Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where is the next cheap lentils/legumes/nuts/yogurt/vegetables fast food restaurant? I think it's a weird concept of a society where all the parts of it with money are directing people to do one thing - but at the same time, the people are expected to do the exact opposite and it's their own fault if they follow the coercion...
There are such restaurants around here in Europe but they are super expensive, so you are better off doing it on your own at home. Cooking a stew of lentils or any other legumes is very easy and does not consume that much time either, and you can cook for 3 days easily. Why are people not doing this?
McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
521–530 of 611 posts
Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
#522> 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…
Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
That same pattern of the poor eating instant noodles is true in Asia as well. The origin of a number of those products is US food aid. Governments in the 60s and 70s set up facilities to convert the wheat they were getting into a product people would eat.
Usually in college age kids, that situation quickly changes in married couples and families.
If it was a product only university students ate, it'd only be sold near universities.
Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
Citation needed.
Use critical thinking. Google it yourself. Come to your own conclusions. Don't just believe whatever you see on CNN and MSNBC.
A surgical mask is most often used not to protect the surgeon but rather the patient from transmission from the surgeon to the patient.
I would suggest by refuting Unmasking the surgeons: the evidence base behind the use of facemasks in surgery - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4480558/ which describes several studies about transmission from the surgeon to the patient.
Face masks were suggested not only for protection of the individual wearing them, but also as a layer of defense for transmission from someone who may be asymptomatic at the time. As such, face masks were in part to prevent transmission from someone who is in public and might be contagious and not know it in addition to than preventing someone wearing it from contracting an airborne disease (though this may require a higher grade of filtration).
https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/prevention/masks.htm...
> Wearing a mask can help lower the risk of respiratory virus transmission. When worn by a person with an infection, masks reduce the spread of the virus to others. Masks can also protect wearers from breathing in infectious particles from people around them.
> ...
> Generally, masks can help act as a filter to reduce the number of germs you breathe in or out. Their effectiveness can vary against different viruses, for example, based on the size of the virus. When worn by a person who has a virus, masks can reduce the chances they spread it to others. Masks can also protect wearers from inhaling germs; this type of protection typically comes from better fitting masks (for example, N95 or KN95 respirators).
Note that the first point is that the mask is to prevent the spread from the individual wearing the mask.
And specifically in the context of covid-19 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014564118
> ...
> Reducing disease spread requires two things: limiting contacts of infected individuals via physical distancing and other measures and reducing the transmission probability per contact. The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high. Given the current shortages of medical masks, we recommend the adoption of public cloth mask wearing, as an effective form of source control, in conjunction with existing hygiene, distancing, and contact tracing strategies. Because many respiratory particles become smaller due to evaporation, we recommend increasing focus on a previously overlooked aspect of mask usage: mask wearing by infectious people (“source control”) with benefits at the population level, rather than only mask wearing by susceptible people, such as health care workers, with focus on individual outcomes.
I would suggest a careful reading of section 6 on source control https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014564118#sec-6
> Johnson et al. (70) found that no influenza could be detected by RT-PCR on sample plates at 20 cm distance from coughing patients wearing masks, while it was detectable without mask for seven of the nine patients. Milton et al. (71) found surgical masks produced a 3.4-fold (95% CI: 1.8 to 6.3) reduction in viral copies in exhaled breath by 37 influenza patients. Vanden Driessche et al. (72) used an improved sampling method based on a controlled human aerosol model. By sampling a homogeneous mix of all of the air around the patient, the authors could also detect any aerosol that might leak around the edges of the mask. Among their six cystic fibrosis patients producing infected aerosol particles while coughing, the airborne Pseudomonas aeruginosa load was reduced by 88% when wearing a surgical mask compared with no mask.
Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
The secret is to eat out less often and spend more when you do. Service is fantastic still at higher end restaurants.
Probably varies where you are, but in the UK (especially outside London) there are lots of places you can have reasonably good food an service at a decent price. A lot of pubs with good food now, for example.
Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
#526Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
It still baffles me that people compare cooking to playing an instrument. It really is not that difficult to cook, depending on what it is. Do people know how to make schnitzel (breadcrumbed meat)? Make fries? Make rice? Make boiled potatoes? Or are those things difficult as well? Making a stew out of legumes is not that difficult either. Boil your legumes, then mix eggs, flour, and paprika together, put it in oil, h…
Agreed. The analogies to playing a musical instrument or speaking a foreign language are pretty silly. Cooking (provided you have access to some simple cookware) is literally printing out the recipe and FOLLOWING THE DAMN INSTRUCTIONS . If that’s beyond someone’s abilities then I weep for the general state of mankind.
Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
$35 for 6 meals for two people at McDonalds? What? Where I live, one meal at McDonalds is about $12. So 6 * 2 * 12 = $144. Not that much of a difference. Also, if you aimed for 2200 calories per person per day with that $170, then it isn't really fair comparing to a single McDonald's meal, is it? It sounds like buying whole foods is cheaper.
Does McDonalds not have the $5 McValue Meals where you live? In the Bay Area, $5 + tax gets you a McChicken, 4 chicken nuggets, small fries, and small drink. $6 to upgrade to a McDouble cheeseburger instead of the McChicken. Altogether ~1000 calories per meal. That's darn good value for your money, at least for a prepared hot meal that's convenient in most locales. $5 for ~1000 calories, plus the ingredients are fort…
Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
You remember incorrectly. Norway and Sweden took opposite approaches in 2020—Norway used strict lockdowns, tight border controls, and intensive outbreak tracking, while Sweden kept society largely open. The results weren’t subtle. As the Juul paper puts it: “That resulted in 477 COVID-19 deaths (Norway) and 9,737 (Sweden) in 2020, respectively.” Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8807990/
You are only looking at 2020 and posting a source from 2021. Now look at 2021, 2022 and 2023. That’s the whole point. Sweden had slightly more excess mortality the first year especially amongst the elderly but they ended up doing similar or slightly better than their neighbours if you look at the whole pandemic. They did significantly better on other metrics however like youth mental health and education. I posted a…
The only reason Sweden’s later all-cause mortality looks “similar” is mortality displacement: COVID killed so many frail, high-risk people in 2020 that Sweden had fewer dementia and respiratory deaths in 2021–22. Nordic registry papers explicitly note this. Sweden didn’t outperform anyone. Its early losses were just so large that later excess deaths looked artificially low.
Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use critical thinking. Google it yourself. Come to your own conclusions. Don't just believe whatever you see on CNN and MSNBC.
Saying "google them yourself" removes the ability for people to refute you and your stated position here. A surgical mask is most often used not to protect the surgeon but rather the patient from transmission from the surgeon to the patient. I would suggest by refuting Unmasking the surgeons: the evidence base behind the use of facemasks in surgery - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4480558/ which describes s…
People aren't wearing masks anymore, do you see a dramatic increase in COVID deaths? Then your point is self-evidently wrong--no further analysis needed.
You're conflating so many different things. Surgery with an open wound is not the same as spreading COVID which was never even proven to be spread airborne. You're either intellectually dishonest or naive. Either way this is pointless. You clearly just like being told what to think. I get it, there's safety in feeling like if you just follow the rules you'll be safe. You can follow the school into the net, because freedom is not what you actually want.
They just wanted to sell you masks. Don't you get it? It's just about the money.