigate the risks, and then shame anyone who did. Lost a
| bit of my faith in humanity. Well, more than a bit, I
| think.
|
| The masks didn't do shit and neither did vaccinations. It
| was all scaremongering. Don't you get it? Israel had
| nearly 100% vaccination rate but didn't do any better
| than Gaza which had none. Masks don't prevent the spread
| at all. The 6 foot distancing rule was just made up. Why
| do people not understand this? Is it willful ignorance?
| maxerickson wrote:
| It can be that social order is partly maintained by
| conformance and a bunch of people found out that there
| aren't consequences for choosing not to conform.
|
| In the local facebook rants group, any time someone posts
| about someone doing something that is mildly antisocial
| (a reasonable thing to rant about), there's always
| several comments saying "So what, who cares".
|
| Like sure, it isn't the end of the world to park like an
| asshole, but it would suck if everybody did it, so it's
| better if no one does it. And it's the same for dozens of
| other minor little things you might encounter in a given
| week.
| Tanoc wrote:
| Normal people were shown that they had no real bearing on
| the world, and were forced to live without being rushed
| for a year or in some places two. Without the need to
| constantly look over their shoulders for encroaching
| crises people started to examine the world around them.
| They had time to enjoy things without constantly battling
| with mental, emotional, or physical exhaustion that lead
| to procrastination just to recover a little bit. So many
| realized they were being deprived of not only recreation,
| but fulfilling their basic needs outside of food and
| sleep. So they shifted from fearing the systems that
| deprived them to loathing them and the people who
| administrated them, and resolved to deny contributing to
| those systems as much as possible. That's why there were
| so many sweeping changes starting in May of 2020, not in
| the way the systems of the world were run, but in the way
| the public at large engaged with them.
|
| Much of what's been happening over the last five years
| can be compared to the behaviours of those suffering
| through trauma after long term abuse. Some continued the
| cycle against new targets, ignoring a collective truth.
| Others realized they were victims of the cycle and chose
| to work towards safeguards that would prevent it from
| continuing. Another group learned about the cycle and
| thought they would benefit from being new instigators for
| it.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| For me yes. I'm not the same, much more depressed. I was
| already prone to it but two years of home imprisonment
| while living alone really damaged me. I also have a
| really bad reaction to the masks due to a youth trauma
| where I nearly choked. Being forced to trigger that
| memory daily was terrible. I did wear them of course (I'm
| in Europe so we had quite heavy restrictions). Maybe it
| was necessary for society but for me personally the
| damage was much higher than the benefit. On the bright
| side when it was over in 2022 it did make me go out again
| and I go out partying every weekend until 6am still. That
| probably wouldn't have happened because I'm in my 50s.
|
| I think the measures were a bit overblown though some
| were necessary. But shit like curfews was ridiculous. It
| made contagion worse because the shops were only open
| during the day so everyone had to go there during a much
| shorter time. So they were always chock full of
| customers, exactly the thing you don't want during a
| pandemic.
| graemep wrote:
| > I think that the response to COVID (ie lockdowns) did far
| more damage than the disease itself.
|
| Possibly true in some places. I think it very likely did in
| the UK.
|
| > I feel bad for young people growing up in this broken
| world
|
| The world has always been broken. Look at the 20th Century,
| two world wars, multiple smaller wars, Gulag, great leap
| forward, cold war, genocides.....
|
| In many ways the world is better than its ever been.
|
| What is true is that the golden age the west had from the
| end of the cold war until the early 21st century has come
| to a close, but that was an exceptional time for people in
| a small proportion of the world.
|
| Like the username. Nice reference.
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| I don't understand why people still blame the lockdowns.
| When the lockdowns started, it was unknown how dangerous
| Covid actually was. It could have killed 20%, or reduced
| lifespan by 30%, or something. Nobody knew. It takes 20/20
| hindsight to blame lockdowns for what was a generational
| catastrophe. It's like blaming shelter in place
| requirements instead of the bombing of the reich.
| grosswait wrote:
| Nobody knew, that is true. But not everyone was in
| agreement, it only seemed that way because dissenting
| voices were silenced. Do some research and you'll find
| that there were plenty of people predicting bad outcomes
| from the lockdowns. I was not one of them, but they exist
| for sure.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| To be fair to the parent, despite what they think about
| the lockdown decision now, it says nothing about whether
| or not they thought it made any sense _then_.
|
| It's perferctly possible to believe that the lockdown was
| a reasonable decision with what was known then, and still
| believe that the lockdown is to blame for certain
| unavoidable consequences down the line. Again, the parent
| might not believe this as well but their point can be
| taken separately fron your complaint.
|
| Since several generations of Americans are not familiar
| with a drawn out sustained attack on acceptable cost-of-
| living parameters, the observation that "people are more
| awful" should be familiar to many people who lived and
| endured in places that have had decades-long
| deteriorating econonmies. If the economy or subjective
| economic perception had not tanked post-lockdown, the
| awfulness of people would be much less pronounced I
| believe.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| I seem to remember that Sweden applied the WHO
| recommendations as they were written and didn't lock down
| because the damage of locking down is huge and everybody
| dog pilled on them about how it was stupid.
|
| Turn out their excess mortality was quickly better than
| the other Nordic countries and their economy and mental
| health did better if I remember correctly.
|
| People should complain more about the lockdowns. Most of
| them were extremely poorly implemented and stupidly
| managed.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| To the people downvoting me, you are welcome to actually
| look at the numbers. [1]
|
| Feel free to read about what it shows about lockdowns.
| [2] [3] [4]
|
| I understand that the US has somehow turned this topic
| into a political debate and people hate facing that they
| might have been wrong but I am thankfully not from this
| part of the world and the evidence is not in favour of
| lockdowns ever being such a good idea. If you read the
| BBC article, you will see that we have reached such a
| polarised and abusive moment in time that even some
| experts are scared commenting on the available data.
|
| [1] https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/34/4/737/7675
| 929?log...
|
| [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-024-
| 01216-7
|
| [3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecaf
| .12611
|
| [4] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250304-the-
| countries-th...
| op00to wrote:
| You remember incorrectly.
|
| Norway and Sweden took opposite approaches in 2020--
| Norway used strict lockdowns, tight border controls, and
| intensive outbreak tracking, while Sweden kept society
| largely open. The results weren't subtle. As the Juul
| paper puts it: "That resulted in 477 COVID-19 deaths
| (Norway) and 9,737 (Sweden) in 2020, respectively."
| Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8807990/
| diogenescynic wrote:
| >When the lockdowns started, it was unknown how dangerous
| Covid actually was
|
| That's simply not true. They already knew the death rate
| was like .001% higher than the flu--I was discussing this
| in the office before we were ever sent home for the
| lockdowns. We knew it wasn't Ebola, but the media had a
| death clock and scaremongered everyone into a national
| mass delusion. I say this as someone who voted against
| Trump, but in hindsight it honestly feels like the media
| just went with it to try to make sure Trump wouldn't get
| re-elected. It was all propaganda.
| hasperdi wrote:
| > .001% higher than the flu
|
| That isn't true. Just from this paper
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9115089 ...
| COVID-19 killed roughly five to seven times more
| hospitalized older adults than influenza.
|
| Anecdotal, my uncle, several friends' relatives died from
| COVID during those lockdowns. I don't know / heard anyone
| died because of flu (in my extended circle of people I
| know)
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Fake news. Let's see the stats for 2025. Those numbers
| from the pandemic were not real. Anyone who died, they
| just attributed to COVID. Total fraud. They wanted to
| scare everyone into getting an untested risky vaccine
| that they had a financial motive to give people. It comes
| down to money like everything else.
| ghc wrote:
| Propaganda? COVID was the third most common verified
| cause of death in the US in the first 18 months after the
| lockdown started in March, and that's despite the
| lockdown. That's 10x more deaths per month than the
| particularly bad flu last year. Do you not remember the
| morgue trucks? The whole health system was overwhelmed.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| All that means is someone checked a box that said COVID.
| Those stats are absolutely fake. Why are we not seeing
| the same deaths now then? There's no lockdown and COVID
| still exists AND even fewer people are getting the
| vaccines. Your argument makes no sense.
|
| >Do you not remember the morgue trucks?
|
| You believe everything CNN and MSNBC tells you?
| shmeeed wrote:
| Too many people either never saw or forgot about the
| morgue trucks. Or the footage that showed flocks of
| vultures circling over south american cities from afar.
| Desperate people coughing and dying in their own cars in
| hospitals' driveways. Body bags littering the floors of
| hospitals in third world countries.
|
| All of that happened, but it went right over a lot of
| people's heads, and nobody talks about it anymore because
| it became such a sore and divisive topic and we're all
| glad it's over.
|
| I remember well the video showing a whole column of
| military trucks transporting bodies out of the city of
| Bergamo, Italy, on March 19th, 2020. I took a screenshot
| because the magnitude of what this meant gave me shivers.
| It was one of those moments when the world seemed to stop
| for a minute and was changed forever like on 9/11, to me
| at least.
|
| Ever since, I can't find much common ground for
| discussion with people claiming it was just a flu. You
| either acknowledge the difference or you don't.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| So then why isn't it happening now? Why did Israel not
| fare better despite their much higher vaccination rates
| than Gaza without any vaccinations? It was never a
| pandemic and never anything more than a severe flu.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Two weeks to flatten the curve.
|
| Institutions can only lose their credibility once. That
| was one of the worst things that Covid did.
| GOD_Over_Djinn wrote:
| Some, including myself, were against lockdowns from day
| 1, and were viciously attacked for it.
| fragmede wrote:
| It's a pretty anti-social viewpoint. Why do you think you
| shouldn't have been?
| bamboozled wrote:
| A packet of crisps is now $4, yes they are fancy gourmet but
| they were three last year, it's just insane . Next year they
| will be $5 I guess?
| butvacuum wrote:
| Blame the spud monopoly for that one.
|
| I wish I was joking.
| thelock85 wrote:
| I have a slightly different take that everything was really
| broken right before, but Covid and its response brought
| everything to bear.
|
| I see this play out a lot in ed reform politics where leaders
| conveniently compact decades of prior failure into the "Covid
| gap".
|
| To be sure Covid and the response produced a slew of new
| problems, too, but I think they are massively inflated by
| prior failures.
| georgefrowny wrote:
| The UK is still blaming all sorts of stuff on the pandemic
| that are actually structural failures showing effects. It's
| a especially convenient time for cover considering Brexit
| happened in early 2020 and between then and now no major
| party has been willing to come out and say that Brexit has
| been damaging.
|
| I don't even think it was necessary for Brexit to have been
| a net negative. There are plenty of ways the UK can thrive
| outside the EU, but the UK governments have basically done
| the square root of fuck all between 2016 and now to plan or
| execute on anything substantive.
|
| That said, long-term problems included a lot more than
| Brexit, like the slow euthanasia of the industrial base and
| the parting out of anything but nailed down to the highest
| bidder.
| LocalH wrote:
| COVID isn't the only thing that broke everything, but it was
| quite the accelerant
| porjo wrote:
| Australian here and the sentiment is the same. Drive-through is
| tolerable but dine-in is not pleasant due to basic cleaning
| like sweeping, wiping of tables not being done.
| bombcar wrote:
| Around here dine-in costs the same or _more_ than the local
| diner; why would you do it?
|
| The only saving grace is the happy meal and that's getting
| too expensive now, also.
| throaway123123 wrote:
| Canadian who agrees and will add that 95% of the employees
| are also new immigrants which really rankles us who have had
| to look hard for any kind of unskilled job!
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| "They're poor, they don't care a about basic human dignity." -
| McDonald's CEO probably.
|
| It truly is the most "Shove this in your slop hole you wretch"
| experience in all of fast food.
| silisili wrote:
| It's pretty hilarious because your comment is exactly their
| goal.
|
| McDonald's is laser focused on low income customers. They do
| not want to compete in the middle income space, as they don't
| visit as often and there's ton more(and better) competition.
|
| Their CEO has been blunt about this recently, and trying to
| find ways to get low-income customers back. Dire straits
| ahead for them, they've priced themselves into a place they
| don't want to be nor will they be able to succeed in.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| I used to eat there when I was young and poor.
|
| I used to stop at ones off the highway if I was taking a
| road trip.
|
| I used to grab the occasional soft serve just for nostalgia
| sake.
|
| Now I'll hit the gas stations deli sandwiches or roller
| dogs before setting foot in the attached McDonalds.
| ndiddy wrote:
| I don't like how the CEO is portraying this as something
| solely caused by outside market forces. In the last 10
| years, their profit margin has gone from ~17% to ~32%. The
| pricing is an intentional decision that they could choose
| to change at any time.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I only used McDonald's in an emergency, if there is no where
| else to eat, and having to now use those screens, I must be
| really desperate.
|
| Better replace the kitchen with cooking robots as well then.
| lewiscollard wrote:
| From the UK too, and your experience is matched by mine. The
| last time I was in one (I mean "the last time" in both senses
| of the words) I waited over 20 minutes for my food; I do not
| know how long it would have actually taken because at that
| point I got bored, wrote it off as a loss and walked out. No
| sense in complaining to anyone because that would have consumed
| even more of my time.
|
| McDonalds is not food and it is not even fast anymore.
|
| I cannot blame their staff for any of this anyway; if I was
| being paid that little to be treated like garbage I wouldn't
| give a shit either.
| lumost wrote:
| I do wonder if the US is soon to experience a regression in
| productivity due to compensation practices.
|
| If all accessible jobs have declining pay, when do you start
| to reduce effort to match?
| Tanoc wrote:
| That's already happening. Roadsides aren't being cleaned up
| because the local DOTs aren't being paid enough. That
| leaves fallen rocks, mud buildup from floods, tree
| branches, and overgrown bushes very close to the roadway.
| Grocery stores have empty shelves because they don't get
| enough stockers. If you go to the meats aisle it's a good
| chance you'll either find some pork that's started to turn
| yellow or some beef that's started to turn brown because
| nobody wants to dig through the freezer. They get told the
| meat's old, they find the visible one, and the put a price
| reduced sticker on it. Walk into a hospital and the grating
| at the entryway will be filled with mud, the baseboards
| along the walls in the hallways will be scuffed to hell,
| and the walls will have scrapes taken out of them because
| the maintenance staff aren't being paid enough to care. Go
| into a bank and you'll have one teller working both the
| drive through and the front desk, and they'll take their
| time getting to you because the drive-through counts
| towards their statistics since the interaction with the
| drop off point is tracked. They aren't paid enough to work
| back and forth in the down time when either is doing
| something the teller doesn't need to be involved in.
|
| Apathy's just setting in across the board, and it's
| entirely warranted. One hour of work can't even afford you
| one hour of reward anymore when it comes to most non-
| specialized and non-salaried jobs.
| bromuro wrote:
| Here in Spain i have had only good experiences and i love
| sometimes going to McDonald!
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Here in Japan I have only had good experiences, but I can't
| say I love going to McDonalds. The breakfast offerings are
| decent and it's extremely fast service. During peak times
| seats will be around 95 percent full but the restaurant
| remains very clean. I think the cleanliness in part is due to
| the patrons being responsible.
| linguae wrote:
| I'm an American living in the San Francisco Bay Area who
| travels to Japan twice per year. McDonald's in Japan is
| better than McDonald's in America. McDonald's in Japan not
| only is cleaner and has better customer service, but is
| cheaper.
|
| McDonald's in America wasn't always expensive; I was in
| high school and college in the 2000s when the dollar menu
| had double cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches, and small
| orders of fries. The regular menu didn't break the bank,
| either. Prices started shooting upward in the 2010s; first
| the Double Cheeseburger on the dollar menu got replaced
| with the McDouble (one slice of cheese instead of two),
| then it exited the dollar menu and became 2 for $3, then 2
| for $4. But after COVID, prices exploded. I remember the
| first time seeing a fast food combo meal selling for more
| than $10 sometime about five years ago, but it was the most
| expensive meal on the menu. Nowadays in my area $10-$12
| combo meals are the norm. It's sad and maddening; my salary
| hasn't risen at this level!
|
| Meanwhile in Japan, I could get a Big Mac meal for around
| Y=800. Even when the yen was strong, $8 beats $11. At
| today's yen valuation ($5.09), it's more than half the
| cost, and with better customer service at that!
|
| I make six figures but I feel like fast food prices in
| California are a ripoff ($10+ for a crappy meal? No
| thanks!), and so I quit eating out except when traveling or
| for entertainment, such as hanging out with friends.
| bombcar wrote:
| Spain has McBeer, right? Like Portugal? Different world!
| tiagod wrote:
| In Portugal we also have Soup and Salad :)
| rkomorn wrote:
| But, tragically, no hash browns. :(
| shmeeed wrote:
| "In Amsterdam, you can buy a beer at McDonald's!"
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yes here they have the Uber cheap menu4you option too. A
| double cheeseburger which is pretty much a big Mac (but with
| nicer sauce), fries and coke for EUR5
| globular-toast wrote:
| I'd rather just skip a meal than resort to McDonald's, but I've
| noticed in so many places there are more deliveries going out
| than people eating in. This seems to go for any place that does
| delivery. It's even hard to read reviews for places as so many
| of them are rating the delivery when the food in question
| doesn't transport well.
| mc32 wrote:
| Seeing pictures of Cardiff McD's afterhours with disheveled,
| boorish patrons and rubbish strewn about, no-one would want to
| patronize them:
| https://hollyhughesgraphics.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/maciej-...
| shoddydoordesk wrote:
| First they complained that restaurants like McD's were poisoning
| the lower classes with fast food, now they're complaining that
| they can't afford it?
|
| This also seems overblown for dramatic effect as the McD's dollar
| menu still contains good value meals.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Well the situation changed
| shoddydoordesk wrote:
| You're right, the McRib is back just in time for the
| holidays.
| jswelker wrote:
| Well in the past you could get unhealthy but cheap, convenient
| food. The cheap+convenient combo no longer really exists for
| families that for some reason will not cook.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Both things can be true, you know. Yes, its food is abysmally
| unhealthy, but it's effectively the de facto national cafeteria
| of the continental United States by virtue of its widespread
| footprint and (previously) low prices.
|
| In an ideal world, we should be challenging both, rather than
| throwing up our hands and pleading confusion because someone
| can't hold two truths simultaneously.
| billy99k wrote:
| "In an ideal world, we should be challenging both"
|
| Not really. Calling food poison and then complaining that
| poor people can't afford it implies that you support poor
| people eating poison and or eating the food.
|
| The first complaint implies that they shouldn't be eating it
| at all and result is that I just can't take the second
| complaint seriously.
|
| It's just a way to shit on big corporations without having to
| take responsibility.
| stego-tech wrote:
| You're grossly misunderstanding the broader arguments
| through misrepresenting the claims as tied together, rather
| than the standalone grievances they are. A single system
| can have multiple flaws that interact on each other without
| necessarily creating a single, larger issue.
|
| McDonald's food is unhealthy and should be improved. At the
| same time, they have become too expensive for the poorer
| working classes to afford. These are two different
| problems, with different solutions.
|
| You're basically arguing that because I cannot demonstrate
| "one easy fix" to a complex issue of nuance that I'm
| essentially advocating for poisoning people, and it
| demonstrates your complete inability to grasp simultaneous
| truths or discuss complex issues effectively without
| misrepresenting opposition to score points.
|
| Go away.
| umvi wrote:
| Who is "they"? Someone, somewhere, will always complain about
| anything, no matter how good it is. The world is filled with
| critics because (my hot take) it's easier to tear things down
| than build them up.
| franktankbank wrote:
| There is nothing valuable about the trash McDs serves. The
| bread is diabetes inducing.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > First they complained that restaurants like McD's were
| poisoning the lower classes with fast food, now they're
| complaining that they can't afford it?
|
| Are they the same people?
|
| Is it possible there are 2 problems?
|
| Who complained? Reporting is not complaint.
| aboringusername wrote:
| This is a trend that's probably going to continue and widen the
| rich-poor divide. Take airlines, there's only so many seats they
| can offer day to day, and with planes retiring from service and
| new planes slow to be delivered the inequality will only
| increase, and the market will shift to more affluential
| customers.
|
| The likes of McDonald's will need to understand who their new
| customer base is quite carefully and market around that if they
| are to stay relevant. Sadly their products to me are garbage now;
| slow service, cold fries, awful oil. Obviously they've had to
| adapt but it's just expensive slop.
|
| And in the UK they have had scandals around sexual harassment,
| which hasn't helped their image/branding.
| stego-tech wrote:
| These articles deliberately skew reality to fit an anti-worker
| narrative. All the focus is on costs of labor and materials, with
| not _one single sentence_ devoted to McDonald's own financials -
| like the growth of their margins, the share buybacks performed,
| the executive compensation, or the franchising model itself.
|
| When I was rallying for a higher minimum wage and was challenged
| on it driving up costs, I made it abundantly clear that would
| only be the outcome if the corporate leadership refused to budge
| on their compensation and shareholder reward schemes - which,
| surprising nobody, is exactly what they did, and this was the
| entirely expected outcome.
|
| We've tried being nice about this and attempting to reach a
| compromise in long, gradual, sustainable changes to the economy
| so everyone can benefit from its improvements in efficiency and
| scale, but the grim reality is that said compromises are no
| longer on the table, and harms are inevitable. With no more room
| to squeeze workers, it should be of no surprise that a growing
| plurality are demanding immediate and substantial change instead
| of piecemeal reform - and Capital has every right to be terrified
| of an angry labor class.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Looking at McDonald's finances would have made the article
| better. And it mentioned their claims about labor costs. But it
| cited analysis which contradicted those claims.
| stego-tech wrote:
| No problem stands alone in a vacuum, and nothing at this
| point has "one easy fix". These articles that try to paint
| higher wages or corporate consolidation as the sole reason
| for complex and nuanced issues aren't just toxic to discourse
| around addressing these problems, they also collectively dumb
| down people into the debate equivalent of sports teams with
| no room for other positions.
|
| The entire piece reads as a sympathy puff article to paint
| McDonalds in a "woe is us, our business dictates we raise
| prices to only serve the wealthy" posture, which is insincere
| _at best_ , and almost certainly shit journalism.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The article discussed several factors increasing costs and
| decreasing low income household spending. My impression and
| yours were very different.
| prewett wrote:
| So, basically in addition to campaign for higher minimum wages
| you were simultaneously campaigning for lower profit margins.
| I'm guessing you would not voluntarily take a pay cut, so I
| don't see why you expected employers to. It sounds like those
| people who challenged you that minimum wages would raise prices
| were correct. It seems disingenuous to pretend that "oh those
| greedy capitalists just wouldn't play nice". If you want to
| raise wages and limit profit margins, you should campaign for
| that instead of only half of it and not complain that people
| did not cooperate in giving you what you really wanted.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Or you could not jump to completely inaccurate conclusions
| about someone's viewpoints, movement participation, and
| policy positions based solely on one comment on a single
| post. You could ask questions for clarity, or challenge
| specific assertions, instead of leaping directly to bad faith
| arguments ("why don't YOU take a pay cut?" maybe because I'm
| not a CEO with a compensation package in the millions of
| dollars a year?) to support a pre-supposed conclusion you
| refuse to waver from.
|
| C'mon, ya'll, I expected better from HN commenters. This is
| arguably the worst thread I've been in with regards to the
| quality of discourse.
| testing22321 wrote:
| This has been the story in the US for a few decades now. You
| can't have nice things that other developed countries take as a
| given like higher lineage, healthcare, higher education, public
| infrastructure, etc because of profit, exec compensation, stock
| buybacks and all the rest.
|
| To suggest decreasing those is akin to treason.
| jujube3 wrote:
| When you're too poor for smelly clown meat, you know things are
| bad.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| It could be worse if millions of low-income customers were
| already as poor as ever in living memory, for quite a number of
| years and still enjoying McDonalds as regularly as expected.
|
| As recently as a year ago and now the only difference is in the
| decreased value of the dollar :\
| kakacik wrote:
| Where I live (Switzerland), cost of going to some proper burger
| joint vs mcdonalds costs roughly the same, or its very mildly
| cheaper for mcd. Plus unlike say France they don't serve beer
| here(canned heineken but at least its still technically beer).
|
| The only reason to go there is their method of handling tons of
| customers (restaurant experience this ain't thats for sure),
| their opening hours and often location.
|
| That's it, if you look for quality or pleasantness of experience
| or actual good food in statement above you don't have to bother.
| Worst burgers Swiss market can offer, we have different food and
| tasting standards here.
| f1shy wrote:
| My experience in many countries is that for 10 to 30% more
| price you can eat a real hamburger made of real beef, with real
| pommes. But that 30% is for sure prohibitively high for many
| folks.
| dole wrote:
| You eat at McD's or most fast food places these days, you _need_
| the app to get reasonable prices, usually at a 15-20% discount.
| The app really does enhance the experience, order exactly what
| you want without human error, roll up to the drive-thru, give
| them the code, and they begin making the order at that point.
|
| They've been pushing $5 value meals recently because the dollar
| menu's just not fiscally feasible anymore and $10-12+ for the
| normal value meals isn't a value to most people.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| > The app really does enhance the experience, order exactly
| what you want without human error, roll up to the drive-thru,
| give them the code, and they begin making the order at that
| point.
|
| They're particularly good at getting orders right compared to
| some other restaurants, so the additional value here to me is
| negligible. It's actually negative value to me, since if I can
| do a transaction without having to sign up, that's what I
| prefer. The value is entirely in the other direction:
| McDonald's wants to monetize their customer's identity
| information.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Try ordering a heated muffin. My current success rate at the
| drive through is 2/8. The other 6 times it's not heated.
| willis936 wrote:
| It's really location dependent. The one near me missed
| opening time by more than 30 minutes one day last week. I
| don't have more data because I only would splurge for a
| fast food breakfast when I need it.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| You don't know, the other 6 times the employees might have
| yelled at the muffin to make it angry.
| tzs wrote:
| Don't overlook paper coupons. A while back I took a look at the
| advertising junk that appears in my physical mailbox instead of
| just throwing it in my recycle bin and found some really good
| fast food coupons.
|
| Where I am both Subway and Burger King have been sending
| approximately monthly a sheet full of coupons with some quite
| good deals.
| bombcar wrote:
| Subway you just google "November 2025 subway coupon" and find
| the Reddit thread and use FL1299 and get two footlongs for
| the price of a decimeter.
| ta12653421 wrote:
| mahahahaaaaaa..... any restaurant that requires an App to
| access it, completely insane.
| cwillu wrote:
| I had the mcdonalds app installed once, and then my phone
| pinged with a notification when I was driving near a
| mcdonalds. Never again.
| shmeeed wrote:
| For the few times a year I eat at Burger King, I just
| install the app on the way, use the discount, and uninstall
| it right after while I'm still eating.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| The app doesn't work if it's installed from a location other
| than the play store. I install it via aurora store without a
| Google account for privacy reasons (I do have play services
| installed but it's not logged in, notifications still work).
| It's a ridiculous limitation for such an app.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Beef and salaries? They mean executive salaries right? Because
| average McDonald's hourly pay ranges starts at $8.94 per hour.
| esseph wrote:
| I live in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest US, and
| McDonald's hourly pay here starts at $14.45/hr
| daft_pink wrote:
| Every time I go to Mcdonald's, I just think wow, I should have
| gone to Chipotle. Less expensive and healthier. Better in just
| about every way. Except no drive thru and you get less food if
| you order online with Chipotle
| esseph wrote:
| McDonald's is in far more places than Chipotle, somewhat sadly
| ryandrake wrote:
| You're not going to get value at Chipotle anymore, also
| somewhat sadly. Order a burrito and you're going to get a big
| flour wrap with a tiny lump of rice and meat in the very
| center. These guys have cost-cut themselves to death, just
| like everywhere else.
| morcus wrote:
| Do they still allow you to get the tortilla on the side
| with the bowls?
| purplezooey wrote:
| Awkward writing in this article. _" McDonald's executives say the
| higher costs of restaurant essentials, such as beef and salaries,
| have pushed food prices up..."_
|
| Beef and... salaries? I think I found the name of my new fast
| food place.
| mmooss wrote:
| What is awkward about it?
| soared wrote:
| It's weird two have those to things in the same category.
| Beef is.. not at all similar to salaries. The only overlap is
| that they are costs.
| sc68cal wrote:
| They are inputs into a business. I agree that it's
| bloodless but it's very typical of business language
| alberth wrote:
| Actual title: _"Fast food is losing its low-income customers.
| Economists call it a symptom of the stark wealth divide"_
| johnnienaked wrote:
| "People don't want to spend $9 for a Big Mac"
|
| No shot?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| When I was a boy quite a few decades ago, McDonald's finally
| came to Tampa.
|
| Burger King already had a few locations in other towns after
| getting started in Miami, and they were a bit like after-school
| soda shops of the 1950's that Northerners were more accustomed
| to. Which most people don't realize had not existed up until
| then in Florida because of the very small fraction of students
| and young people in general compared to all other states.
|
| There were no Whoppers yet or fancy logo but they did have an
| overhead sign with a jolly fat king sitting on a burger with
| lettuce and tomato. Which you got for 10 cents. Burger King was
| just trying to become a chain. A major attraction at the time
| was of course the air-conditioning, which was seldom seen
| outside of banks and supermarkets at this early time. The meat
| was not as small as the major chain at the time, Royal Castle,
| which had locations up the East Coast. Royal Castle was very
| much like the Krystal mini-burgers from the Northeast, they
| were 9 cents in Florida and most kids would have no less than 2
| or 3. These were small tiled breakfast/lunch/"dinner" grills
| that served any of their fare around-the-clock. The one in our
| neighborhood even had a jukebox like we figured was real common
| up North.
|
| Most tourists from the Northeast never took the Turnpike or
| even considered passing through Orlando before Disney World was
| built, so they all came down US-1, and it was dotted with Royal
| Castles all the way to Miami, people would stop in any time on
| a long drive for coffee, on the door it said "open 29 hours a
| day". This was when 7-11 was only open from 7am to 11pm (not
| Sunday though) and nothing else had shopping hours that late.
| Gas stations closed Sundays and at night too, and self-service
| pumping was still not the least bit primed for consideration
| since the arrival of the automobile. When I was about 10 I kind
| of figured that the Royal Castles had only been there about 10
| years themselves, without threat of a hurricane up until that
| time, when one was on the way they had to scramble to put locks
| on the doors because they had never closed before.
|
| Anyway, people knew McDonalds was going to be a California-
| style approach and it was not near downtown, not far but on
| then-undeveloped property and you could see it as they built
| the characteristic golden arches. Big tiles too, not the small
| ones. They were proud of their growth and often updated their
| signs with the increasing number of hamburgers sold, striving
| for their first million.
|
| When they opened of course they had the _longest_ french fries
| anybody had ever seen. Sticking way out of the smallest little
| paper sack that looked so absurd it actually got people 's
| attention. No large orders of fries, and Big Macs were not even
| a dream, nothing but regular hamburgers in the white wrapper
| for 12 cents, cheeseburgers in the yellow wrapper for 15 cents,
| fries and Cokes for 10 cents, shakes 13 or 14 cents, slightly
| more than a burger. Grilled with onions, plus mustard, ketchup,
| and pickles on every one assembly-line style, and not nearly as
| small as the mini-burgers, but they were always ready when you
| got there, and nobody had realistically thought about drive-
| through yet.
| anarticle wrote:
| The feeling for me is the market has bifurcated into: delivered
| expensive shit in a bag, or omakase sushi. The middle ground of
| cheap decent made to order food is largely gone or on the way
| out. There are diners in my area still but nearly everything is
| over 10 nearly 20.
|
| The quality for delivery is astoundingly low for unbelievably
| high prices.
|
| I cook way more and am healthier for it.
| delichon wrote:
| > Her brother, who works as a cashier, can't afford meals out at
| all, she said. The cost of his diabetes medication has increased
| greatly, to about $200 a month, which she helps him cover.
|
| This is an often unacknowledged part of the cost of fast food. It
| turns susceptible people into diabetics. As a diabetic there is
| little I can eat there, since I manage it with food not drugs.
| When I do I get a burger and throw out the bun, which isn't very
| thrifty.
|
| If you just go with the flow and eat what this culture makes
| easiest, it's an unusual specimen who can be healthy and happy in
| late life. And it's not at all unusual to turn young people into
| patients.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is unusual to see young people make the choices to not turn
| into patients.
|
| It costs very little to eat mostly
| lentils/legumes/nuts/yogurt/vegetables, and drink mostly water
| without carbs dissolved in it, but no business is going to
| survive selling those things.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Its worth noting that you don't need to avoid meat if the
| goal is to avoid being a pharmaceutical patient.
| graemep wrote:
| Meat is more expensive though and GP was talking about a
| low cost healthy diet.
| kingstnap wrote:
| I don't think animal products are all that expensive tbh.
| Chicken, milk, yogurt, eggs are all really cheap if you
| consider the protien content.
|
| Completely unbeatable value especially factoring in time
| and convenience and heartiness is picking up a rotisserie
| chicken and a bag of frozen veggies.
|
| Liver is also very affordable and extremely nutritious.
| graemep wrote:
| Of the four animal products you list there, only one is
| meat, and its a cheap meat...
|
| Meat is not all that expensive for protein and
| comparatively quick and easy to cook, agreed, but the
| cheapest option is still veg.
|
| Liver, and offal in general, is much underrated for both
| taste and health. A lot of people in the UK just do not
| eat it and its becoming hard to find (liver the common,
| but other things are not).
| _heimdall wrote:
| At least in my area, good quality meat isn't any more
| expensive than good quality produce. By "good meat" I
| mean at least pasture raised, and by "good produce" I
| mean at least organic.
| whateveracct wrote:
| I can often get whole free range chickens for 99c/lb. So
| a 6lb chicken for $6.
| gyomu wrote:
| Insert classic Michael Pollan "if you see it being
| advertised, it's likely something you shouldn't be eating".
|
| No one's advertising spinach or beans.
| AstroJetson wrote:
| Popeye the Sailor has entered the chat. /s
|
| Weirdly, I do get ads for veggies, but it could be driven
| by my recent research spree on vegetarian recipes to have
| great food across the holidays for my mostly vegetarian
| family. I may have skewed "the algorithm "
| toast0 wrote:
| I recall advertisements for veggies from the Green Giant.
| And fresh veg always has a slot on the grocery flyers.
| xg15 wrote:
| Where is the next cheap
| lentils/legumes/nuts/yogurt/vegetables fast food restaurant?
|
| I think it's a weird concept of a society where all the parts
| of it with money are directing people to do one thing - but
| at the same time, the people are expected to do the exact
| opposite and it's their own fault if they follow the
| coercion...
| johnisgood wrote:
| There are such restaurants around here in Europe but they
| are super expensive, so you are better off doing it on your
| own at home.
|
| Cooking a stew of lentils or any other legumes is very easy
| and does not consume that much time either, and you can
| cook for 3 days easily.
|
| Why are people not doing this?
| andyjensen wrote:
| I think you are having a too black and white opinion on
| the issue. As a founder it is actually cheaper for me to
| spend 1000$ on restaurant and take-out food per week than
| wasting time cooking for myself. Plus you support local
| businesses by eating out
| johnisgood wrote:
| It is cheaper to spend 1000$ on a restaurant than to take
| an hour or two to cook a very low-effort food that takes
| max 2 hours to cook and lasts for 3 days? I'm genuinely
| baffled.
|
| Personally I would not call it a waste of 2 hours.
|
| Either way, if you can afford it, then Godspeed. :D
|
| I definitely do not have 1000 USD per week for food. I do
| not even have 100 USD per week for food.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| I personally don't get takeout or eat at restaurants but
| there are certainly many cases in the US where it would
| be (far) cheaper. You say 2 hours for 3 days (so 40
| mins/day or about 5h/week) which I think is on the low
| side. If you spend an average of 90 minutes a day on
| everything related to food (grocery shopping, recipes,
| cooking, cleanup, dishes) that's 10.5 hr/week. In any
| case, that's between 5-10h/week or $75-150/week at
| $15/hr, enough to pay the extra over groceries for cheap
| fast food. At $100/hr you could easily buy nicer food
| with the time savings, much like the GP comment.
|
| But of course the math is different for everyone. Some
| people love to cook and some hate it. Some people like
| things that are fairly hard to cook (Korean, Japanese,
| Indian.) Some people need a different dinner each night
| and some are happy eating a giant pot of one bulk-cooked
| thing across days or weeks. Personally, I occasionally
| cook elaborate dinners, but for weeknights I find that a
| rice cooker plus frozen vegetables is a nice middle
| ground. Variety, hot fresh food, nutritious, and also
| very little time required. That, and eating with friends
| and family and trading off cooking.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Speaking of, I have difficulties gaining weight. I would
| have to eat a lot. The only time I could gain weight was
| when I spent most of my day eating. I am not sure how
| other people do it. I do not have that amount of time to
| eat food.
| toast0 wrote:
| Most people aren't interested in a stew that you have to
| cook for 3 days easily. Even BBQ people expect low and
| slow to finish on the same day it starts. :p
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Because they lack the skill?
|
| You seem to take the ability of people to cook for
| granted. I don't think it is automatic anymore.
| Generational transmission of some skills has ceased.
|
| Jamie Oliver famously asked British school kids to name
| objects such as an apple, a potato or a cucumber, and
| plenty of them did not know. They just stared at the raw
| vegetables/fruits, baffled.
|
| And as of now, you cannot simply vibe-cook using AI. You
| actually need to know some stuff, like what is what, how
| to use utensils, how to treat hot objects, what is too
| much gas and what not enough etc.
| johnisgood wrote:
| It is very easy to learn. If I could learn it, so can
| anyone else. :P I have not cooked my entire life, for the
| most part, but when my situation requires me to cook,
| then I can. I find a relatively easy recipe and I just
| follow the instructions. It has worked out fine for me.
|
| > Jamie Oliver famously asked British school kids to name
| objects such as an apple, a potato or a cucumber, and
| plenty of them did not know
|
| Okay, the situation really is horrible then, wow.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| > If I could learn it, so can anyone else.
|
| More than a billion people have successfully learned to
| speak Chinese, some of them very stupid. Yet here I am,
| struggling to remember the hanzi and the tones.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Different skills take different amounts of time and
| parameters to master.
|
| Comparing learning a language to watching a video or
| reading a recipe and spending a few weeks adding some oil
| and spices in a pot or pan is ridiculous.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Sorry, I wanted to sound edgier and made my point less
| clear! What I wanted to convey is, it's waaaaay easier to
| learn a skill when you've been exposed to it since you
| were a baby.
| johnisgood wrote:
| My mother and grandmother cooked, but I have never
| participated, I just ate the food. Does it count as
| exposure?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "It is very easy to learn. If I could learn it, so can
| anyone else. :P "
|
| Well, the Neanderthals cooked, so it is not exactly a
| rocket engineering skill ... but it is probably acquired
| better from other people than alone, and equipment
| matters as well.
|
| If you learn to cook from your mother in a well-equipped
| kitchen, you will probably enjoy the process a lot more
| than alone with Youtube in a cheaply rented flat with one
| pot, one dull knife and two dented plastic plates. And if
| people don't enjoy some learning process, they are much
| more likely to drop out and resign. Especially if fast
| food alternatives lurk at them from their smartphones.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I come from a very poor family, and I am Eastern
| European... so we had very "shitty" equipments. We peeled
| our potatoes using a knife, too. I wonder how foreign it
| is to others.
|
| I have never learned to cook from anyone. I just read the
| recipes and/or watch some videos and that is literally
| it. My kitchen is not as equipped as it is in rich
| households.
|
| Ordering food is ideal, but super expensive, so I
| personally cannot afford to do that.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Aren't you Martin Janiczek? Bro, if true, you're not
| helping our collective effort to resurrect "Central
| Europe" in colloquial use :)
|
| We had a weird assortment of equipment as well, some
| dating back to Masaryk, but it was usually durable and
| reliable. That is why we also kept it; late stage
| Communism was terrible at producing durable consumer
| goods, while old stuff lasted for decades.
| abracadaniel wrote:
| My grandmother cooked daily and taught her kids to cook.
| My mother cooked weekly and taught us to use the
| microwave. Sure anyone can learn to cook, just like
| anyone can learn to play the piano, but it requires time,
| money, dedication, and the push to get started. It's much
| easier if you were taught some of the basics as a kid, or
| had an example in your life.
| johnisgood wrote:
| It still baffles me that people compare cooking to
| playing an instrument. It really is not that difficult to
| cook, depending on what it is. Do people know how to make
| schnitzel (breadcrumbed meat)? Make fries? Make rice?
| Make boiled potatoes? Or are those things difficult as
| well? Making a stew out of legumes is not that difficult
| either. Boil your legumes, then mix eggs, flour, and
| paprika together, put it in oil, heat it up for a few
| seconds, then pour everything into the water you are
| boiling your legumes in. Put some herbs to your liking.
| That is literally it. Healthy, delicious stew of any
| legumes.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| There are plenty of these restaurants all around the world,
| they're just not cheap. Poke bowls and salads and
| Sweetgreen are very popular, go to any downtown anywhere.
| But where McDonald's uses shelf-stable, globally sourcable
| bulk materials, these places are the opposite. Both Coke
| and salads are mostly water, but the Coke ships as a
| concentrate and the salad ships whole. You can sign one
| contract and get a regular, reliable delivery of Coke to
| your stores in Houston, Anchorage and everywhere between;
| good luck doing that with salad. There also aren't any
| great huge-markup upsells with healthy foods; the closest
| thing is guac, which costs a ton, meanwhile McDonalds can
| upsell you on fries or coke (which are basically free!)
| There's the trend factor: Baja Blast is catchy and you can
| rotate it out for another neon soda in a week, how do you
| do that with arugula? Artificial ingredients provide more
| of a moat/proprietary edge; it is legally and practically
| trivial to copy a healthy sandwich. Healthy foods are more
| difficult to eat while walking or driving, so you need more
| seating. Then there's the prep time, the addictive factor,
| calorie density...
| mindslight wrote:
| > _I think it 's a weird concept of a society where all the
| parts of it with money are directing people to do one thing
| - but at the same time, the people are expected to do the
| exact opposite and it's their own fault if they follow the
| coercion..._
|
| You've summed up the foundation of our entire consumer
| economy quite well. And people might be able to devote
| their attention to several types of things they need and
| not fall prey to adversarial pop culture for those specific
| things, but nobody is capable of doing that for everything.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Where is the next cheap
| lentils/legumes/nuts/yogurt/vegetables fast food
| restaurant?
|
| Nowhere, because people prefer to pay for excess sat fats,
| sugar, carbs, and salt.
|
| > I think it's a weird concept of a society where all the
| parts of it with money are directing people to do one thing
| - but at the same time, the people are expected to do the
| exact opposite and it's their own fault if they follow the
| coercion...
|
| Every single health resource in society says not to eat
| excess sat fats, sugar, carbs, and salt. And avoid alcohol
| and tobacco. And gambling.
|
| But people like short term benefits, even if they know
| there are long term consequences. And society is composed
| of people. Maybe GLP-1 pills can fix this error in the
| psyche.
| NoRagrets wrote:
| Indian restaurants
| the_real_cher wrote:
| We have a place in my town called Cava.
| pdpi wrote:
| That describes Indian food trucks, or any of several places
| selling falafel wraps.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| I went to the grocery store and bought six meals worth of
| whole foods for two people two weeks ago. Rice, veggies, two
| fish meals, two meals based on eggs (I already had the eggs),
| one meal based on chicken. Thirty grams of protein for each
| meal. I had staples in my pantry already. I aimed for 2200
| calories per person per day. I didn't buy organic because
| it's more expensive. This wasn't Whole Foods or some bougie
| store. I didn't buy ANY beverages.
|
| It was $170 with my loyalty card.
|
| Six meals at McDonald's is... Just about $35. Chipotle? $110,
| maybe less. Chick-fil-A? Under $50. And none of them need to
| be cooked or taste like wet cardboard.
| hyperpower wrote:
| $35 for 6 meals for two people at McDonalds? What?
|
| Where I live, one meal at McDonalds is about $12. So 6 * 2
| * 12 = $144. Not that much of a difference.
|
| Also, if you aimed for 2200 calories per person per day
| with that $170, then it isn't really fair comparing to a
| single McDonald's meal, is it? It sounds like buying whole
| foods is cheaper.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| Sorry, I didn't multiply by two; it would have been $70.
| I checked the nutrition facts on the menu, it was a mix
| of meal deals and had nearly the same calorie counts that
| I was aiming for. Still less than half the cost of
| groceries (minus all the food I already had).
|
| But if we're talking about the balance of macronutrients,
| I'd love to hear how you manage to beat the cost of fast
| food with legumes/nuts/yogurt and don't have a huge
| percentage of your calories from fat. 40g of protein from
| almonds is nearly a thousand calories and 90g of fat. 40g
| of protein from black beans is five Chipotle bowl orders
| worth of beans or _four cups_ of fava beans. 35g of
| protein from nonfat Greek yogurt is nearly 3 /4 of a
| pound of yogurt. If you can't stand to eat nearly a pound
| of nonfat yogurt in one sitting like most of the
| population, you'll only get 30g of protein from a 32oz
| tub and spend as much as a McDonald's sandwich (and get
| the same amount of fat).
| wkat4242 wrote:
| There's a lot of quirky vegan restaurants doing really well
| at least here in Barcelona. And health/eco shops too.
|
| But it's not quite as tasty as a greasy burger
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It costs very little to eat mostly lentils
| /legumes/nuts/yogurt/vegetables, and drink mostly water
| without carbs dissolved in it, but no business is going to
| survive selling those things_
|
| This is like every new fast casual business in Manhattan in
| the last decade.
| philjw wrote:
| The lack of vegan options -- and Trump flexing his one-day
| McDonald's internship -- finally pushed me to boycott McDonald's
| altogether. Also it became slow with all the delivery drivers
| queuing up as well. Burger King might be raising prices too, but
| at least their deals are still decent, and every burger has a
| vegan option (which is supposedly even cheaper for them to
| produce).
|
| My actual favorite "fast food" is IKEA -- surprisingly good as a
| coworking spot, and their vegan Kottbullar are great. And
| honestly, in Germany who needs McDonald's when there's a good
| Doner place around? It's basically a 5-in-1 burger: real bread,
| salad, sauces, and your choice of meat/halloumi/seitan.
|
| From what I see here, McDonald's mostly survives in low-density
| areas or as car-dependant late-night junk food where alternatives
| don't exist. But if people go out less, or can't afford a car
| anymore, that model gets shaky fast. There are simply too many
| better options now.
|
| It reminds me of the same shrinkflation/bloat cycle we see with
| American pickup trucks: beds get smaller while prices balloon,
| and then people act surprised that these wank-tanks fail in
| Europe where efficient vans just work better. "Free market" also
| means that bad products eventually lose.
|
| Same story with phones: everything keeps getting bigger, heavier,
| and more bloated with features nobody asked for. Bring back the
| iPhone Mini -- not everything needs to be Super-Size Me.
| grosswait wrote:
| Don't forget Trump's one day flex as garbage man.
| mycall wrote:
| The US has efficient vans to like the Ram ProMaster City or
| Ford Transit/E-Transit, pretty popular.
| kotaKat wrote:
| How many low income customers are going to sit there and figure
| out how to min-max the McDonald's App(tm) to get the best
| possible deal for their money?
|
| They're not. They're priced out from the efforts and hoops
| required to get the deal.
|
| And while there's deals in the app, not every deal is the best
| deal (leading to the min-max situation).
|
| (I live somewhere super-rural where McD is one of the only lunch
| options. I've figured out that depending on promos, one of the
| 'cheapest' options is to take advantage of the "buy one get one
| for $1" double cheeseburger every day offer, then check the
| 'deals' section to see if there's a cheap fry offer (because
| fries are always expensive). Drink offers are never worth it when
| the sodas are always $1-$1.49 for a large soda, but sometimes
| there's a "free medium fries with purchase of drink" that
| definitely maximizes the value offer here. Combined, this 'meal'
| is often less than even the new Extra Value Meals they offer at
| below $6-7 depending on deal applied.)
| bombcar wrote:
| You found the exact combo I build when the cravings hit.
|
| Use the coupon for free fries any size with drink purchase; get
| the $1 bonusburger, and be out with more food for less money
| than the two cheeseburger combo.
|
| Annoying as hell to order.
| not4uffin wrote:
| I mean, near me there are a couple of places that sell sometimes
| even better quality than McDonald's for lower prices, so
| McDonald's loses the competition in the financial convenience
| factor.
| bombcar wrote:
| That has been huge. I used to be able to be absolutely sure
| that if I picked McD's, at least the bill would be smallest.
|
| No longer. They're more expensive than Culver's sometimes!
| antonymoose wrote:
| Throughout my 20s that was about the only factor that led me
| to McDs - a cheap, fast meal. The 2/$3 McChicken for a lazy
| dinner or a McMuffin for a hangover fix was always too cheap
| to pass up.
|
| Nowadays McDonald's feels like a Seinfeld bit: _Whats the
| deal with fast-food, it's not fast, and it's not food._
|
| I'm pretty much guaranteed to spend so much on a biscuit and
| coffee that I could go to the local coffee shops in town and
| get a coffee and breakfast sandwich for the same money and
| oftentimes faster, somehow.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I think the sad thing is that "high earners" are eating at
| McDonald's now.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| If you're ever in GA/TN/NC, check out _Cook Out_ and _Pal 's_
| fast food establishments.
|
| They cost _just a little more than national chains_ , for a much
| more satisfying meal (still fast food tho).
|
| Things I miss most about Austin (2nd-gen that left, a decade
| ago): H-E-B Grocery and _P 'Terry Hamburgers_.
| LocalH wrote:
| Pal's is a regional GOAT. They also have a unique "Sauceburger"
| with a ketchup-and-relish based sauce that takes me back to my
| childhood. Highly recommend.
| mac-attack wrote:
| in response to an article about high costs, I'm not sure
| suggesting a more expensive option serves a purpose...
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| You pay about 15% more for twice the food (at much higher
| quality).
|
| From Cook Out, for $11, I can make two meals with two
| deserts.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| McDonalds food is disgusting and overpriced compared to
| competition. A Happy Meal is ~$8 and the food is awful. I can go
| to Five Guys and get the classic combo for ~$13 and then I just
| have them cut the burger in half and I feed two kids. It ends up
| being about the same price for MORE food of a higher quality that
| is made to order. McDonalds locations are also really dirty
| inside. Kids aren't interested in the playgrounds as much and
| most McDonalds don't have them. AND McDonalds changed their
| design and look hideous now. I think they've done this to
| themselves. Make food with real ingredients, make it to order,
| and bring back the playgrounds and birthday parties for kids.
| polski-g wrote:
| The CEO said, a few years ago on an earnings call, that this was
| the goal.
|
| Low income customers are disorderly, rude, argumentative and
| generally not worth the effort.
| epolanski wrote:
| I never understood how can eating at McDonald's be cheaper than
| cooking your own meals.
|
| I'm not from US, but checking US grocery shops, you can eat meals
| made of chicken breast, bread and vegetables well below 5$ per
| person, well below 20$ in total for a family of 4.
|
| Yet every time I see those discussions, fast food is always
| presented as a cheaper option?
| fragmede wrote:
| Simple conomy of scale. McDonald's buy chicken in bulk from
| vendors, and get a better deal than Safeway/wherever you shop
| does, they get industrial bulk handing deals and yeah they have
| to pay for employees to cook the food, but that's amortized
| over all the other customers. So it can be cheaper, the same
| way that it's cheaper to get oil out of the ground, refine it,
| do a bunch of chemistry to it, form it into plastic knives and
| forks, make a box for it, decorate that box, put the cutlery
| into the box, ship that box halfway around the world, put it in
| a store, and all of that's still cheaper than getting someone
| to wash a metal fork for you to eat dinner with.
|
| What blew my mind is when someone explained to me the cultural
| difference with some places in south east Asia. In the US,
| eating out at restaurants is what rich people do. But in
| certain places in south east Asia, having a kitchen, having
| appliances like a fridge, having electricity for them, having
| dining space, having the time to go to the market to haggle
| with vendors, all of that adds up so it's the rich that can
| afford to eat at home, and everyon else eats out. So it's
| location dependent.
| epolanski wrote:
| Wait, you misunderstood my point. I was stating that
| regardless of scale economy, it's cheaper to eat healthy at
| home than at McDonald's.
| forinti wrote:
| I only ever enter a McDonald's for coffee and there seems to be
| an issue with my order more often than not. And there is always
| someone very upset about their order.
|
| It's really not an inviting place.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| That's pretty standard for fast food coffee. Dunkin is
| notorious for just winging it.
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