Fast Food Still Sprinting

I am noticing a change in so called "fast food". Given I rarely eat it, except for a few favorites, my opinion may not be worth the onions on your next burger. Still, I think that fast food is better tasting but more expensive than ever. In fact, when looking at a fast food burger or chicken menu the high end items that the places push toward customers, seem to be in the range of a high end restaurant's similar offering. And it's indisputable that cooking a meal at home is far more economical than eating out. Yet, many people today are either too lazy or too time limited to cook regularly at home.

Forget nutritional value here. I care nothing about "healthy food" when it tastes bland or dull...and most of it does. My motto is "Health food makes me sick". When we compare taste and economical value of home food (normal home food, not that awful quinoa with bran pudding" kind of mess the food police want to mandate for us) eating out, particularly fast food is expensive now. But the taste issue is better in most fast food places. Meat, for example, is now more often real beef, lamb pork or chicken with nothing added to it (those soy extenders).  The condiments are better, the options range from nutty healthy to greasy tasty and it's still served quickly to the customer.

But fast food places are creating more and more high priced options. That may sell with the fast food addicted customer, but the lower income customer (a big portion of the fast food industry business) is not going to respond to that. For the lower income person the alternative to junk food is not grass fed beef and greens from a trendy farmers’ market, or any of that overpriced health food mess sold at grocery stores, but anything other than junk food. That would include staples like rice, grains, pasta, beans, fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, bread, peanut butter, a thousand other things cooked at home. It's a great alternative, but that crowd is uneducated about it or unwilling to spend time cooking at home.

For many people besides the lower income group, cooking is defined as work, and fast food is both a pleasure and a crutch for them. Most people just shrug and say, "Let me enjoy what I want to eat, and stop telling me what to do. Eating out is something we all can do, rich or poor."