this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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It’s kind of wild how everyday groceries get framed as luxuries. Sometimes people are just trying to eat something convenient and affordable, not make a statement about their finances.
ready to eat hot food is a luxury. it's not groceries. groceries is stuff you have to prep and cook. if you want stuff you don't have to prep, or cook, it's generally going to cost you more, in either value or quality.
it's just that whole foods and other groceries normalized the concept of hot ready to eat meals being served in grocery stores. that was never a thing 20+ years ago. when i was a kid they had a tiny hot bar, and it was shitty. now my local whole foods 1/4 of the store is devoted to this type of product. and it's hugely profitable because people value convenience.
is international travel a luxury or a necessity? where I live, people think it's the latter and if you aren't traveling multiple times per year, they think you are living in poverty. that is regardless of finances and many people are going into debt to travel because they know it's not socially acceptable to not travel. i know 28 year olds making 30K a year who are dropping 5-10K a year traveling.
people's frames of reference for what a 'necessity' in 2026 is not exactly objective.
Ready to eat hot food that is cheaper than the ingredients to make it, is not a luxury.
Especially if it can be refrigerated and made to last for over a week, used to supplement other foods such like chicken quesadillas, chicken soup, broth and chicken salad.
Having to prep and cook is such a narrow minded way to look at things, and a way to look down at what people do to survive.
Does the fact that I can just bite into a tomato and eat it without preparation or cooking make it not a grocery? Hell, I can even do that with oatmeal if I'm down on protein and fiber.
Exactly. Additionally a lot of low income families lack the knowledge of how to properly prepare a chicken, or the equipment to do it well. When the difference is 20¢ a pound for an already seasoned and prepared bird its not really luxury prices. Luxury is like some $50 chicken wrapped in gold bullshit topped with exotic flower pistols.
These aren't properly prepared chickens. They are McChickens. They are fast food that is full of artificial crap to make it taste good.
Low income people eat a lot of fast food because it's an affordable luxury for them. That doesn't mean it's not a luxury, or that it's a good choice to make a regular part of your diet. Especially due to the long affects.
One of the first things you figure out when you get out of being poor is that paying more for food is not a luxury, it's a necessity for a higher quality of life overall. I got this lesson in college, which was the first time it was regularly available to me.
when I was 14 years old and eating shitty food everyday, I thought healthy food was 'gross' and 'crazy expensive'. I was wrong. I was just poor and trapped in a poor person's mindset and had no idea about long term costs because i was consumed with getting things as quickly as possible for as cheap as possible.
I agree that a rotisserie is closer to fast food, but I was saying most low income people are lacking any food education to make a properly prepared chicken. Most low income prople who are suffering the effects of dollars a day making a difference also lack the education of the why, where, and how they can prepare equivalent priced meals that are better for them. To some this is all they know.
I also got a lesson in college, a privalidge that you and I were able to afford that some prople genuinely never got the opportunity, and those people are the ones truly suffering from the effect of "luxury" rotisseries.
I know that. I have had partners and friends who were like this. Just because someone is all that you know, doesn't mean isn't a self-defeating self-impoverishing cycle of choices.
Just because a choice is easy and convenient and seemingly cheap doesn't make it a good choice. There are other choices, even if you don't know they exist. Especially with the internet in everyone's pocket. What is stopping someone from just looking up a recipe?
I think you misunderstand the general state of people suffering from the effects of companies forcing this upon us. For you and I it is as simple as look up a recipe and do it, some people truly do not know. They don't know to look for something else. They dont know if something is unhealthy.
And that is their own fault.
Nobody forces me to cook, nor do they force me to go buy fast food. Those are choices I make.
Even if I perceive fast food as my own choice, that doesn't mean I am correct. I am wrong. It's on me to fix my mistakes.
When I was 12 I thought McDonalds was the GREATEST food in the world. Most kids do. I didn't know it was unhealthy. But they are wrong. And it was on me to grow up and learn that McDonalds was terrible for me and should be avoided rather than celebrated.
Similar, what are we to do about Alcoholics? Condemn alcohol companies? Ban them? Or do we put the onus on them to heal themselves?
We teach them. That's thengoal. You sought out to learn, sure, but you were able to find the resources to learn from. You had the means and the ability to. Im saying there are people out there who dont even know to look for a better option. They genuinely have no idea about food health, where to start, or where to buy the food. Food Deserts exist. If you have never shopped at a Piggly Wiggly in the middle of a shit state in this twisted country, then I dont think you understand what it really means to be impoverished.
I grew up poor, very poor, but my family had the intelligence, the know how, and the ability to make better choices. Some people really dont have that. Its up to us to teach our communities to be better, not scoff and say things like "those are choices I make."
You're a troll. Go away.
I literally used to make these. It was my fucking job to make them. They are literally just the whole chickens sold in the deli, the package removed, seasoned with a mixture of things like paprika, garlic salt, pepper, cumin, etc, rubbed down by a worker, and stuck into a rotisserie heater.
That's it. That is literally it. They're not manufactured any different. You could make the same thing at home for twice the cost since the cooked chickens are cheaper than the raw chickens. There is nothing devious or sinister behind the scenes. There are no extra hormones or microchips stuck into them. I was asked to go grab X amount of chickens from the shelf, season them, cook them, then put them in their containers and put them on display.
Your ability to make a mountain out of a grain of sand needs to be studied for how unhinged some human beings are.
Again, you worked for Hannaford. That's a higher quality more expensive store. You worked for one store under one process, YEARS ago no doubt.
Practices change. Food science changes. etc. It's not sinister, it's business. It's objectively the fact that store bought chickens from Coscto and the like are full of fillers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/06/opinion/sunday/costco-chicken-animal-welfare.html
I did? That's news to me. Can't say I've ever heard of them before. I worked for fucking Wal Mart in a town of 3,000 people in rural Ontario. Also you said earlier in this thread that YEARS ago no one made rotisserie cooked chicken, so which one is it?
Your lies are starting to get exposed.
So it's clearly obvious you're a troll, an idiot, or just trying to shit on people struggling just to make it to tomorrow just so your pathetic emptiness has someone to look down on so you can feel better about how utterly shit your own life is. And if the latter is true, I don't feel sorry for you.
you can eat however you want.
however engaging in poverty finance is a way to keep yourself in poverty as it prevents you from developing smarter and healthier behaviors around food and persisting in myths and thought patterns that are objectively unhealthy and defeating.
I know this from personal experience. cheap ready to eat food is awful for you and long term does way more damage to your health and fiances than learning to cook healthy food at home. cooking for yourself is objectively healthier as you get to control what goes into your food.
but yeah if you are narrow terms of gratification and raw cost, why not just grind up the chickens into hot protein paste and let the poors eat that? or perhaps we think there is more to life than calories and macronutrients?
since when was 3-4 meals of tasty protein for under $10 considered a luxury?
because it's premade food.
fast food prices used to be similar, was that a healthy smart way to get calories? a burger and fries from mcdonalds used to be 3 bucks or so. for a lot of struggling people, it certainly was a standard option until recently and the one by me is still full of housing project kids everyday.
you didn't answer the question
I did, but you're being a typical lemmy troll who refuses to acknowledge any counter point to your simplified narrative that lacks any context because you want to bite the ragebait that makes you feel morally superior for doing so.
the article is designed to make you upset and troll you by going at your bias that premade grocery store chickens are some sort of nutritional necessity that is liberating people from the doldrums of their suffering at the evils of capitalism... even though it the chickens being sold like this is really an evil of capitalism itself.
you can't have your pre-made chicken rage and eat it too!
In fairness, like the troll you accuse everyone else of being, you have zero proof for your claim that these chickens have somehow been modified to be shittier for you, and that's why they're cheaper.
Sorry you apparently grew up in bumfuck nowhere, pal. The Hannafords in the sticks that I worked at in high school, more than 20 years ago, had plenty of rotisserie chickens, and had them long before I started working there.
You've gone and invented a massive conspiracy that ignores a simple reality. Offering rotisserie chickens as a loss leader is a simple and effective way to a) move whole chickens with minor blemishes and b) get people in the store with the promise of a cheap bird that almost always required you head to the back of the store, where they could count on you seeing several things "I may as well get while I'm here" to make up for whatever loss they sell the rotisserie chickens here.
I've worked in several major grocery stores in different regions, and never encountered any evidence of this nonsense you're so indignant people won't swallow wholeheartedly.
tl;dr: Show some proof or shut the fuck up, you muppet. Your own screeds do not count as proof, let's see some external links.
whatever proof i gave you you'd deny. you can google it. these chickens are overwhelmingly prepared with injections of salt, fat and butter and plenty of outlets have tested them and they have massive levels of sodium, saturated fat, and other stuff like preservatives and chemicals that makes them processed if not ultra processed foods.
it's not a conspiracy, it's how our food supply works.
Hannafords is small chain, we're talking about Costco and Walmart in this thread. Perhaps their chickens are better. I have been to a few of them in my area and they are an expensive store with more premium products. Whole foods has them too and theirs aren't cheap and are probably more natural.
Ah, yes, a tiny, insignificant chain, only backed by the supply chain of its parent company which is one of the largest food retailers in the entire US with it's various regional rebadges of subsidiaries.
You're talking out of your ass and you know it, while grasping at straws and completely ignoring the fact that criticism in the OP is not that they are spending money on something people like you consider a luxury, but they're framing it as a splurge to purchase a whole chicken at the lowest cost available in most stores for an entire chicken.
You really had the obvious option available to complain about this whole time, if you wanted to talk about people in debt splurging on a luxury, you could have just bitched and moaned about them springing for the probiotic juices mentioned in the OP. Instead, you're here arguing against a point nobody is making about the quality of the chicken because you've got a bug up your ass that someone else might eat a chicken you disapprove of.
Go get a hobby.
No, I'm talking out of a personal interest in economics and the food supply. You are just the one talking our your ass and thinking your personal chicken prep experience from 10-20 years ago is relevant to the market today.
Again, you have restated the same thing over and over again without proof, while not just myself, but multiple people from at least two countries, working for different major companies have told you that this was not the case where they worked. If there really is this massive conspiracy of yours to specifically inject chickens destined for the rotisserie (as opposed to just all of them, since plenty of cheaper chicken gets injected with brine and other chemicals at the processing plant, so that whole, raw chicken that you're on your high horse about being so much better often is no better or worse in this regard), then post your proof already. If you're just going to keep on moaning, "But it's true, you're all just too stupid and emotional to admit it," then kindly shut up and save us all time. You post it again, I'm going to ask you for proof of your claims another time.
You can't even be bothered to know the most basic outlines of corporate retail supply chains, or else you wouldn't be saying such stupid things like Hannaford is too small a chain to be a valid comparison, when they've been owned and backed entirely by one of the largest grocery multinationals going and used their supply chain for around two decades at this point. Given that level of ignorance on the topic, I really doubt your insights into food and grocery supply chains are even worth the electricity you're consuming to transmit them to the server when you post them.
no, what I'm asking is how a ready to eat food product that is cheaper than the raw materials alternative is considered a luxury in this context
I understand that ready to eat food itself is somewhat of a luxury, but that is not what is being discussed - what is being discussed is the cost of the food.
No no, you see when you pay any amount beyond what is absolutely necessary to survive then you are spoiled by luxury. /S
is fast food a luxury or a necessity?
this is a version of fast food. that's why it's a luxury.
it's also a factor of true cost vs the fact these are sold at a loss and understanding the psychology therein that gets people to buy more than they otherwise would.
no, what I'm asking is how a ready to eat food product that is cheaper than the raw materials alternative is considered a luxury in this context
I understand that ready to eat food itself is somewhat of a luxury, but that is not what is being discussed - what is being discussed is the cost of the food.
When the pre-made food is cheaper than uncooked food, how is it a luxury?
You think people should pay more for food, then bitch about people spending too much?
Get the hell out of here.
Also, from your previous comment:
I literally worked at the Deli in a wal mart in small town Ontario 20 years ago when I was in my late teens cooking the rotisserie chicken you're bitching about didn't exist.
You're either trolling everyone here, or a completely disconnected moron.
Lol you're changing the topic because you know he's right. If someone else cooks my meal for me, regardless of price, that's a luxury. If it costs $1 or $100, the act of another person preparing and cooking my food instead of having to do it myself is something I would consider a luxury. If it was free I would still consider the act of another person cooking my food for me a luxury. Its not about price or how much the ingredients cost separately.
Because if you don't consider having someone else make your food a luxury, what is it? Normal? Expected? Do you not cook your own food? It's wild you just call "troll" cuz he has a different opinion than you. If anything you and the people shadow boxing his comments are the trolls.
They've been changing the topic to try and shoehorn their own elitist opinion into something else. The entire topic is about cost. Not luxuries or people serving others. It's about money and how much things cost. The reason @TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world is being downvoted to hell and back is because they're missing the point from the beginning. If money is tight, why should people be forced to buy uncooked food and ingredients to make food at home, spend more money to do it, just to make some uptight person on Lemmy feel better about themselves?
If the already cooked chicken is cheaper, and money is tight for things like bills and electricity, buy the fucking cooked chicken. The only person who brought "luxury" into this was that idiot who completely missed the entire point of the conversation and the entire point of the post and had to stick his elitest fucking nose into everything.
Yes, I do cook my own food. I make dinner at home all the time. My partner cooks as well. Because we can afford dropping $20 on a club pack of pork chops, wrap a bunch in our vac sealer, and stick them in the freezer for future use. We have the means in order to store ingredients and have two freezers in our farm house and own a 14 acre property.
But we're the exception, not the rule in today's day and age. And guess what? I'll still order pizza and come home with that. Or get a rotisserie chicken because work sucked and I don't feel like cooking. And the fact that people like you and Tittyfrog genuinely care so fucking much about how other people spend their money and what they eat is remarkably pathetic.
And because I know they're going to read this comment too, to quote something they said...
When you are struggling to literally feel yourself, your kids, pay rent, fill your gas tank, and make ends meet paycheque to paycheque, you don't have the time or the energy to give a shit where the supply chain comes from. Some people are literally just trying to survive, and you talking down to people like that make you a fucking asshole.
Edit: Words.
Thanks for not really addressing anything I said and just jumping right back into your own stuff. That was cool. It let me know you didn't really read what I said, think about it, and formulate a response. Great stuff. Oh and you should scroll back up to the first comment in this chain and see that the original poster called it a luxury first, so I guess you didn't read that either. TittyFrog hasn't been the one calling people idiot, or pathetic, or asshole, YOU have been.
Maybe take a step back and read what I'm trying to say. We are talking about the idea of if hot and ready to eat food is a luxury item. Not food in general or how much it costs (which you keep bringing up when I'm telling you it's not about the cost). I don't really care how you spend your money lol, I wish my tax dollars could go towards providing food, water, and shelter to everyone instead of the military industrial complex and corporations. Most people are just trying to survive, you and me both and everyone else in this chain I'm sure.
Thanks. Yeah that's part of the point I'm trying to make.
But people don't see the world that way... they see premade food as some sort of normal thing. And ironically all the nutrionists and public health people straight up tell us that premade stuff is unhealthy and problematic in both terms of nutrition and cost. Cheap food is always full of additives and shitty stuff. Natural foods are not, but they cost more. Better food production practices and regulations, cost more, etc.
But people just want see the sticker price in front of their face and ignore all the things that go into that price and don't want to talk about them because acknowledging how the supply system works is 'trolling' because it makes them uncomfortable. The existence of $6 ready to eat roasters is seem some inherently good and worthy thing... but it isn't when you start to ask why they cost so little.
We increasingly live in this weird world were the notion of cooking your own healthy food is some form of class oppression and privileged or something. When what it does is give you way more control over what goes into your body and typically you eat less.
Because that's not what the conversation is about, and you know it.
If all you can afford for dinner is a supermarket roast chicken, you're not in a position to give a single iota of a fuck about why it's so cheap.
I can afford Michelin star roasted chickens.
I guess that means I am not allowed to buy groceries or something? Or care and have any interest in how the food supply works? Who is going to stop me from reading books and articles about nutrition and economics and farm policy?
...what? That's literally the opposite of my point.
You're in the position where you can be intentional with your food choices. Good for you.
People buying pre-cooked chickens because that's all they can afford aren't.
Most people buying pre cooked chickens aren't doing so because it's their only option. They are doing so because it's convenient and they are hood winked by the loss leader pricing into paying more for less.
If loss leader pricing didn't work companies wouldn't do it.
How is that relevant? The article doesn't say "Gen Z and millennials are getting lured in by pre-cooked chickens and then duped into buying other stuff they don't need".
How is it a luxury if it's cheaper than actual frozen whole chicken?
because the true cost is hidden
I guess you're right because there's an awful lot of nitrates, nitrites and salts in those things and they're mass produced so I guess there are a lot of long-term health costs involved.
These might help you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader
It is cheaper by weight. Also, it's seasoned, already made, and can make multiple meals. Costvo loses money on rotisserie chicken. Just like they lose money on hotdogs.
Rotisserie Chicken is cheaper than groceries. The expensive "luxury" is the grocery in this case.
TIL eating at a soup kitchen (ready to eat hot food) is a luxury.
a soup kitchen is for the homeless.
the homeless aren't buying 5 dollar rotisserie chickens
Well, they can't, because you can't buy hot food with food stamps.
Idk what's up with the downvotes. I think you're right, having someone else cook and prepare my food for me IS something I consider a luxury. Same as if someone else cleaned my dishes or did my laundry. I'm not commenting on the "quality" of the food, or the cost, just the idea of someone else cooking and prepping my food for me.
people aren't reading or thinking, they are just being outraged that their entitlement is being called out.
i get this a lot with travel too. travel is a luxury, but if you say that people tell you are a close minded asshole and that travel is a necessity for their well-being and happiness and if isn't for yours you are mentally ill.
millennials and gen z travel way more than ever and spend massive amounts on it and then cry poor about not being able to spend more on it.
life is expensive, but spending your money on luxuries like travel, ready to eat food, and food delivery and then whining about how expensive necessities are (housing, healthcare, education, groceries) is so straight up absurd. apparently everyone is broke all th e time and struggling, but when it comes to getting their grubhub, their pot, and their international vacation travel, they miraculously always have money for that.. and it can't be that these two things are maybe related?