In general i would agree, i live in a pretty rural area surrounded by farms and co-ops. i get 96% lean GB for about $3 per pound cheaper then the grocery store by buying from the source. we also have a pretty good farmers market every sat and a co-op for veggies and other products. quality is usually better and the prices are better.
unfortunately those that live in more urban areas with denser population don't usually have those options. it used to be that buying a fast food meal would be cheaper then buying the ingredients and making it yourself, that isnt the case anymore but unfortunately many don't have access to affordable ingredients either.
add in the time investment of shopping, sourcing locally, prep and cooking and many also do not have the time. with most households needing to be duel income just to make a decent life, add in things like after school activates for the kids and that time commitment and all the other life things that take time and fast food becomes ever more enticing to ease some of the burden.
drglnc wrote:
Busy or not, urban or not, children or not, poor or not, fast food usually isn't the answer.
I eat a lot of cheap, healthy, whole food that nearly everybody has the time to cook and can afford, even if they live in an apartment in a city.
Eggs
Peanut butter sandwiches
Cottage cheese
Protein powder
Beans in the crockpot
Pasta
Rice
Oats
There isn't a stoplight or a single full on grocery store in this county, so I am in a food desert just like those in the poorest of urban areas. The closest grocery store is 29 miles one way, the closest Dollar General is 10 miles one way.
I do have good, flat land and not everybody has 44 acres. BUT both of my gardens combined are only 4,266 sq feet, which comes out to 1/10th of an acre. A 1,750 sq foot area can hold up to 1,400 corn plants.
So anybody that lives in the burbs, and most people that live in a town or city, could have a nice sized garden, if they stay away from a HOA neighborhood.
Working the land isn't a picnic, it's real work. It's a lot easier to complain about the price of a can of corn or green beans than to get sweaty and dirty growing it and canning it yourself.
Whether it's greed or inflation, my take is that people are pissed off at the price of fast food because most of them are lazy and have become accustomed to being entitled to easy, cheap "food".
It's not like if fast food companies charged pre "pandemic" prices they wouldn't make money, I get that. They just wouldn't make as much bc of 2024 inflation (End the FED). I understand their goal is to make as much as possible. Ultimately their greed isn't the problem. McDonalds isn't forcing anybody to buy an 18 dollar Big Mac meal. If their customers quit being lazy and said "no" then McDonalds would have to change their prices or go out of business.
