...so says Mark Bittman at the New York Times—you can make a roasted chicken dinner for four for $13.78, or rice and beans for $9.26, versus $27.89 at McDonald's (click on the graphic under "Multimedia" on the left). And yes, he acknowledges that people need time to cook and all that—and he's not talking about organics, either:
The alternative to soda is water [or milk, in the case of in his homemade meals], and the alternative to junk food is not grass-fed beef and greens from a trendy farmers’ market, but anything other than junk food: rice, grains, pasta, beans, fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, bread, peanut butter, a thousand other things cooked at home — in almost every case a far superior alternative.
“Anything that you do that’s not fast food is terrific; cooking once a week is far better than not cooking at all,” says Marion Nestle, professor of food studies at New York University and author of “What to Eat.” “It’s the same argument as exercise: more is better than less and some is a lot better than none.”
He also knows he's preaching to the choir, and discusses that too (mostly on the second page)—e.g.:
Real cultural changes are needed to turn this around. Somehow, no-nonsense cooking and eating—roasting a chicken, making a grilled cheese sandwich, scrambling an egg, tossing a salad—must become popular again, and valued not just by hipsters in Brooklyn or locavores in Berkeley. The smart campaign is not to get McDonald’s to serve better food but to get people to see cooking as a joy rather than a burden, or at least as part of a normal life.
That's indeed going to be an uphill battle. (Here's Bittman's recipe for roasted chicken. And for rice and beans.)