The amount of time required to prepare incrementally larger batches increases at a sub-linear rate. The bigger your batch, the more food you get per unit of wall clock time. I try to prepare no less than 3 lbs of dry beans or 2 lbs of beef at a time. Anything less does actually feel like I'm wasting my energy.
The thing I see stopping most people in poverty is lack of access to a kitchen. No oven, no stove, no pantry, etc... A hot plate and a microwave if they are lucky. Also the usual health issues that come from deep poverty like executive dysfunction, depression, and other chronic illnesses.
How poor are we talking here? The most nominally poor people I know live in depressed post-industrial towns in Slovakia and I don’t think I ever saw a kitchen without a stove and an oven.
I remember years ago, when I worked at Subway, so often I'd be ringing up the customer, tell them their total, and they'd be like "It'd be cheaper to make it at home!"
I never for the life of me understood how this was some giant revelation for some people. Of course it's cheaper to eat at home. The value proposition for eating out, even at fast food, was always convenience, not cost.
Of course, the counter-argument is always something about how a load of bread is $X, all the veggies are $Y, etc, and it adds up to like 3x the cost of the Subway sandwich. But everyone making that counter just completely ignores the fact that all those ingredients will make at least 5 sandwiches.
Economists keep saying we are under 3.5% inflation which makes no sense. Prices in stores are doubling in 10 years which is more like a 7-8% inflation rate. Maybe it's local to me?
When I worked there in 2012, a footlong Roast Beef was $7.50. Now, just the six inch is $7.99, and the footlong is $14. Not quite a doubling, but still pretty nuts. That's about 4.6% per year, higher than the 3.5%.
Why should this be the case in principle though? Do economies of scale not apply to food preparation?
Does it make economic sense? Yes, when you know that there is a frozen potato cartel: https://www.potatopro.com/news/2024/alleged-potato-cartel-ac...
The homeowner does not charge themselves rent for their own kitchen, nor for their time.
It's not an iron law, it's downstream of a hundred things, like property prices due to restrictive zoning, baumal's cost disease driving up wages, onerous regulation on food service, and a populace that seems to have collectively given up on seeking the best value for dollar.