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somenameforme

I have quite a lot of difficulty eating out once you start cooking at home, because think of what you are buying:

- one English muffin (is it called an English muffin in England?)

- one slice of cheese

- one egg

- one slice of ham

- one cup of coffee

- one hashbrown

£5.09 for that? Obviously when you buy from a restaurant you're paying for their labor, rent, electric, and much more so it makes sense - McDonald's franchisees tend to operate on single digit profit margins even at that cost. But mehhh, still. And then the food you end up buying is packed full of preservatives and other additives and artificial ingredients.

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It was hot and tasty and delivered near-instantly to my car at 6am. There's no way the fair price for that is less than a fiver.

If you've never lived here, I'm not sure you can really say what £5 is or isn't worth anyway.

Yeeeeah I had a £4.50 coke yesterday. Getting a meal for that price is pretty good, even if meal is in quotes.

The price for each of those at my local supermarket when buying the low quality option in bulk:

English Muffin: 70¢

Slice of cheese: 40¢

Egg: 40¢

Slice of Ham: 50¢

Hash browns: 40¢

Coffee: $1?

In total $3.40. £5.09 for that in hot, prepared form ready to eat sounds cheap to me, not expensive.

I calculated how much I spend on food, shopping at Lidl in the EU in a mid range expensive country, and I pay about 3 euros per day.

That's about the same as $3.40, but for 4 full meals (one of those is smaller than the others)

Admittedly I've optimized my menu.

but you don't say what you buy because eating only potatoes really is cheap

I do eat them, but they're not that cheap.

Oats, brown sugar, milk, (frozen) french fries, chicken burgers, "American" cheese, gnocchi, tomato basil pasta sauce, turkey nuggets, tinned beans, xv olive oil, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, chicken salt, seedless grapes

Dude you’re not even trying, why buy muffins and eggs when you could grow wheat, grind flour, raise chickens and get eggs for free, slaughter your own pigs and cure the bacon yourself… because labour costs nothing and convenience has no value amirite?

I find it bemusing that so people are simultaneously extremely agitated by high prices but also completely disinterested in doing anything except paying them. With this mindset it's not particularly hard to guess which direction they'll trend in over time, even if the world wasn't going nutters.

I mean these things are not difficult to make. They even freeze extremely well, and then you toss them in the microwave for a couple of minutes while you're getting ready and they're done. And the food you create is not only much cheaper, but also way healthier and also higher quality. When you go to a McDonalds you're getting the cheapest possible find they can source on a global level. The only reason they dropped pink slime [1] is because they were outed using it on television.

Incidentally that was a long time ago and while Wiki is quiet unclear it seems that the USDA chose to reclassify back as simply ground back in 2018. If it's been rebranded and remains legal, that's probably what people are now eating, again, at least in the US - as it's deemed unfit for human consumption in Canada and the EU.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime

I don't know where you get the assumption that people who eat McDonalds can't or don't also cook their own fresh food from scratch.

I did not say that. I was responding to a person who engaged in banal snark implying that making food for oneself is a herculean task, but it all depends on what you're making, and things can be extremely stream lined. In the case of what we're talking about (mcmuffin stuff), you can even cook and freeze them in arbitrarily large quantities and it's way cheaper, healthier, and even faster since it's in your freezer instead of having to go out.

I do think that the fast food (or even eating out in general) starts to lack any real selling point for households that are capable of cooking, and so this is probably going to weight the customers, especially regulars, of these sort of places away from households that do cook. I suppose you'd argue time is the selling point, but one can even remain competitive on there with things like pressure cooker meals. There are even one pot rice cooker meals which are also great.

I think it's from living in the world and actually meeting people.

The UK comparison for home cooking vs fast food breakfast should be really be Wetherspoon. Spoons makes a solid stodgy full English breakfast and bottomless coffee for 5-7 quid depending on the size. Classic hangover food, and you can start the morning where the night ended.

Obviously you can beat it with home cooking, but the calorie value for a sit down meal out is compelling: 1300 cals for 7.50 (more if you go for hot chocolate).

Wetherspoons is amazing and a great replacement for McDonalds. They bring the food to your table, with cutlery, on a plate and you get unlimited coffee and tap water. I paid £4.78 for a muffin of sauage+bacon+2 eggs+hash brown and unlimited coffee this morning.

You got to choose very carefully from the menu as lot of things aren't good value.

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