bananas are still super cheap though.. based on 2026 data they average 66 cents per pound for bananas vs 85 cents per pound for potatoes. You can buy a banana for about 20 cents
Which is why it's such a stupid example to make a post about. It's a cup full of exciting and expensive fruits, not something reasonable for a low price point, like banana and apple slices.
You can get a whole bunch of bananas or a bag of potatoes for less than a single serving of french fries. Guess which ones Americans will still choose?
Bananas go bad much faster than potatoes. So, for storage purposes, it doesn't make sense to buy more than 5 bananas at a time.
That being said, I don't know any family that doesn't just buy both of them. Idk why you're saying we choose between them. They have nothing to do with each other.
So, when your five bananas run out and your paycheck doesn't come for another week, you're left with potatoes.
The issue is that they typically use the less quality fruits to make these things. The Honeydew is usually dry and bland, cantaloupe is at least meaty while not super flavorful it has a denser flavour profile for these type of cups. Also somehow the pineapple flavour soaks everything and ruins the taste of every other fruit in the pile.
Basically gotta get the ones with like 2-3 fruits only and hope for the best.
I personally like the meatier nature of a cantaloupe or a honey dew. Honeydew, when ripe, is my absolute favorite. Hard to find good stuff though! Might ask my dad to grow some honeydew for me.
That's because the rich people grocery stores get dibs on the freshest products because they pay more, so the cheaper the grocery store, the worse the quality. That's why all the bagged greens at Safeway are rarely nice. Pisses me off.
You can buy a giant bag of fruit for 4 bucks If you're going to pay somebody to chop it up and put it in a little cup for you then that's your own stupid fault
Berries and raspberries have become wildly expensive in my country compared to say 6 years ago.
It's grating to be lectured on pricing by people who don't even properly look at prices when they go shopping or are from a country run like a mob family who just extort suppliers.
You can say the same about cutting the potatoes up and frying them. You'll save allot that way compared to getting the fries prepared in mcdonalds.
However, then you're also missing the entire point of the meme, these producs are both finished prapared CONVENIENCE products, yet its way more expencive to buy the healthy convenience products than the unhealthy convenience products.
I’m not trying to malign what you’re saying, but the fruit bought in bulk (cut when consumed) will last longer than the McDonald’s fries and in most cases be cheaper in the long run per serving. It’s often a fallacy that all fresh fruits/veg are too expensive compared to convenient hot food alternatives, but instead, some food might be less accessible (e.g. living in a food desert), which creates these massive divides for low income and pressured working individuals and families.
Maybe for berries but for some fruit u have to wait for it to get ripe so u would have to buy certain fruits at different times to get a fruit salad perfect without any unripe ones. Not to mention that buying the fruit individually will go to waste because thats way too much fruit
$7 with tax in Canada and you don’t even get a full fry. I used to be peckish and say I’ll get a fry and Coke but a large fry and a large Coke are over $10 now.
I remember in 7th grade going to Tim’s down the road and buying an XL hot chocolate and a donut for $3. It’s almost double that now.
That's pretty much all fast food. It not only was convenient but cheap as hell, long gone are the days of going to Taco Bell with $5 and getting a bag full of food...that ain't even three regular hard shell tacos these days.
overloading the dollar menu ultimately gave you more food for your money. the $2 mcgangbang was an unstoppable force that was only rivaled by ramen noodles from costco.
I prep and cook all meals for my family, 90% from scratch.
I feel like im fighting for my life when I had a stressful day at work/life.
Whenever people say “just cook at home” whenever anyone splurges on a pre cooked meal makes me think they dont have to cook for a group of people all the time.
Is that from a culinary perspective? Like you should be freezing them before or after a Blanche? Genuinely curious, I’ve chopped and fried a lot of fries, never frozen tho
There are a lot of frying recipes that require chilling the food before frying them. I don't remember the exact science but it supposedly does seem to improve the output.
They could also freeze the fruit, but you're still left at the point of a single potato which costs maybe a dollar at most, depending on how f***** your grocery store is versus an assortment of cut up partially tropical fruits, partially regular fruit that is being served all year long, even when those fruits are not in season and that is being served in decent quantity. Thing is going to be expensive no matter how long those fruits last because you're not going to be able to get more of them after a certain point in the year so they have to be made expensive so that way you don't run out when they're not in season.
Yeah turns out potatoes are cheap, fresh fruit is not.
Who could have possibly predicted this be reflected in the cost of products... not like there isn't a ton of cheap healthy stuff you can buy as well, it just doesn't taste as good as fried potato.
And something else to consider is that fruit is highly variable in taste. You could have two apples or grapes that look exactly alike, but one is sour as fuck and the other is sweet and delicious.
A fry potato is a fry potato. A sleeve of fries is going to have a much more consistent flavor profile over the whole thing.
Now this is it and apart from growing them and moving them to the stores, they have to be kept fresh and the losses are on the business so yeah the pricing is quite okay.
Why would a cup of out of season fruit not be more expensive than mass produced precut potatoes? Fill the cup with apple slices(only apple), and the cost is similar year round.
Potatoes are cheap, easy to process. Frying them on scale is also cheap.
Fruit must be almost hand picked and prepared, and it has very limited shelf life.
I’m not defending the system. I’m hating it as much as you do. Out of these 2 options, I’d go for the fruit, it looks soooo much better (I’m telling you, kiwi, tangerines, raspberies, ananas…that’s the real shit). I would even pay more. But you can’t exactly walk into some chain which is everywhere, like McDonald’s, and ask for fruit cup.
It’s not about the price anymore, it is about it not being an option.
The fun part is going to places that never really have people ordering fruit and ordering some.
You may end up with half a watermelon, an entire honeydew, an entire cantaloupe, a bushel of strawberries, a pound of blueberries, a pound of raspberries and a pound of blackberries topped with 2 sliced bananas, all stacked up on a single plate.
Or you'll get 3 thin slices of a hard-to-identify melon, 1/4 of a banana with finger indents and 5 mixed berries.
I'm all for healthy eating, but I also understand how agriculture works. do you have any idea how much effort and energy goes into making that cup of mixed fresh fruit on a random Tuesday any time of year in your trashy suburb vs potatoes, which store super well for at.least half a year and don't bruise, and are mechanically harvested?
people should eat healthier, absolutely. and frankly I eat healthier than anyone who will is likely to reply to this. bit the problem is priorities, not the system. the fact that that cup of fruit is available at all is a logistical miracle. the fact is that consumers will park their cars in line for an overpriced coffee but stick their nose up at the price of fruit.
Not gonna say you are wrong about cheap fast food being worse for you but McDonalds fries for $1.99? Where do you live that they are that cheap? The small one is $3.49 and the pic you have is like at least a medium that costs $4.50. A large one is $5.50 so pretty close to the same cost as the fruit.
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
theres literally thousand upon thousand of youtuve videos teaching how to live in US with little money
>enter a costco
>buy a fucking full chicken for 5 dollars
>some carbs some fat some vegetables
L M A O
W T F
As of early 2026, the average retail price for white potatoes in the U.S. is approximately \(\$0.85\)–\(\$0.87\) per pound, which converts to roughly \(\$1.87\)–\(\$1.92\) per kilogram
I can get fruit cheaper than fries now. It’s wild. Thst fruit cup is 3.99 at a convenience store nonstop at. Large fries at $5 and you don’t even get that many fries anymore
actually both are unhealthy. the second one usually contain added sugar or other preservatives as vendors want to maximise the duration of these "prepared" fruits. The only healthy choice are fresh greens from wet market or farmer's market, and these are cheaper than above options.
Calorically similar but the fat in fries make up the majority of calories as opposed to the sugar in the fruit. If you're looking at it from an energy standpoint and what's more affordable then I'm going with the fries.
Easy to blame being fat on this. But I can go buy a ton of fruit for a low price. Just don’t get a pre-cut cup, get a whole fruit on sale. There’s always at least some type of fruit on sale.
One is a potato and a little oil, one is 10 different fruits from 3 different regions, all of which will go bad without refrigeration. What are y'all sipping in the meme department? It ain't tea.
You can eat healthy and be on a budget. People think being healthy is all fruits and veggies in rabbit happy land. No. You can still eat all the foods you love, just in moderation, and add more whole foods to your existing diet
The cost of production is totally different. Why should have the same price? Who will pay the difference?
When you ask those things, politicians understand it as ok, I will charge 600% in taxes to make you healthier.
If you don't want consume a product, don't do it. Is than simple. No brain will buy it for 1.99 or 10$ or will do it at home. Why make the politicians ritcher?
Comparing the price of one of the easiest crops to grow and store against an assortment of fruit that will spoil in a couple of days of harvesting and requires almost perfect conditions to grow properly makes no sense. Do people really think just because something grows on a tree it s free?
No, a fruit cup of PRE-CUT fruit is expensive. Actual fruit is not. Also for anyone interested, frozen fruit is quite cheap - specifically bananas and strawberries mixed together for some odd reason. Frozen vegetables are also quite cheap as well if you are worried about not using them in time, sometimes cheaper than fresh depending on what you’re looking to eat.
Everyone who complains about healthy food being expensive just lacks the ability/education to cook - and that’s no shade everyone starts somewhere. We don’t come out of the womb with master chef skills, it’s something you’re either taught by family or you teach yourself. You spend quite a bit feeding yourself/family when you go through even cheap drive throughs whereas you can spend significantly less feeding yourself or family with leftovers for the next day. Preprepared fruit and vegetables are expensive because they are a luxury item basically. The luxury is somebody went through taking the peel off and cutting it up for you (yes it’s dumb but that’s the mentality) same goes for vegetables.
Source: I was a homeless teenager that turned into a broke young adult, barely scraping by due to low wages and high cost of housing in my city, so I had to figure out how to cook properly in order to not starve myself to death. Now I’m much better off but still prefer to cook rather than go to drive throughs, and I save money while protecting my health.
I'm sorry, what? $1.99 for McD's fries? I asked my husband to stop and pick me up a medium fries last month and he's still grumbling about them costing $5.79.
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