I do all of the shopping and cooking for my family. I understand your general point, but I’m having a very difficult time understanding how you could get to a $200 bill with “two small bags”. I don’t think I could get there without loading up on expensive steaks and seafood.

I normally purchase a lot of vegetables and fruits and some meat. There’s no way I could get to $200 total with a number of bags I could carry in my hands, even in a HCOL area.

This is your issue. You’re an omnivore, and it sounds like you’re overemphasizing meat. Buying primarily plant-based items will greatly cut down your grocery bill, and hopefully introduce you to some delicious new recipes on the process.

I’d recommend checking out Greek, Italian, Indian, Japanese, and Ethiopian recipes for some extraordinarily flavorful and filling vegetable-heavy meals that are relatively cheap. With Japanese, focus on buying tofu rather than meat since its cost should be generally cheaper.

Tofu is on the low side of carbs and fiber for plant food, but I believe that the fat and protein profiles and nutrient availability are better from meat.

While true, there are many people who cannot do this because they work 16+ hours per day. And if they have children it is even more difficult.

To me, this points to the fact people in the US are not being paid a "living" wage. I even heard Walmart will help new employees apply for food stamps, that is sick because we are subsidizing the owners of Walmart and their stockholders.

Whenever I read these comments I feel like people either grew up in an alternate reality than I did, or they get their perception of poor people from the hyperbole on Reddit.

People who grew up in poverty and work two full time jobs aren’t the ones feeding their families with fast food for 2-3 meals per day. They’re the ones who are experts at cheap cooking, crockpot meals, and cheap meals at home.

Reading comments like this that hit a checklist of cliche bullet points (being “forced” to feed your family with fast food, parent who works 16+ hour days, using Walmart as the canonical American job, mentioning the anecdote about Walmart instructing people about how to apply for assistance) I suspect the experience is more of a conglomeration of talking points from politicians and Reddit rather than real experience.

The solution would be something like wage crush from the top. The mass of this change wouldn't come from billionaires or the 1%, they are a drop in the bucket compared to the 50-90%.

There are tons of "average" people who got absolutely stacked in the last 5 years. Especially here on HN. They won't raise their hand, it's pretty taboo in this environment, but consumer spending and unrelenting housing prices make it very clear which social classes are fucked and which ones are richer than ever. And it's not billionaires and everyone else.

Is this true? I have repeatedly come across people saying tipping in North America is insane since in most of the rest of the world it isn’t required because restaurants pay living wages to start, and the pricing is on par or less than in North America.

But anything along these lines is still relatively expensive.

Who is waiting while food cooks? When I cook I am attending to the food the entire time. Perhaps if you are a heavy oven user you get time to do other things, but otherwise, no.

And laundry lol. To barely keep up with the laundry, I have to do a load a day and the on the weekend I do several loads. It wasn't like this before I had a kid, but everything grt dirt faster and more often with a child around.

Being a parent who works is _exhausting_. You're always weighing money vs time investment. In many cases it's just easier to buy food you don't have to make or think about then have to do the whole rigamole of planning and buying groceries and then cooking the food yourself. If you're like me and you order a head via an app, you don't even have to wait the few minutes fast food takes. It's right there for you and you carry on your way. I can now spend my mental energy on something else.

Long long ago I had a neighbour who cooked ONE day per month and froze everything. He printed out a menu card for himself with 3 and 4 course meals. He used a table cloth with the fine silver utensils and fancy plates. He would sit himself down, look at the menu, pick something then move the food from the freezer to the microwave. It looked like a high end restaurant. His argument was that he hated cooking and didn't want to spend any time on it.

The house had a shared kitchen. The one day he cooked was hilarious. He cooked for 40-50 people (inc guests), made various kinds of soup, all kinds of meat, pastas, curries, deserts etc

He one time pondered buying a rice cooker to make better rice but decided it was to much like cooking.

The food went in plastic bags in containers, when frozen he would pull it out of the container to save space and avoid having to wash the containers.

I also know people who eat together. They have no further relationship. They take turns cooking. Small groups like 3 or 4 but also larger ones like 6 or 8 people. You do need space for that ofc.

If you really attend to the food for an hour it is probably a more nutritious and more sophisticated meal than the fast food? How much money are you saving in that hour?

Parenting is just hard work. I'm afraid it includes teaching how to cook.

Nothing wrong with eating later, in fact we prefer it because fast food is kinda crap and I don’t really like them eating processed foods. But it definitely saves time, not to mention on the cleanup side too.

And no, can’t really multitask during the weekdays because the timing is so tight. I can do dishes as I go but that’s the limit because the kids start screaming at each other that their feet are touching or whatever the drama of the day is…

Also my kids are picky eaters (autism) so it's not like we only have to make one delicious and nutritious meal for everybody. It's more like two or three different meals, or my wife and I have to settle for buttered noodles or what have you. Eating out lets us get a different meal for each person and there's still a chance of the adults being able to eat something delicious and/or nutritious. Or we can get take-out for the kids and make our own dinner or vice-versa.

2. let's say these 16+ hours workers were the only ones justified eating ready meals, would the industry survive?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...

Also, Republicans have held the House for 22 out of the last 30 years. Hence why Republicans were able to hold up more Supreme Court judges from Obama, and obtain a Republican majority on the SC.

Also, on the state level, Democrat led states have higher minimum wages, stronger labor protections, parental leave and paid leave in general, expanded Medicaid, and other policies that raise the floor in general.

Not what the House does.

What you describe is one of my concerns with UBI, but the devil is very much in the detail.

Granted, you can often play political games with labor, such as only raising the wages of workers in the USA, while leaving the labor making the plastic trinkets in who knows what third-world country to continue to struggle. In that sense, it doesn't necessarily happen linearly. Not really achieving the goal of a "living" wage then, though.

I'm a middle class white collar worker who makes every single meal my child eats and it sure as fuck doesn't take me one or two hours to feed my kid. I meal prep and I lose my entire day to just making food for the week.

This is baffling for two reasons:

1. Canada currently has massive inflation problems. Housing prices are out of control. Groceries are expensive. Maybe you went to a small town somewhere and shopped as cheaply as possible, but your experience isn’t common.

1. I go to Costco in the US every week and fill the massive cart (bigger than your grocery store cart) for around $200. If you can’t fill a normal grocery store cart for $200 then you’re either in an extremely HCOL area or you’re shopping for expensive things.

When you break down CPI, the inflation is almost entirely on the back of rising mortgage interest costs. Canada has been within the inflation target for at least a year now if you exclude mortgage interest.

That said, even including mortgage interest, the current rate is 2.9%. That's not exactly a massive problem. That's pretty close to what the BoC is looking for

> Housing prices are out of control.

Price of rent, maybe. For buyers, the housing market crashed in 2022. Affording a home for the Average Joe hasn't gotten any easier due to higher interest rates (see the part about CPI), of course, but that's not the price of housing.

> Maybe you went to a small town somewhere

Groceries in small town Canada tend to be more expensive.

This is only true recently as the interest rate hikes took a while to filter down to actual mortgages and then make it into the CPI numbers. Prior to that, groceries were a huge component of inflation.

Recently, as in within the last year, as I said.

> Prior to that, groceries were a huge component of inflation.

Years ago, sure. That whole war in Ukraine thing, coupled with the EU shutting down fertilizer plants in 2021, along with some devastating weather in the US breadbasket and an ounce of COVID-19 sent the food industry into a complete tizzy, indeed. As a Canadian farmer, the price I was being paid for food had doubled by 2022 as compared to 2019. But it was short-lived. Things are pretty much back to normal now and have been for a while. The farm gate price has returned to 2019 levels (in nominal dollars). There isn't any remaining pressure on groceries. "Currently" is what was specified in the original comment.

Wait, what? As a Canadian I can assure you this is not the case. It is so much different than what you are saying that our generally passive population has undertaken a month long boycott of our largest grocer to protest the outrageous pricing. When I see American prices on social media, I am shocked at how much cheaper prices are, even with currency conversion.

I’d love to know what you thought was cheaper.

Man, not to derail from the topic, but it never ceases to amaze me how varied our lifestyles can be. My wife and I have always loved going out to eat at restaurants, it would be a strange week where we didn't go out at least once.

As for my family, we've basically stopped going. It's just gotten ridiculous. The various hidden service charges, and tipping which has gotten way out of control (like really? you expect 25% for bringing me a microwaved Sysco meal?). $100 used to get you an amazing meal/experience for two, like something worthy of an Anniversary. Today, after all the taxes, tips, and fees, you can easily drop that for a mediocre Olive Garden "experience".

The mainstream just hasn't caught up to the varied choices the world offers to individuals now, and that makes the bell curve seem a lot more flat than it actually is.

I’m sure a lot of people have behaviors that are totally alien to a large group.

We could expand that to other activities that I imagine a large segment of the population has never gone to.

That was the case for a while, but hasn't been for quite a while in the US. Food at home has been one of the factors bringing down the inflation rate for more than a year. The most recent data release shows only a 1.2% increase in the last year. It's true that food at home has risen by 25% since the start of the pandemic, but that was driven by what happened in 2021 and 2022.

Inflation on food away from home has come down quite a bit as well, but its inflation rate is still above 4%. At "limited service" food establishments (fast food), the inflation rate is well above 5%.

Fast food chains have the benefit of scale but they still have margins to make. That food is rarely healthy so you're also increasing your long term healthcare costs by going that route.

I believe that a major issue here is that many of the younger people in the US haven't gained the skills to cook for themselves. With those skills comes efficiency and the ability to reduce waste. For those working low wage jobs (of which I was for about a decade), time spent on cooking has a higher value than say a knowledge worker who can pick up some contract work on upwork.

I feel we've grown far too used to cheap food in the US. Particularly meat which relies on consolidation into large operations that require antibiotic use, cheap labor in poor conditions, and questionable practices in processing and livestock welfare. So yeah, perhaps that happy meal should cost more?

I agree that cooking can be done cheaply, but I never recommend gardening as a way to get cheaper food. I say this as someone who gardens a lot and enjoys it.

Gardening is fun if you enjoy it, but it’s not a realistic option for lowering food prices. It’s definitely not a solution to high food prices. It’s a hobby.

But you’re right: Even shopping at Whole Foods in a HCOL area it’s trivially easy to prepare reasonably priced meals. I don’t understand what some of these commenters are buying with claims of $200 for “two small bags” of groceries. I don’t think I could accomplish that without loading up on expensive beef, cheeses, and seafood.

Agreed, it's not a solution. But if one is buying rosemary, thyme, basil at the store those kinds of things are priced high and are very cost effective / low maintenance to grow. If one is really just getting by these aren't things to reach for but for a middle class family trying to save some money it's kind of a no brainer if they purchase them regularly.

It's the same for food prep. For some items the time to prepare doesn't offset the cost of buying the prepared item so you really only gain better nutrition or flavor. Other things, say granola, stock, dressings/sauces almost always give you a tastier, healthier product for cheaper.

As you mentioned in your other comment these kinds of things are skills that lower income families tend to have / gain. It just seems that it's becoming increasingly less common.

I wonder if it's a recent phenomenon starting with the millennials growing up in higher standard of living households where those skills weren't really needed as much and now they've gone and moved out into an economy that's far less forgiving.

The ones walking out of the grocery store with $200 in groceries that fit in two bags. And families with low wages. The former is more likely to benefit from growing herbs and leafy vegetables as they are more likely to use them. Dried herbs can be pretty expensive as well.

But yeah, I only had one sentence about gardening in my original comment. Didn't mean to emphasize that as a groundbreaking differentiator in saving money on food.

That sounds odd, do you buy particularly expensive ingredients? I'm not in the US, but I prep my own meals with average quality ingredients. Not accounting for the extra time that it takes (which amortizes well with meal prep), I probably spend between 1/4th and 1/3rd as much as I would spend if I were to eat a similar meal at a restaurant.

Yes. Far more expensive than the cheap ingredients like the flours and oils of fast food. I focus on making my food as nutritionally dense as possible, which ain't cheap. But I ate a lot more than my share of fast-food first and did a lot of damage with it. I'm positive I'd be dead if I didn't change. That would certainly be a lot cheaper.

I think if you run the real numbers, eating at home is still a huge savings. And this allowing that you are probably using higher quality ingredients.

Big retail chains were making record profits, raised prices, offloaded most of risk elsewhere, and didnt correct once covid became another meh.

You can add travel cost there, folks went mental with traveling after restrictions were dropped, and so far dont seem to slow down.

And the "excess savings" in the US economy due to the pandemic are gone, inflation has eaten them all up.

Combine that with high interest rates and I don't see how we avoid a fairly severe recession.