Kevin Roberts remembers when he could get a bacon cheeseburger, fries and a drink from Five Guys for $10. But that was years ago. When the Virginia high school teacher recently visited the fast-food chain, the food alone without a beverage cost double that amount.
Roberts, 38, now only gets fast food “as a rare treat,” he told CBS MoneyWatch. “Nothing has made me cook at home more than fast-food prices.”
Roberts is hardly alone. Many consumers are expressing frustration at the surge in fast-food prices, which are starting to scare off budget-conscious customers.
A January poll by consulting firm Revenue Management Solutions found that about 25% of people who make under $50,000 were cutting back on fast food, pointing to cost as a concern.
I probably am gonna get a lot of hate for this. Isn’t that a good thing? Afterall processed food is the leading cause of most diseases today, most notably cancer. It’s about time organic food is promoted heavily and incorporated in the policy making.
In isolation, maybe a good thing. Problem is that it’s a bit of a sign of a broader trend of crazy expensive dining out.
The stuff a fast food customer is likely to eat at home is likely even worse than the fast food. Also, groceries are also pretty expensive, though not quite as bonkers as restaurant pricing.
I can’t fathom what I have at home that’s worse for me than a 1200 calorie value meal.
I’d really have to go out of my way to make something that calorie dense and still edible.
Your 1200 calorie figure is about right for a “combo” with large drink and fries and a quarter pounder at McD.
That’s about the same as half a fairly modest frozen pizza and a soda. Which would be a plausible “cooking at home” solution that I’ve seen people do, and that’s assuming they stop at half the pizza. Similar story for a lot of frozen “air fryer” fare, they pour from the bag until they have “about a bowl’s worth” and that’s usually about the same calories as the food part of the fast food. They read the “nutrition facts” and see “200 calories” and miss the part where there’s “20 servings a bag” and eat what the packager counted as 6 servings.
Also, that’s only the calorie counting, a TV dinner will have even more added sugars and sodium than the fast food meal.
That’s about the same as half a fairly modest frozen pizza and a soda.
Had to look that up. So…Totino’s party pizza (which I eat every once in a while if I’m being a total slob)…It’s 700 calories for the whole thing, plus throw in a 16oz pepsi and you’re still at only 900 calories. (Which I only drink diet these days)
It doesn’t sound like a big difference, but that’s still usually 100-300 calories less than fast food. They’re both shit for you, but if you get to the brass tacks, those 100-200 calories per meal add up quickly.
That’s 20 extra minutes of light exercise per meal.
(The other thing…I looked up the cheap frozen dinners…they’re surprisingly not bad. Banquet, which you can get for 1-2$ usually, is only 400 calories. The higher priced ones (“Big Man”) things are only 600-700. Again, terrible food, but still healthier and cheaper than McDonald’s)
Anyway…the point…It’d be hard for me to make something as unhealthy as McDonald’s at home. I’ve done it (Eggs Benedict for example), but it took a lot of work.
I used a Digorno’s pizza as reference. On Totino’s, I was looking more toward how I’ve seen family members eat Pizza Rolls, where they have a cereal bowl full and that’s fast food territory.
As I said on some of the TV Dinners, they may eek by with fewer calories than a McD meal if you get large fries (small fries bring it down to “comparable”), but the added sugars and sodium make them in some select ways worse.
I’d suggest that the sort of person to be selective about their home diet when faced with fast food is likely to get the better options. I think the “biggie size everything” crowd will have bad at home eating habits, and more careful are likely to do things like skip fries and drink and maybe have a smaller sandwich.
I just have the general impression that people think the choices are:
- Grab an unhealthy fast food meal
- If they can’t do that, folks will be breaking out fresh vegetables and fish or poultry and making a reasonably healthy dish from scratch
When I’m reasonably sure the people that go all in on unhealthy fast food are filling bowls of pizza rolls and pouring from the 2 liter soda bottles, which is hardly better.
Undoubtedly it is easier to eat healthy at home (portion control, having the right ingredients), but just not sure “once they can’t afford fast food they’ll be on the road to healthier eating” will work out, as has been commonly expressed in this thread.
It’s a reasonable assumption. But hell…I think even a bucket of pizza rolls is still slightly healthier for you than a super sized value meal.
I don’t disagree with you. But I think even the the most unholy compulsive eater will do a little better if they can get away from fast foods.
Not only have the prices become absurd, the quality control has gone to crap.
For years we’ve taken regular road trips and use to stop at fast food places every single time. In the past 3 years we’ve repeatedly been served triple salted food, awful sub sandwiches, “cheese” burgers missing the cheese and condiments, and cold burger patties so old and dry they couldn’t be choked down. When you factor in the amount of waste due to the lousy food, the actual prices are way higher than what’s shown on the menu.
The ridiculous prices and regular bad experiences pushed us to a tipping point and we now find a grocery store along the way for deli sandwiches. It usually only adds about 5 minutes to the trip. Not only are the prices about 30% less but the food is consistently edible which makes the real price probably 1/2 of fast food places.
This is something we wouldn’t have taken he time to do a few years ago, so for us there’s been a big upside to the absurd prices and lousy food. We’re permanently changed our habits and cut fast food out of our diet completely. We are now spending less and getting consistently better quality, healthier food.
Maybe we should send “thank you” notes to the various fast food corporate headquarters.
You can’t pay your employees poverty wages and expect them to care about quality.
It has to hurt for the people who spend their hard earned money on a night off from cooking by ordering out at McDonald’s, but it’s a lesson we all learn the hard way.
it’s very hard to give a shit when you’re making a meal that costs $15 in 30 seconds when you make maybe $9/hr. the math is so plainly unfair and it’s right in front of you all day
Nothing has made me cook at home more than fast food prices.
I mean… the reason isn’t good, but the outcome is. Maybe this’ll actually make a dent in the obesity epidemic, which fast food exacerbates immensely.
Note that “cook at home” is likely to mean “toss box of pre-cooked factory food featuring mechanically separated ‘meat’ and enough junk to keep it shelf stable for months into microwave or air fryer to reheat”, which is unlikely to be any better, and in fact may likely be even worse (going harder core on some of the processing to last months in a customer pantry).
Yeah, that’s a really good point. It’s kinda horrifying what poor people are forced to consume in this country. The crap we sell at the bottom tiers of food supply is actively deleterious to your health. It’s awful.
i haven’t gotten fast food regularly in years (only once this year, trip to taco bell, feelin a bit proud tbh), but i have been lucky enough to WFH for a lot of that. when you’re starving and want something you just want it, even if it’s overpriced garbage. i dread the day of having to work an office job again.
what really pisses me off is the psychological manipulation: these companies think they can just rewire our brains with their dogshit marketing. ohh $3 is actually fair for 1 hashbrown. there was never a ““dollar menu””. they don’t even list the damn prices on their website like a normal restaurant. it’s so fucking shady and dishonest, the whole damn thing, the gray prison architecture, taking away the soda fountains from customers (and making the kitchen people worry about drinks as well). it’s so so fucking sick. WE’RE the ones suffering, they’re the ones looking at graphs and DESIGNING our suffering. they don’t have to pinch pennies, they don’t have to pinch shit. fuck mcdonal i CANNOT wait to see them fall.
