I calculated how much I spend on food, shopping at Lidl in the EU in a mid range expensive country, and I pay about 3 euros per day.

That's about the same as $3.40, but for 4 full meals (one of those is smaller than the others)

Admittedly I've optimized my menu.

but you don't say what you buy because eating only potatoes really is cheap

I do eat them, but they're not that cheap.

Oats, brown sugar, milk, (frozen) french fries, chicken burgers, "American" cheese, gnocchi, tomato basil pasta sauce, turkey nuggets, tinned beans, xv olive oil, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, chicken salt, seedless grapes

Dude you’re not even trying, why buy muffins and eggs when you could grow wheat, grind flour, raise chickens and get eggs for free, slaughter your own pigs and cure the bacon yourself… because labour costs nothing and convenience has no value amirite?

I find it bemusing that so people are simultaneously extremely agitated by high prices but also completely disinterested in doing anything except paying them. With this mindset it's not particularly hard to guess which direction they'll trend in over time, even if the world wasn't going nutters.

I mean these things are not difficult to make. They even freeze extremely well, and then you toss them in the microwave for a couple of minutes while you're getting ready and they're done. And the food you create is not only much cheaper, but also way healthier and also higher quality. When you go to a McDonalds you're getting the cheapest possible find they can source on a global level. The only reason they dropped pink slime [1] is because they were outed using it on television.

Incidentally that was a long time ago and while Wiki is quiet unclear it seems that the USDA chose to reclassify back as simply ground back in 2018. If it's been rebranded and remains legal, that's probably what people are now eating, again, at least in the US - as it's deemed unfit for human consumption in Canada and the EU.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime

I don't know where you get the assumption that people who eat McDonalds can't or don't also cook their own fresh food from scratch.

I did not say that. I was responding to a person who engaged in banal snark implying that making food for oneself is a herculean task, but it all depends on what you're making, and things can be extremely stream lined. In the case of what we're talking about (mcmuffin stuff), you can even cook and freeze them in arbitrarily large quantities and it's way cheaper, healthier, and even faster since it's in your freezer instead of having to go out.

I do think that the fast food (or even eating out in general) starts to lack any real selling point for households that are capable of cooking, and so this is probably going to weight the customers, especially regulars, of these sort of places away from households that do cook. I suppose you'd argue time is the selling point, but one can even remain competitive on there with things like pressure cooker meals. There are even one pot rice cooker meals which are also great.

I think it's from living in the world and actually meeting people.