I suspect you underestimate how much you spend on food, most people do. Whenever this conversation comes up with my friends I always spend over double what they claim. I trust my estimation much more since I actually have records through splitwise on how much I have spent on groceries for each month. Maybe you should do an experiment to see how much you are really spending.

We actually did exactly that, and this 500 figure is a high-point.

I took the September groceries and checked, and we are at.. -462,11 €

So yeah, it's an actual figure.

I think people would notice if their checks bounced because they are spending more than their income each month.

$18K per year on groceries is insane. Yes, some people go with their families to restaurants and bars >1 week, but people who don't go, know they don't.

Yeah the western countries seemed to kind of highball the prices.

Average expense based on Statistics Canada puts the expenditure at 7,000 per annum, which works out to $130 a week, which is about on par with me and my wife's expenditure and we're almost dead on median income.

If you start throwing in fast food that price would really spike, but for the average family in an average week you're not going to see a doubling of food expenditure based on fast food. We might spend $25 in a week on fast food.