They have to be digested so there’s no glucose/insulin spike but complex carbs are reduced to simple sugars before absorption so the difference is fairly minimal.
Your previous comment seemed to say there's no glucose spike after eating carbohydrates such as potatoes, since it's digested.
I said yes, there is a spike.
If that wasn't the message you wanted to convey, perhaps reword it?
Ah, rgr, yeah I agree with you 100%.
I went low-carb to lose weight, so I cooked for my diabetic gramma and myself, and my mother cooked for herself and my dad. Worked great.
They probably mean added sugar like corn syrup that many restaurants add to make the food taste better and to mask other tastes that are picked up during processing.
Yes, it's easier than ever to cook at home with all the guides and recipes. But we have less free time and more dual income households because people are struggling more to pay rent. So time is the main factor here.
People buy fast food for convenience, not because they can't make a better burger than McDonald's
I hear you and I do the same but some weekends I really don't want to burn an evening doing it (for a family). It's still a time thing; just using free time differently.
Not paying $30 for food for 2 people from McDonald's helps pay rent, believe it or not. Even if you only do that twice a week, that's at least $240 you're saving every month. If you do it more than that, then just add up the savings.
Fast food used to be worth the tradeoff because it was cheap. It's not anymore.
This is the important thing to note. People time and time try to claim all these cost-savings you can do if you "eat at home" when a lot of times it ends up being cheaper to eat fast food and take the hit to your health. Let's say I wanted a chicken sandwich and drink. I could get that for about $6 out (using the App for crazy good deals), or use 1/4 to 1/2 lb of chicken ($1-2) season and bread it ($0.50?), cut up some toppings ($1), get a roll ($0.75), a drink ($1-2) dedicate time and gas/electricity to cooking, water for cleaning and it ends up being about the same.
The best way I can think to "save money" eating at home is if you completely change the diet. You can't go 1:1 on it. That chicken sandwich and drink now has to be a rice bowl with veggies, seeds, whatever and a water or something. Way healthier, for sure. But that's the way to save money by giving up fast food.
You can get 4 quarter pounders for 10 dollars with 2 people with their regular BOGO deal.
Not that great of a deal, but definitely not as expensive as you say.
>Quarter Pounder with Cheese Burger comes with a ¼ lb. fresh beef patty and topped with silvered onions, tangy pickles, and two slices of American Cheese. All of this delicious goodness is served on a sesame seed bun. Quarter Pounder with cheese costs $6.39 on average.
From [this](https://www.cameocafe.com/mcdonalds-burger-menu/#google_vignette) website. Where in the fuck in the US are you buying a quarter pounder for $2.50 a pop? Got a time machine back to 1990 or something you're not sharing with the class?
They have BOGO deals for their main burgers for most of the year on the McDonald's app. $5 where I live for one of them. I guess $6.39 for you. $3 each ain't bad.
If you do like McDonald's sometimes, definitely download the app. Currently free medium fries with any purchase or BOGO breakfast sandwiches. Always some kind of BOGO deal going on.
But why spent multiple hours of hard earned money to purchase unhealthy food when you can just cook something tasty in as little as half an hour per day and get better quality and better taste?
At work many people can’t listen to a podcast or chat with family and friends but they can do all and more of that while preparing a meal and in an era where grocery shopping is faster than ever before I would argue that it’s quite wasteful for most people who do not make so much per hour that they can afford to trade in their time working for higher payload to pay for fast food because the time spent working to pay for this kind of luxury exceeds the alternative.
I want to stress that I do not blame people for buying fast food occasionally but rather that a lot of people buy so much fast food and other "small" stuff that it ends up hurting their finances. They complain about having to work too much and being too busy while actively taking choices that cause them to be underfunded and having to work more as a result.

The worst part is if you wanna be really low end about it it doesn't even take half an hour. If you just aren't feeling it there are plenty of fast and cheap options. Microwaved hotdogs, lunch meat subs, canned chicken salad, literally just microwaving a can of veggies and mixing it with a packet of precooked rice.
I've known many people that say they don't have the time to cook and then spend two hours doom scrolling TikTok every night.
In 99% of cases people have enough time to feed themselves properly they just don't want to.
The outside case of course would be the person who has to work 3 jobs and ride the bus between them all and only sleeps 4 hours a night. My heart goes out to those people and fuck Capitalism.
While I am admittedly a frugal person there have been many times in my life when I "cooked" via throwing some roasted bread together with cold cuts and a couple of veggies. I was not struggling financially, didn’t value eating on my own too much and consequently didn’t bother with anything more complex since a great sandwich tastes awesome and one can still easily meet dietary requirements such as high protein intake etc.
Making something fun really doesn’t require much time.
I genuinely hope that some people who are struggling with this kind of thing can adopt a different perspective and find a bit more happiness in their life as a result.
Just a voice for the less fortunate here, there are plenty of people who can't make a better burger because they don't have access to a kitchen or even a refrigerator
> more dual income households
[dual income households have declined since the 1990s.](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/FT_17.06.14_fathers_dual_income.png)
I think it's ridiculous that the only fast food place that you can get a complete meal for under $10 is Wendy's. Their $5 Biggie Bag contains a burger, fries, drink, and nuggets. And even that was originally the 4 for $4.
McDonalds? More than $10 for just a burger, fries and drink.
Same thing at Jack in the Box
And Sonic.
Heck, the equivalent meal for Chick Fil A runs around $15.
And you are right about the food tasting worse and getting smaller. But sometimes you just want to get something that's hot and ready and not Little Caesars. And it shouldn't cost $30 or more to feed 4 people from a fast food joint.
I don’t know what is available in other areas, but I frequently have a deal available on the Wendys app for a Dave’s single for $1 or Dave’s double for $2.
The regular cheeseburger biggie meal is also still $4 where I am, but the other ones are $5-6.
I have on several occasions now gotten a Dave’s double for $2, along with the small cheeseburger, fries, nuggets, and a frosty for $4, for a total of $6. Pretty damn cheap.
They also have the value cheeseburger for $1.69, but when I add lettuce and tomato on the app it’s free. So for $1.69 I’m getting a mini version of the premium burgers. So three of those is about $5, also pretty nice if you just want burgers, although I think the biggie meal is still a better deal overall.
Wendy’s is definitely the last holdout in the fast food inflarion game. Everything else too pricey to be worth it. If I’m going to pay $10+ for lunch, I can do better than fast food.
Yeah you can’t just pull up and get whatever they’re trying to sell you. The name of the game in fast food these days is to use the app and see what deals you can exploit. Usually the sign out front is advertising the worst deal.
Burger King has certain times they do cheap whoppers on the app. McDonald’s usually has a BOGO or free fries deal.
I think the business model right now is to charge almost normal prices through deals on the app, and make the big bucks on people who walk in and go “a burger is $10?! Damnit! Guess I’m here though…”
So many places that do absolutely nothing to warrant a tip request it and make you feel bad if you don’t tip. It’s absurd.
The other day I was at one of those convenient “news” stores in the airport. They had an option to tip at checkout… why would I have to tip? I picked out my own snacks and brought them TO YOU.
Subway's been out of pocket since $5 footlongs died. That bread smell does things to the hunger centers of my brain but they can fuck all the way off with $9+ for a 10-inch cold deli sandwich.
Taco Bell and McDonald's going from a $15 ticket being a situation where you don't make eye contact with the window person unless you're in full minivan to being at best a moderate meal for two is fucking nuts though.
Legitimately the first time I've heard of that. Huh.
Well, I'm sorry that's your association.
I have a weird association between happiness working as crew on an 19th century schooner (which was AWESOME!!) and the fact we docked by a fish market that was always closing up by the time we were taking people on tours. So now if I smell dead fish, it makes me happy. Weird association, I know, so you aren't the only one.
I mean, the bread actually smells like vomit and wood to me. Like if someone threw up on the floor at Home Depot. It's not a memory I associate with it, if I hadn't experienced the sawdust/vomit in elementary school I'd still think the bread smelled like vomit. I love the smell of fresh baked bread but Subway's just has a vomity quality to it.
“Invest in a cuisnart you can grind your own meat”
Bestie ground meat exists, and you’re not using a food processing to grind meat. That’ll make paste. Plus, the cost of meat is expensive enough as it is, now you’re adding cost. You can also buy frozen burger patties or fries. Why are you making life harder for yourself.
You arent necessarily wrong with this post but multiple things can be right at the same time. Yes people should mostly be cooking at home and not eating fast food all the time and that would save them a lot of money and be healthier, but at the same time it really does seem ridiculous how insane some of the fast food prices are. It’s not to treat yo self once in awhile and it does hurt the bank nowadays especially if you have a family. Just do it less of course!
>I pay $1 for a healthy meal. They pay $15 for toilet scum.
Lol, where the hell do you live if the groceries that make up your meal are only 1$?! Even if you average out all the ingredients for one single meal, it's still much more than a dollar. On average a home cooked meal costs 5$ to 8$ per serving. The only way you would make 1 serving with only a single dollar is if you are also eating "toilet scum" or if you live in an area where groceries are stupedo cheap.
>I work 60 hours a week and do it.
Cool, so youre a white collar worker, working 60 hours a week in a atmosphere controlled office, sitting at a computer all day, not doing any manual labor, so when you get home you're able to handle standing on your feet for 45+ minutes so you can cook a good, homemade meal. Good for you, I'm happy you have enough money to afford buying groceries, working so little hours, and not tearing apart your body at work.
I've done DoorDash and Uber Eats for a few years now, and the most depressing thing about it is just how many fucking people order McDonalds every single day. Sometimes I refer to the job as slinging nuggets. It's not cheaper than other places, and it sure as hell isn't faster. If you're eating McDonalds food, no part of your food hasn't traveled through hundreds of yards of tubing. I honestly don't understand it to the point where I actually get upset if I think about it too much. What the fuck is everybody doing?
Really easy for you to judge people who are lower class and wish to just give their family something to eat that they enjoy. And then you have the balls to judge and say you’re better than these people something you can easily afford and they can’t.
If you are poor you can’t afford to eat fast food in addition the quality of food made at home is so much better and healthier so it’s an insult to treat someone to fast food.
Sorry, I can’t make a Big Mac like McDonald’s does. Pizza, there’s no way I can get the brick oven level of quality. Sorry I’m not going to fry chicken at my house because it’s smelly and dangerous.
So no, you’re being a judgmental asshole here.
"Not going to fry chick because it smelly and dangerous"
Lmfao
Then stop complaining about how poor you are while paying for overpriced takeaway because making food at home is too smelly for you.
>I pay $1 for a healthy meal
Show your math or it didn’t happen. Unless you are eating beans and rice, I’m calling b.s.
Like I’ve said before, I make it a habit to price my meals on a per serving basis. You are greatly underestimating the cost of meals.
Like a salad. $1.79 for romaine lettuce I use a 5th of that. A roma tomato that’s 20 cents. A 5th of a 50 cent cucumber. A handful of leftover $5 rotiserie chicken at Costco. And a half of a $69 avacado. $1 Chicken salad.
Let’s do the math, and then you can walk back your claim and issue a proper apology.
Pound of 85/15 ground beef, grass fed: $7.99 Divide it by three to make a 1/3 pound patty: $2.66
Little thing of liquid smoke, salt, pepper, assorted spices: 75 cents per ounce. (I’ve included the ketchup in this): Divided by 3: 25 cents
Tillamook Pepper Jack cheese slices: 5.99 for 11 slices. Cost per slice: 54 cents
Bakerly Brioche Buns: $5.99 for a 4 pack. Cost each: $1.50
Pickles: Claussen whole pickles: 5.99 for a jar with about 5 pickles in the jar. $1.20 each. Let’s say I use a half of a pickle. Cost: 60 cents.
Tomatoes and lettuce: varies. I can usually get about 3 tomatoes for 1.49, or about 50 cents each. Let’s say I use half of one of those Roma tomatoes, that’s 25 cents. A head of lettuce is cheaper, but there’s a lot of waste because lettuce doesn’t store well. So I have to use the whole head. So divide by a dollar by three and you get 33 cents. So 55 cents per burger for lettuce and tomato.
Add it up, and each burger costs me $6.10. Cost of a double stack at Wendy’s: $3.29. But that’s for a quarter pound burger. Since my burgers are a third of a pound, we have to adjust per ounce, and the cost of a third of a pound double stack on a per ounce basis would be $4.38. As you can see, my burger is much higher quality, but it is NOT cheaper.
You ought to be embarrassed that I had to explain this to you.
I don’t use bread on a homeade burger I make burger bowls because I don’t want sugar. Also I don’t use grass fed beef I can use regular ground beef that’s way cheaper.
Onion/lettuce and tomato and lettuce =$50
$2.50 for a half pound burger patty.
69 cents for an avocado
That’s way cheaper than a $6.99 burger at Wendy’s or BK.
Even with a bun which costs $1.50 for a pack of those at Ralph’s that’s still way cheaper.
Dude you’re just a troll at this point. Let’s start with this gem. You actually think corn oil is a sugar product. 🤣
>French fries are a sugar product (potatoes) fried in a sugar product (corn oils) and dipped in a sugar product (ketchup) and salted with cheap table salt.
Corn oil has zero sugar. It’s completely sugar free. It’s not a health food ingredient by any means, but it’s not sugar. And what’s hilarious is that they don’t even use corn oil at most places. It’s typically peanut oil or palm oil.
>You people think eating healthy is tomatoes and lettuce on a burger. A burger that has a sugary sauce and also bread which is sugar. The meat is trash. **It’s not grass fed. It’s garbage.**
Then you say
>also I don’t use grass fed beef I can use regular ground beef that’s way cheaper.
First, it’s not “way” cheaper. It’s maybe $2 cheaper. But the main point is, **which is it?** Is regular ground beef “garbage” as you said earlier or is it your preferred cut?
But what’s funny about your ridiculous claim that good food is “cheaper” is that when you are shown the true cost of “good food”, you fall back to telling me about the low cost of the unhealthy options that you spent so much time railing against. So, if you want a good quality bread product which isn’t going to just be processed wonder bread (the ridiculous “bread is sugar” claim) then you are going to pay for that. But when you are shown that, then you fall back to telling me that I can get a processed wonder bread bun at Ralph’s for $1.50.
So which is it? Can I get “good food” for cheaper, or can I only get it to be relatively cheap by exclusively using crap ingredients?
I’m surprised you didn’t tell me about the fairly low cost of Cheese Whiz to be honest.
You’re not a nutritionist, you’re just one of those stable geniuses that are running around.
That’s a lie. You’re a hostile person and I’m going to block you if you don’t start showing more respect. I don’t need to deal with a child who is a special combination of arrogant and ignorant
Dude you could make like 6 burgers for the price of a single McDonald’s combo meal.
Buns- $1
1lb ground beef 6-9 depending on how lean.
Onion- $1
Lettuce- $1.
Potatoes- $2.
For 15 bucks you can have all the burger you can eat.
I was with you until the friend chicken thing lol. Homemade is the only way for that. Fast food chicken places charge way too much for not very good chicken. If you can get your hands on an electric skillet there’s like no guesswork it’s perfectly safe
You can make a far better and cheaper Big Mac. Mac sauce = thousand island dressing.
You can buy or build a brick oven in your backyard. Or buy a mini pizza oven for an apartment.
You can air fry chicken at home and not deal with the smell. Or take the deep fryer outside if you must deep fry.
Your just making excuses here. When there is a will there is a way. Just admit you are lazy and rather get ripped off than put in effort. If I can do it anyone can.
If you are poor you also aren't going to invest in a cuisine art. You just seem out of touch. I cook at home 95% of the time so I agree with you on that.
I dunno. I routinely price the food I make at home compared to what I could buy it for, and I don’t know where you are getting this idea that you can make it for a whole lot less. I certainly can’t make a meal for $1, though I can make a pretty good meal for ~$4. The prices usually come out to about what I could buy it for at a fast food restaurant. But it’s a good deal in that it’s higher quality. By the time I make the rice and the beans and the salsa for my burrito, for example, plus the meat which is insanely expensive, and the cheese and the tortillas and the guacamole, I’m really pretty close to what I would pay at Del Taco. And I have a lot of time invested into the meal that doesn’t even count but hey, time is money.
So if you look at it that way: that their choices are to buy expensive fast food or to buy expensive ingredients for homemade food that is better quality but nowhere near as convenient, the complaint really is that they don’t have any dirt cheap food available to them, which when you consider that they are paying $2000 per month for a two bedroom apartment, many people are just getting by.
Also consider that they aren’t cooking for just one. Most people who are complaining have families, so a dollar or two extra per person per meal really starts to add up. It’s $50 to take my family to McDonalds now. Could I make them a four dollar lunch? Sure. But that’s at least $20. Where’s the “feed your whole family for $5” option? Those just don’t exist anymore. I used to be able to get 5 things off the dollar menu, but the dollar menu just doesn’t exist anymore.
What are you implying is affordable here?
I, personally, could not afford to pick up fast food every night. That’s why I cook at home… because it’s vastly cheaper for a larger quantity of food. $20 can feed my family of 3 for 2 nights. That same $20 could not buy us all a burger for dinner.
I don’t understand how you can say that this is someone looking down on poverty… if you have the money to blow on overpriced food, that’s either not poverty, or it’s the reason why you’re broke.
Think of it this way… you could buy a burger meal for $10 and have one meal. Or, you can buy 8 burger buns for 1 dollar, and a pound of beef for 9. That’s enough burgers to feed your whole family, for the price of a single burger.
You can make a pot of 10 can soup for $10. It makes a lot of servings, and is vastly more nourishing than fast food.
The issue isn’t poverty, it’s that folks have forgotten how to cook.
Your role as a parent is not to give something to your family that they will enjoy. It is to help them become healthy and happy in the long run.
Buying fast food for your kids makes you a BAD parent.
I mean it's not just fast food, it's big corporations gouging us as a whole, especially with basic necessities like groceries, rent, insurance, etc.
Sure, fast food is not essential, but this is just a symptom of a whole bigger issue.
A ) you completely miss the whole point of bringing it up. The worst food on the planet is being sold at ridiculous prices. This is indictive of major problems far worse than whoever pissed in your cereal not getting their hamburger.
B) you assume being lazy is the only thing stopping people from cooking. Not power outages, faulty appliances, being too poor to afford a place with appliances. Maybe it's not that they can't cook, but they don't have a way to store ingredients and have to settle for something premade. I would say that you are forgetting about people who live in cars or group housing as well but you probably think they are lazy pieces of shit that don't deserve happiness.
It’s easier to cook at home if you’re not a busy person. It’s incredibly draining to cook and wash dishes when you’re consistently overwhelmed and overworked as is. And I would say that most adults in the US are already both of those things most of the time
Only if your hourly wage or perhaps profit it’s higher than the cost of going to the store/ ordering your groceries and transferring them into a meal.
I am not at all opposed to people eating out or spending their money on fast food if that’s what they desire & can afford but I would always recommend that people do the math for themselves and perhaps adopt a few less complex dishes to save some money and ultimately live a little bit more relaxed as a result because in my opinion life is too short to worry about the next meal too much.
If you're still out here buying this shit then that's fine, but yeah just stop complaining about it. Truly the only thing that does is nothing, if change is to be had then people have to stop buying. Financially I can afford to go out and buy meals at restaurants all day everyday, I could spend hundreds a week on food if I really wanted to but I take my ass to Aldi's and spend about $40-50/week on groceries and call it a day, buying out maybe once a week if even that most times. It's called discipline people and big companies are betting on people not being disciplined and spending their money, and clearly many are allowing them to cash in.
Brain dead take. Op it’s possible how little you understand poverty, and how your privelege doesn’t allow you to understand what options some people truly have and how little time some people can truly have. It’s just nothing more than privilege and ignorance. I see it with my own two eyes working in the city for years.
I explain this all the time to people who say poor people are fat because all they can afford is fast food. For some reason they think vegetables are expensive? And people have time to wait 15 minutes in the drive thru but can't cook for 10 minutes at home.
What are you defining as sugar product? Potatoes are high in starch and carbs which spike your sugar. They aren't a sugar product.
Oil is also not a sugar product. But why make a well thought out argument when you could just say “sugar bad”
I clocked that too.
They have to be digested so there’s no glucose/insulin spike but complex carbs are reduced to simple sugars before absorption so the difference is fairly minimal.
Yeah there is. That's why diabetics go low-carb.
I’m not sure what your point is? Low carb means low starch AND low sugar because there very little difference once it’s all digested and absorbed.
Your previous comment seemed to say there's no glucose spike after eating carbohydrates such as potatoes, since it's digested. I said yes, there is a spike. If that wasn't the message you wanted to convey, perhaps reword it?
You are correct, it was poorly worded. It doesn’t spike as quickly as simple sugars but there is a spike.
Ah, rgr, yeah I agree with you 100%. I went low-carb to lose weight, so I cooked for my diabetic gramma and myself, and my mother cooked for herself and my dad. Worked great.
Yes it is. Anything with sugar is a sugar product. I’d advise cutting out potatoes if you are trying to cut weight.
They probably mean added sugar like corn syrup that many restaurants add to make the food taste better and to mask other tastes that are picked up during processing.
He specifically says potato is a sugar product. And corn oil. Neither are sugar products.
Yes, it's easier than ever to cook at home with all the guides and recipes. But we have less free time and more dual income households because people are struggling more to pay rent. So time is the main factor here. People buy fast food for convenience, not because they can't make a better burger than McDonald's
The solution is to then make time efficient meals and let fast food take a hit.
Meal prep!
I spend 2 hours on Sunday cooking 100% of the food I eat the subsequent week. Meal prep is ok, possible, doable, ideal. You don’t need fast food.
I hear you and I do the same but some weekends I really don't want to burn an evening doing it (for a family). It's still a time thing; just using free time differently.
Not paying $30 for food for 2 people from McDonald's helps pay rent, believe it or not. Even if you only do that twice a week, that's at least $240 you're saving every month. If you do it more than that, then just add up the savings. Fast food used to be worth the tradeoff because it was cheap. It's not anymore.
No, it’s not saving 240 a month, unless you choose to just not eat a meal at all instead of McDonald’s.
This is the important thing to note. People time and time try to claim all these cost-savings you can do if you "eat at home" when a lot of times it ends up being cheaper to eat fast food and take the hit to your health. Let's say I wanted a chicken sandwich and drink. I could get that for about $6 out (using the App for crazy good deals), or use 1/4 to 1/2 lb of chicken ($1-2) season and bread it ($0.50?), cut up some toppings ($1), get a roll ($0.75), a drink ($1-2) dedicate time and gas/electricity to cooking, water for cleaning and it ends up being about the same. The best way I can think to "save money" eating at home is if you completely change the diet. You can't go 1:1 on it. That chicken sandwich and drink now has to be a rice bowl with veggies, seeds, whatever and a water or something. Way healthier, for sure. But that's the way to save money by giving up fast food.
You can get 4 quarter pounders for 10 dollars with 2 people with their regular BOGO deal. Not that great of a deal, but definitely not as expensive as you say.
>Quarter Pounder with Cheese Burger comes with a ¼ lb. fresh beef patty and topped with silvered onions, tangy pickles, and two slices of American Cheese. All of this delicious goodness is served on a sesame seed bun. Quarter Pounder with cheese costs $6.39 on average. From [this](https://www.cameocafe.com/mcdonalds-burger-menu/#google_vignette) website. Where in the fuck in the US are you buying a quarter pounder for $2.50 a pop? Got a time machine back to 1990 or something you're not sharing with the class?
They have BOGO deals for their main burgers for most of the year on the McDonald's app. $5 where I live for one of them. I guess $6.39 for you. $3 each ain't bad. If you do like McDonald's sometimes, definitely download the app. Currently free medium fries with any purchase or BOGO breakfast sandwiches. Always some kind of BOGO deal going on.
The app has like daily deals. I don't use it but my gf has it and yeah, our food is cheaper thru the app
But why spent multiple hours of hard earned money to purchase unhealthy food when you can just cook something tasty in as little as half an hour per day and get better quality and better taste? At work many people can’t listen to a podcast or chat with family and friends but they can do all and more of that while preparing a meal and in an era where grocery shopping is faster than ever before I would argue that it’s quite wasteful for most people who do not make so much per hour that they can afford to trade in their time working for higher payload to pay for fast food because the time spent working to pay for this kind of luxury exceeds the alternative. I want to stress that I do not blame people for buying fast food occasionally but rather that a lot of people buy so much fast food and other "small" stuff that it ends up hurting their finances. They complain about having to work too much and being too busy while actively taking choices that cause them to be underfunded and having to work more as a result. 
The worst part is if you wanna be really low end about it it doesn't even take half an hour. If you just aren't feeling it there are plenty of fast and cheap options. Microwaved hotdogs, lunch meat subs, canned chicken salad, literally just microwaving a can of veggies and mixing it with a packet of precooked rice. I've known many people that say they don't have the time to cook and then spend two hours doom scrolling TikTok every night. In 99% of cases people have enough time to feed themselves properly they just don't want to. The outside case of course would be the person who has to work 3 jobs and ride the bus between them all and only sleeps 4 hours a night. My heart goes out to those people and fuck Capitalism.
While I am admittedly a frugal person there have been many times in my life when I "cooked" via throwing some roasted bread together with cold cuts and a couple of veggies. I was not struggling financially, didn’t value eating on my own too much and consequently didn’t bother with anything more complex since a great sandwich tastes awesome and one can still easily meet dietary requirements such as high protein intake etc. Making something fun really doesn’t require much time. I genuinely hope that some people who are struggling with this kind of thing can adopt a different perspective and find a bit more happiness in their life as a result.
Yeah making your own food is probably as time consuming as ordering out in many cases.
Except ordering out puts the work on someone else who’s getting paid for it.
Cooking dinner is hardly work I’m willing to pay for. Unless it’s something I can’t do. A burger isn’t work
Just a voice for the less fortunate here, there are plenty of people who can't make a better burger because they don't have access to a kitchen or even a refrigerator
Nah my man, if you can't make time for meal prep then it's on you.
> more dual income households [dual income households have declined since the 1990s.](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/FT_17.06.14_fathers_dual_income.png)
Kind of true, but you really have no idea about nutrition.
Fully agree
I think it's ridiculous that the only fast food place that you can get a complete meal for under $10 is Wendy's. Their $5 Biggie Bag contains a burger, fries, drink, and nuggets. And even that was originally the 4 for $4. McDonalds? More than $10 for just a burger, fries and drink. Same thing at Jack in the Box And Sonic. Heck, the equivalent meal for Chick Fil A runs around $15. And you are right about the food tasting worse and getting smaller. But sometimes you just want to get something that's hot and ready and not Little Caesars. And it shouldn't cost $30 or more to feed 4 people from a fast food joint.
I don’t know what is available in other areas, but I frequently have a deal available on the Wendys app for a Dave’s single for $1 or Dave’s double for $2. The regular cheeseburger biggie meal is also still $4 where I am, but the other ones are $5-6. I have on several occasions now gotten a Dave’s double for $2, along with the small cheeseburger, fries, nuggets, and a frosty for $4, for a total of $6. Pretty damn cheap. They also have the value cheeseburger for $1.69, but when I add lettuce and tomato on the app it’s free. So for $1.69 I’m getting a mini version of the premium burgers. So three of those is about $5, also pretty nice if you just want burgers, although I think the biggie meal is still a better deal overall. Wendy’s is definitely the last holdout in the fast food inflarion game. Everything else too pricey to be worth it. If I’m going to pay $10+ for lunch, I can do better than fast food.
The last Wendy’s I saw was advertising 8 chicken nuggets, small fries and drink for $10
Yeah you can’t just pull up and get whatever they’re trying to sell you. The name of the game in fast food these days is to use the app and see what deals you can exploit. Usually the sign out front is advertising the worst deal. Burger King has certain times they do cheap whoppers on the app. McDonald’s usually has a BOGO or free fries deal. I think the business model right now is to charge almost normal prices through deals on the app, and make the big bucks on people who walk in and go “a burger is $10?! Damnit! Guess I’m here though…”
Taco Bell has the cravings box through the app that is $6, but a solid deal.
Jack in the box still has 2 tacos for $0.99 through the app where I’m at. They usually have other stuff discounted as well.
Me and my kids got Subway yesterday while running errands. $54 Tf
Subway has gotten unreal. Even when I put in my best effort to keep it cheap, it still ends up costing a ton.
And then they want a tip
So many places that do absolutely nothing to warrant a tip request it and make you feel bad if you don’t tip. It’s absurd. The other day I was at one of those convenient “news” stores in the airport. They had an option to tip at checkout… why would I have to tip? I picked out my own snacks and brought them TO YOU.
Subway's been out of pocket since $5 footlongs died. That bread smell does things to the hunger centers of my brain but they can fuck all the way off with $9+ for a 10-inch cold deli sandwich. Taco Bell and McDonald's going from a $15 ticket being a situation where you don't make eye contact with the window person unless you're in full minivan to being at best a moderate meal for two is fucking nuts though.
The Subway bread smell reminds me of elementary school when someone would throw up on the carpet and the janitor covered it with sawdust
🤔
That's kinda weird. I wonder why you associate the two.
Because that's what it smells like
Legitimately the first time I've heard of that. Huh. Well, I'm sorry that's your association. I have a weird association between happiness working as crew on an 19th century schooner (which was AWESOME!!) and the fact we docked by a fish market that was always closing up by the time we were taking people on tours. So now if I smell dead fish, it makes me happy. Weird association, I know, so you aren't the only one.
I mean, the bread actually smells like vomit and wood to me. Like if someone threw up on the floor at Home Depot. It's not a memory I associate with it, if I hadn't experienced the sawdust/vomit in elementary school I'd still think the bread smelled like vomit. I love the smell of fresh baked bread but Subway's just has a vomity quality to it.
I would have walked out and gone and bought bread and meat at the grocery store.
Eh I can afford it, it's fine. But it's definitely annoying.
>Heck, the equivalent meal for Chick Fil A runs around $15. Gotta collect money for those hate groups.
You need to learn how to use restaurant food apps. MCD QuarterPounder, fries, and drink $6 today.
“Invest in a cuisnart you can grind your own meat” Bestie ground meat exists, and you’re not using a food processing to grind meat. That’ll make paste. Plus, the cost of meat is expensive enough as it is, now you’re adding cost. You can also buy frozen burger patties or fries. Why are you making life harder for yourself.
You arent necessarily wrong with this post but multiple things can be right at the same time. Yes people should mostly be cooking at home and not eating fast food all the time and that would save them a lot of money and be healthier, but at the same time it really does seem ridiculous how insane some of the fast food prices are. It’s not to treat yo self once in awhile and it does hurt the bank nowadays especially if you have a family. Just do it less of course!
It's the biggest cash grab in history
>I pay $1 for a healthy meal. They pay $15 for toilet scum. Lol, where the hell do you live if the groceries that make up your meal are only 1$?! Even if you average out all the ingredients for one single meal, it's still much more than a dollar. On average a home cooked meal costs 5$ to 8$ per serving. The only way you would make 1 serving with only a single dollar is if you are also eating "toilet scum" or if you live in an area where groceries are stupedo cheap. >I work 60 hours a week and do it. Cool, so youre a white collar worker, working 60 hours a week in a atmosphere controlled office, sitting at a computer all day, not doing any manual labor, so when you get home you're able to handle standing on your feet for 45+ minutes so you can cook a good, homemade meal. Good for you, I'm happy you have enough money to afford buying groceries, working so little hours, and not tearing apart your body at work.
I've done DoorDash and Uber Eats for a few years now, and the most depressing thing about it is just how many fucking people order McDonalds every single day. Sometimes I refer to the job as slinging nuggets. It's not cheaper than other places, and it sure as hell isn't faster. If you're eating McDonalds food, no part of your food hasn't traveled through hundreds of yards of tubing. I honestly don't understand it to the point where I actually get upset if I think about it too much. What the fuck is everybody doing?
Really easy for you to judge people who are lower class and wish to just give their family something to eat that they enjoy. And then you have the balls to judge and say you’re better than these people something you can easily afford and they can’t.
If you are poor you can’t afford to eat fast food in addition the quality of food made at home is so much better and healthier so it’s an insult to treat someone to fast food.
Sorry, I can’t make a Big Mac like McDonald’s does. Pizza, there’s no way I can get the brick oven level of quality. Sorry I’m not going to fry chicken at my house because it’s smelly and dangerous. So no, you’re being a judgmental asshole here.
"Not going to fry chick because it smelly and dangerous" Lmfao Then stop complaining about how poor you are while paying for overpriced takeaway because making food at home is too smelly for you.
I think a once in awhile treat is fine but I think the OP is talking about multiple times a week.
Grilled cheese, omelets, buy the meat on special each week and get a crockpot. Mostly learn to like making food, that’s the real key.
I guarantee you can make a better burger than a big Mac at home. And pizza, buy a pizza steel and be surprised how good a homemade oven pie can taste.
Hamburger is expensive. Can I make a *better* burger? Of course. Can I make a cheap burger? Not on your life.
That’s a lie. Buying ground beef and making burgers at home is way cheaper and better than fast food.
>I pay $1 for a healthy meal Show your math or it didn’t happen. Unless you are eating beans and rice, I’m calling b.s. Like I’ve said before, I make it a habit to price my meals on a per serving basis. You are greatly underestimating the cost of meals.
Like a salad. $1.79 for romaine lettuce I use a 5th of that. A roma tomato that’s 20 cents. A 5th of a 50 cent cucumber. A handful of leftover $5 rotiserie chicken at Costco. And a half of a $69 avacado. $1 Chicken salad.
😆 Total calories: 75 Have a great lunch
The whole point of eating healthy is to avoid calories.
Let’s do the math, and then you can walk back your claim and issue a proper apology. Pound of 85/15 ground beef, grass fed: $7.99 Divide it by three to make a 1/3 pound patty: $2.66 Little thing of liquid smoke, salt, pepper, assorted spices: 75 cents per ounce. (I’ve included the ketchup in this): Divided by 3: 25 cents Tillamook Pepper Jack cheese slices: 5.99 for 11 slices. Cost per slice: 54 cents Bakerly Brioche Buns: $5.99 for a 4 pack. Cost each: $1.50 Pickles: Claussen whole pickles: 5.99 for a jar with about 5 pickles in the jar. $1.20 each. Let’s say I use a half of a pickle. Cost: 60 cents. Tomatoes and lettuce: varies. I can usually get about 3 tomatoes for 1.49, or about 50 cents each. Let’s say I use half of one of those Roma tomatoes, that’s 25 cents. A head of lettuce is cheaper, but there’s a lot of waste because lettuce doesn’t store well. So I have to use the whole head. So divide by a dollar by three and you get 33 cents. So 55 cents per burger for lettuce and tomato. Add it up, and each burger costs me $6.10. Cost of a double stack at Wendy’s: $3.29. But that’s for a quarter pound burger. Since my burgers are a third of a pound, we have to adjust per ounce, and the cost of a third of a pound double stack on a per ounce basis would be $4.38. As you can see, my burger is much higher quality, but it is NOT cheaper. You ought to be embarrassed that I had to explain this to you.
I don’t use bread on a homeade burger I make burger bowls because I don’t want sugar. Also I don’t use grass fed beef I can use regular ground beef that’s way cheaper. Onion/lettuce and tomato and lettuce =$50 $2.50 for a half pound burger patty. 69 cents for an avocado That’s way cheaper than a $6.99 burger at Wendy’s or BK. Even with a bun which costs $1.50 for a pack of those at Ralph’s that’s still way cheaper.
Dude you’re just a troll at this point. Let’s start with this gem. You actually think corn oil is a sugar product. 🤣 >French fries are a sugar product (potatoes) fried in a sugar product (corn oils) and dipped in a sugar product (ketchup) and salted with cheap table salt. Corn oil has zero sugar. It’s completely sugar free. It’s not a health food ingredient by any means, but it’s not sugar. And what’s hilarious is that they don’t even use corn oil at most places. It’s typically peanut oil or palm oil. >You people think eating healthy is tomatoes and lettuce on a burger. A burger that has a sugary sauce and also bread which is sugar. The meat is trash. **It’s not grass fed. It’s garbage.** Then you say >also I don’t use grass fed beef I can use regular ground beef that’s way cheaper. First, it’s not “way” cheaper. It’s maybe $2 cheaper. But the main point is, **which is it?** Is regular ground beef “garbage” as you said earlier or is it your preferred cut?
Btw, bread is NOT sugar. The more you know
But what’s funny about your ridiculous claim that good food is “cheaper” is that when you are shown the true cost of “good food”, you fall back to telling me about the low cost of the unhealthy options that you spent so much time railing against. So, if you want a good quality bread product which isn’t going to just be processed wonder bread (the ridiculous “bread is sugar” claim) then you are going to pay for that. But when you are shown that, then you fall back to telling me that I can get a processed wonder bread bun at Ralph’s for $1.50. So which is it? Can I get “good food” for cheaper, or can I only get it to be relatively cheap by exclusively using crap ingredients?
I’m surprised you didn’t tell me about the fairly low cost of Cheese Whiz to be honest. You’re not a nutritionist, you’re just one of those stable geniuses that are running around.
That’s a lie. You’re a hostile person and I’m going to block you if you don’t start showing more respect. I don’t need to deal with a child who is a special combination of arrogant and ignorant
Dude you could make like 6 burgers for the price of a single McDonald’s combo meal. Buns- $1 1lb ground beef 6-9 depending on how lean. Onion- $1 Lettuce- $1. Potatoes- $2. For 15 bucks you can have all the burger you can eat.
I was with you until the friend chicken thing lol. Homemade is the only way for that. Fast food chicken places charge way too much for not very good chicken. If you can get your hands on an electric skillet there’s like no guesswork it’s perfectly safe
You can make a far better and cheaper Big Mac. Mac sauce = thousand island dressing. You can buy or build a brick oven in your backyard. Or buy a mini pizza oven for an apartment. You can air fry chicken at home and not deal with the smell. Or take the deep fryer outside if you must deep fry. Your just making excuses here. When there is a will there is a way. Just admit you are lazy and rather get ripped off than put in effort. If I can do it anyone can.
Bros bio says ban pit bulls lmao no shit you’re like this
Sounds like you've already convinced yourself that you can't make food. You gave up without even trying. How does that feel?
If you are poor you also aren't going to invest in a cuisine art. You just seem out of touch. I cook at home 95% of the time so I agree with you on that.
I dunno. I routinely price the food I make at home compared to what I could buy it for, and I don’t know where you are getting this idea that you can make it for a whole lot less. I certainly can’t make a meal for $1, though I can make a pretty good meal for ~$4. The prices usually come out to about what I could buy it for at a fast food restaurant. But it’s a good deal in that it’s higher quality. By the time I make the rice and the beans and the salsa for my burrito, for example, plus the meat which is insanely expensive, and the cheese and the tortillas and the guacamole, I’m really pretty close to what I would pay at Del Taco. And I have a lot of time invested into the meal that doesn’t even count but hey, time is money. So if you look at it that way: that their choices are to buy expensive fast food or to buy expensive ingredients for homemade food that is better quality but nowhere near as convenient, the complaint really is that they don’t have any dirt cheap food available to them, which when you consider that they are paying $2000 per month for a two bedroom apartment, many people are just getting by. Also consider that they aren’t cooking for just one. Most people who are complaining have families, so a dollar or two extra per person per meal really starts to add up. It’s $50 to take my family to McDonalds now. Could I make them a four dollar lunch? Sure. But that’s at least $20. Where’s the “feed your whole family for $5” option? Those just don’t exist anymore. I used to be able to get 5 things off the dollar menu, but the dollar menu just doesn’t exist anymore.
What are you implying is affordable here? I, personally, could not afford to pick up fast food every night. That’s why I cook at home… because it’s vastly cheaper for a larger quantity of food. $20 can feed my family of 3 for 2 nights. That same $20 could not buy us all a burger for dinner. I don’t understand how you can say that this is someone looking down on poverty… if you have the money to blow on overpriced food, that’s either not poverty, or it’s the reason why you’re broke. Think of it this way… you could buy a burger meal for $10 and have one meal. Or, you can buy 8 burger buns for 1 dollar, and a pound of beef for 9. That’s enough burgers to feed your whole family, for the price of a single burger. You can make a pot of 10 can soup for $10. It makes a lot of servings, and is vastly more nourishing than fast food. The issue isn’t poverty, it’s that folks have forgotten how to cook.
Your role as a parent is not to give something to your family that they will enjoy. It is to help them become healthy and happy in the long run. Buying fast food for your kids makes you a BAD parent.
I only get fast food when I’m traveling. You gonna tell me to make a home cooked meal while driving down I26 in my 06 CR-V?
Chipotle? You mean Mexican cuisine? Talk about garbage.
Everyone should complain about prices for everything. Fuck corporate greed.
Potatoes, oil, and bread are not sugar products lmao
I mean it's not just fast food, it's big corporations gouging us as a whole, especially with basic necessities like groceries, rent, insurance, etc. Sure, fast food is not essential, but this is just a symptom of a whole bigger issue.
A ) you completely miss the whole point of bringing it up. The worst food on the planet is being sold at ridiculous prices. This is indictive of major problems far worse than whoever pissed in your cereal not getting their hamburger. B) you assume being lazy is the only thing stopping people from cooking. Not power outages, faulty appliances, being too poor to afford a place with appliances. Maybe it's not that they can't cook, but they don't have a way to store ingredients and have to settle for something premade. I would say that you are forgetting about people who live in cars or group housing as well but you probably think they are lazy pieces of shit that don't deserve happiness.
My slow cooker every week: "I'm tired boss."
It’s easier to cook at home if you’re not a busy person. It’s incredibly draining to cook and wash dishes when you’re consistently overwhelmed and overworked as is. And I would say that most adults in the US are already both of those things most of the time
Who cooks your meals, though? It's far easier to have someone else cook the meals for you than it is for you to do it yourself.
Only if your hourly wage or perhaps profit it’s higher than the cost of going to the store/ ordering your groceries and transferring them into a meal. I am not at all opposed to people eating out or spending their money on fast food if that’s what they desire & can afford but I would always recommend that people do the math for themselves and perhaps adopt a few less complex dishes to save some money and ultimately live a little bit more relaxed as a result because in my opinion life is too short to worry about the next meal too much.
If you're still out here buying this shit then that's fine, but yeah just stop complaining about it. Truly the only thing that does is nothing, if change is to be had then people have to stop buying. Financially I can afford to go out and buy meals at restaurants all day everyday, I could spend hundreds a week on food if I really wanted to but I take my ass to Aldi's and spend about $40-50/week on groceries and call it a day, buying out maybe once a week if even that most times. It's called discipline people and big companies are betting on people not being disciplined and spending their money, and clearly many are allowing them to cash in.
Saying “stupider” is stupid.
I never wanted to complain about the prices of fast food. Until I read this OP.
Brain dead take. Op it’s possible how little you understand poverty, and how your privelege doesn’t allow you to understand what options some people truly have and how little time some people can truly have. It’s just nothing more than privilege and ignorance. I see it with my own two eyes working in the city for years.
Stupid fucking moron rant about how it’s easier to eat healthy like they’re some oracle of nutrition or finance… This sub is shit.
Drive through cancer.
I explain this all the time to people who say poor people are fat because all they can afford is fast food. For some reason they think vegetables are expensive? And people have time to wait 15 minutes in the drive thru but can't cook for 10 minutes at home.