{"id":21387,"date":"2013-07-29T10:35:52","date_gmt":"2013-07-29T14:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=21387"},"modified":"2024-07-15T18:41:04","modified_gmt":"2024-07-15T22:41:04","slug":"junk-food-costs-as-little-as-1-76-per-1000-calories-whereas-fresh-veggies-cost-more-than-10-times-as-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/07\/29\/junk-food-costs-as-little-as-1-76-per-1000-calories-whereas-fresh-veggies-cost-more-than-10-times-as-much\/","title":{"rendered":"“Junk food costs as little as $1.76 per 1,000 calories, whereas fresh veggies … cost more than 10 times as much”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making a case for the McDonald’s McDouble<\/a> as the greatest food in human history:<\/p>\n

What is \u201cthe cheapest, most nutritious and bountiful food that has ever existed in human history\u201d Hint: It has 390 calories. It contains 23g, or half a daily serving, of protein, plus 7% of daily fiber, 20% of daily calcium and so on.<\/p>\n

Also, you can get it in 14,000 locations in the US and it usually costs $1. Presenting one of the unsung wonders of modern life, the McDonald\u2019s McDouble cheeseburger.<\/p>\n

The argument above was made by a commenter on the Freakonomics<\/em> blog run by economics writer Stephen Dubner and professor Steven Leavitt, who co-wrote the million-selling books on the hidden side of everything.<\/p>\n

Dubner mischievously built an episode of his highly amusing weekly podcast around the debate. Many huffy back-to-the-earth types wrote in to suggest the alternative meal of boiled lentils. Great idea. Now go open a restaurant called McBoiled Lentils and see how many customers line up.<\/p>\n

But we all know fast food makes us fat, right? Not necessarily. People who eat out tend to eat less at home that day in partial compensation; the net gain, according to a 2008 study out of Berkeley and Northwestern, is only about 24 calories a day.<\/p>\n

The outraged replies to the notion of McDouble supremacy \u2014 if it\u2019s not the cheapest, most nutritious and most bountiful food in human history, it has to be pretty close \u2014 comes from the usual coalition of class snobs, locavore foodies and militant anti-corporate types. I say usual because these people are forever proclaiming their support for the poor and for higher minimum wages that would supposedly benefit McDonald\u2019s workers. But they\u2019re completely heartless when it comes to the other side of the equation: cost. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update, 30 July<\/b>: Stephen Dubner<\/a> notes that the Kyle Smith story has triggered “about one zillion” media requests for more comment on the original post, but that he’s too busy writing to take time out to respond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Making a case for the McDonald’s McDouble as the greatest food in human history: What is \u201cthe cheapest, most nutritious and bountiful food that has ever existed in human history\u201d Hint: It has 390 calories. It contains 23g, or half a daily serving, of protein, plus 7% of daily fiber, 20% of daily calcium and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,74,66,13],"tags":[1420,1555,150,91,907],"class_list":["post-21387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-food","category-health-science","category-usa","tag-classism","tag-fastfood","tag-obesity","tag-poverty","tag-snobbery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5yX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21387"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66009,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387\/revisions\/66009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}