2 lb of ground beef is way more beef than a happy meal. A kids meal patty is only 1/10 of a lb, you've given enough for 20 kids meals.

The rest of your numbers are similarly off: - you are giving each happy meal 1.25 lbs of potato!? - apple serving size is 1.2 ozs - An average apple is 8-10 ozs, 4 apples = 26 happy meals minimum.

You realize how expensive fast food is if you are at all used to cooking at home from scratch all the time.

> You realize how expensive fast food is if you are at all used to cooking at home from scratch all the time.

But cooking from scratch all the time has a time cost, too. Many families are time poor as well as money poor so there's a balancing act to be done.

It does, but that is a highly subjective value that depends on the person in question. You can't just plug in the average wage for someone doing cooking for a living and assume it's meaningful. And you especially can't do that while running a clickbait headline that just straight up says fast food is cheaper without also explicitly and prominently explaining this caveat.

When I say "cooking from scratch", I specifically mean the super fast and easy stuff. Starting from raw materials doesn't mean you do anything complicated to it.

For the burger example: buying pre-formed burger patties is still massively cheaper. Throwing a pre-formed burger patty from your fridge in a pan and putting it on a bun with a slice of cheese will take you ten minutes. Microwave small potatoes while you fry. You are done. There is no prep, you have made 1 easily washed pan and bowl for potatoes and your plate.

Is it the exact same thing taste-wise as your fast food meal? No, the potatoes aren't fried, sorry. Does it hit all the macro nutrients for far cheaper, and probably less time than even going to the fast food place? Yes.

Bag o'tots and an air fryer solves the "no fries" problem.

Tots > Fries

He's the young man who doesn't cook for a family I was talking about I'm guessing.

My kid is 30. But yeah I’m cooking for two, not four or five.

I would download the safeway app. Hamburger buns are $1 usually. Ground beef is $0.99/lb. 10 lbs of russett potatoes makes way more than 8 happy meals. frozen orange juice is like $1 each. This is insanity, and exactly expresses my point above. And if you go to a food bank, it's all free. Most are throwing away entire grocery stores worth of food.