Maybe this isn't proper shopping but $18.50 for four veggie burgers, buns, and danish seems like a lot

You literally have the most expensive possible options for every single one of those

Food is absolutely getting more expensive, but they equally bought a rod for their own back buying all the premium brand stuff.
Spoiling yourself is all well and good, but they shouldn't complain something expensive was expensive haha
- Of course. look treating yourself is nothing bad, however it is going to cost more for it.
  To be fair I live in a part of the US that is poorer than average and isn't really a nice place politically. I can spend 60-80 dollars for a weeks worth of food, and I eat a lot of food.
2.50/ patty for plant protein??? Vegans are suckers.
- The only thing that bothers me about your statement is how much my tax dollars pay to subsidize your stupid meat addiction.
- I get a ten pack of beyond patties that are half the price.
  This guy is just a sucker.

Buying prepared food is expensive.

The only thing prepared is the *coffee cake.
- Veggie burgers are also prepared, and bread is also ready to eat.

That’s relatively cheap…

You’ve got 8 buns there so buying 4 more patties would take the whole thing to $28 for 8 burgers and cutting the danish into 8 slices which is probably the serving size anyway. Or $3.50 per burger and slice of danish.

And you grabbed the most expensive versions of things too.

But no toppings (lettuce, tomato, cheese, onions etc.) So a plain burger and a piece of Danish for 3.50 isn't exactly great value nutritionally. But yeah this could be done cheaper and probably could have gotten at least some store brand cheese too.
- All of that might be another $2 total. Produce is generally dirt cheap.
  They could also make their own homemade black bean burger patties for far cheaper than $2.50 a patty too. Premade stuff is expensive.
- Yes, they need those veggie toppings on their veggie burger.

Fancy brioche buns, not normal burger buns. Brioche is typically the most expensive bread off the shelf.
Fancy veggie burgers, of course they are expensive lol, that's fancy vegan stuff
Don't pretend that is a Danish singular. That's a huge fuckin Danish, that's the equivalent of 4 Danishes easily lol

I hate when people buy fancy bespoke food and are like "why do my gluten free vegan free range burgers cost so much?"

If you want to be vegetarian/vegan, go buy normal vegis, don't complain about your super fancy "takes a bunch of extra work and has very low demand" food being expensive.

Yeah, that’s not a danish, that’s an entire cake. It’s 14 ounces.
Yeah fuck me for wanting a gluten free burger, as if being gluten-free was my choice
- You can eat gluten-free, vegan, etc without eating like a hipster. That was @pixxelkick's whole point. Actual hamburger patties are gluten-free.
OP spent $19 to feed four people a veggie burger on a brioche bun, and a pretty good sized piece of cake in the shape of a Danish.... Like half a square foot of the stuff.
While not cheap overall, each person is eating for less than $5. And they're eating better than you could taking that $5 to any rte food store.
Not sure what the problem is here.
You miss the point. Food should not even cost this much. Even crappier "normal" food costs too much yet is still unhealthy. And OP could have specific food needs, you don't know. So why should he have to pay more for a basic need.
- Rice and beans is food
- What is the objectively correct price for this food?

Artisan brioche buns. Plant based burgers are more expensive then the real thing for some reason (and full of salt). That Danish is a ripoff.

The reason is that the US spends a ton of money subsidizing the beef industry. Beef would be a hell of a lot more expensive if they didn't.
- True~ish. Farmers get subsidies in general, not just ranchers. But this is also Hamburger we are talking about. If the meatless patties were to replace the steak in a steak sandwich, they'd be more comparable in "price for function" comparison. The meat in hamburger patties is recovery from more expensive cuts and is basically designed to be cheap while the meatless patties are specifically designed to replace them.
  It's like building a small fence with pallet wood vs. what you'd buy at a lowes or something. Neither is gonna be priced at the premium of a boutique lumber mill or restaurant, but their inception doesn't startvevenly.
- Seeing as how most farmers don’t make much at all for their products, I wonder who those subsidies actually go to.

It's so sad how many posters would rather blame OP for spending an extra dollar on better bread and veggie patties rather than actually acknowledge the blatant price gouging on food. The idea that everyone should only be buying the cheapest ingredients is just stupid. No one is living a fulfilling life eating nothing but cheap beans and rice everyday, and food prices have been ridiculous for a while now.

I miss the good ol days where inflation was so low, you could pick fruit off a vine/bush/tree and it was free
- Nowadays, you have to pay HOA just to get a smell of that community cherry tree
The point is that it's all processed and premade, that's why it costs so much. Make your own beef patties with ground beef and some seasonings, just bake a damn dessert for once and stop getting the fancy artisanal bread and just go with whole wheat.
Nothing about that requires eating rice and beans, you just don't want to accept that some shit requires effort and when you outsource that you pay more.
Yeah food costs an insane amount, but you don't have to buy the "we did the work for you" tier of food if your income can't handle it. You're not entitled to having everything done for you. Learn to goddamn cook.
- I can rarely find a pound of ground beef for under $9 now unless buying in massive bulk. Even produce has gotten insanely expensive in the last few years. Sometimes the raw ingredients are so expensive it's cheaper to buy the processed shit... Idk how anyone less fortunate can stay sane in the grocery store. Buying raw ingredients and cooking isn't a cheat code to save money.
- The biggest saving would actually be the buns I would bet.
  You could make your own 8 burger buns for like 10 cents.
There is nothing unfuflfilling about beans and rice. This is the staple diet of almost a billion people. We are just so far removed from reality that we think of a healthy diet as a terrible punishment.
- You did not understand my comment very well. Beans and rice are great staple foods, I love them. A well rounded diet involves more than just beans and rice.
- Beans and rice yummy farts in farts again my oh my another one bites to dust tummy
  On a more serious note didn't early humans live a hunter gather life style eating both meats fish plants and vegetables I mean there's alot of evidence that shows that our ancestors lived hunter gather life styles also I'm fairly certain that most people didn't just eat beans and rice for billons of years
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer
  https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/resource-library-hunter-gatherers/

Well, those are some fancy burgers... Worth the money if you have it, IMO, but not something I'd buy on a budget. I usually get the Morningstar Farms chipotle black bean burgers, which Costco sells in a big box for a good price. They aren't trying to be indistinguishable from meat (which isn't a priority for me anyway) but they're greasy (in a good way) and delicious.

Plus the Morningstar burgers have the rare advantage of being microwaveable. (I suppose you can technically microwave anything, but they're good after being microwaved.) I'm not just saying that because I'm lazy - I have a little electric grill I can use, but I don't need to for them and it's nice to save a little bit of time that way.

Morningstars don’t even need to be eaten like a hamburger. A little red wine vinegar, a few drops of olive oil, and a light sprinkling of Italian herbs turns that into some gourmet shit.
Morningstar burgers are the best ones I've tried
Beyond burgers are gross. Impossible are the best
- Buhhhhh beyond is just nasty, I've tried preparing it a bunch of different ways and it always comes out nasty. There's just some flavor I can't cover no matter how much seasoning is on there. Eventually you just cover it in hot sauce so you don't waste food.

I think the other side that doesn't get explored very often is how convenience food makers have gotten everybody hooked and unable to cook anymore.

Now that that is generally locked-in behavior in our society, the price goes through the roof.

I know people that literally do not know how to make rice because it's "too hard".

We should acknowledge that grocery prices have gone up in that price-gouging is rampant. We should also acknowledge that most of people's money spent at the grocery store is to exchange hundreds of dollars of extra money, for minutes less preparation.

In this picture of this person paid $10 for a pound of "burger". A pound of ground beef or tofu is a third that price. It takes a minute to slap a couple patties together or to slice off a few slabs, dry them and fry them.

I really feel like we need to enhance this conversation. I think a lot of people don't want to have it because they want to have the convenience but not the price and it's just not sustainable anymore. I think people need to look at their own dietary lifestyle, and consider what they're trading for that convenience.

A pound of ground beef or tofu is a third that price.
I understand what you're trying to say here. But I just wanted to add, making a vegetarian/vegan burger is not as simple as grinding up a pound of tofu and sticking it together to fry in a pan. I'm not saying you have to buy some of the "no meat" brand burgers to make a nice vegan patty but simply substituting some meat with natural unprepared tofu and expecting a great tasting result is IMHO where a lot of people get their aversion to tofu (and often derived to all meat alternatives) from. (Source 15years of vegetarian eating and cooking) The fact that ready made vegan patties exist and taste great these days is awesome for someone like me who sometimes just wants to make a stupid simple tasty burger.
Tl;dr: Tasty vegan patties aren't that simple.
I agree that people should be encouraged to cook more (I love doing it when I have time and it hits me). But simply declaring "nobody can cook anymore" and demanding people that might not have the time to prepare a home cooked meal in between their first and second job is not helping.
Of course the convenience of fast food and ready made meals is one of these classic situations where an "invention" that makes our life simpler and more convenient is a good reason why we don't need all that time we save to ourselves anymore. i.e. you don't need a lunch break when you can just microwave something up and eat it while continuing your work.
Sorry got kind of a long winded bit here. Hope it makes sense
- How about a different angle; enjoy the veggies as they are and forget the emulated meat puck. This isn't a dig at you, just a general statement of how I always found it weird there are so many vegetarian and vegan food tring to emulate a meat stick or patty. Veggies are wonderful all by themselves why not enjoy them for what they are instead of competing with something it's not. My 2 cents.
I agree with you for the most part but a pound of ground beef for under 4 bucks?! Where I live it's rarely less than $8 lb, but definitely a high cost area. Even chicken is usually more than $6 per lb now.
Even a damn tomato or onion is more than a dollar these days and bell peppers are $2 each!
- Same
- It's only really fair to compare when you consider the price at OPs store.
  Myself, I'm looking at the cost of the burger patties and I know that in my region the price of 1 lb of ground beef relative to this convenient product would be 1/3rd

What a sucker, seed packets to grow your own Barley and wheat come out to 0.0003c per seed! Just grow your own crops NOOB

Is there a frugaljerk community yet?
- Man, you said it jokingly and I truly chuckled but more and more the frugal community turns into that for the simplest things like, I don't know:
  OP: I love my Dr. Browns cherry diet soda brings as it's my little piece of heaven and sincerely would like to find alternatives as is crazy expensive compared to cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper, that doesn't taste as well, what can a dude do to get ahead of this?
  Community : I've started bartering homemade syrups with neighbors for other home-grown or homemade items. It's a fun community-building activity and we all save money, you just need to grow organic non GMO crops of cherry or other fruits and gather for harvest once a year to get the sugar cane and fruits to make the syrup.
  Community 2: I've recently scouted all 223 bodegas supermarkets and drink emporiums in my town and took note of the price of individual cans, next week I'm going to the distributor to place an order equivalent to a sizeable amount of all cans on display to corner the market and resell the cans I have at an exuberant markup that will cover my habit and imagine all that I'm saving by buying in bulk!
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I get a sack of rice, a couple avocados, dry beans, frozen broccoli and corn, lime or two, bunch of spices if you don't already have. Whatever Mexican spices recipe online but definitely get smoked paprika it's straight up drugs. This will cost more than the burger set in the picture but it makes more meals.

Instant pot rice, instant pot seasoned beans with a second inner pot, 1/8 of tall wide mouth mason jar each of rice and beans, arbitrary amount of broc corn and cubed avocado leaving about 1/8 of jar as air, tablespoon or so of lime juice. Cool the jars and freeze once cool. I use plastic lid rings with silicone insert since the metal ones get rusty when used like this. I'll prep like 40 of these in one session but that's definitely using a bigger budget so I don't have to do it as often.

My recommended rice is long grain brown with about 1/16 to 1/8 of the amount cooked being wild rice mixed in. They both take the same amount of time to cook when mixed, but it's a decent amount longer than white rice. I usually put an arbitrary splash of sake or gin in the water for cooking the rice but it's largely a habit from copying grandpa.

I take a frozen jar to work with me in a lunch bag and it doubles as an ice pack for whatever else I want in there. I aim for it to be thawed enough to shake it and mix it before microwaving. For at home I thaw it in the fridge the day before. When I didn't have a microwave I just steamed the whole jar in the instant pot.

Jars and instant pot + accessories were all things I waited for sales on. It can be done without instant pot but it's probably the safest way I can think of to cook things and fuck off without worrying about it burning the house down. Jars are merely the cheapest I could find in decent quantity and dishwasher safe.

This is probably the cheapest with highest output volume food option I batch prep. I also do things like potato leek and/or squash soup, or potato cheese and soy bacon soup (I'm not actually vegetarian or vegan but it's a real pain cooking all the bacon needed and cutting meat is tiresome), and some other stuff that has been hit or miss that I only tried once. I keep them all in a chest freezer and I take out whatever I feel like eating as an easy microwave meal, unless I'm running low and need to reserve them for work lunches.

1/8 of tall wide mouth mason jar each
Americans really will use anything but the metric system /s
- Lol I'm actually Canadian and prefer metric, but these jars have weird and inconsistent volume so I just eyeball everything and the last one that has a different amount from the others is the one I eat on the spot.
Interesting. What does the alcohol do for the rice?

Danish was a fair choice but your buns and burgers were premium stuff, expect premium prices Mr. Ultimate burger

I mean, most people don't have an Aldi's nearby, would be great though.

I'm so used to NYC food prices that $20 for four meals seems like a steal

Yeah I moved to Seattle a few years ago and the cost of everything here has ruined my sense of what is expensive or not. I've definitely paid more for less than shown here
$4.50 more and a smaller piece of dessert and they could have got a meal for 8 with probably a better veggie patty. Could have saved $1.50 to go with the cheapo buns, but the Sara Lee, while equally processed (I am not judging... they look pretty good), are a small investment to improve the dinner.
https://www.kroger.com/p/beyond-meat-cookout-classic-plant-based-burger-patties/0081005729013?searchType=defaultsearch

I'm in Vietnam having a peek about. Just ate a light, 4 course meal with beers for two for about usd $6.. It was incredible.

The world is indeed out of balance.

I miss Vietnam a lot. Great food and people.

That is kind of what you get when you buy super processed foods. If you want to save money you have to buy low processed foods. For example, you can get a 3lb bag of apples ($5), 5 cans of beans ($5), 2lb carrots ($2), 5 lbs Potatoes ($5) for the same price.

And then you can make a delicious pot of apple & bean stew! 🤤
- But you'd really struggle to make burgers and a Danish.
- Zelda TotK cooking vibes from this post.
i mean i wouldn't call bread super processed food, that just sounds silly
- It really is. Stuff you can get fresh at a bakery in France? Not that processed. The bread they bake at the grocery store? Probably fairly processed. They often put a lot of crap in there, and
  The stuff made in a factory, like most hamburger buns? That stuff is generally so processed it's almost a lie to call it bread. It would take a chemistry degree to make that from only things you could harvest personally

If you had bought normal store brand buns instead of artisan brioche, they are a third of the price. You are paying 2.50 per veggie burger pattie instead of a bit more or less than a dollar per pattie in morning star and great value brands. 5 dollars for a Danish that size is not ludicrous, but I bet you could have shopped around better for that too. You could have cut the total price in half at least if you were paying attention to prices and brands. Not saying that prices aren't getting out of hand, but it doesn't look like you even tried.

If there weren't price tags in the pic I would have guessed this would be $25-$30. This type of convenient food, none the less fancier versions of convenient foods, are expensive. Go figure.

If "proper shopping" is buying cheap and healthy food then yeah OP you suck at it.

Maybe it's just a flavor preference, but why vegan burgers (no dairy or egg as well as no meat) with brioche (eggs, butter) and danish(cheese, butter)? Nvm, I did some looking and I didn't see any meatless burgers that aren't also vegan.

Yeah, sounds like they're just garden-variety vegetarians so it wouldn't matter what they're picking up as long as it's not meat. Although to your point about meatless burgers, home-made versions often do contain egg as the binding protein.

$10 for McDonald's combo for 1. $10-$14 for Carl's combo.

Yet you are complaining about 18.50 for fancy buns and a veggie patty for 4. Really?

Go cheap then.

Time to go back to making veggie "burgers" out of portabella mushrooms and beans lol

That's about 5 a burger. While it isn't exactly a good price, it isn't out of scale. A good veggie burger is highly processed, it has to be or it won't hold together, nor taste right.

Seriously, try and whip up your own version some time. It's labor intensive. Even if that labor is done by machine, that factors into pricing compared to a meat burger (which is still a good bit of processing, just less complicated).

They absolutely should cost less, I'm not denying that. But it isn't out of scale with what highly processed foods cost. They should all cost less, but that's a separate thing.

Besides, you know anything vegetarian or vegan is going to be priced higher just because is a niche product. They know they can get away with it; if a vegetarian is buying that kind of thing, they're obviously not willing to do the work it takes to do it themselves (and it is a lot of work to make a good veggie burger at home).

And, if you want something other than fast food burgers, it isn't like a meat burger is any less than that. So, again, the scale isn't that bad.

Edit: I missed the danish in the pic. That's a quarter of the price total by itself. Which means that the entire group is priced normally compared to what I see in stores. And, you're down to about 3 a burger, which is also a decent price compared to the ultimate stuff when you get it from a restaurant. Again, I still agree that food shouldn't cost that much, but you would have trouble getting your per burger price below that if you made your own.

It would be $5 a burger if they waste the other 4 buns in the package. They got 4 patties and 8 buns.
If they get another 4 patties it would be $28 total and about $3.50 per burger and slice of danish. Which is relatively cheap for everything they got. Throw in a head of lettuce, a tomato, and an onion and it might cost an extra $2 total to dress 8 burgers.

Hey you're from Indiana too! I've noticed Kroger's the worst about this, Meijer is usually lower. Shop Aldi then Meijer if you can.

The only thing that seems expensive is the veggie patties in my opinion. For $4.99 I would have expected a 4 pack.

The buns are a bit pricey, but we're talking a dollar and some change then.

Looks to me like you have most of 4 lunches and 4 breakfasts for $18.

I don't know. Depending on where you live, that sounds about on the mark for what you bought. Groceries are getting expensive.

Prepared food is expensive, nonprepared is at a good price.
- All groceries are getting more expensive.
- My bill of entirely unprepared ingredients have increased by 25% since the beginning of the year, so no not a good price.

Buy vegetables and actually cook stuff, it's a fraction of the cost and a lot tastier.

For comparison I was in Germany recently and to a supermarket, 6 half liter beers (variety of em too), nice bottle of wine, cheese, crackers, salami and some dessert type chocolate crackers…$20.

Germany is actually well known for having very low grocery price
English language article that mentions this though the main subject of the article are the " true price of groceries including climate costs: https://www.dw.com/en/the-true-cost-of-germanys-cheap-food/a-38976477)
This is largely done by price dumping the suppliers and low balling the workforce (as much as German labor laws allow) <- I'm aware I have no source for this I will try to dig one up tomorrow when I can
- I didn’t know that! Along the roads though there were a lot of Apple trees and my friend I was visiting said that’s commonly a thing to plant them along roads there so that no matter the situation someone can have access to food…I really liked that!

And what is a danish, I'm a Dane and doesn't now what a danish is? Is it flæskesvær?

Holy f it's a cake.
- cake ('american' kind, with frosting) probably would have been 'healthier' than these 'danish'
@Dass93 I think you might call it a Viennese or Wienerbrød ?
- Yes in Denmark wienerbrød is a morning cake. We use the term cake a bit different: kage(cake) meaning danish: sweet pastries that are especially served with coffee or tea or as a dessert come in many different sizes and types.
Wienerbrød

Ok but what is that flavour? Strawberry cheese coffee? Is that common?

Coffee isn't the flavor but the type of the pastry.

Where I live it would cost at least twice that. The veggie burgers would be about $12 per pack of two, buns would be around $9 (but only come in a 4 pack) and the Danish would probably be $8 or $9.

Real beef is still way cheaper. A pack of probably 15 patties is around $40.

I live in Alaska. Frozen stuff is a premium. And otherwise prices are all over the place, and supply depends on what came on the barge.

I live in Alaska. Frozen stuff is a premium.
Shouldn't frozen stuff be the opposite of a premium in Alaska?
- only place i can possibly see frozen being premium is like, rural africa? and even then i'd assume it's sufficiently beneficial and cheap to go to the extra effort to set up supply chains for it even in really remote areas.
"I live in Alaska"
Yeah, that's a you problem.

I would expect to pay more for veggie burgers than normal burgers

I expect to pay more too, albeit very begrudgingly. To develop meat you have to feed vegetables to an animal for months/years and then you need to process the meat in a very specific manner to separate the meat, the offal, and the bones.
A vegetable patty? Just mush it all up and call it a day, maybe add some beetroot extract to give it that 'bloody' colour.
The lack of competition, the lack of consumer demand, and the lack of government subsidies have turned what should be a very cheap alternative into a luxury good.
- It boggles my mind why we don't subsidize plant based meats. Subsidizing it shouldn't cost anything (should actually save money) as every customer who buys the now cheaper plant based option is not buying the subsidized meat option. The plant option is natrually cheaper so our expenditure on subsidies goes down, our impact on the environment goes down and no one is being forced to eat either. Choice stays. Eventually cost savers would move to the cheaper option, slowing increasing our savings and decreasing our inpact. Market for plant based grows, more companies come in to compete and make a better product. I must be missing something about how the subsidies are enacted. Oh and while we are changing things with food subsidies, let's get corn out of our shit. Bring in more efficient crops.
- [This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
- Maybe you can make your own veggie burgers. I never buy beef burgers. I just buy ground beef and make my burgers.

Please stop calling that junk "danish"

That really isn't bad

You.... Bought premium brand items, and are shocked that they are above average price?

:surprised pikachu face:

If you go out to eat you would spend like $27 on two people so this isn't that bad.

Eh it's not terrible but I usually only buy those burgers when they're on sale. But I get it, sometimes you want to splurge a bit.

It is - in the US, but it wouldn’t be in Liberia. I zoomed in on the receipt to get some much needed context on this price.

'Too good to go' gives me 3 shoppingbags of food for that money here in the Netherlands. Just need a freezer to keep bread, meat and veggies last for longer. We reduced the costs of food with at least 250€ per month by getting food that normally would be thrown out by retailers that is perfectly fine to consume.

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And it's not even real burger

You deserve worse. Keep asking the broke government for more free stuff, and then when they print more money, make a pikatchu face on the prices shooting up with even more inflation.

Enjoy! I'm enjoying watching you suffer.

So... they shouldn't buy food?
- Look at mr moneybags with his "food".