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Comment by nchmy | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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.

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