Is Fast Food Cheaper Than Cooking at Home?

After seeing this infographic, I hope most of you realize that fast food is more expensive then cooking at home. Not to mention it's a million times healthier as well. Many people still think that cooking at home is more expensive and that probably is part of the reason why so many Americans are obese. Many people argue that fast food is cheaper when measure by calorie, and that this make fast food essential for the poor because they need as many calories as they can get for the smallest amount of money. However, over half the people in this country (and a higher percentage of poor people) consume too many calories as opposed to to few. Calories are important, but when it comes to nutrition, you need way more then calories to stay healthy. Measuring food's value by calorie content is just as logical as measuring a drink's value by it's alcohol content. Why not drink 190 proof alcohol, it's the cheapest way to get drunk? Another point is that the calories provide by fast food are not nearly the same kind of calories as a home cooked meal can provide.

The point we're trying to make here is that most people can afford real, home cooked food. Even the nearly 50 million Americans enrolled in the Food Stamp program receive about $5 per person per day for food. While this is still not ideal, it can easily provide a family of 4 with a healthy, home cooked meal once a day.

In order to change this, political and cultural action would need to be taken. From a cultural view point, we need to celebrate real food, raise our children to know the value of a real meal; giving them the pleasure of enjoying a nourishing meal with one another. From the political view point, the marketing of fast food would have to be limited and the producers would have to be forced to pay the true costs of productions. One must understand that advertising for fast food is not the exercise of free speech, but it is the behavior of manipulating the masses through addictive substances. The political challenge is obviously the more difficult of the two. But the easiest thing to do is to cook at every chance possible and demonstrate to everyone around you that the real way, is the better way.