I'm not arguing whether fresh food tastes better or is healthier. What I want to see is evidence that "quality" food is (relatively) more expensive in the United States than it is anywhere else in the world. And then maybe some evidence that people buy junk food because "healthy food" is too expensive (my hungry teenager looks in the pantry and the refrigerator and says, "all we have is ingredients").
> my hungry teenager looks in the pantry and the refrigerator and says, "all we have is ingredients"
Matches my experience. I too would contest that reasonable quality food is more expensive. In my experience it's actually somewhat cheaper by any metric except $/calorie and even then you could just add butter or oil to the "healthy" alternative to juice the numbers.
I think the primary differentiator is convenience. Grabbing an actually rather expensive box from the cupboard beats out spending 30 minutes cooking and another 10 cleaning.
