[quacker]

This needs more detailed data that normalizes for the amount of food (price per calorie or price per weight or something like that).

Yes, a bowl at chipotle in the US might be 2x the price (more, probably) of a Japanese bowl, but it matters if I am getting 2x the calories also.

And there are foods in the US that are technically as cost effective, although maybe not as nutritious, like pizza which they mention, that can be around $1-$3 per slice. (Not my first choice for a lunch, but I could pickup a large 3 topping dominos pizza for $10 and make 3-4 lunches out of it, for example)

[627467]

> In Japan, workers rely on healthy lunch bowls for under $4

The title doesn't capture that, but the issue is not that the US can't produce $4 lunches. It's it can't enable cheap(er) healthy lunches

[quacker]

I'm not sure what your point is. Is it about the lunches being specifically healthy?

A rice bowl at Chipotle, for example, is not unhealthy (rice, beans, meat, vegetables). Plenty of restaurant food in the US is perfectly healthy (or, you can look at nutrition facts to know if it is). And if I can take a single US portion size and split it into two lunches that are Japanese-sized portions, then maybe we're getting the same amount food per dollar.

And on the "healthy" point: The article doesn't discuss nutrition facts at all or refer to any specific meals or dishes.

They link to an article concerning the price of Japanese bowls, that mentions "a regular-sized bowl of rice with beef from Japanese fast food chain Yoshinoya, which costs around 468 yen (S$4.25)." I don't know Japanese so it's hard for me to find nutrition information about that particular dish, but I suspect that a beef bowl is high in saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium (because most stir-fried beef is higher in these things). Is that healthy? Japan as a country has higher sodium intake than the US. Is that healthy? And so on. I suspect a big factor of the "health" of these lunches is that portion sizes are just smaller than in the US (but I have no data).