I'm pretty sure opportunity cost plays a part in the cheapness of fast food. Saying that the time is there because Americans watch a couple of hours of tv is really half-hearted analysis. Additionally, it's not only the time to cook, but also the time needed to travel to grocery stores, which is actually more inconvenient to get to than fast food restaurants in low income neighbourhoods.
I'm surprised by how often the "junk food is cheaper than healthy food" meme gets repeated. It seems so obviously false, I can't understand why people believe it when they hear it, and I really struggle to see how it can survive after people give even a back-of-the-envelope calculation in response.
What am I missing? Is it that people think "healthy" means organic, out-of-season produce? Are they assuming the cost of a whole bottle of ketchup for each hamburger? Is there some experience people are having that makes this "feel" true? I'd appreciate hearing from someone who believed it up until now -- what was it about this idea that resonated with you?
Food has become a statement of moral worth for at least some people. For them, there are morally righteous ways to eat, and other options are sinful. (Swap food for sex if this distinction is a bugbear to wrap your head around.)
If you believe that fast food is essentially sinful but also that poor people are essentially good, then there must be a reason why poor people can't eat like righteous people like yourself eat. Hence things like the economic argument.
My question on the first four is, where the heck are you shopping? Those are terrible prices. Are those really representative of what you see on a regular basis?
Avocados supposedly hit "record" prices of $2.50 each this summer [0]. I get 3 loaves of whole grain bread for $5 at my local grocer. Frozen broccoli is 3-4 pounds for $5 [1]. Low cal tortillas can get up near $5, I guess, if you get the fancy ones in a 10 or 12 pack.
Here are a few other things you can get for $5 (all taken from my local grocery ad [2]):
- 20 pounds of potatoes
- 3.5 pounds of frozen chicken breasts
- 3 pounds of ham
- 5+ pounds of produce: tomatoes, carrots, pineapples, squash, etc.
- 15 cans of store brand condensed soup
It seems to me like, if you're looking to feed the family, your $5 goes a lot more on this list than it does on the dollar menu. A pound of ham, a pound of squash and tomatoes, and a 10 pound bag of potatoes seems like a lot more food than two burgers, two fries, and a tiny salad. It seems to me like, if you can't do better than the dollar menu for feeding your family, you must suck at shopping [3]. Do you think "sucking at shopping" is really what fuels this meme?
[3] one of my friends who was on government assistance really did suck at shopping. I once went with him and convinced him to replace 10 pounds of meat (of the 20 in his cart) with a big bag of potatoes, as well as bulk carrots and such. At the end of the month, he was delighted that he still had food and had a little money left over.
It is absolutely not reasonable to assume you can buy "chicken breast" for $1.40/lb. The coupon sale price for frozen Dominicks (Safeway) chicken breasts in Chicago is $4/lb. A fresh pack of chicken breast --- again, the grocery store crap --- will easily set you back $7 (which is approximately what Empire runs /lb at Trader Joe's as well).
I don't have a strong opinion about whether junk food is "truly" cheaper than "healthy" food (I cook every night and think it's generally a good idea for every family to get into that habit). I think it's a kind of a moot point, because what many poor families really lack is a history of having time in their schedules to cook. Cooking is a skill built through repetition and serving home cooked meals is a habit that is hard to establish.
What does bug me though is that every time this topic comes up, some nerd hits Google and finds either (a) some ludicrously unrepresentative price sample ("you pay $6/lb for chicken? i can get new york strip for $5.50!") or (b) some combination of beans and millet that will feed them just fine for a month on $3.
It is not enough, to win this argument, for the math to come out slightly in favor of home cooking. Home cooking needs to win on all three axes:
(i) price: home cooking has to be invariably comparable in price to McDonalds to win,
(ii) convenience: it's got to be straightforward to cook and to serve, bearing in mind that one of the hallmarks of low-income working families is shift work, and
(iii) palatability: this doesn't mean "it has to taste as good as junk food" (although realistically that is a factor); it means that you have to find one dish that you can serve four people and have them all come away satisfied.
None of those are easy to accomplish. Erin & I work hard to achieve any two. All three?
A brief anecdote. McKinnon's meat market in Cambridge sells boneless chicken breasts for $2/lb and split chicken breasts for $1/lb. I'm not an expert and can't speak to the quality, but it's really popular among residents here. I have no idea whether this is an "unrepresentative price sample", but it's a meat market in Boston a few blocks away from the red line. It's not exactly an obscure shop. I've never been there, but I'm thinking about checking it out this week as people keep telling me to go.
Google says McKinnon's sells ground chicken for $1.49 --- which is itself an absurdly low price, lower than Costco, wildly lower than the supermarkets --- a boneless chicken breast costs $0.50 more than that per pound?
It might just be regional variations. In Quincy (quite near Cambridge), Roxie's is currently selling chicken breasts for 1.79/lb.
Roxie's is a local meat market where my family used to buy most of our meat (the other place being an illegal meat auction which was held in a strip club on Sundays...and yes, I'm being completely serious).
Here is McKinnon's flyer: http://mckinnonsmeatmarket.homestead.com/Menu.html. I'm not sure on ground chicken price, but you can see the prices for chicken breast on there. I've never personally been there, but there is a Yelp review from July that confirms buying split Chicken breast at $0.99/lb.
$1.40/lb for frozen chicken breasts is a sale price, but it's not out of the ordinary for what I used to see in Seattle (less than a year ago) or what I see in rural Utah now. $2-3/lb is more common, and I've seen similar prices when I visit family in Denver, the Oregon coast, and northern Cali. I don't know why Chicago is $4-7/lb for "the grocery store crap"; all I know is that those numbers are way outside of the prices I've experienced. The prices I gave are not "ludicrously unrepresentative"; they're prices I see on a regular basis.
I'm a stay at home dad who's done the shopping for many years. I shop at the closest store, tilt my shopping somewhat but not entirely toward sale items and generics, and don't do anything more extreme than grab coupons from the ads at the customer service desk. I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary, or anything that I'd expect "the poor" to have trouble doing. Everything I say here is a result of my experience feeding my family in a way that I think is pretty normal and sensible. In my experience, home cooking comes out way ahead on price -- it's not even close.
Thus, I'm very firmly in the camp that says "price" is not the major contributing factor to people eating crap. The two other factors you note, "convenience" and the "picky kid factor" (palatability), are the dominant considerations.
We avoid fresh chicken breasts; they're extravagantly more expensive than other better meat options.
But yes, my point is that price really isn't the issue, except that I don't believe home cooking is so much cheaper that it makes a real difference for people.
Those were off the top of my head from my last shopping trip at Albertsons. I'm sure I was wrong about the avocados — the $5 is for a pack of three avocados (though I do think that people would not value even five avocados the same way they would five hamburgers). I'm going again tonight, so I will check if I misremembered the other prices as well, but they don't sound wrong.
I wonder if we should make basic cooking a required class in high school? Even if people who would otherwise eat fast/junk food every night would cook at home just a couple nights a week, it would probably make a noticeable improvement in our overall health.
There are some basic dishes that are very quick and easy to make, and very cheap. For example, consider spaghetti. A box of dry spaghetti is cheap and has a very long shelf life, and is quick and easy to cook (boil water, drop in spaghetti, turn heat down slightly--read HN on your mobile device for 10 minutes, occasionally stirring the spaghetti). Drain, put on plate. Pour on some bottled sauce that you've heated up (go ahead and use the microwave).
Congratulations--you've now made an alternative to your usual Big Mac, in 10 minutes, and it cost you under $0.50.
They teach basic cooking in middle school in Chicago.
Much is made of food availability and "food deserts" and the like, but the real issue is time. Even "very quick" meals take more time & effort than fast food.
It's particularly the case when you're cooking for a family. Fast food is practically guaranteed to be palatable, but taking a box of dry spaghetti and making it palatable to 4 different palates takes some doing.
I was talking with a German about what he thought America's national rallying cry was. He said, "In America, everyone is an aristocrat"
He pointed out that we all drive big cars and in Germany you can't drive a big car without means. He also pointed out that in America we all hunt (remember the kings deer) and fish as if it were a God given right.
I think to some extent the fast food issue is the same here. We like fast food, because people are serving us. We don't need to cook. It goes back to our desire for everyone to be an Aristocrat or at least feel that way.
As far as I concern, there is always the short and long term time analyses. And in The short run yes, but this short run takes only 5 to 15 minutes. The risks for your health are extremely high producing a higher price for all of us.
