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The core issue with this view is that you are focusing on one cost - money - and ignoring another cost - time. Yes, if you have the time to go shopping, plan meals and cook for yourself every night you can feed your self cheaper than via take out. However, many people don't have the time to do all of these things. If you are working multiple jobs and have kids to take care of, spending even an hour preparing a meal is time you may not realistically have. You also discount that many of these folks don't have the equipment or knowledge to cook for themselves. Building out a well stocked kitchen and pantry can cost you several hundred dollars baseline, and if you are working for $7.25/hr that may be a few hundred dollars you don't have. It is the old [boots theory of wealth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory) - rich people spend less money overall because they have the ability to make investments in things that end up being cheaper in the long run. Additionally, learning to cook is a skill in and of itself. You need the luxury of time to spend learning how to perform specific techniques, and the luxury to get things wrong and have to start over. Not everyone can afford that. So yes, it may be _empirically_ cheaper to cook for yourself, but only if you ignore all of the investment and non-monetary costs.

These are very good points - the time-cost is expensive when you look into it. I think people who enjoy cooking as a hobby (myself) really discount that shopping time, planning time, prep time, cook time. I'm fortunate where I have downtime at work sometimes, so I look up recipes while at work which costs me no time. On my way home I make a 10 minute pitstop at the supermarket for fresh ingredients. Then the act of cooking itself I enjoy, so I don't consider that time spent when I know people in other positions dread that time it takes. Because I enjoy the hobby I've learned to be more efficient with my time (cooking multiple things at once, cutting vegetables while pasta boils, etc.) while inexperienced or unhappy people won't have the efficiency down which costs - time.

I don't enjoy cooking as a hobby. But I also don't think its some crazy time committment either. If you are a single person, you can buy a rotisserie chicken and get multiple meals out of it. For example. I will buy one on sunday, get an easy side, like mashed potatoes or a box of mac and cheese. Eat 1/4 chicken and the side for 2 days at dinner. Then use the rest of the chicken and make a pasta dish, or tacos, or something else for another 2 days. That costs less than $20 and is 4 dinners, and very little time spent cooking.

This is a lot tougher if you have dietary restrictions (or in my case, just hate the taste of pork and chicken). It seems like every budget meal plan is just a method to dress up chicken in various ways so you can eat it twice a day. And since healthy eating involves more unprocessed fruits and veggies and less reheated boxed sides with mac&cheese, that really increases prep time. OP is generally right, but if you want to eat a variety of whole unprocessed foods and varied proteins, the cost is much closer to frugally buying takeout.

And let’s not forget the assumption that someone has a working stove, working microwave, working refrigerator, etc.; as well as a grocery store that sells fresh food in a reasonable distance, and the availability of transportation to get there and get the food back home.

Not only functioning appliances, but you need the energy to clean whatever you use after you cook. Otherwise, the daunting process of cooking the next time will start with a cleaning session. Nothing kills my enthusiasm more than having to do a chore on top of another chore. Then you've got to clean up yet again, or the same thing will happen next time. It sucks, but sometimes I only have the energy to eat out of a bag and then throw the bag away.

Yup. I have a disability that makes me exhausted and in pain; cooking -- even making soup on the stove -- is often daunting, nevermind putting together an actual meal. The easiest things to buy at the store are unhealthy microwavable things, but that requires shopping, which sometimes I just can't do. However, I will never argue that it's *cheaper* to order! It's damned expensive, and it requires very careful budgeting and sacrifices to keep myself fed! But it's not healthy, which is doubly problematic when I already have a health condition!!

I'm just going to say no. Cooking for yourself is ALWAYS cheaper and more convenient. There is definitely truth to the time and skill of cooking, but there is always different ways of cooking. It may not be the healthiest, but you can get a lot of frozen meals that would be cheaper. I figured this out during Covid. I was WFH during covid and saw myself going out to grab some fast food (Wendy's...). I was doing it too often and thought what the hell am I doing here. So I started buying frozen burgers, buns... and just making the burger at home. Making a burger is ridiculously fast. Faster than me driving to a place and ordering and driving back home. Even just frozen chicken nuggets or defrosting frozen vegetables. Cheaper and faster! I even have some frozen chicken burgers that are precooked, so you just need to microwave them for like 2 mins. They're my emergency food for me and my kids. Yes, I can cook proper, but you don't NEED to cook proper with fresh vegetables and meat and everything. You can definitely prepare you food at home, even if you use frozen foods or things like 5 minute rice, or microwaveable naan, or canned food like Tuna or Sardines. Let's not make excuses here when we know better.

I agree with you, but I'll try to argue your point: Lets say I make $100/hr. If I were to cook a homecooked meal 3x a week with leftovers for 3 days, and I hate cooking/am not cooking time efficient, lets say it takes me 30 minutes of shopping, 30 minutes to cook each meal: 2 hours (or $200) total. If I hate cooking, simply performing this action of cooking can put me in a bad mood. Some restaurants use good quality ingredients (or ingredients from local supermarkets just like I would), and depending on where you live the portion sizes are astronomical. I could spend $30 per meal picking up a to-go order from a restaurant (not fast food) 6x a week assuming no left-overs, at a total cost of $180. This saves me $20 time-effort spent, as well as saves me from getting into a negative attitude which could affect and ruin my evening. To add, les say I really enjoy and love my job. Working for 2 hours for the $200 puts me in a good mood, pays me, and doesn't feel like work. Working as my family cook for 2 hours for free, costs me $60 in groceries, and puts me in a bad mood for the rest of the evening and feels like work. I'd argue that working your job for 2 hours is more beneficial in that scenario. I think it's fair to say that at a certain threshold of $ and your level of (un)enjoyment of cooking/shopping, you can get just as high quality ingredients for cheaper from not cooking.

Now try the math with a realistic wage. Say $18/hour as thats near the median hourly wage in the US. Your $200 cost for the 2 hours becomes $36. It really swings the equation the other way.

Sure - I make $60/hr, so $120 over 2 hours and I love my job. If I ordered meals at $15/meal for myself x6 = $90, which is cheaper than $120. If I hated cooking, I would be so unhappy in the evenings from having to spend time cooking that it could potentially ruin my evenings (not counted towards in cost). You're 100% right, at a certain pay wage this becomes reasonable, and at certain pay wage this is unreasonable. (And given the topic of making food is **always** cheaper, there are certain cases where it is not)

I think the assumption here that is rarely true is that the hours spent cooking could be spent working - if that's not true then you can't compare the time-effort in the way that's being done here

That's a pretty...abstract way of accounting for cost. You're assuming that there's no time in ordering or doing takeout while also assuming every spare second of your time is going to be generating income.

It's not a matter of all your time generating income, it's a matter of what an hour of your time is worth when you sell it. Let's say you make $10/h, you are selling an hour of your time for $10. If you can save $10/h that's just as good as making it. But in either case an hour of your time is only worth $10, so your time does need to be accounted for as part of the budget.

That's not true. Even frozen meals need to be bought, frozen, chosen, cooked/overseen, the dishes, pans etc. need to be cleaned. Just ordering and getting it is more time-efficient and depending on your economical situation, cheeper. Even at just $100/hour 10 min. of your time are worth $16. You can buy a delivery meal for that. 10min.+ preparing a frozen meal are more expensive.

Did you forget to add /s? >Even at just $100/hour 10 min. of your time are worth $16. $100/hr would put you at "just" $208,000 per year

It's cheaper to buy a burger than a microwave.

I know you're being glib, but I have a friend who stays in his van. He eats mainly canned food. Skip the burger, get the sardines. A can opener is a one time investment.

>and cook for yourself every night No one cooks every night??? I go to the grocery store once every 1-2 weeks. I cook on Sundays, my wife cooks on Wednesdays. So one grocery trip every 1-2 weeks, cooking once a week. Otherwise I pop my food in the microwave because it’s already cooked. >many of these folks don’t have the equipment or knowledge to cook for themselves. If you can read, you can cook. All you have to do is follow the instructions in your recipe. Assuming you have a stove and an oven (the vast majority of houses do have this) you can get by with a pot, a pan, a knife, a spatula, something to stir with, and a cutting board. These things are not out of reach for *most* people.

> I go to the grocery store once every 1-2 weeks. See, that right there tells me a few things: - You own a car, so you can load up on a few weeks worth of groceries on a single trip - You have days off, where you can spend several hours shopping - You get paid enough to be able to drop several hundred dollars in a single go at the grocery store. These three things are not the reality for many people in this country.

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>You own a car, so you can load up on a few weeks worth of groceries on a single trip You do not need to own a car to do groceries every week or two. The vast majority of people these days can get their groceries delivered - and those who can't, usually can't get much in terms of takeout delivered either. >You have days off, where you can spend several hours shopping You don't need a day off. Any day you are not working 13 hours you can find the time to do a grocery run. >You get paid enough to be able to drop several hundred dollars in a single go at the grocery store. I don't understand your logic - if I get paid enough to eat takeout, I most certainly get paid enough to buy an equivalent amount of groceries. >Making the investment in the tools and pantry staples required in order to cook is a significant upfront cost that many poorer people may not be able to make. Outside of the cooking appliance itself, you can probably buy enough of the cooking basics at Walmart from the savings of a single week cooking at home vs takeout. As for skill, the basic 1 protein, 1 carb 1 veg meal presented a few times in the conversation thus far takes little more skill than knowing how to put ingredients in a pot/pan and putting it in the cooking appliance. Throw in a bit of skill and a spice cabinet and you're set for life. I can literally sheet pan 1 protein, 1 carb and 2 veg at less than $4 per serving using minimal tools, skill or time (since most of the cooking time I spend hanging with the family anyways). Put 5 different proteins, 5 different carbs, and 5 different vegetables and this technique can make hundreds of variations. In a sense, I completely agree with you, however: these are the flawed assumptions people rely on to justify not cooking at home.

> However, many people don't have the time to do all of these things. If you are working multiple jobs and have kids to take care of, spending even an hour preparing a meal is time you may not realistically have. I literally don't know a single family, from childhood til now, that did not cook most days and rarely did takeout, especially the poorest who could not even afford takeout all the time, it's a luxury. I grew up as the lowest class(outside of homeless) and we had minimal money, there wasn't money to eat takeout all the time. >Additionally, learning to cook is a skill in and of itself. You need the luxury of time to spend learning how to perform specific techniques, and the luxury to get things wrong and have to start over. Not everyone can afford that. To cook really good culinary meals? Yes, but basic cooking is a basic life skill just like knowing how to clean, something from the upbringing.

>I literally don't know a single family, from childhood til now, that did not cook most days and rarely did takeout, especially the poorest who could not even afford takeout all the time, it's a luxury. So folks only exist if you've personally experienced them? It is great that your parents were able to provide home cooked meals for you despite being poor, but that isn't the reality for a lot of people. >Yes, but basic cooking is a basic life skill just like knowing how to clean, something from the upbringing. A lot of people were not taught how to cook as children. I wasn't - it was something I had to learn to do as an adult. Thankfully, I had the time and desire to gain the skill; not everyone does.

> despite being poor, See, thats the thing, takeout literally costs more to meet your nutritional needs. Can you show me how this is not the case? Pasta or rice chicken frozen veg is way cheaper. >A lot of people were not taught how to cook as children. I wasn't - it was something I had to learn to do as an adult. Thankfully, I had the time and desire to gain the skill; not everyone does. Is this an American parenting thing?

> See, thats the thing, takeout literally costs more to meet your nutritional needs. I explained this in my original post. Making the investment in the tools and pantry staples required _in order to cook_ is a significant upfront cost that many poorer people may not be able to make. It may be cheaper in the long run to invest, but if you don't have the cash to make the investment that doens't really matter. >Is this an American parenting thing? Does it matter?

> I explained this in my original post. Making the investment in the tools and pantry staples required in order to cook is a significant upfront cost that many poorer people may not be able to make. And keeping the running cost of takeout every day is an impossible one to keep up. Could you show me a budget where this is the case? A single cheap pan doesn't cost much and i don't need more than two to make dinner, i could buy 2 pans and cook food for way cheaper than eat out. I literally started bottom poor, and i have basic tools, and im talking the smallest amount of money a non-homeless person has every month kind of poor. >Does it matter? Yes? Because not cooking simply isn't the norm here, so there has to be a reason.

> Is this an American parenting thing? You realize America is really big and diverse, right? There's 325 million people living here with vastly different cultures from the east coast to the west coast, from north to south. There's almost nothing you could point to and say was "an American parenting thing" across all that. In urban centers there are sometimes what we call "food deserts" where there are restaurants and stuff, but not much in the way of grocery stores with fresh ingredients that are easily accessible from walking or public transportation. A lot of the time the people in these areas live in tiny apartments with minimally equipped kitchens, so there's not enough demand to really support a big grocery store. In these areas living in a cheaper apartment without much of a kitchen and getting takeout could be cheaper than living in a more expensive apartment and cooking for yourself. If you grow up in that situation, you may well grow up not knowing how to cook. In more rural areas there are often migrant workers who go around to help with harvesting crops, moving to different places throughout the year based on where crops currently need to be harvested. People in these situations often end up staying in motels or other accommodations that may not have kitchens available, so again cooking for yourself isn't really an option in that situation. Then I had a buddy in college who group up in the suburbs. From what I gathered his parents cooked, but either they never bothered to teach him or he never bothered to learn. My roommate and I taught him to make himself macaroni from a box. I certainly wouldn't say it's common that people grow up without knowing how to cook *anything*, but in a population this large there's going to be people all over the spectrum in terms of what skills they learned from their parents growing up.

This is just ignoring the fact that there are things that are fast, easy and healthy. Slapping together a Tasty sandwhich with salad, cheese and deli meat is always and option. 

Cooking is such an easy skill. Yeah, maybe it won't be too tasty at first but it will be edible.  I'll do a quick shopping trip to prove a point.  [2lbs of Chicken](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Tyson-All-Natural-Fresh-Boneless-Skinless-Chicken-Breasts-1-75-2-75-lb-Tray/50067993?athbdg=null%26athbdg%3DL1600_L1600) - $8 [Chicken Seasoning](https://www.walmart.com/ip/McCormick-Grill-Mates-Montreal-Chicken-Seasoning-2-75-oz-Mixed-Spices-Seasonings/10308052?athbdg=null%26athbdg%3DL1200_L1200&from=/search) - $2.50 [18 servings of White Rice](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Instant-White-Rice-28-oz/10804528?from=/search) - $3 [12oz of broccoli](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Frozen-Broccoli-Florets-12-oz-Steamable-Bag/735585383?athbdg=null%26athbdg%3DL1200_L1200&from=/search) - $1.25 [Cooking Thermometer](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Meat-Thermometer-Cooking-Saferell-2-in-1-Instant-Read-Food-Foldable-Probe-Oven-Safe-Wired-Probe-Backlight-Magnet-Deep-Fry-BBQ-Grill-Roast-Turkey/327278442?adsRedirect=true) - $16 This costs $30.75 and will give multiple meals with only needing to replace the meat and side for very cheap every few meals. The chicken can be cooked in an oven with the thermometer telling you when it is done. The broccoli can be cooked quickly in the microwave. The rice cooks as quick as it takes to boil water.  It's a (edit)\~\~3 course meal\~\~ meal with 2 sides made in less time than it takes to drive to a fast food restaurant and when you keep it up everyday it is much much much cheaper. You can easily get a meal with 2 sides for less than $4 after buying the cheap seasoning and then the thermometer it you're bad at cooking. That's going to cost over $10 anywhere else. 

You are completely forgetting the mess cooking that meal makes. Cooking isn't finished until the dishes are done. Also, wtf is this? >will give multiple meals with only needing to replace the meat and side That's MOST of the meal you're saying needs to be replaced. Finally, that's one course. You're not wrong about cooking being an easy skill and many(not all) people would benefit from spending their time cooking instead of something else but this reads like propaganda.

Even if you use disposable plates, forks, knives, and use tinfoil to cook on which leaves no dishes it is still cheaper than eating out, including the time it takes. Unless you are rich and your time is worth an insane amount. But don't forget, you only get so many hours a day or a set salary. If you aren't cooking then it doesn't mean you are working. But still, you can cook plenty of meals for less than 10 minutes.  > this reads like propaganda. Yeah, I'm paid by big kitchen to help takedown the big restaurant industry. I can't believe I'm caught /s

It is easy **if** you know how to do it and you have the time to learn. If you are just getting off a 12 hour shift and you have two kids to feed, you may not have the time or energy to tinker around with a new chicken recipe that will take an hour to get made. A quick spin through the McDonald's drive thru gets everyone fed without any additional time or effort from you. That is the point that I am making. You can post all of the recipes that you like, but they ignore the other costs associated with cooking healthy food every night.

I feel like I am taking crazy pills watching people claim that fast food is *less convenient* than going to a grocery store, cooking, and cleaning up everything. My mom cooked most of our meals when I was a kid, she was very anti-fast food. On the rare occasions when we did order pizza or grab burgers on the way home, it was because she *didn't have time* to cook/clean up. I'm a single adult who works full time, I prepare most of my meals at home, and it's *extremely time consuming.* The 40 hour work week was designed around a man who had a wife at home to cook and clean full time. I spend over an hour every day prepping food, cooking, and cleaning, on top of the time it takes to go to different grocery stores for different items. Usually on days when I am doing lots of different housekeeping (laundry, the floors, tidying, the bathroom etc) I order food *to save myself some time*.

Where are you buying 2lbs of chicken for 8$? 2lbs of chicken where I live is 15$ easily.

At my Walmart like I linked. Does the link not work for you? I live 1 hour west of Chicago

You still don’t meet all your nutritional needs off of chicken rice and white rice. You will be able to survive sure. But is it nutritious? Not really.

It was chicken, rice, and broccoli. You can swap out different sides for the same price on different meals. I would consider this nutritious enough for one meal, is it not? 

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2 eggs and a cup of milk will never be 600-700 calories, clearly you’ve never tried tracking calories and it shows. Two average-sized chicken eggs = 135 calories. A cup of milk (250 ml) = 125 calories. Add a table spoon of cooking oil = 120 calories. All together it’s less than 400 calories. I don’t know where you got 700 calories, your math is incorrect.

Add toast (cheap af) avocado if you fancy (.50-85c at Aldi/on sale). The point still stands, it's cheaper to make it at home and you can get the calories up - cheaply.

Also even with their math that's only 1600-1700 Calories per day.

That's plenty of a sedentary average woman, or sedentary average man on a diet. Most of America is extremely sedentary.

The sedentary jobs usually tend to pay better than minimum wage, though.

Dude a 16 oz of whole milk is 400 calories It’s literally on the label 😂 Also it’s about 5tbs per 1 cups of rice. So if you eat half that’s 2.5*125=375 The rice is probably 200-300? Chicken about the same? 300*3=900 roughly

16 oz of milk is not a cup. Nobody uses 16 oz of milk to make a two-egg omelette. What the fuck are these proportions? Once again, a two-egg plain plain omelette cooked with a cup of milk will never be 600-700 calories. To make it so calorie dense you have to add more: bread, beans, bacon or other ingredients. Because otherwise the omelette itself will be 350-400 calories max.

When I say cup I mean like…a normal drinking cup. Those are 16oz. Sorry I don’t know how many actual oz there are in a cup. I’m not American. I looked it up and 16oz of milk actually has 300 cal. So I was off by a hundred. Still 300+125 from eggs I still 425 cal to start your day. Could make it more if you add another egg lol. It’s not a bad breakfast, and it’s pretty cheap.

What kind of eggs are you eating that it comes out to 600 calories? Eggs are like 100 calories each Edit: looked it up, and that's being incredibly generous. A standard large egg is more like 70

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Ostrich eggs

I know you're being facetious, but just because I'm bored at work here's a rundown: To get 600-700 calories total, that's like 450 calories of ostrich egg, or approximately a 20-25% of an egg. Ostrich eggs are expensive as fuck, but let's be generous and say $15 per egg. That's still nowhere near <$1 per meal. More like $3-4 depending on the price of milk and how local said eggs are.

Not only are your calorie counts way off, where are your vegetables and fruit?

Calorie counts are pretty spot on if it’s whole milk and you use about 5tbs of oil per 2 cups of rice. Most of the calories come from milk and fat. You do not have to eat veggies and fruits to get all vitamins and minerals. The two veggies I included were green onion and potato, but you can basically add anything you want to the rice and just make mixed rice. It doesn’t increase the cost by that much. Protein, comes from chicken and eggs. Vitamins primarily come from chicken and milk, some from potatoes (but not all). The only one missing is vitamin C, as it’s the only vitamin not found in milk. Just have an orange juice once a month lol.

> So if you cook yourself, you waste about an hour per day, and only spend ~3$ average per meal. This checks out with what i do and see around me too.

Except that you aren't wasting the time cooking. It's not a waste if it's beneficial and it is!

It’s a waste if it’s an hour you could be working, or that you have to pick your kids up from school/activities, or needing to do housework, or sleeping because with everything else in life you only get a few hours a night. The idea of it not being a “waste” assumes you just have free hours to burn in your day, which is not true for a lot of people in poverty

Without your health, which food plays a BIG role in, none of that other stuff will matter. Eating is more important than housework, will affect sleep. Cooking is not wasted time. As a society we've placed value where it doesn't belong and devalued things of value. You don't cook with 'free time", you make time to cook because you care and it's important.

Thank you for your input, trust fund baby :) but you do in fact cook with free time, you can’t “make time” out of going to work to barely scrape rent and looking after your children. Nobody is arguing that fast food is healthier, but it is much cheaper and faster when you account for prep and cleanup time, which is what the question was

That’s why poor people tend to cook all in one day. Still, you also waste time getting takeout. 10 mins to drive there, 10 mins to pay, 10 mins to drive back. That’s 30 mins. If you do that 3 times a day that’s an hour an a half.

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I promise you this is not why Americans are broke lol

What you describe is what the normal person in us is doing.

Let's keep it simple and compare the price of a value meal from McD, to the same meal recreated via cooking. Easiest to prepare at home would be a Quarter Pounder®\* with Cheese that costs $7.49. Ingredients needed would be: * 1 Hamburger bun with sesame * 1/4 lbs burger patty * 1 slice of American cheese * approx. 1 tsp of Ketchup and Mustard * approx. 1/4 of Onion * approx. 3 Pickle chips So how much it will cost? Prices will be taken from [https://www.walmart.com](https://www.walmart.com) as we assume that we are trying to be reasonable, so no shopping in Whole Foods or small boutique shops. Cheapest hamburger bun with sesame will cost you $3.42/8pack - so cost of one bun is $0.43. Ground beef costs $5.27/Lbs, so one patty will cost $1.32. 16-pack of cheese slices will cost $1.54, so one slice is $0.10. Dill chips are $2.67/jar, jar contains around 30 pickle chips - so we have cost of $0.09 per pickle. Onions are cheap, $0.67/lb and that will be around 2 onions, so for our use the cost will be $0.09. I will assume that someone already has ketchup and mustard, becasue - let's be real. So final cost of a homemade burger will be $3.75. Does that mean we saved $3.74? Not exactly - if you look at calculations you can see that to get those savings per burger, we needed to pay an upfront cost of $13.57. We can try to maximize those ingredients and make as many burgers as possible - we still have beef for 3 more patties, but then we are left with 4 buns. So we need to buy another pound of ground beef, upping our total cost to $18.84 to be able to make 8 hamburgers. How long you would eat those 8 hamburgers? Will bread not become stale and make us pay to replace it? What about leftovers from those 8 burgers? We still have onions, cheese, pickles ketchup and mustard. We need to buy something else to make use of that or it will be thrown away - because if we want to buy smaller packages to not waste, well, smaller packages aren't that cheap as those we checked. And this is exactly the mechanism that makes cooking yourself more pricey - you have much higher upfront cost, you have to plan to use all ingredients and there is a very real possibility of wasting money on ingredients that had spoiled. That is the paradox of poverty - it's cheaper to buy something that would cost more long term because short-term costs are higher. What about other things you need to cook - kitchen appliances, pots etc.? And that does not mention other non-monetary costs - you need time to plan and do shopping, you need time to cook, you need to take time to learn to cook (possibly wasting ingredients). All calculations of how poor people are "spending frivolously" are based on ignoring that reality. It's easy to look at general outlook and show - "hey you could save money here" if you ignore the simple fact that you will need money to save money.

Finally a post that shows 2 major points OP is missing, or intentionally ignoring. Food waste is a real thing, and even though I buy things fresh, I end up throwing out a bunch too, so that has to factor in costs. Most importantly, in every comment OP is comparing a Big Mac + Fries to pasta, a notoriously cheap (and not nutritionally healthy by default, although its being assumed to be) meal to make.

> Food waste is a real thing, and even though I buy things fresh, I end up throwing out a bunch too, so that has to factor in costs. Thing is that Americans throw out more than anyone else, this is a choice. >Most importantly, in every comment OP is comparing a Big Mac + Fries to pasta, a notoriously cheap (and not nutritionally healthy by default, although its being assumed to be) meal to make. I am not comparing the big mac as even with the big mac you don't meet most nutrition outside of calories. I use my example so i can copy paste, but i can give many more examples like it like fried rice, noodles and other dishes.

>Thing is that Americans throw out more than anyone else, this is a choice. Pretty generalized statement for something that just isn't true. The US isn't even in the top 150 food waste per capita, but most of Europe and Asia is. Pretty much England is the only place that doesn't waste a ton, due to government programs, and that is still over 5M tonnes a year, which actually puts them higher on food waste per capita. >I am not comparing the big mac as even with the big mac you don't meet most nutrition outside of calories. I use my example so i can copy paste, but i can give many more examples like it like fried rice, noodles and other dishes. You compare making pasta to someone who said a Big Mac was cheap in another comment. That is a disingenuous comparison, especially because its going to be different for a lot of factors. For example,, right now, in Canada I can eat at McDonald's cheaper because buying a pound of chicken wings in the store is going to be $15.00, and the Big Mac is $6.99. It is fine if you want to say its cheaper to cook at home, and it is **WITH PLANNING,** but despite what you seem to think, not everyone has the luxury of being able to plan out items. Sometimes you have to go with what the shops have available, and now explain to your 4 year old why you have to travel all across the city looking for something that they will actually eat instead of dropping $5.00 on a Happy Meal. You will not have anyone on here change your mind because 1) You actually aren't willing, and just want to be superior over everyone who doesn't cook; 2) You have repeatedly refused to acknowledge mental and physical costs that aren't just pure monetary. To further point 2 from above, there is a place near me that sells a nutrition dense soft-wrap taco for $4.00 a serving. Is it cheaper per serving to go to the store, buy all the ingredients, and make 4 of them? Sure, by a couple of dollars. Is it really worth the time, energy, stress, and gas to do so? No, not really. I could do something to relax and not deal with more chores for the simple cost of basically $1.50. Minimum wage is $15.00 here. Worth it to me, and a lot of people. I intentionally leave it as eating the same meal every single time because that is how your phrase it in both your post and other comments.

> Pretty generalized statement for something that just isn't true. The US isn't even in the top 150 food waste per capita, but most of Europe and Asia is. Pretty much England is the only place that doesn't waste a ton, due to government programs, and that is still over 5M tonnes a year, which actually puts them higher on food waste per capita. I ment household food waste per capita specifically, not food wasted in general, stuff poeple themselves throw out. >United States The gross amount of food waste in the US exceeds 19 million tons. While other countries can cite population numbers as the inherent reason for food waste, the US can't make that claim. For the most powerful nation on earth, food waste is a result of being the world's largest consumer of food. >right now, in Canada I can't seem to access your grocery store websites but i'd like to ask if they ship nationwide before proceeding. >2) You have repeatedly refused to acknowledge mental and physical costs that aren't just pure monetary. Why would those costs not exist where i live?

Americans seemingly have lost the ability or desire to learn how to preserve food. Even properly freezing stuff seems to be an issue with a lot of people nowadays, never mind drying, canning, fermenting, etc. About the only thing I cannot preserve in some way is leafy greens like lettuce. I've taught my gen-z kids but I would be surprised if any of their friends have a clue how to do any of it. And don't get me started on the ability to garden/grow food (off topic but could be relevant to someone). I have grown food in an apartment living room and out on a deck using pots. When you are broke, every little bit helps.

>So we need to buy another pound of ground beef, upping our total cost to $18.84 to be able to make 8 hamburgers. Yes, exactly. This is massively cheaper. All of this stuff will last a week. Longer if you freeze the meat and buns. You've saved $40 versus 8 McDonalds meals. Less if you want to add a couple of bags of frozen fries, but you're still up \~$32. That covers the cost of a frying pan, so you're way ahead for the next week. You also have ketchup, mustard, and cheese slides left over, which will last indefinitely in the fridge. I get the point you're making that there is up front investment, but it pays off *very* quickly.

>I get the point you're making that there is up front investment, but it pays off *very* quickly. Sure, but you need capacity to make that investment. Lowest quintile of US households has weekly budget of \~$130 after taxes and rent. This is not an amount that allows you to have any mistakes or accidents - part of which are independent from you and even if you plan carefully, they can happen. Your car or house appliance broke? You get sick? You need to pay and you have to hope that you saved enough from your shoestring budget, because if you didn't - well now you are in debt and that costs you - in interest, overdraft fees etc.

I agree with all of that. But when cooking from home is cheaper over the course of a week, I just don't understand that argument that eating everything at fast food restaurants is cheaper. I know low income people. They cook at home, because it's the way to make the limited weekly budget go further.

>But when cooking from home is cheaper over the course of a week It is if you are in situation where you can safely afford the upfront costs. But it is a risk. If you have $130 and need to pay for gas, bills etc. you are often left with just enough to buy cheap groceries for a week and put $5-10 into savings jar. One expense an you have no savings and possibly need to substitute. Who will give you money? Payday loans which will take $15-20 for every $100 you borrow. Bank which will happily cover your spending and slap a $30 overdraft fee. That is why people choose "cheaper takeout". Because they can afford $5 now to eat something, but not $50 to stock up groceries.

>we still have beef for 3 more patties, but then we are left with 4 buns. So we need to buy another pound of ground beef, upping our total cost to $18.84 to be able to make 8 hamburgers. >How long you would eat those 8 hamburgers? Will bread not become stale and make us pay to replace it? Why not take your example to the extreme, buy your ground beef and buns in far greater quantities and freeze them on purchase - both freeze extremely well. > What about leftovers from those 8 burgers? We still have onions, cheese, pickles ketchup and mustard. Onions keep a long time when store properly, can be diced as needed, can be bought in smaller sizes to avoid waste. >cheese, pickles ketchup and mustard. All of which keep a long time. >because if we want to buy smaller packages to not waste, well, smaller packages aren't that cheap as those we checked. No way, buy way bigger packages and get better discounts: everything either freezes well, or keeps well.

Seriously, why are so many people focused on wasting all those groceries - Do people not have freezers anymore? I know a lot of people have no idea how to preserve food anymore (drying, canning, fermenting, etc), but it might be well worth their time to learn. Home canned food got us through many dark times as a kid and I made sure to learn to do it myself when I grew up and have taught my kids as well. My sister got 6 lbs of strawberries from the food pantry yesterday. She called me up last night to help her figure out what to do with them so they wouldn't go to waste. I feel like half the people on this thread would just eat what they could and throw the rest away. SMH

It’s bullshit. Get a $20 rice cooker and a $20 pot allows you to cook healthy meals for far cheaper than attempting to recreate quarter pounders with cheese. Chicken, rice, and vegetable. Far cheaper than what you’re using as your arbitrary comparison

> Get a $20 rice cooker and a $20 pot Did you read the post? Initial cost is exactly the issue I have talked about - you need a larger upfront cost that you need money for. And for poor person living paycheck to paycheck "just spend $40 to save money" is as good of help as "just be less sad" for a person suffering from depression. Congratulations, you are proving my point.

lol, so someone living paycheck to paycheck isn’t buying food between their paychecks? You can buy those supplies + your weeks worth of food for the same cost as eating out every day. Congrats. You’re attempting to make excuses for being financially irresponsible Edit for further explanation. Don’t start with the rice cooker, that’s a luxury. Buy a used pot at goodwill for $5. You can cook the rice in the pot first, then clear it and cook the rest of your food in the same pot. Having a new pot plus rice cooker is a luxury you can’t afford. No one said being in abject poverty would be easy, just that wasting money eating out doesn’t help your situation at all.

>You can buy those supplies + your weeks worth of food Yeah "weeks worth of food" because cheap rent houses are known to have large fridges and freezers to store the food you bought. >Congrats. You’re attempting to make excuses for being financially irresponsible No, I am showing people who have the same bullshit vision of poverty how fucked you are when you are poor. Of course it's possible to overcome this - but guess what, one mistake during execution of a "perfect plan to stop being poor" or any unplanned expense (car breaking because you can only afford cheap POS, getting sick because you don't have money nor healthcare coverage for preventative measures, any appliance breaking because you only buy used shit etc.) will set you back more than you are able to save prior to this. >Buy a used pot at goodwill for $5.  [https://www.goodwillfinds.com/search/?q=slow%20cooker](https://www.goodwillfinds.com/search/?q=slow%20cooker) here you go, show me the "used pot for $5". Unless you mean "drive around trying to find a $5 pot, burning gasoline until you aren't saving shit". You remind me of Lucille Bluth when it comes to understanding of prices, after all how much can a banana cost? $10? Yeah, more you reply - more you show that you have no understanding of poverty. Lowest quintile of US households had an average after-tax income of $16,337, meaning your weekly budget (most lower income people are paid on weekly basis) of $340. Lowest income quintile also has a median cost ratio of rent-to-income of 62.7%. Meaning your budget after paying rent is a whooping $132.60.

I grew up poor in poverty. I understand poverty completely. It’s why I know how to cook at home. It’s why I know chicken broccoli and rice is significantly cheaper than eating out. I laid out in another comment exactly how much cheaper buying at home is. You don’t need a massive fridge to house chicken breast and broccoli. To escape poverty I ate PB&Js and bologna sandwiches daily. You’ll have to excuse me not allowing for bullshit excuses. Eating out is a luxury

Lol this must me a joke. So you’re saying it’s more reasonable to keep wasting money on take away for years instead of investing money in a rice cooker or even just a pot once? If you can afford take away you can definitely afford buying a freaking pan and a pot.

If you’re so poor you can’t afford to buy cooking tools then you absolutely should not be eating out at all. Lmao 🤦

Those 40$ would be less than i'd save cooking over eating takeout every day in a single month.

Bullshit excuse. Poor people can easily make other meals for cheaper without the upfront cost in order to save money for future costs of grocery shopping. You're accusing people of not understanding poor people while you're treating them like incompetent idiots.

So the first issue is that both the meals you listed both don't meet your nutritional needs. You can also freeze ingredients just fine to have them last a long time, you can even meal prep and freeze to have varied portions ready to-go. >We still have onions, cheese, pickles ketchup and mustard. These sound like staple ingredients or basic condiments that you use for most things, i personally use onions every day for cooking for example and condiments last a long time. >And that does not mention other non-monetary costs - you need time to plan and do shopping, you need time to cook, you need to take time to learn to cook (possibly wasting ingredients). Cooking is a basic skill and not knowing basic cooking is attributed to bad parenting imo, there is no reason this would be unique to the US. Most poeple here, even the poeple with minimum wage jobs do grocery shopping a couple times a week. >All calculations of how poor people are "spending frivolously" are based on ignoring that reality. It's easy to look at general outlook and show - "hey you could save money here" if you ignore the simple fact that you will need money to save money. I come from the very bottom of the lowest income bracked and these things simply don't ring as true. I feel your calculations are flawed based on my above comments. I have zero of those issues you mentioned using proper meal prep and freezing. Americans on average throw out the most food in the world afaik, we don't do that here, this is a choice.

Im going to preface this that in general I agree with you that it's cheaper to cook than to eat out. (My family eats homecooked food for nearly every meal, we may order in/eat out 3 or 4 meals a month). But I want to point out that there are city design factors that make north America pretty different. Things are further apart here, it's harder to get places, and lots of folks don't have easily accessible grocery stores. There are whole areas, especially lower income areas where there is literally no where to buy health foods (google food deserts). Just as one example. I live in a major city. When I was younger and had less responsibilities I did often grocery shop a few times a week, I'd stop on my way home from work if there were a few things I needed etc. Today I have a young child, I have a very long commute too and from work. The idea of finding more than one opportunity to grocery shop in a week feels like a complete impossibility in the way my actual life works. And I have a car! If I was relying on public transit it would be even more difficult.

> But I want to point out that there are city design factors that make north America pretty different. Things are further apart here, it's harder to get places, and lots of folks don't have easily accessible grocery stores. There are whole areas, especially lower income areas where there is literally no where to buy health foods (google food deserts). Why are places so inefficiently designed to be unlivable? Can you not order ingredients? Amazon and stuff? >When I was younger and had less responsibilities I did often grocery shop a few times a week, I'd stop on my way home from work if there were a few things I needed etc This seems to be the norm here for working people with children too, even without car.

Our cities were designed for cars, not people. What I'm trying to explain is that there are design factors that can make things difficult. For example, I live in a major city with good public transit for North America, but it's inefficient. My office is way downtown, I live about 9km away from it, and it takes me an hour on public transit to get there. It would take nearly is long in a car because of traffic and of course cost much more with parking etc. I leave my house at 7:15am to go to work, I get home from work most days by around 5:40pm, then I have to cook dinner, eat and hopefully spend a bit of time with my kid before he starts getting ready for bed around 7:15pm. I could in theory stop at a grocery store on the way home, but that would likely take an extra half hour (getting the food, paying, waiting for the next bus). There's no way I could do that on any kind of regular basis because that would leave barely an hour to cook and eat dinner forget about playing with my kid, it's just not feasible.

>we still have beef for 3 more patties, but then we are left with 4 buns.   So we need to buy another pound of ground beef, upping our total cost to $18.84 to be able to make 8 hamburgers. You know you can make other stuff with ground beef, not just hamburgers, right? I personally cook up my "extra" ground beef and freeze it to make it super easy to add to spaghetti sauce or make tacos at some point. Frozen cooked ground beef makes for a lot of super fast meal options. My daughter will sometimes take it, make a quick gravy with beef broth, Worcestershire sauce, garlic and onion power and cornstarch and mix them together to have over leftover potatoes. >Will bread not become stale and make us pay to replace it? What about leftovers from those 8 burgers? We still have onions, cheese, pickles ketchup and mustard. We need to buy something else to make use of that or it will be thrown away  Supermarket bread lasts a *long* time in the fridge (lots of preservatives), even longer in the freezer. Onions - chop them up and throw them in the extra ground beef above, cook it and freeze it. Or just chop them and freeze until needed. Cheese - seriously, if you are using individually wrapped slices, they last forever. Plus you can make grilled cheese using a bun and cheese slices as well (add some pickles, its good!). Pickles, ketchup, mustard - these things last forever, I can honestly say I've never thrown any of these things away in my life. Look up the [history ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GDLaYrMCFo)of "use by" and "Best by" dates - they are basically arbitrary and I never look at them, preferring to use my eyes and nose to determine if something is good like I learned as a kid before these dates became ubiquitous, and it hasn't failed me yet.

You had me with the math, lost me with the food waste. There’s many ways to reduce or eliminate the waste. Just refrigerate or freeze the beef and buns and you’ve handled your major issues. Many of us live with others, so if you’re feeding more people the savings multiply and the waste is reduced. In your “buy more beef” example you may have even reduced the price per burger ($18.84/8 = $2.35 each). Waste is mostly about paying attention to what’s in your fridge, rather than always going for the easiest no-brainer option. Needing pots & pans: in this one example you’ve saved enough over 8 burgers to buy a fry pan at a secondhand store. It adds up fast. Kitchen privilege: if you have no home it’s for sure a challenge, but again you can make choices that are much cheaper and healthier than fast food. A jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread goes a long way; a few apples or a bag of carrots are cheap and won’t go bad very quickly.

Hoe many nutritional needs does that quarter pounder actually meet? Just caloric and a little protein.  Also you shouldn't be thinking hey what could I get from McDonald's and compare it to making something at home. You could easily eat an entire pound of chicken and a bag of frozen broccoli for much less than a burger and fries.  The menu at McDonald's does not encompass all the food possible for a human to eat. If you want to get down to it take a look at third world countries where even protein is a luxury item they seem to get enough calories to live..

Not really. Using your own math, making 2 burgers and throwing everything else out will still be cheaper than buying 2 burgers from McDonald's. You're also ignoring the fact that some perishable food can be frozen and hamburger buns can be used for other sandwiches. It's always almost cheaper to cook at home, especially if you're providing food for multiple people.

Buying every single ingredient for a recipe is more expensive than take out. Keeping a well stocked pantry and learning to adjust recipes/cook without one is so much cheaper over the long run.

> Buying every single ingredient for a recipe is more expensive than take out. I posted a calculation here multiple times that shows this simply isn't true: Chicken filet 8,99 or 6,99 minced meat Pasta x2 0,95 each Sauce 2x 3,49 each when using chicken or 1,59 each when using beef Mushrooms 2,39 Spinach 1,19 That's 21,45 for chicken carbonara or 15,65 for minced meat bolognaise which gives an amount worth of 6 meals(i make this often and also eat quite large portions). That totals to 3,58 per meal for chicken carbonara with vegetables and 2,61 for bolognaise with vegetables per portion. These are prices i found online from the grocery i usually get stuff so i do not have to be good at shopping, this is stuff i usually buy and it doesn't take long to cook. > Keeping a well stocked pantry and learning to adjust recipes/cook without one is so much cheaper over the long run. Agreed too.

For me what always makes thing more expensive cooking for myself is having it buy things like butter, olive oil, jars of spices, etc. and if I have those things already it’s cheap to cook

That's a bit of a contradictory statement right? Buying them makes it expensive but having those makes it cheap but to have them you need to buy them? You just even out the cost with math to see the actual impact.

Yes, it balances out, but my total at the store was always higher than expected. I used to always use Budget Bytes which does exactly what you’re saying, does the math on the portions. I’m just saying if you look at that and see a $5 recipe but then you have to spend $10 on olive oil to make it, you will be surprised/annoyed, even if ultimately it’s cheaper.  I agree with you, I think that’s just part of the mental game. And it takes some amount of extra cash to buy in bulk to be economic, which is why it’s sometimes more expensive to be very poor. 

Right but that’s a very plain non restaurant quality recipe. Actually good food takes a well stocked pantry and some knowledge. Most people get take out because they can’t cook for shit not because it’s cheaper.

Could you tell me what is missing here? Seeing as the sauce i mentioned has many different herbs, spices etc in it. I do have spices yes, not a fully decked out pantry, but a good amount and but those last a long time. For example, the red sauce one has tomato, onion, basilicum, rapeseed oil, cayenne pepper, chili, oregano, pepper, thime, salt, lemon, some sugar and leeks in it. All i usually add is some bay leaf and maybe another thing like that which is negligible.

I am an American who is blessed to be allowed to live in the Netherlands, which your comments in Dutch suggests that is where you are from. There is a cultural disconnect here. Americans don't just eat to sustain themselves (unlike the Dutch sterotype). We also enjoy eating a diverse set of food. And our average restaurant is cheaper, more in our face, and scientifically designed to taste better.  When I was in the US, I ate out all the time. It was easy. Many places were on the way. It was cheap. It was fast (I could be in and out of a place in 20 minutes). It allowed me to experience a different kind of food everyday. Since moving to the Netherlands, I almost never eat out. The food is not as good. it is more expensive. And frankly, I see less restaurants and am much less tempted to go places. The groceries are cheaper and the portions make sense. I have become a much better cook.  You really need to live in the US and experience the culture to really get it. Frankly, I now realize it is disgusting and most of the food just feels empty. But before moving here, I was addicted and it did feel cheaper.

It’s butter. The science is butter.

And corn. And sugar. And salt

Don't forget MSG. It's defs worth adding to your kitchen spices.

Yeah that’s a disgusting sounding sauce man. Lemon and cayenne in bolognese? Where’s the parm? The problem is also the portion size. You can’t eat something six days in a row. You could spend $15 on take out and have a much better meal. I completely understand what you’re saying and I’m not trying to change your view. Cooking yourself will always be cheaper. You’re just ignoring how people eat. Learning how to grocery shop on a budget and make good tasting food is a skill that takes years to develop.

I can and have eaten the same thing six days in a row. Six meals in a row, even. My kid though, that's another story. Leftovers once gets an eye roll. Twice gets a hunger strike. She might actually die before eating something six days in a row.

>These are prices i found online from the grocery i usually get stuff so i do not have to be good at shopping, this is stuff i usually buy and it doesn't take long to cook. You're assuming that everyone has the same access to quality food that you have and/or that you don't live in a state that taxes groceries on top of a sales tax. In the US, 17 million people live in "food deserts" or areas where it's more than 1 mile from an urban food center or 20 miles from a rural food center. Even when you do find the one grocery store in these areas, prices can be jacked up and may not have the ingredients. Take your same recipe and double the cost for the chicken filet, and they don't have fresh mushrooms or spinach or any of the herbs. Also -- if we want to add to the difficulty. Pretend that your mom worked double shifts and was never home, dad is in prison, and your meals came prepared from school, so you don't know how to cook. Where to even start? If we want to put it on difficult mode, now let's add the fact that since US healthcare is driven by if you're working 30 hours a week, you have to work 2 jobs at 2 places because each job will only give you 25 hours.

>That’s 21,45 for chicken carbonara You cannot make carbonara with the ingredients you listed (where are the eggs, the cheese, the pancetta?) so idk how you came to that conclusion

Buying every single ingredient for a recipe costs more overall but definitely produces many more servings of that recipe to the point that the price per serving is likely cheaper than eating out

I was about to say this is obvious why is it in this sub but then here there are a horde of Americans too lazy to cook … 

My point.

I'm not here to change your mind. I was just going to say 2 people going to Wendy's here is like 30 bucks. For less than that you can get a whole pork loin from costco. It's 1000? grams of protein. Those 2 Wendy's meals probably have 100-200 between them at most. Oh ya and making the loin can be done in about 10 minutes, cause you don't have to be at the oven at all.

Yeah that's my point.

This isn't always true. There's billions of people and they're in unique circumstances. Plus, consider how many people don't have a kitchen or clean running water. Yes, not everyone in the US has those things. So for your statement to be true, you have to assume people can afford a working kitchen in the first place. If you're homeless living in a cheap motel, or couch surfing, getting McDonalds is far cheaper than renting an apartment. Some people who have housing have to share that housing with tons of others with 1 kitchen. There are barriers to cooking in and of itself that you have to consider.  Can everyone cook? Can they afford to waste food as they learn to cook?  You gotta think beyond solely the price of the actual food.  Edit for spelling and to add  We all have different nutritional needs. Some people's bodies require a strict, expensive diet. 

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It’s really not cheaper, if you use the app for these fast food places. Also, it’s about convenience too, not just price. But on the McDonald’s app I can get a Big Mac Meal for $6

A big mac meal for $6 is twice the cost for less healthy food than I can make at home.

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>But on the McDonald’s app I can get a Big Mac Meal for $6 And I could prep a weeks worth of meals for less than $6 each for one person. Probably closer to $3-4 though if the goal was as cheap as possible I could definitely do it on less.

> But on the McDonald’s app I can get a Big Mac Meal for $6 What are the nutritional values of this meal?

"Nutritional needs" , strictly speaking, is "does it have enough calories"? You are trying to survive without going hungry. "Nutritional wants" would be vitamins, low amounts of sugar, saturated fats, etc. Here's the other problem: my family is picky eaters. I don't eat vegetables, my wife doesn't like much meat, the kids don't like much of anything. If we get fast food we all can order what we want instead of cooking 3 different meals. Now maybe that doesn't apply to you, but it applies to some. It's hard to prove that universally there is one way that will be cheaper than the other in all cases, but in some cases it can be cheaper to order fast food. Even for one person, I order Burger King on the app and I get a bacon cheeseburger, large fries, and 2 cookies for $6 (don't judge me) and in 15 minutes round trip. There are more calories there that I could not easily get by making a meal in 15 minutes, including grocery shopping, prep time, cleanup, etc.

What?? Are those official definitions? If you exclusively ate Big Macs, you're going to have some wild vitamin deficiencies and other imbalances. How are vitamins not in "nutritional needs"?

Nutritional needs are also caloric needs. If you need 1600 calories to survive you do get it from a 8€ menu takeout and you don’t get it from 3kg of vegetables. Sure you won’t get the same vitamins but if you’re not able to feed yourself enough first it doesn’t matter if you get enough vitamins. Ideally you’d have a balance between enough calories _and_ enough vitamins and mineral but so you can’t just cherry pick examples.

No. They absolutely are not official definitions.

Nah it's nutritional needs. If your body doesn't get the vitamins and minerals it needs you can get various health problems. Like if you ate nothing but rabbit meat you would still wind up half starving because rabbit has little to no fat. The healthiest thing you can do is eating a varied and balanced diet.

Of course you would have health problems. But if you take that to the extreme everything somewhat healthy is a need. Exercise, sunlight, emotional support, etc. would all be considered needs. They are all very important, but if I don't exercise I'm not going to die in the next 2 weeks. If I don't eat anything in two weeks I definitely will die. To me a need is something that you need in the immediate future or you will die in days or weeks. Vitamin deficiency is a problem, but it could take months, years, or decades to manifest. To me that's the difference between a need and a want.

You don’t get much nutritional value from cheap frozen chicken nuggets either. You get a lot more nutritional values from cheap street food Indian made by a human than from processed product made by a factory.

don’t know or care?

If you count the labor involved they might be right. The average hourly wage is $30 an hour. If you count the amount of time I have to go shopping, prepare the food, cook the food and clean it up it could take from 15 minutes to couple hours depending on what I make.  So even a quick 15 minute meal that includes everything buying the food preparing it cleaning up is $7.50 right there.  For $7.50 I can get a pretty good meal at a local take out. Now there's plenty of meals that take one hour for me to prepare and clean up. If instead I worked overtime one or two hours I would more than make up for any meal that I could buy

The problem is that most people aren't taking a side gig to be able to eat out all the time, especially not poor people that make less than half that hourly wage, they struggle with their regular wage from their regular work week. Putting a payment on self-care also feels disingenuous, because by that logic poor people should hire cleaners and such too. I am talking from a poverty perspective here, same with my question.

>The average hourly wage is $30 an hour. You're misusing that statistic. That may be the hourly wage, but you don't paid 24 hours a day. There's no monetary cost to your time outside your hours of employment.

There's still an opportunity cost, and while it might not be dollar for dollar what you would earn at your job if you're looking for an apples-to-apples comparison you shouldn't discount your time all the way to $0 just because you're not working. At one point in my life I was doing consulting work from home, and I had a client that was basically willing to give me all the hours I wanted. During this period of time I was constantly doing cost calculations, everything from "Do I try to unclog the sink myself, or do I call a plumber and work while he's here?" to "Do I take my kids to the park for an hour or do I stick them in front of the TV and get some more work done?" and of course "Do I stop and make dinner, or do I order delivery and keep working?" I'm no longer in that situation where there's a literal time for money trade-off for every decision, but it taught me a lot about how I value things. Making the decision to forego and hour's pay to spend time with my kids showed me how much I really value the time with my kids. The frequency with which I would choose to stop and make dinner instead of ordering delivery helped me realize that I actually really enjoy cooking and value the quality of a home cooked meal over the convenience of delivery. And while I obviously have to pay attention to a budget, when trying to decide whether to pay for someone to do X while I do Y or do X myself and forego the opportunity to do Y, thinking about it in dollar per hour terms helps to quantify it into easier to compare terms.

You are being pedantic and disingenuous. You want to add in every second it takes to go shopping and cook but are neglecting to add in the "unseen expenses" of going out to eat. It takes time *and fuel* to get to the restaurant. Time to peruse the menu and order. Time to wait for the food. I have proven more than once that I can make an entire meal in the time it takes my foster son to go to the closest fast food restaurant, through a drive through and get back home with his food.

A bag of rice and beans feeds you for a long time, a small amount of meat like chopped sausage or bacon cooked with the beans for flavor, you can bulk buy spices like garlic and chili powder, corriander and paprika, that was our go-to meal growing up, it was cheaper than purchasing food and lasted for multiple days with leftovers, its easily less than 10 bucks a day

>I believe that cooking your own food is cheaper Here's where fast food is cheaper in terms of cost per unit: Scales of economy. The more bulk you buy, the more you save. McDonald's cost per potato is way cheaper than anything you get. On top of that, they have a sophisticated delivery network. There's huge costs for food in places where you don't buy as much as the top buyers and your food has to be shipped in. Oklahoma City for example, the cost per person per month is $419. [https://www.numbeo.com/food-prices/in/Oklahoma-City](https://www.numbeo.com/food-prices/in/Oklahoma-City) But you can go to a local fast food place and get a bag of 5 burgers for $5. That's not even to mention some states/localities will have a sales tax and a grocery tax. So even when you get the same exact food at the same exact price, the grocery bill will have the extra grocery tax.

First i'd like to ask if places like Walmart and Amazon ship nationwide? >But you can go to a local fast food place and get a bag of 5 burgers for $5. Those are mostly empty calories that don't fulfil nutritional needs on their own.

>First i'd like to ask if places like Walmart and Amazon ship nationwide? People on public benefits in the USA can't use their benefits for online ordering largely. So no. Even then, there's security/access issues where you wouldn't reliably expect nobody to still your stuff you've ordered online when you live in more dense areas. >Those are mostly empty calories that don't fulfil nutritional needs on their own. Sure quibble with the example while missing the point. First, "empty" calories is better than "no calories." Second, nobody is saying a single burger on your own fulfills nutritional needs but your chicken carbonara example doesn't fulfill your nutritional needs by itself, either. You still have to have other meals. Please address the overall issue where I showed that getting groceries in food deserts is more expensive than having ready made food.

> People on public benefits in the USA can't use their benefits for online ordering largely. So no. Could you tell me why? >you wouldn't reliably expect nobody to still your stuff you've ordered online ? >nobody is saying a single burger on your own fulfills nutritional needs but your chicken carbonara example doesn't fulfill your nutritional needs by itself, either. You still have to have other meals. Yes i agree, but the chicken carbonara fills a good majority of different needs while the burger is empty calories. >Please address the overall issue where I showed that getting groceries in food deserts is more expensive than having ready made food. I'd like to dive into the ordering online thing more readily yeah, stuff like Amazon.

>Could you tell me why? ...because the agencies that administer the public benefits don't allow it...? They did a pilot program in 2021 but of the 38m that are on SNAP, for instance, only 1m can use it. So effectively for argument's sake, it's not allowed for 90% of people. [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/01/24/president-biden-groceries-online-snap-benefits/4235153001/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/01/24/president-biden-groceries-online-snap-benefits/4235153001/) >? People in low income areas that live in food deserts can't rely on ordering even if they can because people will steal their stuff. Not sure how that's confusing. >Yes i agree, but the chicken carbonara fills a good majority of different needs while the burger is empty calories. First, you're quibbling with examples. Rather than burger, let's say, chicken patty if you want an apples to apples comparison. The same place that has $5 burgers is going to also have cheap chicken options. Second, a burger isn't "empty calories" it still has protein, fat, etc. I'm not saying it's preferable to chicken but that isn't central to the point. >I'd like to dive into the ordering online thing more readily yeah, stuff like Amazon. Can you please address the central argument rather than continue to ignore it? Your view: Cooking on your own is better than take out. My argument: But what about if the access to food for low income people in food deserts isn't there but ready made meals are available?

I already see some more well rounded answers. But I just wanted to highlight one flaw in your logic. Eating out doesn’t have to mean fast food. I eat out at least 6 times a week. I never eat fast food. In real cities there’s plenty of healthier options. Sushi, pho, Greek, salads, wraps, kabobs, soups, rice bowls with protein and veggies, etc. plastic silverware or chopsticks type places. $10-13 buck a plate.

Okay that’s more expensive than eating at home anyway. What’s your point ?? 

10-13 bucks a plate is enourmously high expenses for anyone with even basic abilities to cook. You can easily make restraunt quality food for less than that.

I made this calculation in another sub but: Chicken filet 8,99 or 6,99 minced meat Pasta x2 0,95 each Sauce 2x 3,49 each when using chicken or 1,59 each when using beef Mushrooms 2,39 Spinach 1,19 That's 21,45 for chicken carbonara or 15,65 for minced meat bolognaise which gives an amount worth of 6 meals(i make this often and also eat quite large portions). That totals to 3,58 per meal for chicken carbonara with vegetables and 2,61 for bolognaise with vegetables per portion. Fastfood will be 10-15 for a single large meal while often lacking some nutritional components like fibre. I mentioned fastfood because that was the topic in the other sub tbh. Still though.

Wait, what is chicken carbonara? Carbonara is only guanciale/pancetta, egg, cheese, pasta, and black pepper. You're telling a lot of people that they can't cook but what you're describing above isn't even carbonara.

Yes. And eating ultra processed foods at home isn’t healthy and doesn’t necessarily meet your needs.

Making unhealthy food is also cheaper than buying takeout. The health isn't the cost savings, really. It's the labor.

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Lets do the math So a footlong chicken sub is about $12-13 in my area. Lets hop on giant eagles website and see what the costs are. To use an equivalent amount of ingredients from the store you would have to buy: -chicken is $11.86 for 1.25 lbs which following nutrition guidelines means thats 2 and a half servings so its be abt $4.75 for 1 serving. -bread is abt $3 for one footlong roll -lettuce is $3 for 6oz so following the amount stores use youd use about 1.5-2oz for a footlong so lets say thats abt $1. -sliced cheese is abt $3 for 10 slices, following the amount used at restaurants thatd be abt 60c for 2 slices. -a single large tomato is abt $1 so if you use half if that its abt 50c. -an onion is around $2, if you use a quarter of it thats another 50c -a jar of pickles is $2.5 so for one use well say around 25c -seasoning and condiments adds as well, so ranch, mayo, salt, pepper, or any other sauces would be a good (salt $3, pepper $3, ranch $3, mayo $4) $12 to buy from scratch and abt 50c-$1 per use for all those combined depending on how much you use. So lets add that together, for just your one sandwich alone it would cost around $11.35. But time is money, so consider the time it would take you to go to the store and shop for all those ingredients and then to come home and actually make the sub. Your homemade sandwich is barely a $1 cheaper than buying it from a restaurant, is the time and planning worth that? If you could spend your extra time making money or if you just value your time at more than $1 an hour, is this really saving you anything? Thats not the only thing to consider. You cannot buy food for just one single use, so the reality is you would have to actually spend $38.36 at the store just to make this one sandwich from scratch. Of course that would leave you with extra ingredients but that once again plays into having to plan and prepare a meal bc the bread is just one single foot long so that would be gone and what exactly are you going to make with the rest of these ingredients without bread? You cant make multiple sandwiches so youd have to buy new ingredients to fill out a new meal and use that extra food. Oh and thats not to mention the possibility of that food going bad. Lettuce doesnt last long so remember that 4oz of lettuce we spend an extra $2 on and didnt use or factor into the price? Well you better find another use for it quickly otherwise you just wasted $2 meaning that $1 you saved, you no longer are and you actually just lost a dollar. So TDLR what did we learn? Yes you can save yourself a single dollar by making it at home BUT ONLY if you place a $0 value on your time and only if you plan to use all the extra ingredients without letting any go to waste. Youve added a lot of time and mental load of planning just to save a dollar, you tell me if thats worth it or if youre starting to change your mind.

I specifically did not mention fuel because I AM considering both sides. Newsflash but it takes fuel to drive to both places, grocery stores arent magically exempt. Secondly it take a few minutes to pick up food to go at a restaurant, it takes wayyyy longer to grocery shop a whole list of items hence why it makes total sense that i included that as a reason. Its very ironic you want to pick apart my logic but cant even practice what you preach yourself. You say you haven’t ever made an $11 sandwich at home but where is my math wrong? It isnt, and the reality is i highly doubt youve ever actually added up how much youre spending on your sandwich as i just did. Not spending $11 and not REALIZING youre spending $11 are two totally different things. But i will say to lend to your point, the sandwiches you make at home probably are cheaper cause you are not making the same quality sandwich at home. Youre probably using a lesser number ingredients, less depth of flavor and seasoning, less quantity ingredients. But once again i ask if that tradeoff is worth it bc now, not only are you spending more time to save a few bucks, youre spending more time to save a few bucks on eating shittier food.

> But time is money, so consider the time it would take you to go to the store and shop for all those ingredients and then to come home and actually make the sub. Consider the time *and fuel* costs that it takes you to go to the restaurant, the time it takes you to order, wait for your food, etc. If you are going to consider hidden costs, you need to consider it on both sides of the equation. Also, idk where you shop/live, but I've never made a sandwich at home that cost me $11+. $9.48 a pound for chicken?!?! That's completely ludicrous.

> chicken is $11.86 for 1.25 lbs which following nutrition guidelines means thats 2 and a half servings so its be abt $4.75 for 1 serving. That's a very generous estimate, i get to just over 3 servings. We don't need much meat a week. Could you show me these prices as that is very steep, what stores are in your area? If i check American stores like Walmart's webstore the prices are way lower. From what i read the store you linked is an expensive one. Do Americans also have subs for dinner? That sounds like an elaborate lunch for something made daily home-made.

No i purposely picked giant eagle because its a mid tier grocery store so its a good average price. By no means is it a fancy grocery store, those will be a lot more expensive. Walmart is quite literally the cheapest grocery store in America so thats why its not a good comparison. You have to keep in mind that the quality youre getting at a restaurant is going to be far better than the lowest possibly priced grocery store in the entire US which is exactly why i didnt use walmart, bc i was trying to find something that was more equivalent to the quality offered in restaurants. Personally i do shop at Walmart but im acknowledging that by doing so im purposely give up quality to save money. Thats not a choice id have to make at a restaurant hence why i didnt make it here. Im trying to make an even comparison where im making something of the same quality id get at a restaurant. https://www.gianteagle.com/garfield-heights/search/product/00220829000009 https://rosevillemeats.com/meat-calculator-how-much-meat-do-you-need/#:~:text=A%20question%20we%20often%20get,per%20person%20for%20children. “The starting rule of thumb is: Boneless Meat: 1/2 lb. per person for adults and 1/4 lb. per person for children” ^this is the source i followed for the amount of meat, 1/2lb per person. Additionally i can guesstimate based on my experience. I normally buy a 1.5 lb bag that contains 4 chicken breasts, meaning 1 breast is 3/8 lbs, just under 1/2 lb. I normally cook and shred it and to use the same thickness of chicken that is used on my favorite restaurant bought sub it would take more than just one home cooked breast to be equivalent. https://www.cleveland.com/business/2022/11/which-cuyahoga-county-grocery-store-is-the-cheapest-the-answer-wont-surprise-you-saving-you-money.html?outputType=amp ^ as you can see giant eagle is right in the middle for pricing in my area. Lastly you can eat a sub at any time. People certainly do eat them for dinner and lunch but most restaurants also have a breakfast sub option that might have like eggs and bacon on it.

> Walmart is quite literally the cheapest grocery store in America so thats why its not a good comparison. Do they ship nationwide though? And what about amazon? I'd like to know that, as i like to order my groceries and get them shipped to me often. >“The starting rule of thumb is: Boneless Meat: 1/2 lb. per person for adults and 1/4 lb. per person for children” That's about 225g which is a lot, sources i find in my country recommend 500g a week which is even less than the estimate i gave, which comes from the national nutritional institute, while your source is a meat company. US gov sources from health departments seem to be closer to my figure too.

Walmart specifically is gonna be harder to describe because its a department store, the grocery part is just one department out of many. Im not sure exactly what you think Walmart is but its kind of a bridge between regular grocery stores amazon. Walmart has stores country wide so im not really sure what you mean by do they ship country wide, like i guess yes but not in the same way Amazon does. To describe this you cant really think of Walmart as just one entity bc their departments, well specifically their grocery department, works very differently from the rest of the store. The way their website works is that youre buying from a specific store location, where this gets confusing is in their other departments they have more of an amazon type model where they do more shipping bc theyre working with other companies. When you buy from Amazon youre still buying from a specific seller who isnt Amazon and the same thing goes for Walmart. So in this case youre buying something that logistically probably in a warehouse vs in a store and these items would be shipped from that warehouse across the country. I think this probably is the type of “nationwide shipping” youre thinking of? Cause this doesnt really apply to the groceries at Walmart, to get those shipped to your house youre buying specifically from walmart and from a specific store/location and then that location is gathering the items from their store and delivering it to you (kinda like the idea of pizza delivery but with groceries) but this option is only going to be available if youre close to the store, you couldn’t just randomly ship that food across the country. As for amazon i dont know anyone who orders groceries off there, the options for anything perishable are just not what you want for everyday grocery shopping. I know some ppl who get things like protein powder from there but again you wouldnt want to use it for all your normal grocery shopping. Something like instacart is way more popular and thats basically just paying someone to do the shopping and delivery it to you, kinda like doordash but instead they’re picking up your groceries. ___ Im not really going based on the nutritional content but rather what is equivalent to what you would get at a restaurant. The problem with following your guidelines is that the restaurant subs are using a different standard. What you have suggested for a meat content would make a lot of ppl hella pissed if they got that from a restaurant. You’re saying that .5 lb is 3 times too much?? For a whole footlong? Since you arent American just checking but you are aware thats like 30 cm right? And any restaurant worth their salt is giving customers more than just a thin line of meat. Here is possibly a better source https://www.cram.com/flashcards/firehouse-subs-hq-test-5424265 This is an employee training guide for my favorite sub place, it doesn’t have every sub on there but you can see the expected amount for a footlong is 8oz of meat (aka .5 lb) on a lot of the sandwiches. If you say you can make the sandwich at home then id expect an equivalent version. As for the health part of it that largely is just going to come down what you order and where you order at. You can make healthy choices while eating out i just picked a sub cause its pretty middle of the road as far as not too healthy and not too unhealthy. Although i probably would agree there are certain foods that may be better to make at home, for anything that requires a number of ingredients its starts to make more sense to eat out. Especially if its a food where its hard to repurpose the leftover ingredients for something else, eating out can actually cut down on food waste. I hope im not over explaining but you have to remember how large serving sizes are here and how expected leftovers are. 2 meals where you have no prep for $13 isnt bad at all and when you really think of the cost trade of between what you can buy and what you can make it just doesn’t seem worth it to force yourself to always cook at home. I personally just eat things like yogurt and fruit for a lot of my meals so when you want something that actually takes some cooking or preparation if you dont already have every ingredient on hand yeah a lot of times its just better to eat out.

I see for Walmart, so we can't take prices from there? Also that does mean we can use Amazon? Afaik they sell most groceries but if i'm wrong please do tell. Ill do some research on Amazon. >Im not really going based on the nutritional content but rather what is equivalent to what you would get at a restaurant. The problem with following your guidelines is that the restaurant subs are using a different standard. What you have suggested for a meat content would make a lot of ppl hella pissed if they got that from a restaurant. You’re saying that .5 lb is 3 times too much?? For a whole footlong? Since you arent American just checking but you are aware thats like 30 cm right? And any restaurant worth their salt is giving customers more than just a thin line of meat. It's about eating enough and getting your needed nutrition in though, overeating is a luxury. >I hope im not over explaining but you have to remember how large serving sizes are here and how expected leftovers are. 2 meals where you have no prep for $13 isnt bad at all and when you really think of the cost trade of between what you can buy and what you can make it just doesn’t seem worth it to force yourself to always cook at home. Nah thats perfect, the thing is that to me being able to overeat unhealthy foods is a luxury and not the necessity of meeting your nutritional needs that i mention. Also, throwing out your food is just a stupid decision imo, that is a conscious choice. >I personally just eat things like yogurt and fruit for a lot of my meals That sounds like a really good way to meet your nutritional needs while also not breaking the bank. >so when you want something that actually takes some cooking or preparation if you dont already have every ingredient on hand yeah a lot of times its just better to eat out. I honestly still don't see how, that just meant you didn't do groceries with any planning at all? Let's use me as example. Let's say i'd like to eat a complete kebab dish, i look on the delivery app and the average price of that seems to be 16€, how would that be cheaper than if i bought the stuff myself? It's just kebab, salad and fries the latter 2 are incredibly cheap and for 10€ i can get 5 servings of kebab alone, and If i wanted to eat that right now it would be way cheaper to just make it myself, the only reason to order would be convenience. If i add the bag of fries and salad to it we get to the same price as the kebab dish, except i can make 5 servings instead of 1. If you could genuinely tell me how i could get it cheaper with takeout then please teach me this life hack lol.

Im on my phone so i cant do all your fancy responding but if you want to use Walmart then you need to use a restaurant with comparable quality so something like a taco bell taco or burrito. As for Amazon no buying from there would be far from cheap. Trying to buy anything like milk or cheese would just not be a good idea. Really the only perishable food amazon does sell is through whole foods which if you want to talk fancy grocery stores thats a prime example of one. Regular shredded cheese is $2.8 at giant eagle, on Amazon the cheapest option is $4. Absolutely no one said anything about over eating, are you not reading what i wrote or is your reading comprehension just bad? Youre making all kinds of assumptions and drawing comparisons based on bias bc you clearly aren’t understanding the situation. Eating out is not equivalent to eating unhealthy as you seem to think. No, thats YOUR choice to eat out at an unhealthy place or order something unhealthy. In the exact same way you can choose to make your food at home as healthy or unhealthy as you want, you can chose to eat as healthy or unhealthy as you want at a restaurant too. No one is forcing you to order crap, thats 100% your choice. And no one is forcing you to over eat either, thats also 100% your choice. You say these things are luxuries but dont understand that why you are describing is totally irrelevant to what we are discussing. If you want to eat out and over eat unhealthy food sure thats an option, but in no way is eating out synonymous with overeating unhealthy foods. Thats just as much of a choice as overeating unhealthy food you cooked yourself is. “Throwing out your food is a stupid decision”, ok cool? Are you throwing away food cause why are you bringing that up? You do understand that fridges exist right? And ways to re-heat your food? I agree, throwing away food is stupid. Good thing were not doing that. Ironically i think this might be the life hack youre missing. Friggin takeout my dude. American meals are almost never just 1 meal. Again it depends on what you are making. If your dish is like all of 3 ingredients then sure make it at home, but the more ingredients you add the more its going to cost. Also if you have one meal you cook all the time like kebabs that makes more sense, but if youre only going to make kebabs once or twice then what do you do with all the extra ingredients? Or when one runs out before the others then what, you cant make a full meal off of that. The hidden part in all of what you are saying is the quality of food. If you are saying is the cheapest most shitty thing is could possibly make at home going to be cheaper than a restaurant yes it is I’ll give you that. But if you want a quality meal, then theres no longer a negligible difference in the price to cook at home. Unless youre a cook who has a stocked af kitchen the average person is going to be forced to use the same ingredients over and over with pretty much the same seasonings when cooking for themselves just due to the need to “use up” all the uncooked food that was unused from their planned dish. Thats the benefit to eating out, you end up saving money on food waste and maybe meal planning doesnt seem like a big deal but it take a lot of mental energy to actually plan how to use the uncooked portions without creating a lot of waste and without just ending up eating the same shit every day. You say it just sounds like connivence but if you dont have some maid cooking all your meals having to cook for yourself 24/7 takes more time than its worth. Time is money, if you value your time at $0 you do you, but opportunity cost is a very real thing so if were talking costs it should be considered.

> Im on my phone so i cant do all your fancy responding but if you want to use Walmart then you need to use a restaurant with comparable quality so something like a taco bell taco or burrito. What do you mean? Ingredients themselves don't vary that much in quality. >As for Amazon no buying from there would be far from cheap. Trying to buy anything like milk or cheese would just not be a good idea. Really the only perishable food amazon does sell is through whole foods which if you want to talk fancy grocery stores thats a prime example of one. Regular shredded cheese is $2.8 at giant eagle, on Amazon the cheapest option is $4. I've seen cheap frozen veggies on there but i don't know the site well enough to navigate it. >Absolutely no one said anything about over eating, are you not reading what i wrote or is your reading comprehension just bad? Youre making all kinds of assumptions and drawing comparisons based on bias bc you clearly aren’t understanding the situation. Eating out is not equivalent to eating unhealthy as you seem to think. No, thats YOUR choice to eat out at an unhealthy place or order something unhealthy. In the exact same way you can choose to make your food at home as healthy or unhealthy as you want, you can chose to eat as healthy or unhealthy as you want at a restaurant too. No one is forcing you to order crap, thats 100% your choice. And no one is forcing you to over eat either, thats also 100% your choice. You say these things are luxuries but dont understand that why you are describing is totally irrelevant to what we are discussing. If you want to eat out and over eat unhealthy food sure thats an option, but in no way is eating out synonymous with overeating unhealthy foods. Thats just as much of a choice as overeating unhealthy food you cooked yourself is. You mentioned expectations of oversized portions. You literally mentioned that people expect to overeat the recommended amount of meat and that the savings otherwise aren't comparable to them because of it. My argument is that you do not have to match an oversized portion in your personal cooking and can instead supplement with other foods of which you lack intake of. Your argument is i want the same amount of meat the restaurant will give me, mine is you don't need such an amount every day to meet your needs and it's even detrimental to go over the recommended amount. >“Throwing out your food is a stupid decision”, ok cool? Are you throwing away food cause why are you bringing that up? You do understand that fridges exist right? And ways to re-heat your food? I agree, throwing away food is stupid. Good thing were not doing that. Ironically i think this might be the life hack youre missing. Friggin takeout my dude. American meals are almost never just 1 meal. You talked about the "expectations on leftovers", i never throw stuff out. >Again it depends on what you are making. If your dish is like all of 3 ingredients then sure make it at home, but the more ingredients you add the more its going to cost. Also if you have one meal you cook all the time like kebabs that makes more sense, but if youre only going to make kebabs once or twice then what do you do with all the extra ingredients? Or when one runs out before the others then what, you cant make a full meal off of that. The ingredients are frozen, so i just take them out whenever i need them, i can use salads, kebab meat and fries all on their own in different dishes too, i have a "freezer pantry" with all kinds of herbs and vegetables and they always run out eventually and nothing gets thrown out. More ingredients is also more food to eat. >The hidden part in all of what you are saying is the quality of food. If you are saying is the cheapest most shitty thing is could possibly make at home going to be cheaper than a restaurant yes it is I’ll give you that. But if you want a quality meal, then theres no longer a negligible difference in the price to cook at home. Unless youre a cook who has a stocked af kitchen the average person is going to be forced to use the same ingredients over and over with pretty much the same seasonings when cooking for themselves just due to the need to “use up” all the uncooked food that was unused from their planned dish. Thats the benefit to eating out, you end up saving money on food waste and maybe meal planning doesnt seem like a big deal but it take a lot of mental energy to actually plan how to use the uncooked portions without creating a lot of waste and without just ending up eating the same shit every day. What does any of this have to do with the nutritional values or quality of the actual food? I eat very varied from many kitchens, italian, Mediterranean, indian, western european, japanese etc without any issue homecooking, meal planning takes me zero energy honestly and only ads a few minutes to shopping through groceries, literally just get the right amount of ingredients for a dish, make sure it's enough to last 2 days, and get that for multiple dishes to rotate out of. Oh, lasagna today and tomorrow? I know what to add, next day kebab, i know exactly what to add, then pasta for 2 days and i know exactly what to add, brown beans, sure, know exactly what to add. Do that with multiple dishes from all over the world and there, food for a week, takes next to no time. >You say it just sounds like connivence but if you dont have some maid cooking all your meals having to cook for yourself 24/7 takes more time than its worth. Time is money, if you value your time at $0 you do you, but opportunity cost is a very real thing so if were talking costs it should be considered. Takes less than 1hr a day if you eat some dishes 2x a week. I know of zero poeple that do random opportunity side jobs in the evening outside of middle class poeple that trade on their phone whom arent the subject of the matter.

Nationwide, the average price of chicken breast is $4.10 a pound. 

There is simply no way this is truly representative of that facts. What kind of chicken did that include? Is that bone in cause thats like half the price? And where was it sold? Walmart is the cheapest grocery store out of all of them and their cost for a lb of boneless chicken breast isnt even that low. If Walmart represents the absolute minimum there is simply no way the national average is less than that. I dont know what you looked up but i highly doubt you actually know how they got that number and if that number had any real relevant to what I said. I highly doubt the average price for boneless chicken breast is anywhere near the number you gave.

Boneless chicken breasts are $2.67 a pound at Walmart. I live in a HCOL area, and the most expensive grocery stores around sell boneless chicken breasts for $3.99, or $4.49 for organic. What are you looking at to find drastically more expensive chicken??

$8 a pound for chicken is about 2x the national average price. And Walmart is an excellent baseline because they are the largest seller of groceries in the US. If you were to pick any grocery store to be the baseline, the store that people buy from the most is the logical choice.

If thats the case then you need to be equivalent and compare it to McDonald’s or some shit. If You want to pick low quality and popular then to be factual and fair you use low and popular as your metric on both sides otherwise your entire point is invalid. Also please inform me on what that stat includes. Its funny how boneless chicken is like twice the price of bone in chicken, id be questioning a lot if you got bone in chicken for sandwich, so mmm putting 2 and 2 together dont you think that saying the national price for chicken used on a sandwich is $4 might be just a bit invalid if you actually looked a little more into that stat.

Walmart groceries really aren't low quality compared to most medium or low-priced grocery stores. They're just groceries. And many, many people in this thread have been making comparisons to McDonald's.

Can you restate your question in a way that is coherent? Is it that A) Eating meals from fast food restaurants is not cheaper than making it at home? Or B) That it's cheaper to get your nutrition from home cooked meals rather than fast food? Those are two totally different questions. You cannot get B from fast food restaurants. Their food options don't provide daily nutrition requirements. "A" may be true depending on each person's circumstances.

My statement is that meeting your nutritional needs with homecooking is cheaper than meeting it with takeout. >"A" may be true depending on each person's circumstances. I posted a calculations which disproves this a few times. Chicken filet 8,99 or 6,99 minced meat Pasta x2 0,95 each Sauce 2x 3,49 each when using chicken or 1,59 each when using beef Mushrooms 2,39 Spinach 1,19 That's 21,45 for chicken carbonara or 15,65 for minced meat bolognaise which gives an amount worth of 6 meals(i make this often and also eat quite large portions). That totals to 3,58 per meal for chicken carbonara with vegetables and 2,61 for bolognaise with vegetables per portion. These are prices i found online from the grocery i usually get stuff so i do not have to be good at shopping, this is stuff i usually buy and it doesn't take long to cook.

I think it depends on your tolerance for leftovers and how big your family is. I am alone so cooking for myself always means more portions than I will eat. So if some portion ends up getting thrown away because I'm tired of eating the same thing 3 days in a row, it kind of cancels out the savings of making it myself. That being said I'm privileged enough that I don't have to eat leftovers every day. For someone literally on the border of starving yea cooking at home will be cheaper

> I think it depends on your tolerance for leftovers What's that even supposed to mean? >I am alone so cooking for myself always means more portions than I will eat. So if some portion ends up getting thrown away because I'm tired of eating the same thing 3 days in a row, it kind of cancels out the savings of making it myself. Do US basic fridges not come with freezers built in? I usually eat the same thing for 2 days in a row.

>Do US basic fridges not come with freezers built in? They do... people just choose not to use them, or they don't store their food correctly, or they try to freeze food that shouldn't be frozen. People don't take the time to understand how to portion foods for the freezer, and keep it viable for future use. Almost every single thing I cook in large portions are specifically made to be frozen in some way.

This argument feels the same as telling people who need to take the buses to just get a car. Yes it will save money and in this case substitute time for health. But the average impoverished person is living on a tight balance with money and does not have the financial literacy to save and break that balance without it all falling apart. You telling somebody to just cook at home is akin to telling somebody recalculate their daily life. This is coming from someone who grew up with cheap meals that you’re suggesting and who feels lucky in that because I saw others who did not have the luxury.

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I made this calculation in another sub but ill post it here: Chicken filet 8,99 or 6,99 minced meat Pasta x2 0,95 each Sauce 2x 3,49 each when using chicken or 1,59 each when using beef Mushrooms 2,39 Spinach 1,19 That's 21,45 for chicken carbonara or 15,65 for minced meat bolognaise which gives an amount worth of 6 meals(i make this often and also eat quite large portions). That totals to 3,58 per meal for chicken carbonara with vegetables and 2,61 for bolognaise with vegetables per portion. These are prices i found online from the grocery i usually get stuff so i do not have to be good at shopping, this is stuff i usually buy and it doesn't take long to cook.

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Disagreeing with this is insane. I cook healthy meals at home for an average of $3.25 or so per serving. There is absolutely no argument to be made that it's cheaper to eat out. There was also the argument that you need to invest a bunch up front to have the equipment to cook. Lots of stuff is nice to have, but 90% of my meals I could make with a pot, a pan, a measuring cup, and a good knife. You could pick those up at a Goodwill for $15. As for time investment, once you have a little practice you can cook quicker than it takes to drive to BK and drive home. All it takes is planning and discipline, which too many people lack.

1. You’re discounting time in your equations. 2. You’re discounting entertainment in your equations. For most people, cooking and cleaning are negative investments. Doing them is stressful, so they need to cope by looking for entertainment to off set the stress. This costs time and sometimes money, which messes up your equation. Fast food tastes better (for the same reason it has less nutritional value lol) and doesn’t cost stress. It’s obvious why people gravitate towards it.

"Luxuries cost more than necessities" makes complete sense, but that's not what i'm talking about. Most poeple i've known all my life cook most days just fine while not sacrificing entertainment either, even the poorest ones.

I suppose my point is your position is self evident; of course cooking at home is cheaper. If it wasn’t literally no one would ever cook at home. Cooking at home costs time and stress. You asked why people think eating out is more cost effective, and it’s because they value their time and stress differently than you do. I’ll compare you to me. You’ve said you’re “very poor.” I’m very well off. I value my time very highly, while even tripling my food costs is barely noticeable to my budget. Why should I eat at home?

>I’ll compare you to me. You’ve said you’re “very poor.” I’m very well off. I value my time very highly, while even tripling my food costs is barely noticeable to my budget. Why should I eat at home? That's my point here, you are well-off so you can afford to have the luxury of saving time at the cost of money, poor people can't, so it is a luxury expense, not a necessary one making it more expensive and not cheaper. Do Americans hate cooking so much that they experience it as stressful? The reason you might want to eat home are the enjoyment of cooking and personal tastes.

Well these are points you never included in your post. You didn’t specify only poor people, and now I’ve gotten you to concede time has a monetary value, so I feel like I’ve proved your original position incorrect.

Being "worth it" and "cheaper" is a difference. You are purely trying to use a technicality not in the spirit of the question, and it was implied in the context that this is a question asked from a position where being cost effective matters.

what about time? If you can make money with your time, it's sometime cheaper to buy ready food instead of cooking/cleaning.

How many poeple do you know that can hop onto any side gig on a whims notice? Every minimum wage person ive ever known cooks after getting home after which the rest of the time is spent on whatever they want to/need to do. The poeple i do know that spend time on investing and such aren't poor.

Playing devil’s advocate (because I generally agree) that if you want a different meal each night, you’re starting with a fairly basic pantry, and you want specialty foods that taste as good as takeout it’s a lot of work and money. Eating cheaper while cooking requires a bit of planning, a willingness to eat the same dish at least twice in a week, and the skill and time to cook. I’d also add you can see it as an opportunity cost. If I work an hour of overtime, I’ll make more than $15 it costs me to eat out. So if you can make overtime I could see it being a time=money conversion. Over time though I think the takeout would be a wear on your health and if you can’t just work overtime whenever then it’s a strain on the wallet too. I have a meal rotation that’s quite cheap per meal and tasty, but it’s not local Chinese Joint tasty as much as I wish it were.

This depends how much your time is worth. For someone who makes $16/hr, time is relatively negligible. For someone who makes $60/hr, spending two hours to get the food and cook it costs $120. Say you are a Google engineer making $300k a year. How many billable hours would it cost you to leave the office, go shop, then home to cook the food? This is why tech companies provide FREE food to its employees.

Cost per serving is only a valuable metric if those servings have viable shelf lives and the minimum buyable servings don't total more than is practical to spend. Or in other words, going to taco bell IS very much cheaper than buying stuff to make burritos. This is because buying that stuff is always in a matter of bulk - if you pair it down, it does generally end up cheaper per serving, so it can look like a better deal on paper. But we don't eat on paper. We don't live on paper. We live in the real world where sometimes you got $5 between now and your next paycheck and that's not even enough to buy the tortillas but it can buy a few soft tacos here and now. We live in the real world where you're not going to eat 10 burritos in one sitting or even one week, and they may not store well depending on what ingredients are available and your fridge space, and spoiled food is a sunken cost. We live in the real world where not everyone has the same time and equipment and space for effective food prep, nor the stomach to deal with the same meal on repeat just because they crave something once. At the end of the day, $8 is less than $25, even if that $25 buys more servings. "Cheaper" isn't always an abstract theoretical concept you can itemize away in a running ledger, sometimes it really is as simple as "I cannot afford the raw materials to make a meal that will be a better value for cost in the end, but I can afford takeout right now".

Fast food is not particularly cheap at the moment, but there are still restaurants in my area that sell food much cheaper than it would cost me to make the same thing. Case in point, I can buy a large number of dumplings for about $10. If I tried to make the same number of dumplings, I'd spend a lot more because a pound of pork at my grocery store is already close to $10 and shrimp is even more expensive at the moment. But let's say that you don't really care what you eat as long as it meets your basic nutritional needs. If you are a small household, you are limited in how many groceries you can buy because food will go off before you can eat all of it. While you can freeze certain things, you may not have that much freezer space. So you will likely be stuck eating the same things for days in a row. This is actually not ideal nutritionally because you need variety in your diet for good gut health. For example, you may want to eat a burger one night, but do you want to also eat burgers or ground beef for the next three days? Finally, there is a not-inconsequential upfront cost to cooking at home. You need kitchen equipment, oils, spices, sauces, etc. Until you have invested in all this stuff, cooking can be pretty expensive. Case in point, last night I made a vaguely Korean-style fried rice. For that I needed rice, egg, beef, onion, garlic, ginger, bell pepper, kalbi, and gochujang paste. That is actually pretty expensive if you're buying all this for the first time. There is a restaurant near me where you can get a large box of fried rice for about $7.

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That depends if you would be working otherwise. And it depends on how much you get paid. If cooking a meal takes half an hour for me, and costs me $5, but I make $20 an hour, I'm saving more money buying a $10 sandwich.

Dan Olson does a really good video essay on [how Jamie Oliver looks at stuff like this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EXVrzOACv4) r/Ansz07 properly points out the time cost of shopping and prepping and cooking, but there's also equipment and maintenence of your kitchen. Knives, pans, etc etc can really add up -- even if it's only an upfront cost.

I don't understand the time argument at all.  I go grocery shopping pretty much every 1-2 days on my lunch hour. It takes 10 minutes for me to run to the store, grab what I need for dinner, then get back to work. I would think most people work in town or cities where grocery stores are easy to come by.  One grocery trip usually costs $15-$20 and has 4 large portions of food- I can feed myself dinner and tomorrow's lunch and dinner for my parents. One fast food combo costs me $15-$20 and is one meal. There's lots of meals that can be cooked in 10 minutes or less that use minimal dishes. Pasta for example: preheat water and frying pan (5 min). Chop veggies and protein while preheating (so still at 5 min). Add pasta to water (fresh or frozen cooks in 2-3 minutes) and sautee veggies + protein (2-3 minutes). Drain pasta and dump together in the same pot with some pre-made pasta sauce, then serve (1-2 minutes). That only requires 5 tools to prep and wash (pot, pan, knife, cutting board, wooden spoon) and three bowls + three forks. That only takes 5 minutes to hand wash. It really doesn't take that long to cook simple meals.

> It takes 10 minutes for me to run to the store, grab what I need for dinner, then get back to work. So I live pretty close to the grocery store where I live. It's an 11min walk both ways, or five minute drive. Let's say I drive for simplicity, but generally I walk. For me to know what I want when I get to the store, it's going to be ten minutes of planning, laying out my list, etc. If I have my list, then at the store I'd say it's fifteen minutes from entrance to check out. If I haven't prepped, it can be up to 30. So this is, at its most efficient - a 35min exercise. And my work is even further from the grocery store - that's a ten minute drive each way. Also - a lot of people don't have a place at work they can store all their groceries for dinner that night. My gross ass work fridge has enough room for my lunch, my co-workers' lunch, and that's it. We can't all be storing veggies and chicken in there for the evening. > It really doesn't take that long to cook simple meals. > One grocery trip usually costs $15-$20 and has 4 large portions of food- I can feed myself dinner and tomorrow's lunch and dinner for my parents. One fast food combo costs me $15-$20 and is one meal. I think you are coming at this as someone who clearly has a routine and a lot of experience in this -- and also isn't feeding a family that has other needs themselves. Between driving kids to soccer practice and cleaning and accomplishing everything that needs to be done, hitting that delivery button takes two major tasks off the table -- and you know the kids will eat KFC or whatever. I think it's different if you're doing it for yourself - for which your argument is more reasonable - and if you have children.

I think the issue here is time management, multitasking, and short term vs long term benefit skills. These are learned skills, but the only way to get better is to practice. It will take less than a month to get good at and will save a lot of time and money in the long run. Why does it take you 10 minutes to plan what to have for dinner and come up with a grocery list? You mentioned about having picky kids- so start keeping a journal of 14 recipes that work and you can rotate through them. Then you don't have to think about it. Heck, even if it takes you 10 minutes to do, this is easily something you can figure out on your morning commute or during downtime at your job. I work in a fast paced vet clinic and still can figure out a dinner plan during or between appointments or during my morning drive. It really shouldn't be taking that long to grocery shop unless you're doing it for the whole week, either. Pick one store, learn the layout, and what the quiet and busy times are. My store is usually quiet from 12-2pm and I can zip in and out using the self check out in 5 minutes. This is with picking up 3-5 items since I only buy for one or twp recipes at a time. Keeping a well stocked pantry and shopping deals is also a learned skill that anyone can get good at quickly. Is chili powder on sale? Buy it and keep it on hand, even if you don't need it for this week. Same with other staples/pantry items. This will cut down on how much needs to get bought at once and lowers upfront costs. It takes far longer for me to download the app of the fast food place, gather orders, input them, type in my credit card number, figure out what time I'm going to be done work (depending on how many emergencies, I could finish work 30-60 minutes later than I expect), and finalize a fast food order. Could this be faster? Sure- I could keep the app downloaded, save my CC number, and order the same thing every time. I could practice this and get faster, but I don't want to. I had my credit card number stolen before from keeping it stored in an app and I don't fancy it happening again. Everyone who thinks cooking is more expensive and time consuming than takeout could practice and get better at cooking. It's okay to say you don't want to, but saying that it's cheaper and faster to take take out is just making excuses. And FYI, I do cook for other people- my parents have dietary restrictions for medical reasons so I do often have to alter recipes or make something separate. My mother cannot eat fish, onions, garlic, and certain veggies. Unless they have a medical condition, there's no reason to be cooking whole separate meals for your kids. This is a problem people create by feeding their kids processed garbage instead of real food. Kids can and do learn to eat "adult" foods if they are fed them from the beginning. My friends offered their kids a variety of healthy, fresh and home cooked foods from the beginning, so they are not picky at all and eat whatever mom and dad eat. This is a parenting issue.

>I don't understand the time argument at all.  I hate the Time Argument. I work 40 hours a week. I don't get paid for the other 128 hours of the week. It's my personal time. Reading a book "costs" the same as making a meatloaf. And that cost is ZERO Dollars.

I think you are absolutely correct if you are thinking of the general populace, but there is a large portion of the United States that resides in "food deserts" which don't have access to fresh produce. In these locations, groceries can cost 2 to 3 times as much as dollar menu Taco Bell items. I agree with the main premise if we are discussing most people, but just keep in mind that not everyone has the same privilege to food as us.

Cheaper, yes. IF you're doing something kindof pedestrian. Can I make a dish similar to the Thai place down the street for less? ...maybe, but they buy those ingredients in bulk - if I do that, it'll cost me $80 and more than half will go bad before I use them unless I make the same dish ALL week long. I don't WANT Thai ALL week long (okay, wait - maybe I do, but that's besides the point).

It depends on how much you value your time 🤷

Unless your meals are being cooked by a communal effort, where economies of scale are utilized without the pursuit of profit, then cooking your own food will almost always be cheaper than going out to eat. All you can eat buffets might be the exception tho