Do you get your McDs delivered to you instantly at no cost? If not, then takes less time to cook than drive to McDonalds, wait in line to make an order and wait for your meal to be cooked.

> driving that leftover oil to the recycling center.

Right, because people who don't have money/time to cook real food are definitely doing that. Besides, deep frying is not the only way to cook potatoes.

How long do you think it takes to grill a hamburger patty?

To your second point: This is where exact apples to apples comparison breaks down. The sane home cook skips deep frying at home and associated hassles unless it's a special occasion. Microwave the potatoes or boil. Fast, minimal cleanup, and now it isn't junk food either.

Well, I like deep fried potatoes, that's why I included it. I actually do deep fry my potatoes, straining the oil, re-using it, and ultimately recycling it. None of the alternatives are acceptable to me in terms of flavor or texture. Could you explain in more detail why you think that cooking potatoes not in oil makes it not junk food? (in the sense of, I've looked at a wide range of comparisons and it does not seem like frying in oil magically turns healthy potatoes into cancer daemons).

It takes me about 7 minutes to fry a hamburger patty on my Griddle (to rare!), ignoring the heat-up time and clean-up time. The actual cooking is quite fast. On the other hand, I can end up waiting an hour in line at In-and-Out. So while I agree that it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, the economics articles I've seen that compare bsed on fully loaded costs (to the best that they can) seem to conclude that fast food can be about 10-20% cheaper than grocery.

> it does not seem like frying in oil magically turns healthy potatoes into cancer daemons

well, akshually... https://www.fda.gov/food/process-contaminants-food/acrylamid...

however the main concern with fried potatoes is cardiovascular, not cancerogenic.

frying, roasting, and baking all produce acrylamides. There's a paper from sweden that shows you can even find acrylamides in bread that was cooked at standard temp.

The story of frying and cardio is still ongoing; I've seen several full reversals in the public health field over the past 30 years. It's really painful being a quantitative physical biologist watching the press around papers that when carefully inspected provide little to no evidence supporting their position.

people trade time for money. Cooking yourself is often a family affair and so a cheap use of the little free time and money a poor person has, it pays back well because a boor person isn't then looking for something else toespendmoney on for entertainment.