Food for Thought - The Economics of Eating
Food, Abundance, and the Economics of Eating
Food, Abundance, and the Economics of Eating
This week's blogpost - https://bahnsen.co/3RTyKah
Trevor Cummings hosts the Thoughts on Money (TOM) podcast with Brett Bonecutter and Blaine Carver to discuss Brett’s article on food and its economic and cultural implications. They explore how nearly any topic connects to money, then reflect on family dinners, modern home layouts, and how convenience and abundance may reduce intentional time together. Brett shares “food dollar collapse” data: food fell from nearly 50% of household budgets in the early 1900s to 9.7% in 2025, while spending has flipped from mostly groceries to mostly eating out/convenience, and time in the kitchen dropped from six hours per day to about 45 minutes. They discuss trade-offs like lowered appreciation, snacking, delivery markups, loss of cooking skills, and “options overload” in stores with 32,000 items, plus a brief MAHA-related comparison of past low medical spending versus today’s higher costs.
00:00 Welcome to TOM
00:14 Why Talk About Food
02:15 Dinner Table Culture
06:30 Food Memories and Nostalgia
09:46 Food Dollar Collapse
15:29 Abundance Trade Offs
20:12 Convenience and Eating Out
22:04 Convenience And Doomscrolling
23:50 Cooking As Joy And Budget
26:55 Learning Kitchen Skills
28:36 Generations And Eating Out
30:42 MAHA Food And Healthcare
33:09 Pop Tarts And Choice Overload
36:09 Tradeoffs Gratitude And Wrap
Links mentioned in this episode:
Trevor is a Partner, Director of our Private Wealth Advisor Group, and Author of Thoughts on Money.
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