I don't buy that. You can buy a steak and a potato for two for less than a bag of Doritos. A banana costs far less than a candy bar. A bag of mixed nuts will provide many meals.

Price out a bag of rice, a bag of beans, etc.

> food companies' only interest is in maximizing profit

Pleasing your customers is how profit is maximized.

Besides, I bet if you were faced with two stores, one that charges $x for A, and another that charges $(x-1) for A, you'd patronize the latter store.

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folkrav an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Pleasing your customers is how profit is maximized.

If you ignore everything like, including but not limited to, market capture, addictive products, lock-in, information asymmetry, planned obsolescence, dark patterns, captive markets, artificial scarcity, seldom-lucrative-yet-important services and any externality, very true!

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dbalatero 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Where are you getting a steak and potato for 2 for less than a bag of Doritos? Is it a 50 lb bag of Doritos?

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jambalaya8 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe it's 4oz of very lean tough steak and a single small russet potato with no fat, and the two mentioned are five year olds.

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WalterBright 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I can buy the day old steaks for $5-6, and a potato is maybe 50 cents. Doritos are $6.49.

A Hershey's chocolate bar is $3.99-$4.99. A banana is maybe 50 cents.

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to11mtm 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

....

At least 10 to 15-ish years ago, I would actually be closer to agreeing;

You could get Cube or Chuck steak for 3-5$ a pound and potatoes were cheap as hell too. Toss some diced onion in and You'll have a good dinner.

How do I know? Well I grew up in a family where for... reasons[0] we were not that well off for quite a while.

Cube Steak was one of the big things we did for a family meal that Dad cooked. (Chili was his other favorite to make, which was also cheap to do for how much food came out of it...)

However the current prices of beef, I feel like you'd need to have a long standing personal relationship with a local butcher or rancher to make this true.

[0] - My mother's over-propensity for being truly Christ-like in her charity to family and others, also sending myself and my three siblings to Catholic school to avoid the then-absolutely-failed Detroit Public school system were major factors.

	▲	folkrav an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'm québécois, my grandma came from a big family (12 siblings IIRC). She used to cook with ground beef all the time cause that's what her mother cooked with too - it was THE cheap source of protein. Meat loaf, shepherds pie, meat pie, beef and cheese macaroni, the whole shebang. Nowadays, when I cook any of those meals, it's cause I feel like eating that specific thing, but it often turns out to be the most expensive meal of the week.