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Comment by riknos314 | Hacker News Reader

I'd argue that the author's choice of volume as the metric to compare against is a poor one.

The costco hotdog contains 580 calories, approximately 110 of which is the bun. If the bun shrinks by 30%, the calories of the entire dog shrinks by 5.7%%. But also the $1.50 is for a combo that includes a drink of up to 270 calories, so the caloric content of the combo shrinks by 3.9% -- substantially less than the 37% claimed volume loss (which does not account for the drink).

EDIT - The drink also allows for a refill which would add another 270 calories bringing the total to 1120, and the caloric shrinkage down to 2.9%

When looking at protein the meal loses 1 gram out of 23, or 4% loss, which is less than inflation. Good for all the gym rats.

Edit 2 - fixed percentage calculations

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yeah, sugar water is totally what people are going for when they get a costco hot dog.

People want something to wash down the salty protein and fat. They've always had the choice of water, several sodas, and usually bad ice tea, bad lemonade and a diet soda or two.

Soda isn't my preference and personally I'd probably skip out, but it feels disingenuous to completely ignore something included in the price when discussing the value of an item.

That's why I have percentages for both the dog alone and the combo.

The combo also includes water as an option instead of soda, water is 0 calories. The hot dog is what matters.

You're welcome to break this down however you wish. I don't think there's any perfect measurement or stat here as every consumer values the various components of the combo differently. If you are a consumer that values the drink highly, then a dog-only analysis is incomplete. If you only care about the dog then you want to leave the drink out. Neither of these calculations is inherently more or less accurate than the other, they're just relevant to different preferences.

My original point is that by changing what metric and how much of the combo you look at the calculated loss can vary significantly: over an order of magnitude difference between the dog-only volume loss and the refilled drink calorie loss.

lies, damned lies, and statistics.

There's no limit on how much ketchup you can add. Since total calories/$ is your metric, there's no reason why you couldn't make each visit deflationary!

And some people eat the dog dry and some add a bunch of relish and mustard and four other toppings. And some people don't eat the bun. And some people don't even finsh the dog. So what?

The option to get water is a meaningless observation that doesn't invalidate the assessment of what you get for the money.

The Costco hot dog is not a health food to most people, so I don’t think soda is a problem.

Also, it is not possible to buy the hot dog without a soda. So really, people are going for the soda when they get the hot dog, whether they want it or not.

I hope it's not a health food to anyone.

Also, I've bought the hot dog and forgone the soda.

A 20oz/medium coke/pepsi is $2 (McDonald's) to $3 (Wendy's, KFC, Burger King, etc). The majority of people buy one with an entree at all those places. Revealed preference vs you living in a bubble.

If you're going for calorie/$ then nothing beats potato chips

I think you mean cooked whole potatoes.

Potato chips are generally very low weight, and include other calorie containing products, such as oil.

Right, I was wrong. The best calorie/$ ratio is with a bottle of cooking oil. (7-9k calories/$)

But you cannot eat that, so potato chips are a distant second (at least from the products I checked)

And no, the calories in chips added by the oil offset the lesser amount of weight you buy per unit - at least in my locality.

If I just look at calories per dollar, potato chips seem the most cost effective - at least as long as you take the cheapest ones

Pure potatoes are somewhere around 200-500 calories per dollar, cheap potato chips are around 1000/dollar

Pure noodles or rice might be even better, I didn't check those admittedly.

I just searched Google for "highest calorie tuber" to try and see what the best choice would be (cassava/tapioca/yucca) but Google was very insistent I see the search results for "highest calorie tube".

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