What even is the point of fast food now?
- ✅ Fast (edit: sometimes)
- ❌ Good
- ❌ Cheap
It has jumped the shark and serves no purpose now, other than screwing working class people in food deserts out of their hard-earned money.
not even fast anymore to my experience
Available at off-ramps while travelling. That’s the only time I get it.
I usually only drive through Pennsylvania, and as a result I always end up at Sbarro, an “Italian” restaurant that can only survive in the cloister of a turnpike travel plaza. Somehow my brain forgets how fucking awful it was last time. Plus I always order something you can’t eat while driving, like pasta, so I have to sit there and finish it. The only good thing is having a bathroom right there.
Gaht Damm… I was on the Ohio Turnpike and got Sbarro… Two slices of pie was like $15. Theyre huge slices, but not $15 huge.
Theyre huge slices
That’s sort of like the old joke: “This food is terrible!” “Yes, and such unfortunately large portions!”
They were a mall staple for many decades, but I haven’t been to a mall in a while, so not sure how many are left.
I’ve stopped doing fast food. Last time I was out running errands over lunch I went to a pub instead. I chatted with the staff got a cidre, burger, and fries for like $30. It was great, worth the time and money.
Yeah, we have a few local places that will do to-go orders, so we give them our money instead. The last few times where we grabbed fast food because we were traveling or just super busy, it was just a shit experience. I’m okay parting with my money if it’s going back into a local business.
My wife and I have also started shopping in smaller grocery runs. So we will buy food for like 3 meals ahead of time, and then do it again after a few days. We find that we have much less food waste and we make less impulsive decisions. I just wish veggies didn’t suck so much now.
If a fast-food burger costs the same as a burger in a restaurant, then something’s wrong…
I have a non-chain fast food place near me, doesn’t even have indoor seating, just a small waiting space (holds maybe 10 people if you pack them in such that the personal space bubble is tiny) and some picnic tables, but no drive-through.
They’ve managed to keep prices pretty low; Big Mac or whopper equivalent is $4, for example and I think fries are some 2.50 for the large. While that does add up since everything is ordered individually, the quality is superior and it’s local-family-owned, so well worth it. And it’s very very popular even without the drive-through convenience. The local McDonald’s hardly gets any traffic by comparison.
Just goes to show it can totally be done, if not for outright greed.
This rules. I love finding places like that.
When I lived in Seattle, I loved eating a bag of Dick’s.
There are still places with surprisingly good value for money, but they’re rare. Greggs has been this for me, recently, though maybe a useless point of reference for anyone outside the uk
Your instance name is so peak 😂
Maybe stop doing that then. I can get a weeks worth of food for that kind of money and it tastes good.
I’m disabled and homeless and eat veggies, fruit, pasta, bread, cheese and protein on a daily basis at about $7 a day. people eat fast food because they are lazy, not poor.
Yes, with 1 other caveat.
People will also eat at restaurants because they’re ashamed and embarrassed of their own cooking ability and don’t want to look bad in front of their peers.
Food deserts are a thing.
I wanna say first that is a tragedy you are homeless and I wish the best for you in finding permanent lodging but your statement raises some questions. How are you preparing these foods? If you are as homeless as you purport, are you using a campfire, or a communal kitchen, or are your meals prepared for you? How are you procuring your groceries?
No OP, but just so you are aware, homeless can mean no permanent domicile in lots of ways. So, someone living out of their car, camping, staying ad hoc in shelters or hostels or cheap accommodation is all different versions of homeless.
Fair.
I am fortunate we have enough mental energy to go to stores to buy ingredients to cook our own meals most days.
Its similar, to what is referred to as “adhd-tax” I am still in this picture more then i would like.
Doesn’t really matter what your mental energy is if you don’t have the money to have any other choice. Few years ago I was comfortably living on under £100 a month after paying rent for a bedroom, then putting the last £75 or so of my income into savings.
I mean it matters in the sense that you just won’t eat if you can’t muster up the mental energy to make a meal.
E: this was me
What do you mean bread isn’t a meal?
Also half of Americans live in “food deserts” with limited or no options for fresh, healthy food/groceries. Often their only sources of sustenance are the dollar store and fast food.
Maybe, but I hear the same things here and I am not aware of food deserts being a term in the UK.
I mean its not like there was a dark where i lived on a single bag of chips a day or the occasional cup noodles or anything.
Very affordable lifestyle, but you do feel even worse long term.
For a while I got discounted veg at the end of the day and threw it all into a slow cooker that I kept running all week. Take a meal out and top up with more of what ever cheap ingredients I could get.
People I shared the house with had started to steal my food which is why I switched to storing everything in my room and the slow cooker in my room. No fridge/freezer but you can even store meat for several days in a slow cooker. 22:55 the local coop sometimes had sausages for pennies.
Thats kinda cool,
Like a modern day perpetual stew.
That is what I used as inspiration initially and it worked pretty well. A slow cooker is probably more reliable at keeping the temperature than a log fire too.
I can get a weeks worth of food for that kind of money
Well, maybe one week, and you still have to get creatively frugal there.
But I see your point.
Yeah, this is beans and rice with little to no protein kind of money for a week, at best.
Didn’t used to be the case, but orange dipshit keeps causing inflation.Beans, famous for not having any protein… Why do people look down on beans so much? They are great. Just bought a pack of broad bean seeds today as I plan to grow them and I ran out of the last pack. You don’t need to eat the weight of the average American in meat ever year.
That’s a good point, yeah, I was thinking like most Americans that you’d want some meat thrown in there for flavor.
Mostly a vegetarian as well so I agree with you is what I’m saying.
For flavour? Just add some soy sauce
Beans actually have plenty of protein in them. They’re also high in fibre.
me cooking at home 😎
Don’t be afraid! You get better the more you do it and you learn more about your tastes.
I cook dinner 95% of the time and honestly, it sucks. I don’t blame people who have the money eating out constantly, but i can’t afford that crap and i would be 300 lbs.
$25 can get me either a terrible pasta dish at olive garden, or 2 meals at a local diner, so i usually go to local small places. Screw $15 burrito’s and $18 hamburgers, i’ll make them at home.
The best burgers I have had, have been from small back alley places. Had one a couple of months ago, lovely quarter pounder with chips (fries) and a drink for around £6 here in London.
Had less of an upset stomach too, although I do still check the hygiene ratings for the places which helps in this regard.
TIL the UK has publicly available hygiene ratings. I like that.
Ah thanks for pointing that out, I forget not all US States have it.
Nearly every restaurant I’ve been to, and take away place, has proudly shown their hygiene ratings as a sticker on the window. These can be verified via a website too. It’s very useful as I get an upset stomach rather easily.
I had a Whopper and fries at Booger King last year for the first time in a couple of decades. With a drink it was like $20 which is pretty absurd. It actually tasted pretty good and the fries were fresh out of the fryer (which is basically what makes fries good), but I just felt so physically bad after eating. I don’t know what it was, probably the massive amount of salt in it.
The impossible whopper helps with this. I’m not vegan nor do I eat fast food often, but I’m sold on the impossible whopper over the standard when I gotta stuff my maw at immediate, inconvenient, times.
Same. The vegan patty has better consistency than their actual beef.
I sometimes feel like shit if I get a drink with one of the red dyes, red 40 I think? It’s in orange crush, some pink lemonades, and some fruit punches iirc, but it makes it feel like there’s pressure on my gut. Kinda like I have to take a dump but I don’t.
Probably not what you experienced but figured I’d mention it since it took me a while to make the connection, especially since it doesn’t always happen if I have an orange pop (maybe different dye?).
Hmm, that’s interesting. I’m a big orange soda fiend and I drink Sunkist, Crush and Fanta. it does appear that only Crush has Red 40 in it. Sometimes I feel like I have to fart real bad and sometimes I don’t - maybe that’s the dye. I should really be drinking water but I find it so boring.
Ah nice, I see fanta a lot but often skip it because I don’t want to risk feeling kinda crappy. But I’m glad I like water, it’s so refreshing!
Edit: maybe try a filtering system, because after thinking about it, crappy water isn’t very fun to drink, but my reverse osmosis filtered water is great.
Recently got back into cooking. Learn 2-3 easy recipes that can act as a base for the rest of your meal. Get a rice cooker and an instant pot. White rice is quick so its ADHD friendly, plus ricecooker will handle everything in case of distractions. Same for the instant pot.
Watch some cooking competitions for inspiration and confidence building to give more challenging dishes a try.
Chef & My Fridge is a good one, though it’s a subtitled Korean show, but the great thing about it is that the challenges are 15 minutes long and take only ingredients from a Korean celeb’s fridge. I had already started trying some tougher dishes from watching Culinary Class Wars, but CMF (which has a bunch of the same chefs btw) really drove home how it doesn’t have to be a long affair with very specific ingredients to make a great dish.
I still for some reason take forever to get things prepped but once they are ready, I can have restaurant quality soup on the table from scratch in like 30 minutes. The secret is to sear the meats and saute the veggies in the pot before adding water/broth and they’ll quickly release their flavour and make a tasty broth, which then becomes rich when you add a bit of salt, sugar, lemon/lime juice, and soy sauce, like just a pinch or splash of each. Celery, onions, carrots, and poatoes, sliced, diced, and/or julienned. Even better if you start by rendering some bacon and then sauteing the veggies in the bacon grease, which acts as the base of the soup once it’s been tempered with all those flavours.
Anyways I’m rambling. Lol it’s a great thing to hyperfocus on, though not sure I’d say I’ve saved money because of it, what with the knives and other kitchen stuff I’ve gotten.
Also don’t overlook sous vide. I’ve made some heavenly meals with cheap cuts of beef (e.g. shank) recently. Chuck it in a vacuum bag and wait - that’s it! Pull it out and give it a nice sear.
I usually do 2 bags and chuck one in the freezer for reheating at a later date.
If you don’t eat meat, no worries! Loads of veggies are great too, especially roots.
Despite being a childish choice, any new restaurant I go to I order the chicken tenders. It’s pretty hard to mess those up (and they’re usually on the cheaper end).
I like to “get a review” from my wife and friends on their meals, and then I’ll decide if I want to branch out to the full menu if there’s a return visit.
I’m sort of the opposite. I usually aim for their advertised “flagship” meal. If they mess that up, I know it’s not worth returning.
I think your method is probably better, definitely more variety!
Nice username btw :)
I do the same with chile relleno whenever I go to a New Mexican restaurant. It’s a meal that is hard to badly fuck it up and even when it’s only pretty ok, it’s still tasty enough to finish.
I also just love chile relleno so I usually get it anyway
Went to a new pizza place with a friend and she insisted we get the margherita because it is less expensive hard to mess up, and you can tell if the place uses good ingredients.
I’m going to try this method!
I like that this post is coming right as I’m planning to tighten my budget a fast more/lose weight.
25 usd is a little over 96 loaves of bread worth of money
That’s not even 3 loaves of bread …
you are buying overpriced bread
I get 4€ for a bread, but 10€ (8USD) is a bit steep
that 4€ bread is worth over 15 loaves of bread
you are getting scammed
If it’s actually bread from a bakery and not wonderbread slop, then I’m not getting scammed.
the bread i was using for the math is not sliced bread and is low quality; the last sentence was just a joke
bread from a bakery from my country is still half the price of the 4€ bread
Every dinner in an airport.
Peasants of the French Revolution: “Pathetic”
If I spend that money and it’s not worth the cost, either I’ll try to get it comp’ed or something like that. And if it’s really that bad, I put it on a credit card and then call the company to reverse the charge. Worst comes to worst it goes on debit and I dispute it with the bank.
