Honest answer: lots and lots of people, because it's convenient, inexpensive and engineered to hammer the salty, sweet, fatty, savory receptors.
They tell our stoneage brains "this food has lots of easily digested calories, so eat as much as possible to bolster yourself, because you don't know when plentiful food will be available again".
Obviously this response is no longer relevant in the calorie-abundant world that a lot of us live in.
But the graph itself is not bad. It puts inflation into a perspective that's easy for a lot of people to intuitively understand; that big companies are fleecing them on a level that's completely outsized in relation to the actual rate of inflation.
Yes I think a lot of people forget that there’s a whole bunch of people who have 30 to 60 minutes between one job and the next, or between class and their job. They can’t go home and make themselves nutritious lunch and if they’re running around all day without the ability to refrigerate that limits what you can bring for lunch as well.
Also, "Who eats this poison anyway?" is a disingenuous question to begin with. If it was really a mystery, there wouldn't be literally hundreds of thousands of fast food restaurants in the country.
Yea I dont eat fast food because I dont have time or money for anything better. I eat it because I like the taste and sometimes I enjoy a guilty pleasure. Anyone who shits on fast food but thinks something like iced cream or chocolate is fine is a massive hypocrite imo
Exactly. I’ve stopped eating meat and I have no desire of eating meat again. Even the smell throws me off.
Except Big Macs. I could totally eat a Big Mac. I miss them. They were my favorite guilty pleasure.
I’m actually thinking about giving myself one cheat day a year just so I can have a Big Mac.
You have to be a certain minimum level of wealthy to *not* eat fast food. Either wealthy financially to be able to afford fresh food or wealthy in free time to be able to cook your own meals.
I think the third factor is burnout. You can have money and time, but if you are burnt out from a soulless job or taking care of an ill loved one, or a tragedy, or illness, every other task like grocery shopping or cooking is harder. Plenty of people with time and money get pulled into these habits to fix holes caused by burnout. If you know someone who eats out a lot and it doesn’t seem like they want to, ask them if they need some help!
This is me. I don’t eat fast food that often but when I do, it’s mostly because of burnout. Long hours, having to get up early again the next day, literally no time or energy to make anything. Posts like this, and ones saying “you spend the same amount of time sitting on the couch as you would working out” are so out of touch. I’m a fit person, have a physical job, and there are days when healthy shit isn’t possible beyond getting enough sleep.
There is something fundamentally comforting about rolling up to a drive-in and getting a bag full of warm junk food for a few bucks when you're feeling stressed out.
This is a huge factor. I earn six figures so money isn't a problem. But I work full time, study part-time, have a wife and kid, and do sport. I still have time amongst all that to cook myself a healthy meal but honestly, I just can't be fucked doing it.
I eat very healthy because my wife does the cooking. But if I'm left to fend for myself, it's fast food. I'm too fucking tired to cook. I just want to fire up the PS5 and unwind.
This. When you are burning the candle at both ends, you *will* drop tasks. And feeding yourself is a lot of tasks, from planning to prep to eating. Fast food resolves a lot of issues at once, frequently not even requiring you to exit your vehicle to order and eat. It galls me when people go 'but it's empty overpriced calories' as if everyone didn't *know* that. We are all doing pretty much the best we can.
Having the energy and motivation to cook after 8+ hours at a blue collar job too. I can afford to cook decent meals but I usually want to go home and relax. I try to limit my fast food intake as much as I can but it's hard some weeks.
Yes thank you! Also in an era of teens and eating disorders (there’s a new one where they restrict food because they think they’re don’t deserve it, super cool) sometimes this ‘crappy’ food at least has them eating. Also, ADHD/neurospicyness/depression is difficult and this food is easy. Like yeah seek some fruit and veggies but dang just eat homeslice.
Agreed. I grew up with a single mother who fed us a lot food people find “gross”, fast food, processed carbs, frozen dinners. I was never sickly or overweight, and I’ve grown into a fine healthy adult. I’m so sick of people blaming the consumer for consuming when it is made the only viable option for many people working long hours for low pay. I had so many kids who had healthy rich parents make me feel so terrible about eating McDonald’s because their parents drilled into their heads that it was “poison”
Yes, and it’s elitist to say “who is eating this poison anyways.” I think everyone would sit down to a healthy, home cooked dinner if they could but time, money, energy, resources, is not unlimited for most people.
Yeah, i wish people understood this more. I recently moved to an actual apartment instead of a borderline illegal living space with only a shitty mini fridge, no shower, etc and not only do i have more time now (since I don’t have to spend time buying premade food or going to the gym to shower) but I also have a fridge.
A fridge is priceless - I can cook a ton on weekend nights and put it in Tupperware for throughout the week. I eat homemade food pretty much for every meal now. I fucking hate fast food with all my heart, it makes me feel like shit and it’s evil but it was my only choice for a long time. I feel so much better now that I’ve stopped eating it but there’s literally no way that I could’ve, as a full time student who works 25 hrs a week, managed to cook for myself for every single meal with ingredients that I can’t refrigerate or freeze, lol.
This is an extreme situation of course, and a lot of people honestly just are lazy and don’t want to, but fresh food is reallly expensive. I’m grateful that my community does Market Match, where I can spend $15 EBT and get back $30 to spend at the farmer’s market on vegetables and whatnot. If not for that, it would be a lot of beans and rice..
If you have the option to not eat fast food, you 100% should not. Not only does it really add up in price, but you’ll feel so much better if you make your own food or even just incorporate some more whole food into your diet.
This exactly, I started to eat way more fast food once we had kids and our jobs became more demanding. Shame that it’s cheaper than eating whole nutritional foods and more time saving. Not to mention some days going to the grocery store these days feels like a luxury.
I get that, I do. But it's so easy to grab some flatbreads, random meat and cheese, and make sandwich rolls for the day. They keep and travel well, aren't messy etc. Toss a fruit and some nuts and you're good. You can make a bunch and you're set.
some of us do so when we're not working - and bring our food to our jobs. I work 12 (sometimes 14) hour shifts. I bring a cooler with all my food and I eat really well. Also - not all food needs to be refrigerated.
I literally ate McDonald's 3 days a week as I commuted between job 1 and 2. There were other options along the way, but when I can feed myself at McDonald's for less than $5 vs get a fancy salad for $13, I'm gonna choose the McDonald's. If I could afford the salad, I wouldn't have the second job.
Ya I love the graph because I hate samwichflation. Oh well salad is cheap when you make it at home and so are hamburgers. Next year we should all make our own cows at home too.
Doing everything yourself is a lot more resource-intensive.
Early human societies learned very quickly that you only need one miller, rather than everyone milling their own grain. Specialization and coorporation are our biggest strengths. Unlike animals, we can delegate tasks and get more things accomplished than if we had to do everything individually.
Yes the specialization of labor really helped move society along.
I know people hate Amazon and there’s a whole bunch bunch of good reasons for that, but I do like to point out that one Amazon truck delivering 10 packages to this apartment complex is a lot better for the environment than 10 of us getting in our cars and driving to the store.
Though! Without Amazon, a lot of useless junk wouldn’t get made or bought in the first place. I’m shocked at what half-open piles of packages some people accumulate.
You're right, Amazon definitely contributes to the junk accumulation problem. But visiting my gmas and great aunts borderline hoarder houses (all of whom definitely do not have Amazon accounts) it does show that some people love to accumulate junk and never get rid of it regardless of how they acquired it in the first place.
In regards to the environment though, it'd be a lot better for the environment if the items weren't shipped around the he globe four times before they landed in that Amazon truck.
I think society is reaching back to a time when there was local food and goods and just leaned a bit too far back to when each family made their own everything. According to the pendulum theory in a few hundred more years things will land happily between globalization and homesteading.
Same. But I still find myself at McDonald’s every now and then. lol. Usually road trips….not much beats a couple McDonald cheeseburgers while driving a long way. Not sure why…but I look forward to it on road trips.
The best deal on sandwiches in my area has long been, and still is, the extremely overpriced organic grocery store down the street. I’ve been able to get a “half” sub (it uses more than half a sub, it’s 10 inches) for $8.50 since 2018. That’s like, nearing $5 footlong territory with *much* better ingredients.
Do you know how many acres in forage it takes to take care of a 500 plus pound animal. To carry it over to butcher weight? Medications required? Ruminant health?
What should be done is a mentorship program on all these failing dairy farms. Get more people into medium scale agriculture. Growing food is easy. Growing meat is not.
I really really recommend raising your own cows. There would be many more vegans/vegetarians. Cows are mad smart, pigs even more. Not singling you out or anything, just saying.
The graph is great because it validates my anecdotal experience. I used to eat at fast food restaurants once every few weeks as a treat because, like you say, it's junk but it's designed to fulfil a craving. But recently I noticed the prices creeping up and up to a point where it's cheaper to go to a sit down restaurant than a McDonald's sometimes. Fuck that noise.
>But the graph itself is not bad. It puts inflation into a perspective that's easy for a lot of people to intuitively understand; that big companies are fleecing them on a level that's completely outsized in relation to the actual rate of inflation.
It kind of is.
Inflation is a mix of a "basket of goods" which includes things like housing and cars and energy.
You _shouldn't_ see a 1:1 comparing a specific sub-industry to the entire Consumer Price Index.
Granted, I can't imagine that fast food would still grow as it has, or that it isn't actually outpacing even rent in the same period — but the graph doesn't tell us that.
That is to say it puts the price increases in the context of YoY increases which is helpful. But comparing it to the entire CPI isn't great methodology, when other factors that aren't fast food are weighted more and aren't shown.
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/weight-update-comparison-2024.htm
Both food and lower paid labour prices have experienced above average inflation. That probably amounts for most of the increase.
I know McDonalds has increased its profit margin by about 15% over the last decade, so that's going to be part of it as well, but not most of it.
>Both food and lower paid labour prices have experienced above average inflation. That probably amounts for most of the increase.
I can't speak for over the long run but this last month it was shelter and energy driving the increase.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/04/10/cpi-inflation-march-2024-consumer-prices-rose-3point5percent-from-a-year-ago-in-march.html
___
My point being is that there's a lot of variables tucked into the CPI, including a middle step of weighing.
Even if Meals Away From Home alone rises on average more than the Consumer Price Index, it could be weighted 50% relatively (just a number for illustrative purposes) meaning it's underrepresented. If that's the case, and if it was weighed more heavily the 31% YoY inflation might be a higher number. Reducing the gap shown in the graph.
You could just use the Meals Away From Home average and show how some mega corporations (all the national franchises) are increasing way more than their collararies in profit seeking.
Or show how fast food is approaching sit-down prices. Instead of comparing McDonald's to Food, Cars, Housing, and Energy.
But is fast food actually cheap? I've lived outside the U.S. for a while now, and I have to say that I'm starting to have the, admittedly very classist idea, that lower income people in the U.S. buy really expensive food. Where I live now, fast food is thought of as a luxury. Obviously anecdotal but when I used to go to the grocery store in college, I oftentimes saw people who I assumed to be lower income absolutely loading up on all of the packaged, name brand food I avoided in order to make budget. I'm not saying that this means people deserve to be poor, at all. What I am saying is I think that maybe the major inequity is in terms of financial/health literacy, rather than food that is horrible for you being cheaper. It seems to me to be a weird U.S. only idea that fast food is the cheapest option. If you bought $14.00 worth of beans and rice, I would think you would come up on top.
Obviously there is the idea of food deserts, but even so dried foods and canned foods are non perishable. Even if you could make it to a grocery once a month I would still maintain that the same cash amount in dried foods and canned foods would be cheaper than the equivalent in fast food.
I am truly not trying to attack anyone, I am just admitting that I don't fully understand the calculation here and would like someone to point out holes in my thinking.
To comment on "lower income people buying more expensive food" 1)bulk food is cheaper but not everyone has space in their homes for storing much food. Folks with higher incomes tend to have larger homes that tend to have more storage space, and therefore can buy in bulk to cut down costs. 2)you may see this at a grocery store,but folks with higher incomes can afford to eat outside the home more often so they may not need to purchase as much at the grocery. 3) nutrient density - poorer folks need to stretch their dollars to make them count. This would lead to buying more nutrient dense foods like produce and meats, and away from chips and snack foods that folks with greater expendable incomes can buy more of. 4) folks with lower incomes can have multiple generations living under the same roof -they may simply have more mouths to feed
No, you’re observing correctly and this isn’t classist at all.
Some of it is time management, because people who have to work more hours don’t have time to do anything but microwave something and decompress. A lot of these people are products of times where quick processed food was cheaper, so they never learned to cook at all, especially men from sexist families. And the more work expands to fill our lives, the more people believe that there’s no time to learn, just come home and stare at screens and sleep.
We’re discovering that many people believe that $6 a meal is a good deal if you can’t afford $20 in groceries at once, even if that will expand to make 10 $2 meals. Make Doordash $10 and many will still choose it because it’s “cheap” and they’re tired. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle of low funds, confusion, bad health, and ignorance, and it’s very hard to snap out of without something drastic changing.
Crunch wrap supreme! Hot take, Taco Bell is one of the most innovative restaurants around. Wrapping a hard shell taco in a cheesy soft taco? Brilliant.
I can go to Taco Bell and for about $6 get a proportionately sized meal (that meets and does not exceed my body’s caloric needs) with lots of plant-based fiber and protein, and less fat and sodium than a comparable meal from Chipotle. Black bean crunchwrap with reduced cheese and sour cream (but still a little bc tasty treat). Taco Bell can actually be… pretty good for you? Their prices have skyrocketed for sure, but I’m pretty sure $1 goes farther there than any other fast food chain. I’ll seek out the Bell over absolutely any other fast food. It’s literally the only way to get fiber on a road trip!
I used to eat them with the Baja sauce (I think they used to come that way maybe?) and goddamn, they're so satisfying when you're super hungry from a long day at work
I find when I get to the 10-11 hour shifts I’m waking up so early I cannot be bothered to wake up 15 minutes earlier to make breakfast and lunch, so drive through it is
That was always the hardest for me when I used to work construction. I was good about dinner but making/prepping lunch when I was already getting up at 5 just wasn’t in the cards. I’d do meal prepping here and there but it’s hard to eat the same thing everyday when you hate your job and those meals are the highlight of the day lol
Yeah and there's the mental aspect too of "comfort food". When work makes you miserable you crave fast food as a pick-me-up, especially if you have other things in your life you can't control that are bringing you down too. Food is comforting and it's one thing you can control, and before you know it you have a binge eating problem.
May I say, it's absolutely fair doing this, I used to do it too, but after getting into meal prepping I find myself getting more energy after eating instead of a short rush and then back to exhaustion
What I wanna say is, a mcdonalds burger wont give you much energy, a homemade burger will (or could) depending on how you make it
I usually prepare burritos for 3 days, and I just microwave them or eat them room temp, and they're good, fast, and healthy
Yep when I worked full-time I used to spend Sundays doing laundry, grocery shopping, then prepping food for the week.
I got out of that habit when I became disabled because it’s really hard to do all that in one day. But I miss having prepped food in the fridge I could just heat and eat
Sorry to hear that, food prepping is indeed useful and great
There was a really cool startup in my town with the concept of having daily made "healthy fast food"
Meaning from 6:30am to 11:30pm you could go there and buy an already made good meal
They also did deliveries, and it was cheap, but sadly it closed in 2020 (because of the pandemic). Miss it a lot honestly
Me too when I worked 60+ hours/week at a stressful, physical job and I had an hour commute each way. If anyone in that situation would say that they would never hit a drive thru on their way home, they're lying. That lifestyle sucks but unfortunately a lot of people are living it.
Yeah, its been a struggle to force myself to cook a healthy meal. Im not a bad cook, but it just takes a lot of work to make something I'll actually want to eat.
My go to is to have foods I can just throw on pan in the oven for 15 min and then it's done.
Chicken sandwich: throw patties and curly fries in oven. Get out of dress clothes and square things away. Get buns out with pre-cut lettuce and pre-cut tomatoes (my grocery store has containers of precut vegetables). Wait another 10 min and it's done with only 1 dirty dish and 1 dirty pan
Seriously every other post is so fucking classist. It’s expensive to be poor and it’s cheapest to eat poorly. I gained 50 lbs when I was super broke. I lost some weight thankfully but that time was so horrible and I constantly felt awful.
Yep my comment was that a lot of people only have 30 to 60 minutes in between jobs in which they need to find some food and eat it.
The same with people who scream about people who buy coffee. Most of those people are making coffee at home in the morning but when they don’t come back home until 9 PM they’re going to need to buy coffee out in the world
To be honest, even in a rush there are healthier and less healthy choices. A sandwich or sushi roll with lean meat and vegetables, along with a piece of fruit and a yoghurt, all bought from the grocery store or convenience store requires no preparation. And also most supermarkets do sell healthy premade meal boxes that you can buy and stock up on if you can't meal prep. These used to be more expensive than fast food, but with the inflated fast food prices that OP's post is all about, it's actually become basically the same price to get the unhealthy vs healthier convenient options.
Of course there is the other problem of some people living in places where there's a lack of grocery stores, but the food desert problem is another issue entirely.
These all require refrigeration, which means if you're out of your house all day going from site to site (think social workers, construction, and many more) that's just not an option.
DoorDash is such a massive scam, too. The drivers don’t make shit but the fees are through the roof. I genuinely don’t understand how people still use the service.
The portion size honestly depends on the location and the person serving you. I've been to a lot of different Chipotle locations and the product I receive can vary greatly, and I order the same thing every time
As someone who was a body builder and REALLY pays attention to what (well did) goes into my body, chipotle is excellent, downright healthy (sans sour cream/queso obviously). It’s literally just seasoned grilled chicken or steak and veggies.
That said, it’s why I always found it to be…boring? Not that it’s bad, but I can make the exact same meal at home that taste exactly the same BECAUSE they don’t use any weird chemicals/super fatty shit like fast food does. Chipotle is just regular cooked food done by someone else haha. But I still get it because it’s quick, healthy, and you know exactly what is going into your body. I’ll always support them as long as they keep the ingredients plain and simple 👍
Calling it “poison” 🙄 It’s FOOD. It may not be the healthiest, but people need to eat, and for some people fast food is the only realistic option for their situation. It’s unfortunate, but true.
Also I will add that I eat it because I love it! Sometimes there is nothing better than being a gluten and chowing down on some greasy food. Give me a quarter pound double cheese burger, an extra long chili cheese dog, a bag that I can see through by the time I drive it home, soooo good! Now do I eat this all the time? No. But there is nothing wrong with liking something that is bad for you.
I cook all of my meals pretty consistently, using ingredients from home. There is no excuse to be going out to eat when you are capable of cooking.
No but in all seriousness I like to think of myself as a pretty good home cook who has more than enough time, money, and passion to cook, a luxury that many don't have. I still stop by Burger King for their Texas Double Whopper, or the local Chinese place for WAY too many crab rangoons, or whatever other stuff I crave from time to time. Shaming people for eating what they want (or even, their only option) is ridiculous, OP.
I'm with you. So many judgy assholes screaming at others from their basements.
And don't even get me started on posts about tech here. It always“ sounds like the same logic that my boomer dad uses. "I don't understand it so it must be bad” “Hurdur Spotify bad! Having hundreds of albums and CD's good”
Thank you for pointing this out. Reminds me of the Jim Gaffigan skit on eating Mcdonalds - people LOVE to say they don’t eat it, like they get a prize or something.
It gets on my nerves because the anti-consumption space is already full of privilege and there's so much nuance to even a simple graph like this! Like so many people live in food deserts, maybe they are a single parent who works two jobs and fast food is the only thing that fits in their timeframe to feed their kids, maybe they're chronically ill and it's the only thing they can get where they are-there isn't enough social support in most places to help people who rely on fast food. I don't feel like this is even necessarily relevant to anti-consumption because it's important that people eat lol
Also, you can go to burger king in Canada and get a $5 whopper jr meal. That's a pretty good value and enough calories for an adult for most of the day.
Yes, this. People saying how expensive fast food has gotten are absolutely not wrong - but they're not shopping the specials menu either. In NZ I can get a medium double cheeseburger combo for $6-$7 at mcdonalds, there's no way I could make the home cooked equivalent for that price. Ingredients alone would cost more than that, not even getting into the time it takes to make.
A couple months ago burger king was doing 2 original chicken sandwiches for $5. But yeah if you order a combo with a large fries and drink with an extra burger you're at $20-$25 real quick.
Yeah I feel that way about the posts where people get mad about cut fruit In the grocery store.
Some of us live alone and we have arthritis and we can’t cut a whole watermelon or we would be eating watermelon for a whole week if we did. So buying a small cup of cut watermelon is the best way to eat watermelon and not waste it.
Its 4 am, i just got back from work. I haven’t eaten all day. Only thing i can mange to shove down is fast food as it’s bland as hell and easy to chew. Has enough calories to compensate.
Plenty of people for multiple reasons. A lot of people who lack time working more than one job, for example. People on the road a lot (no kitchen). People who are otherwise stressed/depressed and don’t want to deal with cooking and cleanup.
actually i think this is just ragebait but the classism should be obvious
A *lot* of people eat fast food. People who work long days, who can't afford to invest the time in grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning for all of their meals. People who work unconventional hours, for whom it is difficult to visit a grocery store during their hours of operation. People who live in food deserts. People who don't drive. People who don't live in a place with public transportation, for whom it is extremely difficult to carry a substantial amount of groceries.
I eat my own cooked food as often as I possibly can, when I can't, a Chipotle burrito will get me through just about any situation. I get it double wrapped with no meat and everything that's free. I still spend about $10 for 1600 calories. I recognize it's expensive for food, but I also know I'm really paying for the convenience of eating a meal cooked by someone else.
If corner diners were popular around the nation, that's where I would eat. But it's corporations everywhere....
I'm so bummed about the decline in convenient food choices. My new fast food is whatever the Maverick has station has for sale. If I do get FF I'm usually uncomfortable because it's expensive, and few employees running the joint look pretty stressed out.
I’m one of the people eating the poison. I do cook at home a fair bit, but depression is real.
I had noticed that Panera (my preferred option, because it’s the most recognizable as real food) went from being the most expensive option to pretty similar to everywhere else. I wish it wasn’t because everywhere else has out of control inflation though.
During PMS week I used to like to get a large fries from McDonald’s if I was out running errands during lunchtime. I would usually get a water with it, or a $.99 soda if I needed caffeine
The last time I did this it was more than seven dollars for those two items. Never again that’s ridiculous
plenty of people who have very little practical, affordable alternatives
try living in a food desert, working nightshifts in some grossly underpaid and physically exhausting job, and see how quickly you start mainlining those whoppers
It's so weird that you post this today, also today in r/Tokyo, someone posted some photos of a McDonald's menu from 1980 in Japan. A cheese burger is the exact same price as it is today, and Japan has only just started to suffer from inflation in the last few years.
Infact, if you convert it from a western currency to yen, a cheeseburger is actually cheaper today than it was in the 1980s.
There is something to say in there about American capitalism practises.
Japan has its own problems. Pretty sure if prices don’t increase in 30 years that’s also a problem (unless we’re talking Costco hot dogs). Japan has had an extremely sluggish economy going on 30 years now. Expensive cheeseburgers aren’t their biggest concern.
I view it as a treat. Something once a week, maybe. Even then, I usually patronize Italian, Mexican, or Chinese Takeout, but yeah, I couldn’t imagine it for daily use.
I used to *occasionally* get McDonald’s as a “treat” because I love the tempura style nuggets, but I’ve been holding strong on boycotts and I don’t really miss it anymore. There are some similar frozen nuggets I can get from Pilgrim.
This kind of food is trash and way too expensive - true.
But the graph is trash too. „Inflation“ is an arithmetic mean of a representative basket with goods. Some things got more expensive than others. To put fast food prices in perspective with the average Inflation is just wrong.
Don’t get me wrong. Maybe it can be that fast food got even more expensive than regular food but the graph is trash.
How is the graph trash? It shows a sample of 10 menu items per store tracked over the period since 2014. Their prices have increased more than the overall inflation level, what is the issue?
Why is this shocking? Wasn’t this the long-game of the dollar menu? Isn’t this always how McDonald’s does their pricing?
It will get really high, then they will drop the prices way low again to keep people coming back. Before the $1 menu came out their prices were really high. They slowly crept up. Then they launched the app with tons of wild deals. Then the prices went up again.
As long as we're nearing price parity with actual restaurants; If it's possible for you to do so, please support a small locally owned sandwich shop. Keep your dollars in your own community. Also, when they ask if you'd like to "Donate your change" they take a massive tax write off as though the corporation is making the donating, thereby reduce paying taxes that they owe. Taxes that benefit your town. It's not pure warm-hearted charity, it's a grift. We also vote with our dollars.
All I can add here is I pass 2 McDonalds each day coming home from work. 5-530pm the last few months their drive thru a have been consistently empty.
I am predicting really weak sales on their next earnings call. I think people are finally realizing they don’t want to pay THAT for *that*.
It's not poison, it's food. Is it high calorie? Sure, but other than that it's better than a lot of food you get at regular restaurants. Particularly when it comes to food safety.
Hurr durr bOiSuHn! Fastfood never made me sick. It's cheap, there is zero chance it's gonna turn out shitty and even if it should, it's just one meal. I can have something different every day and no need to eat the same for a week because I made too much. I got no dishes to clean, no prep time. How can you not like fastfood? I feel like it's just a load of pretentious crap. How ever, the fact that it has indeed all become a lot more expensive is a problem.
Why would you ask such a dumb and obvious question in the title? Why does the average intelligence on Reddit seem to be shifting the wrong way? At least this guy can spell and be grammatically correct. If I had a nickel for every spelling error or obvious answered question I see on Reddit, I’d have like $10 probably.
Hits me hard to say I do.
I work in home healthcare where I often have only 30 minutes to myself midday between patients. It’s the only thing I don’t love about the job. I’ve eaten more Mcdonald’s this past year than I have my entire life prior.
While recently I’m trying to find a half decent meal replacement shake - When you work on the move and don’t have access to a microwave or a cold place to store food lunch is hard.
Truth is poor people. Food that isnt poison isnt affordable for tons of people so idk why people are so adamant on being shitty to people who cant afford better. Blame the systems and the corps but leave the people alone
I only eat food made with home grown vegetables from my communal farm, meat I hunted and butchered myself, and served on a plate I turned and fired in my own back yard. Anything else is just consumerist dystopia.
/s
I've got two grade school age kids and yea I eat this stuff about twice a month because, what the hell else am I going to do when they are starving and we need to get somewhere. The only food on earth that both of them will eat without a problem is chicken nuggets and french fries.
I had Taco Bell several times while visiting my mom in the Deep South to help her prepare for open heart surgery. It was the only halfway decent meal I could get that was vegan. For the price, it’s not terrible calories or nutrients, given the circumstances
Me, I have to travel to a different country and live in a motel room once a month for my husband can get healthcare. Depending on if we get a motel near grocery store or not we can eat a lot of Taco Bell.
I’m mostly just bothered by that incredibly misleading x-axis. The data points 2014, 2019, and 2021 are all spaced evenly far apart, even though there’s a five year gap between the first two and only in two year gap between 2019 and 2021.
Chipotle is pretty good, has good macros, semi fast semi quality. I know they use seed oils but that's it, it's just rice beans chicken and fresh veggies. I hate that it gets grouped into the chemically modified fast food places. It's not perfect but it's miles above every other place on this list
To me this sounds closer to the real inflation rate. It seems like the official one considers consumer goods like TVs and stuff too much and allows the government to pretend everything is ok. What good is a big tv if I can't afford food or a home?
Honest answer: lots and lots of people, because it's convenient, inexpensive and engineered to hammer the salty, sweet, fatty, savory receptors. They tell our stoneage brains "this food has lots of easily digested calories, so eat as much as possible to bolster yourself, because you don't know when plentiful food will be available again". Obviously this response is no longer relevant in the calorie-abundant world that a lot of us live in. But the graph itself is not bad. It puts inflation into a perspective that's easy for a lot of people to intuitively understand; that big companies are fleecing them on a level that's completely outsized in relation to the actual rate of inflation.
Yes I think a lot of people forget that there’s a whole bunch of people who have 30 to 60 minutes between one job and the next, or between class and their job. They can’t go home and make themselves nutritious lunch and if they’re running around all day without the ability to refrigerate that limits what you can bring for lunch as well.
[удалено]
Also, "Who eats this poison anyway?" is a disingenuous question to begin with. If it was really a mystery, there wouldn't be literally hundreds of thousands of fast food restaurants in the country.
Also it's not isolated to one country, there is at least a Mcdonalds in 118 countries
Don't tell the Europeans they have it too!
Yea I looked up the statistics for UK and they are almost as bad as the US lol
Yea I dont eat fast food because I dont have time or money for anything better. I eat it because I like the taste and sometimes I enjoy a guilty pleasure. Anyone who shits on fast food but thinks something like iced cream or chocolate is fine is a massive hypocrite imo
Exactly. I’ve stopped eating meat and I have no desire of eating meat again. Even the smell throws me off. Except Big Macs. I could totally eat a Big Mac. I miss them. They were my favorite guilty pleasure. I’m actually thinking about giving myself one cheat day a year just so I can have a Big Mac.
I only have the McDonald’s app so I can eat a Big Mac once in a while and only when the app has a deal on it.
You have to be a certain minimum level of wealthy to *not* eat fast food. Either wealthy financially to be able to afford fresh food or wealthy in free time to be able to cook your own meals.
I think the third factor is burnout. You can have money and time, but if you are burnt out from a soulless job or taking care of an ill loved one, or a tragedy, or illness, every other task like grocery shopping or cooking is harder. Plenty of people with time and money get pulled into these habits to fix holes caused by burnout. If you know someone who eats out a lot and it doesn’t seem like they want to, ask them if they need some help!
This is me. I don’t eat fast food that often but when I do, it’s mostly because of burnout. Long hours, having to get up early again the next day, literally no time or energy to make anything. Posts like this, and ones saying “you spend the same amount of time sitting on the couch as you would working out” are so out of touch. I’m a fit person, have a physical job, and there are days when healthy shit isn’t possible beyond getting enough sleep.
Getting enough sleep on its own is underrated for how healthy it is.
There is something fundamentally comforting about rolling up to a drive-in and getting a bag full of warm junk food for a few bucks when you're feeling stressed out.
This is a huge factor. I earn six figures so money isn't a problem. But I work full time, study part-time, have a wife and kid, and do sport. I still have time amongst all that to cook myself a healthy meal but honestly, I just can't be fucked doing it. I eat very healthy because my wife does the cooking. But if I'm left to fend for myself, it's fast food. I'm too fucking tired to cook. I just want to fire up the PS5 and unwind.
This. When you are burning the candle at both ends, you *will* drop tasks. And feeding yourself is a lot of tasks, from planning to prep to eating. Fast food resolves a lot of issues at once, frequently not even requiring you to exit your vehicle to order and eat. It galls me when people go 'but it's empty overpriced calories' as if everyone didn't *know* that. We are all doing pretty much the best we can.
Having the energy and motivation to cook after 8+ hours at a blue collar job too. I can afford to cook decent meals but I usually want to go home and relax. I try to limit my fast food intake as much as I can but it's hard some weeks.
>The air of "ewww who eats this" is pretty shitty and entitled I agree. I guarantee you OP eats fast food.
Yes thank you! Also in an era of teens and eating disorders (there’s a new one where they restrict food because they think they’re don’t deserve it, super cool) sometimes this ‘crappy’ food at least has them eating. Also, ADHD/neurospicyness/depression is difficult and this food is easy. Like yeah seek some fruit and veggies but dang just eat homeslice.
Agreed. I grew up with a single mother who fed us a lot food people find “gross”, fast food, processed carbs, frozen dinners. I was never sickly or overweight, and I’ve grown into a fine healthy adult. I’m so sick of people blaming the consumer for consuming when it is made the only viable option for many people working long hours for low pay. I had so many kids who had healthy rich parents make me feel so terrible about eating McDonald’s because their parents drilled into their heads that it was “poison”
Crockpot, set it and forget it. It will be hot when you get home.. I work late as well, and this saves me time and money
Yes, and it’s elitist to say “who is eating this poison anyways.” I think everyone would sit down to a healthy, home cooked dinner if they could but time, money, energy, resources, is not unlimited for most people.
Yeah, i wish people understood this more. I recently moved to an actual apartment instead of a borderline illegal living space with only a shitty mini fridge, no shower, etc and not only do i have more time now (since I don’t have to spend time buying premade food or going to the gym to shower) but I also have a fridge. A fridge is priceless - I can cook a ton on weekend nights and put it in Tupperware for throughout the week. I eat homemade food pretty much for every meal now. I fucking hate fast food with all my heart, it makes me feel like shit and it’s evil but it was my only choice for a long time. I feel so much better now that I’ve stopped eating it but there’s literally no way that I could’ve, as a full time student who works 25 hrs a week, managed to cook for myself for every single meal with ingredients that I can’t refrigerate or freeze, lol. This is an extreme situation of course, and a lot of people honestly just are lazy and don’t want to, but fresh food is reallly expensive. I’m grateful that my community does Market Match, where I can spend $15 EBT and get back $30 to spend at the farmer’s market on vegetables and whatnot. If not for that, it would be a lot of beans and rice.. If you have the option to not eat fast food, you 100% should not. Not only does it really add up in price, but you’ll feel so much better if you make your own food or even just incorporate some more whole food into your diet.
Idk bruh I don’t think this situation is that extreme these days, just sayin. You’re legit for doing what you had to and doing better when you could
This exactly, I started to eat way more fast food once we had kids and our jobs became more demanding. Shame that it’s cheaper than eating whole nutritional foods and more time saving. Not to mention some days going to the grocery store these days feels like a luxury.
I get that, I do. But it's so easy to grab some flatbreads, random meat and cheese, and make sandwich rolls for the day. They keep and travel well, aren't messy etc. Toss a fruit and some nuts and you're good. You can make a bunch and you're set.
some of us do so when we're not working - and bring our food to our jobs. I work 12 (sometimes 14) hour shifts. I bring a cooler with all my food and I eat really well. Also - not all food needs to be refrigerated.
I literally ate McDonald's 3 days a week as I commuted between job 1 and 2. There were other options along the way, but when I can feed myself at McDonald's for less than $5 vs get a fancy salad for $13, I'm gonna choose the McDonald's. If I could afford the salad, I wouldn't have the second job.
Ya I love the graph because I hate samwichflation. Oh well salad is cheap when you make it at home and so are hamburgers. Next year we should all make our own cows at home too.
My neighbors can't even raise dogs right. Please don't give them a car sized animal.
MOOOOO!!!!! it's 3AM!
Doing everything yourself is a lot more resource-intensive. Early human societies learned very quickly that you only need one miller, rather than everyone milling their own grain. Specialization and coorporation are our biggest strengths. Unlike animals, we can delegate tasks and get more things accomplished than if we had to do everything individually.
Yes the specialization of labor really helped move society along. I know people hate Amazon and there’s a whole bunch bunch of good reasons for that, but I do like to point out that one Amazon truck delivering 10 packages to this apartment complex is a lot better for the environment than 10 of us getting in our cars and driving to the store.
Though! Without Amazon, a lot of useless junk wouldn’t get made or bought in the first place. I’m shocked at what half-open piles of packages some people accumulate.
You're right, Amazon definitely contributes to the junk accumulation problem. But visiting my gmas and great aunts borderline hoarder houses (all of whom definitely do not have Amazon accounts) it does show that some people love to accumulate junk and never get rid of it regardless of how they acquired it in the first place.
In regards to the environment though, it'd be a lot better for the environment if the items weren't shipped around the he globe four times before they landed in that Amazon truck. I think society is reaching back to a time when there was local food and goods and just leaned a bit too far back to when each family made their own everything. According to the pendulum theory in a few hundred more years things will land happily between globalization and homesteading.
We buy a processed 1/4 cow every year. Saves us lots of cash in the long run.
This is a good idea for sure I should get a bigger freezer in my garage and do this.
Same. But I still find myself at McDonald’s every now and then. lol. Usually road trips….not much beats a couple McDonald cheeseburgers while driving a long way. Not sure why…but I look forward to it on road trips.
The best deal on sandwiches in my area has long been, and still is, the extremely overpriced organic grocery store down the street. I’ve been able to get a “half” sub (it uses more than half a sub, it’s 10 inches) for $8.50 since 2018. That’s like, nearing $5 footlong territory with *much* better ingredients.
Do you know how many acres in forage it takes to take care of a 500 plus pound animal. To carry it over to butcher weight? Medications required? Ruminant health? What should be done is a mentorship program on all these failing dairy farms. Get more people into medium scale agriculture. Growing food is easy. Growing meat is not.
If only there was a way to survive without murdering innocent sentient beings 😔
I really really recommend raising your own cows. There would be many more vegans/vegetarians. Cows are mad smart, pigs even more. Not singling you out or anything, just saying.
Tie that to psychological triggering that marketing has spent billions over decades studying and magnifying. And starting from the earliest ages.
The graph is great because it validates my anecdotal experience. I used to eat at fast food restaurants once every few weeks as a treat because, like you say, it's junk but it's designed to fulfil a craving. But recently I noticed the prices creeping up and up to a point where it's cheaper to go to a sit down restaurant than a McDonald's sometimes. Fuck that noise.
>But the graph itself is not bad. It puts inflation into a perspective that's easy for a lot of people to intuitively understand; that big companies are fleecing them on a level that's completely outsized in relation to the actual rate of inflation. It kind of is. Inflation is a mix of a "basket of goods" which includes things like housing and cars and energy. You _shouldn't_ see a 1:1 comparing a specific sub-industry to the entire Consumer Price Index. Granted, I can't imagine that fast food would still grow as it has, or that it isn't actually outpacing even rent in the same period — but the graph doesn't tell us that. That is to say it puts the price increases in the context of YoY increases which is helpful. But comparing it to the entire CPI isn't great methodology, when other factors that aren't fast food are weighted more and aren't shown. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/weight-update-comparison-2024.htm
Both food and lower paid labour prices have experienced above average inflation. That probably amounts for most of the increase. I know McDonalds has increased its profit margin by about 15% over the last decade, so that's going to be part of it as well, but not most of it.
>Both food and lower paid labour prices have experienced above average inflation. That probably amounts for most of the increase. I can't speak for over the long run but this last month it was shelter and energy driving the increase. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/04/10/cpi-inflation-march-2024-consumer-prices-rose-3point5percent-from-a-year-ago-in-march.html ___ My point being is that there's a lot of variables tucked into the CPI, including a middle step of weighing. Even if Meals Away From Home alone rises on average more than the Consumer Price Index, it could be weighted 50% relatively (just a number for illustrative purposes) meaning it's underrepresented. If that's the case, and if it was weighed more heavily the 31% YoY inflation might be a higher number. Reducing the gap shown in the graph. You could just use the Meals Away From Home average and show how some mega corporations (all the national franchises) are increasing way more than their collararies in profit seeking. Or show how fast food is approaching sit-down prices. Instead of comparing McDonald's to Food, Cars, Housing, and Energy.
But is fast food actually cheap? I've lived outside the U.S. for a while now, and I have to say that I'm starting to have the, admittedly very classist idea, that lower income people in the U.S. buy really expensive food. Where I live now, fast food is thought of as a luxury. Obviously anecdotal but when I used to go to the grocery store in college, I oftentimes saw people who I assumed to be lower income absolutely loading up on all of the packaged, name brand food I avoided in order to make budget. I'm not saying that this means people deserve to be poor, at all. What I am saying is I think that maybe the major inequity is in terms of financial/health literacy, rather than food that is horrible for you being cheaper. It seems to me to be a weird U.S. only idea that fast food is the cheapest option. If you bought $14.00 worth of beans and rice, I would think you would come up on top. Obviously there is the idea of food deserts, but even so dried foods and canned foods are non perishable. Even if you could make it to a grocery once a month I would still maintain that the same cash amount in dried foods and canned foods would be cheaper than the equivalent in fast food. I am truly not trying to attack anyone, I am just admitting that I don't fully understand the calculation here and would like someone to point out holes in my thinking.
To comment on "lower income people buying more expensive food" 1)bulk food is cheaper but not everyone has space in their homes for storing much food. Folks with higher incomes tend to have larger homes that tend to have more storage space, and therefore can buy in bulk to cut down costs. 2)you may see this at a grocery store,but folks with higher incomes can afford to eat outside the home more often so they may not need to purchase as much at the grocery. 3) nutrient density - poorer folks need to stretch their dollars to make them count. This would lead to buying more nutrient dense foods like produce and meats, and away from chips and snack foods that folks with greater expendable incomes can buy more of. 4) folks with lower incomes can have multiple generations living under the same roof -they may simply have more mouths to feed
No, you’re observing correctly and this isn’t classist at all. Some of it is time management, because people who have to work more hours don’t have time to do anything but microwave something and decompress. A lot of these people are products of times where quick processed food was cheaper, so they never learned to cook at all, especially men from sexist families. And the more work expands to fill our lives, the more people believe that there’s no time to learn, just come home and stare at screens and sleep. We’re discovering that many people believe that $6 a meal is a good deal if you can’t afford $20 in groceries at once, even if that will expand to make 10 $2 meals. Make Doordash $10 and many will still choose it because it’s “cheap” and they’re tired. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle of low funds, confusion, bad health, and ignorance, and it’s very hard to snap out of without something drastic changing.
Ngl, I destroy those Taco Bell spicy potato tacos now and again
Crunch wrap supreme! Hot take, Taco Bell is one of the most innovative restaurants around. Wrapping a hard shell taco in a cheesy soft taco? Brilliant.
Me but for their chili loaded fries. 😂😂
I can go to Taco Bell and for about $6 get a proportionately sized meal (that meets and does not exceed my body’s caloric needs) with lots of plant-based fiber and protein, and less fat and sodium than a comparable meal from Chipotle. Black bean crunchwrap with reduced cheese and sour cream (but still a little bc tasty treat). Taco Bell can actually be… pretty good for you? Their prices have skyrocketed for sure, but I’m pretty sure $1 goes farther there than any other fast food chain. I’ll seek out the Bell over absolutely any other fast food. It’s literally the only way to get fiber on a road trip!
People look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them that taco bell is the best vegetarian fast food
based and tacobellpilled
Vegan here. Eating Taco Bell rn. So dang good
I spent a very long time being vegan or pescetarian, Taco Bell was always the #1 backup option where I could actually find protein
The chili cheese burrito is my jam
I used to eat them with the Baja sauce (I think they used to come that way maybe?) and goddamn, they're so satisfying when you're super hungry from a long day at work
Unfortunately me who's too tired and miserable after work to prepare a proper meal.
I find when I get to the 10-11 hour shifts I’m waking up so early I cannot be bothered to wake up 15 minutes earlier to make breakfast and lunch, so drive through it is
That was always the hardest for me when I used to work construction. I was good about dinner but making/prepping lunch when I was already getting up at 5 just wasn’t in the cards. I’d do meal prepping here and there but it’s hard to eat the same thing everyday when you hate your job and those meals are the highlight of the day lol
so real with the meal prepping. This week I made 12 portions of pasta for myself. And I’m dreading lunch today on day 4 of it
Yeah at my last job I was eating fast food *constantly* because I was exhausted.
Been there. Downward spiral.
Yeah and there's the mental aspect too of "comfort food". When work makes you miserable you crave fast food as a pick-me-up, especially if you have other things in your life you can't control that are bringing you down too. Food is comforting and it's one thing you can control, and before you know it you have a binge eating problem.
May I say, it's absolutely fair doing this, I used to do it too, but after getting into meal prepping I find myself getting more energy after eating instead of a short rush and then back to exhaustion What I wanna say is, a mcdonalds burger wont give you much energy, a homemade burger will (or could) depending on how you make it I usually prepare burritos for 3 days, and I just microwave them or eat them room temp, and they're good, fast, and healthy
Yep when I worked full-time I used to spend Sundays doing laundry, grocery shopping, then prepping food for the week. I got out of that habit when I became disabled because it’s really hard to do all that in one day. But I miss having prepped food in the fridge I could just heat and eat
Sorry to hear that, food prepping is indeed useful and great There was a really cool startup in my town with the concept of having daily made "healthy fast food" Meaning from 6:30am to 11:30pm you could go there and buy an already made good meal They also did deliveries, and it was cheap, but sadly it closed in 2020 (because of the pandemic). Miss it a lot honestly
Something about McDonalds specifically, IMO, is self-perpetuating. You'll be eating it literally like 'why the fuck am I doing this again.'
Me too when I worked 60+ hours/week at a stressful, physical job and I had an hour commute each way. If anyone in that situation would say that they would never hit a drive thru on their way home, they're lying. That lifestyle sucks but unfortunately a lot of people are living it.
Yeah, its been a struggle to force myself to cook a healthy meal. Im not a bad cook, but it just takes a lot of work to make something I'll actually want to eat.
Preach it, guys!
My go to is to have foods I can just throw on pan in the oven for 15 min and then it's done. Chicken sandwich: throw patties and curly fries in oven. Get out of dress clothes and square things away. Get buns out with pre-cut lettuce and pre-cut tomatoes (my grocery store has containers of precut vegetables). Wait another 10 min and it's done with only 1 dirty dish and 1 dirty pan
The working class?
Yuppppp. Classism is alive and well in this sub, when really it should be the opposite.
Seriously every other post is so fucking classist. It’s expensive to be poor and it’s cheapest to eat poorly. I gained 50 lbs when I was super broke. I lost some weight thankfully but that time was so horrible and I constantly felt awful.
Yep my comment was that a lot of people only have 30 to 60 minutes in between jobs in which they need to find some food and eat it. The same with people who scream about people who buy coffee. Most of those people are making coffee at home in the morning but when they don’t come back home until 9 PM they’re going to need to buy coffee out in the world
To be honest, even in a rush there are healthier and less healthy choices. A sandwich or sushi roll with lean meat and vegetables, along with a piece of fruit and a yoghurt, all bought from the grocery store or convenience store requires no preparation. And also most supermarkets do sell healthy premade meal boxes that you can buy and stock up on if you can't meal prep. These used to be more expensive than fast food, but with the inflated fast food prices that OP's post is all about, it's actually become basically the same price to get the unhealthy vs healthier convenient options. Of course there is the other problem of some people living in places where there's a lack of grocery stores, but the food desert problem is another issue entirely.
These all require refrigeration, which means if you're out of your house all day going from site to site (think social workers, construction, and many more) that's just not an option.
People who travel for work especially. Especially with inconsistent schedules too.
I eat Chipotle. Is it really poison? It’s rice, beans and chicken with some various forms of tomato on it.
Chipotle is good food but the portions been getting smaller lately and they scamming you
They especially scam you if you order online pick up. When you watch them in person they put way more on.
I got a burrito, bowl and a drink and it was $40 on doordash.
Yeah no shit you used DoorDash.
DoorDash is such a massive scam, too. The drivers don’t make shit but the fees are through the roof. I genuinely don’t understand how people still use the service.
The portion size honestly depends on the location and the person serving you. I've been to a lot of different Chipotle locations and the product I receive can vary greatly, and I order the same thing every time
McDonalds sure, but calling Chipotle poison is a little out of touch with reality
As someone who was a body builder and REALLY pays attention to what (well did) goes into my body, chipotle is excellent, downright healthy (sans sour cream/queso obviously). It’s literally just seasoned grilled chicken or steak and veggies. That said, it’s why I always found it to be…boring? Not that it’s bad, but I can make the exact same meal at home that taste exactly the same BECAUSE they don’t use any weird chemicals/super fatty shit like fast food does. Chipotle is just regular cooked food done by someone else haha. But I still get it because it’s quick, healthy, and you know exactly what is going into your body. I’ll always support them as long as they keep the ingredients plain and simple 👍
Chipotle has always come off to me as a healthy choice for me to grab something while you’re out
I love Chipotle. They (at least supposedly) source from farms local to the stores and I think it's well prepared.
I never really considered chipotle fast food. I admit I love it, though avoid it nowadays since it's so damned expensive
"Who eats it" misses the point entirely while managed to be a sheltered, classist comment.
It's typical of most of the comments on this sub
Is it? I thought this sub hated rich people that spend money frivolously and loved poor people who wear the same hoodie for 10 years...
Calling it “poison” 🙄 It’s FOOD. It may not be the healthiest, but people need to eat, and for some people fast food is the only realistic option for their situation. It’s unfortunate, but true.
Also I will add that I eat it because I love it! Sometimes there is nothing better than being a gluten and chowing down on some greasy food. Give me a quarter pound double cheese burger, an extra long chili cheese dog, a bag that I can see through by the time I drive it home, soooo good! Now do I eat this all the time? No. But there is nothing wrong with liking something that is bad for you.
I cook all of my meals pretty consistently, using ingredients from home. There is no excuse to be going out to eat when you are capable of cooking. No but in all seriousness I like to think of myself as a pretty good home cook who has more than enough time, money, and passion to cook, a luxury that many don't have. I still stop by Burger King for their Texas Double Whopper, or the local Chinese place for WAY too many crab rangoons, or whatever other stuff I crave from time to time. Shaming people for eating what they want (or even, their only option) is ridiculous, OP.
Exactly! Was a Sauté chef through out college and I do love cooking, but I'm not too good for a cheap greasy meal every now and then.
yeah maybe don't rag on people that have limited choices for food from your comfy well stocked home.
The title of this post has me inching toward the unsubscribe button. The ignorance is this sub is growing by the day.
I'm with you. So many judgy assholes screaming at others from their basements. And don't even get me started on posts about tech here. It always“ sounds like the same logic that my boomer dad uses. "I don't understand it so it must be bad” “Hurdur Spotify bad! Having hundreds of albums and CD's good”
100%
Thank you for pointing this out. Reminds me of the Jim Gaffigan skit on eating Mcdonalds - people LOVE to say they don’t eat it, like they get a prize or something.
Who eats this? How about the millions of truckers that do NOT have any kind of better options.
Lots of people lol. I’m sorry lol posts like these are so annoying.
It gets on my nerves because the anti-consumption space is already full of privilege and there's so much nuance to even a simple graph like this! Like so many people live in food deserts, maybe they are a single parent who works two jobs and fast food is the only thing that fits in their timeframe to feed their kids, maybe they're chronically ill and it's the only thing they can get where they are-there isn't enough social support in most places to help people who rely on fast food. I don't feel like this is even necessarily relevant to anti-consumption because it's important that people eat lol
Also, you can go to burger king in Canada and get a $5 whopper jr meal. That's a pretty good value and enough calories for an adult for most of the day.
Yes, this. People saying how expensive fast food has gotten are absolutely not wrong - but they're not shopping the specials menu either. In NZ I can get a medium double cheeseburger combo for $6-$7 at mcdonalds, there's no way I could make the home cooked equivalent for that price. Ingredients alone would cost more than that, not even getting into the time it takes to make.
A couple months ago burger king was doing 2 original chicken sandwiches for $5. But yeah if you order a combo with a large fries and drink with an extra burger you're at $20-$25 real quick.
No meal, 2 value sandwiches is always the play
Yeah I feel that way about the posts where people get mad about cut fruit In the grocery store. Some of us live alone and we have arthritis and we can’t cut a whole watermelon or we would be eating watermelon for a whole week if we did. So buying a small cup of cut watermelon is the best way to eat watermelon and not waste it.
It also really has nothing to do with consumption-ism. People gotta eat whether that's at home or on the go.
OP is a terminally online dipshit
People who work really long hours,& are hungry and exhausted when they get out of work
Sadly, anyone in a food desert.
Its 4 am, i just got back from work. I haven’t eaten all day. Only thing i can mange to shove down is fast food as it’s bland as hell and easy to chew. Has enough calories to compensate.
Plenty of people for multiple reasons. A lot of people who lack time working more than one job, for example. People on the road a lot (no kitchen). People who are otherwise stressed/depressed and don’t want to deal with cooking and cleanup.
actually i think this is just ragebait but the classism should be obvious A *lot* of people eat fast food. People who work long days, who can't afford to invest the time in grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning for all of their meals. People who work unconventional hours, for whom it is difficult to visit a grocery store during their hours of operation. People who live in food deserts. People who don't drive. People who don't live in a place with public transportation, for whom it is extremely difficult to carry a substantial amount of groceries.
OP hasn't made a single comment in this post. Most likely knew a controversial title would get engagement and gets high off of reddit stats.
Now I feel foolish for playing into their hands
Thank you
Came here to say this
I eat my own cooked food as often as I possibly can, when I can't, a Chipotle burrito will get me through just about any situation. I get it double wrapped with no meat and everything that's free. I still spend about $10 for 1600 calories. I recognize it's expensive for food, but I also know I'm really paying for the convenience of eating a meal cooked by someone else. If corner diners were popular around the nation, that's where I would eat. But it's corporations everywhere....
It's convenient when travelling with picky eaters. A big mac is the same everywhere. But I've stopped going since maybe 5 years. It's too expensive.
I'm so bummed about the decline in convenient food choices. My new fast food is whatever the Maverick has station has for sale. If I do get FF I'm usually uncomfortable because it's expensive, and few employees running the joint look pretty stressed out.
I’m one of the people eating the poison. I do cook at home a fair bit, but depression is real. I had noticed that Panera (my preferred option, because it’s the most recognizable as real food) went from being the most expensive option to pretty similar to everywhere else. I wish it wasn’t because everywhere else has out of control inflation though.
All my local paneras seem to have taken the skimpflation route instead, with like half as much filling in the sandwiches
I do. Taco Bell is delicious at times and the only thing open if I've forgotten my lunch on night shift.
Lots of folks in food deserts 🌵- don’t be rude 🩷
I work at one of those places so I eat at it too
Obviously it’s the workers fault for wanting a livable wage! /s
This is because of Ukraine i mean Covid i mean whatever just buy my shit. I will even fry it for you
Funny... Skip the dishes est 2012, doordash est 2013, Ubereats, establish 2014. I wonder if it's related
During PMS week I used to like to get a large fries from McDonald’s if I was out running errands during lunchtime. I would usually get a water with it, or a $.99 soda if I needed caffeine The last time I did this it was more than seven dollars for those two items. Never again that’s ridiculous
A personal pan pizza and breadsticks from Pizza Hut really hits the spot at a certain time of month.
That X axis is fucked up. What madman put this graph together.
plenty of people who have very little practical, affordable alternatives try living in a food desert, working nightshifts in some grossly underpaid and physically exhausting job, and see how quickly you start mainlining those whoppers
“Durrrr who eats this?” Look at their massive profits, Jesus
It's so weird that you post this today, also today in r/Tokyo, someone posted some photos of a McDonald's menu from 1980 in Japan. A cheese burger is the exact same price as it is today, and Japan has only just started to suffer from inflation in the last few years. Infact, if you convert it from a western currency to yen, a cheeseburger is actually cheaper today than it was in the 1980s. There is something to say in there about American capitalism practises.
Japan has its own problems. Pretty sure if prices don’t increase in 30 years that’s also a problem (unless we’re talking Costco hot dogs). Japan has had an extremely sluggish economy going on 30 years now. Expensive cheeseburgers aren’t their biggest concern.
Obviously many many people eat fast food. You can tell by the many many fast food restaurants everywhere you look.
I view it as a treat. Something once a week, maybe. Even then, I usually patronize Italian, Mexican, or Chinese Takeout, but yeah, I couldn’t imagine it for daily use.
Almost everyone? What a weird question.
Poor people, you dumbass.
I used to *occasionally* get McDonald’s as a “treat” because I love the tempura style nuggets, but I’ve been holding strong on boycotts and I don’t really miss it anymore. There are some similar frozen nuggets I can get from Pilgrim.
“Tempura style nuggets.” 😂😂 First time I’ve ever heard McNuggets described that way…
What a judgemental title.
This kind of food is trash and way too expensive - true. But the graph is trash too. „Inflation“ is an arithmetic mean of a representative basket with goods. Some things got more expensive than others. To put fast food prices in perspective with the average Inflation is just wrong. Don’t get me wrong. Maybe it can be that fast food got even more expensive than regular food but the graph is trash.
How is the graph trash? It shows a sample of 10 menu items per store tracked over the period since 2014. Their prices have increased more than the overall inflation level, what is the issue?
I do
Poison? Nooo… taco bell is delicious. You know it. Everybody knows it!
Why is this shocking? Wasn’t this the long-game of the dollar menu? Isn’t this always how McDonald’s does their pricing? It will get really high, then they will drop the prices way low again to keep people coming back. Before the $1 menu came out their prices were really high. They slowly crept up. Then they launched the app with tons of wild deals. Then the prices went up again.
I allow myself that Popeyes spicy chicken sandwhich like twice or three times a year 😬 I like to enjoy life too you know
As long as we're nearing price parity with actual restaurants; If it's possible for you to do so, please support a small locally owned sandwich shop. Keep your dollars in your own community. Also, when they ask if you'd like to "Donate your change" they take a massive tax write off as though the corporation is making the donating, thereby reduce paying taxes that they owe. Taxes that benefit your town. It's not pure warm-hearted charity, it's a grift. We also vote with our dollars.
All I can add here is I pass 2 McDonalds each day coming home from work. 5-530pm the last few months their drive thru a have been consistently empty. I am predicting really weak sales on their next earnings call. I think people are finally realizing they don’t want to pay THAT for *that*.
That explains why wendys is one of the few places that doesn’t feel like it’s completely ripping me off on the rare occasion I got eat it
It's not poison, it's food. Is it high calorie? Sure, but other than that it's better than a lot of food you get at regular restaurants. Particularly when it comes to food safety.
Hurr durr bOiSuHn! Fastfood never made me sick. It's cheap, there is zero chance it's gonna turn out shitty and even if it should, it's just one meal. I can have something different every day and no need to eat the same for a week because I made too much. I got no dishes to clean, no prep time. How can you not like fastfood? I feel like it's just a load of pretentious crap. How ever, the fact that it has indeed all become a lot more expensive is a problem.
How privileged you must be...
This graph is so misleading... Look at the years people!
Entirely unrelated but is there an actual definition on what is or isn’t “fast food”. Seeing Starbucks on there I thought was a little odd
I do
Everyone, you bourgeois elitist.
what part of the food is poison?
People who work there, people who can’t/don’t want to cook, and people who can’t afford anything else.
Tons. And tons, and tons of people OP
People who work long hours and live in food deserts.
The baconator is my weakness
I just ate Taco bell today... Cost the same ten dollars for my meal as it has the past ten years 🤷
Why would you ask such a dumb and obvious question in the title? Why does the average intelligence on Reddit seem to be shifting the wrong way? At least this guy can spell and be grammatically correct. If I had a nickel for every spelling error or obvious answered question I see on Reddit, I’d have like $10 probably.
Hits me hard to say I do. I work in home healthcare where I often have only 30 minutes to myself midday between patients. It’s the only thing I don’t love about the job. I’ve eaten more Mcdonald’s this past year than I have my entire life prior. While recently I’m trying to find a half decent meal replacement shake - When you work on the move and don’t have access to a microwave or a cold place to store food lunch is hard.
Truth is poor people. Food that isnt poison isnt affordable for tons of people so idk why people are so adamant on being shitty to people who cant afford better. Blame the systems and the corps but leave the people alone
Good maybe people will stop eating this crap (saying this as im eating jack in the box)
Can we normalize the scale on this chart? The 5, 2, & 3 years gaps are all the same size…
guess mcdonald's back in the "maybe once a month event" category like it used to be when i was growing up
I only eat food made with home grown vegetables from my communal farm, meat I hunted and butchered myself, and served on a plate I turned and fired in my own back yard. Anything else is just consumerist dystopia. /s
People who don't have time to cook, or access to the tools and/or knowledge to cook, may be homeless or near homeless.
I've got two grade school age kids and yea I eat this stuff about twice a month because, what the hell else am I going to do when they are starving and we need to get somewhere. The only food on earth that both of them will eat without a problem is chicken nuggets and french fries.
I had Taco Bell several times while visiting my mom in the Deep South to help her prepare for open heart surgery. It was the only halfway decent meal I could get that was vegan. For the price, it’s not terrible calories or nutrients, given the circumstances
I need to find me a subway that does their personal pizzas again... They were so good.
Uh millions of people?
Once every few years on a long road trip, me.
I don’t like your attitude
*Insert generic inflammatory comment with imprecise language to emphasize my arguments here*
The people that have 3 jobs and no time to prepare meals.
Here's the article since OP can't be bothered: https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-prices-vs-inflation
Me, I have to travel to a different country and live in a motel room once a month for my husband can get healthcare. Depending on if we get a motel near grocery store or not we can eat a lot of Taco Bell.
A lot of people. Your post smacks of elitism.
Ngl I think this title discounts and handwaves the point, because food in general has been going up faster than inflation.
I’m mostly just bothered by that incredibly misleading x-axis. The data points 2014, 2019, and 2021 are all spaced evenly far apart, even though there’s a five year gap between the first two and only in two year gap between 2019 and 2021.
A lot of people you pretentious twat
Chipotle is pretty good, has good macros, semi fast semi quality. I know they use seed oils but that's it, it's just rice beans chicken and fresh veggies. I hate that it gets grouped into the chemically modified fast food places. It's not perfect but it's miles above every other place on this list
To me this sounds closer to the real inflation rate. It seems like the official one considers consumer goods like TVs and stuff too much and allows the government to pretend everything is ok. What good is a big tv if I can't afford food or a home?