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McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

latimes.com

221–230 of 611 posts

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#221
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you interpreting "poor" as "unemployed"? The OP was talking about people who are employed full time but at a low level job (at a shop, or as a janitor or something like that).

That definition of poor would make the majority of people poor.

Yes, exactly. There's a lot of poor people.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#222
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, a pressure-cooked pot of beans can take over 40 minutes to knock together. So it is not that simple.

Only if you lack the planning skills to soak them in the morning or the night before. Besides, hydrated canned beans are perfectly affordable.

Planning ahead is the #1 problem for people with executive dysfunction, many of whom work in IT.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I feel bad for young people growing up in this broken world. They will never even know what was taken from them. I realize that I’m probably going to get dogpiled for saying it, but I think that the response to COVID (ie lockdowns) did far more damage than the disease itself.

Genuine question: do you think that the lockdowns had such long-lasting effect on people as to explain the problems described above? Why would a few months of a “bad idea” induce decade-long changes?

It wouldn’t. The response to COVID merely accelerated the changes that were happening due to changes in the population age histogram.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that people don't know how to cook. Something like pressure cookers (or crock pots where appropriate) are amazing for this sort of scenario. There are endless recipes you can find online that are toss a few ingredients in, wait, eat. Easy clean up, and delicious. I increasingly think cooking should be a part of basic education for everybody. Stuff like rice, beans, and chicken breast are extremely chea…

i’m interested in using my pressure cooker more. Do you have a favorite recipe?

This [1] is amazing, and also prep freezes extremely well. There are so many great recipes online, just search - it's also referred to as an instant pot in many places.

[1] - https://kristineskitchenblog.com/honey-garlic-instant-pot-ch...

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that people don't know how to cook. Something like pressure cookers (or crock pots where appropriate) are amazing for this sort of scenario. There are endless recipes you can find online that are toss a few ingredients in, wait, eat. Easy clean up, and delicious. I increasingly think cooking should be a part of basic education for everybody. Stuff like rice, beans, and chicken breast are extremely chea…

Not knowing how to cook isn't the main problem. Really poor people don't have time to cook and don't have any disposable income to buy a luxury like a pressure cooker, so this is fantasy. Really poor people are on SNAP (which doesn't cover a lot of fast food) and food banks (which provide random/useless stuff like unhealthy ultra processed food, dented canned food like canned corn and tomatoes, and random produce tha…

I think this really mischaracterizes the modern poor, especially in developed countries. It's not uncommon to see poor families with things like recent model phones worth hundreds of dollars, designer clothing/shoes, and the like. In many ways these are the sort of traps that keep people in poverty. Or referencing this article itself, apparently they decided to go eat at McDonalds and managed to spend $20 on two coffees and one coke. I mean that'd break the budget of just about anybody outside of well into the upper edge of middle class.

And a pressure cooker is not a luxury, nor is it something that's outside anybody's price range. On Amazon it looks like they start around $20. And the whole point is that it takes basically 0 time, and saves a ton of money, and even time, relative to things like eating outside the house.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I feel bad for young people growing up in this broken world. They will never even know what was taken from them. I realize that I’m probably going to get dogpiled for saying it, but I think that the response to COVID (ie lockdowns) did far more damage than the disease itself.

Genuine question: do you think that the lockdowns had such long-lasting effect on people as to explain the problems described above? Why would a few months of a “bad idea” induce decade-long changes?

> Why would a few months of a “bad idea” induce decade-long changes?

I don't know about how COVID-19 was handled in the USA, but in Germany it rather was "many years of bad idea".

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#228

> Her brother, who works as a cashier, can’t afford meals out at all, she said. The cost of his diabetes medication has increased greatly, to about $200 a month, which she helps him cover. This is an often unacknowledged part of the cost of fast food. It turns susceptible people into diabetics. As a diabetic there is little I can eat there, since I manage it with food not drugs. When I do I get a burger and throw out…

It is unusual to see young people make the choices to not turn into patients. It costs very little to eat mostly lentils/legumes/nuts/yogurt/vegetables, and drink mostly water without carbs dissolved in it, but no business is going to survive selling those things.

Its worth noting that you don't need to avoid meat if the goal is to avoid being a pharmaceutical patient.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I feel bad for young people growing up in this broken world. They will never even know what was taken from them. I realize that I’m probably going to get dogpiled for saying it, but I think that the response to COVID (ie lockdowns) did far more damage than the disease itself.

Genuine question: do you think that the lockdowns had such long-lasting effect on people as to explain the problems described above? Why would a few months of a “bad idea” induce decade-long changes?

It wasn't a few months, it was a few years of back-and-forth political and corporate shenanigans with a new narrative every few months that the $CURRENT_THING crowd happily ran along with.

January 2020: there is nothing to afraid of, the new disease is mostly harmless and affects only the elderly and immunocompromised. Closing down borders is xenophobic. March 2020: do not go outside unless critically necessary and if you violate the rules, we will severely punish you May 2020: it's fine to have large public gatherings for BLM protests.

February 2020: masks do nothing and actually are harmful unless you are trained to use a mask, do not buy any masks. April 2020: wear a mask if you go outside, or you kill everybody else. Your own fault that you don't have a mask.

Summer of 2020: look, it's actually so great that we are all working remotely now, the nature is healing, all the emissions are so much reduced, this is the new future! Summer of 2023: everybody back to the office, real estate is suffering. People who joined during COVID time? Your contract is now altered, pray we do not alter it any further.

The promises around vaccines, printing money and "loans for struggling businesses" are even more stories of their own. Beats me why after a few years of these kind of shenanigans people would generally get tired of other people.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#230

> Her brother, who works as a cashier, can’t afford meals out at all, she said. The cost of his diabetes medication has increased greatly, to about $200 a month, which she helps him cover. This is an often unacknowledged part of the cost of fast food. It turns susceptible people into diabetics. As a diabetic there is little I can eat there, since I manage it with food not drugs. When I do I get a burger and throw out…

It is unusual to see young people make the choices to not turn into patients. It costs very little to eat mostly lentils/legumes/nuts/yogurt/vegetables, and drink mostly water without carbs dissolved in it, but no business is going to survive selling those things.

Insert classic Michael Pollan “if you see it being advertised, it’s likely something you shouldn’t be eating”.

No one’s advertising spinach or beans.

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