Is Fast food in the US cheaper than preparing your own food?

[Velvetee]

I've just been watching a programme about a man in Houston, Texas who weighed 75 stones. This size was attributed to his vast consumption of fast food.

I was horrified to see a member of this man's family, feeding a baby, who looked to be a year old, hamburgers and fries.

Do fast food suppliers intentionally make their products cheap, so the poor, uneducated and lazy can become addicted? Is it also much cheaper to feed a family Macdonalds or KFC than to go to the supermarket and buy and prepare their own meals.

[Ice.Maiden]

Don't know about prices, but their portions seem to be much larger than here. As with anywhere where you find a MacDonalds etc., it's often just laziness that makes people fork out for fast food. I know someone who takes her children for such meals most days after school, which is not only expensive, but horrifying.

[Waspette]

I live in the NE of england and i regularly see babbies with pasties and mcdonalds hanging out of their gobs. It turns my stomach.

I remember when i went to the US their portion sizes did seem massive. But i was only tiny.

[Velvetee]

They just said this guy was consuming 30,000 calories per day. That is just incomprehensible and I thought I was a binge eating piglet sometimes consuming 3000 cals in a day.

[Waspette]

I think i consume about 30,000 calories a month!!!!!!

Jesus.

[Velvetee]

They had to remove his wall to take him out of his apartment and to hospital. His calorific intake was reduced to 1200, so he lost 12 stones in 40 days.

He said he could buy a "whole heap" of fast food for a dollar. The narrator said Americans spend 110 billion dollars on fast food per year, more than is spent on higher education. Guess it's good for their economy and the tax revenue it brings the Government must be astronomical, so it's no wonder nothing is done to tackle their obesity problem.

That is one messed up nation!

[Ice.Maiden]

I think the bigger people get, the more food they need to fill their stretched stomachs, or to feel "satisfied". 30,000 cals a day is terrible though, and I'd hazard a guess that this person suffers from a medical condition - probably brought on by excessive eating in the first place.
I know what you mean about seeing babies cramming fast food into their mouths Waspy. Their parents need a short sharp shock on childcare! Now and again it probably doesn't do much harm, but it sets the precedence for a life of ill health, and weight gain.
As for larger portions of food in the US, that's what i found when I was in Florida. I ordered a steak, which was huge, and came with a massive portion of chips and a colossal salad!

[jno]

and free refills of your soft drinks, Ice

[Ice.Maiden]

I only drank bottled water jno, but you're right.

[Velvetee]

I was mistaken, the baby being fed a Mcdonalds hamburger was 5 months old, not a year old. The mother should be prosecuted for child abuse.

[Ice.Maiden]

Five months old and being fed a hamburger or whatever?? Poor little mite! It's a wonder he or she didn't choke.

[Eve]

I stayed with families in California for a few weeks and was quite horrified by the first family, they ate nothing fresh, everything came from a packet or fast food joint and all of the first family were very overweight bar the youngest son.

Breakfast would be pancakes with syrup and sausages.

Lunch would be fast food, usually taco bell or pizza, even the school had fast food outlets around campus.

Dinner would be chinese or a Mexican restaurant or burgers or something. Portions everywhere were huge with refills and I found it really hard as I could never eat much of it.

Then there were all the muffins and doughnuts and such.

They never walked anywhere.

The second family were all very fit, all softball mad and ate a lot more fresh food.

[pastafreak]

Almost all food in the US is massively cheaper than it is here...whether it is fast food or a quality restaurant meal, it is about 30% less than here. The sheer variety in even smallish supermarkets is mind-boggling. And yes-there is an awful lot of readymeals and the like.