I haven't eaten "fast" "food" in basically forever. It's been decades. Unless 2010-ish Subway counts, and that was only consumed b/c I was driving cross-country and one whole sub was a day's eats that I could stash as-needed.

These prices blow my mind. I can't believe that people are paying so much for so little, and for crappy fried heart-attack and diabetes fare too. I can eat for a day for the price of one of these "burgers" (or "meals" - just because there's more than one item in the bag doesn't make it a "meal" no matter how much the marketers use the term). For the price of a "quarter pounder" here, I can get at least three big cans of "chunky"-style soup, each of which is a meal in itself - all you need is a bowl and a microwave and a spoon and a few minutes to heat. For the price of that burger I can (and do) get 3-4 boxes of cereal at Walmart, each of which will, along with a little milk in a bowl, provide a week's-worth of breakfasts.

Frozen veggies, basics from the Winco bulk aisles, a bit of dairy maybe, a little spice, and maybe a worn, curled recipe book you got from the used bookstore (or not, if you already have the intuition for cooking) and you can eat incredibly cheaply (and well, if you're careful) in the US. No need to fill your body with expensive McShit just because the ads tell you to and justify your doing it. Everything changes if you're already homeless of course, that's gonna cost you, but just be aware that McEating is going to get you to that state of being all the sooner.

I think that people eating all this McShit and justifying it as some kind of necessity ("too busy shop and cook!") are just addicted to sugar/fat/salt/industrial-chemicals and who demand "treats" of such things each and every goddamn day (vs maybe once every few weeks 40 yrs ago) because that's what they "deserve". I understand, a treat is all you can aspire to, you're never going to buy a house or have a decent job, but blowing what little $ you have on ruining your health and mobility and sanity doesn't seem to me like it's going to help get more out of life. No more than a daily 12-pack of McBeer would, and for that you wouldn't have to wait in line.

The two inflation calculators that I found said that a dollar in 2014 should be worth $1.33 in 2025. That’s significantly lower than the lowest price increase in this infographic.

What's actually infuriating are those bar charts.

Don't eat fast food, make your own.

Fast food is supposed to be trash and cheap. It now is just trash.

Last time, I was at McDonald's, they got my order wrong, it took forever and on my way back home, I got a speeding ticket.

2024 their sales went down for the first time, so they cut the prices a bit on some meals, but you get a small drink and a small frie like we're fucking stupid. If you up it back to medium fries and drink it's the same shitty overpriced deal.

It got me over the idea of stopping for fast food. Fuckem

Plenty small restaurants have not seen price increases this stark over this period of time. Eat there instead.

Fast food didn't just stop being cheap, it also stopped being fast. Might not be the case for everywhere, but when they got the self-checkout screens they started making every order in order, and nothing more. Now if I order a single item, I still have to wait if there are many orders before mine. I miss the time when I could look behind the cashier and see what they had pre-made to get something immediately.

Don't eat fast food. It is really bad for you and will eventually kill you.

To compare, inflation from 2014 to 2025 has been about 33%

What I as a German take from this is fucking hell was McD in the US cheap before. O.o

I mean it inflated a lot here too, but wow.

I wonder how this affects homelessness. What surprised me in my country was how much the homeless dependent on those cheap eats for food. How a 2 dollar burger here meant a meal for them, and how a price increase meant extra begging to get fed.

It's largely because of new tiered pricing. They want to extract the maximum price while not losing any customers.

To do this, they first double or triple all their prices. Then, for those who are willing to stand on one leg, pat their head, and rub their stomach* while ordering the right things, they'll charge you half price.

(*By this I mean use their app. The main purpose of the app and the deals are to charge everyone what they're willing to pay.)

It would never even occur to me to eat at fast food (unless you count like the pizza by the slice place on the corner).

I just feel so alienated from everyone else sometimes. Just... The food isn't good, isn't good for you, isn't cheap, isn't fast. The org isn't environmentally or politically friendly. Just stop eating there. Be mildly inconvenienced if you have to.

But I guess that will slam right into the constant problem of "someone feels bad and now they're not going to listen"

Back ~2010/11 I used to go to McD's once a week with friends after practice. I'd order a McChicken, a mcdouble, and a medium fry and pay with just random loose change from my car. Thanks for confirming this for me with this infographic, these are the prices I remember paying.

Based on the comments here, McDonalds probably made the graphic.

Everyone is more focused on how it should have been done rather then fuming at McDonalds for price gouging.

Mildly infuriating is +122% being the largest bar graph and +199% is the smallest.

IMO, it might be a good idea to compare those prices against relative purchasing power of a dollar. I don't know how those prices stack up to the overall rate of inflation or CPI, or even the cost of the specific ingredients. I would have less of an issue with price increases if a) McDonald's profit margin--as a percentage of cost--remained steady, and b) the cost held steady against the relative value of the dollar overall. If it's just arbitrarily raising prices because they can, then that's bullshit.