Strollerderby

Fast Food Eats Up Your Money

Posted by Madeline Holler

Sure, fast food isn't eating up your budget, since you don't eat it ... ever!

But apparently bagged-up, drive-thru fare takes a bigger bite out of every other family's monthly income than stuff we might consider good for kids.

According to a market research group, mothers of kids under 15 years old spend more on fast food than they do on books, music, movies and video games ... combined. What the study doesn't say is exactly what percent of the household budget.The also don't define "fast food." I mean, I'd agree my family -- with our once a week take-out habit, usually pizza -- spends according to the reported pattern, because we just don't drop a lot on the other stuff. We're big users of the library and the video games are mostly for the grown-ups.

Also in the report are spending differences according to the child's gender: girls get more clothes, boys get more video games. Not a big surprise.

Sound about right? How much fast food do you secretly feed your kids?

 

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Photo: mwdaily.net 


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Comments

 

Yvie said:

Hmmm...how much fastfood do I secretly give my kid? Twice every month when we have the chance. Hahaha. Admittedly we love fastfood but we don't really shed all our money on that.

A large portion of our money goes to the bills (yep, sadly), on groceries, our baby's basic necessities, and sometimes his toys. :)

June 3, 2008 8:43 AM
 

Jenn said:

Ok, maybe it's our grad school lifestyle, but I don't buy music or movies or video games and books are a rare, rare treat so the approx $10/month I spend on fast food would definitely be higher. Unless we count my husband's school books which sometimes exceed our monthly food budget. Sigh!

June 3, 2008 10:43 AM
 

Kris said:

Sure, we buy a take-and-bake pizza at the grocery store every Friday. Costs us $24 a month, so yeah, I guess that's more than the $8 Netflix. (Books, music, and most video games come from the library or are sold used when we're done with them.) Baby doesn't eat the pizza, of course.

What I found really odd, though, is the fact that the baby grabbing for the hamburger in that picture has a feeding tube, so is clearly not eating enough calories by mouth. Sort of an odd context for the picture.

June 3, 2008 10:52 AM
 

Madeline Holler said:

That's a feeding tube? I thought she just had a boo boo! Of course now I'm wondering what kind of mean parents dangle a Big Mac in front of their liquid-diet kid!

June 3, 2008 10:59 AM

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