I think the type of food you eat/cook makes a huge difference. Here are some examples:
Pho:
– Whole chicken (~1-5, depending on if you buy on sale or not)
– Veggies ($2-5)
– Noodle ($2)
So, for $12, you can easily feed 4-8 people, depending on how much chicken you eat.
Spring roll:
– 1 lb of sliced pork ($3-4)
– 1 lb of shrimp (~$4)
– Veggies ($2-5)
– Noodle ($2)
For $11-15, you can easily feed 6-8 people.
Or you can go for less fancy meals and get make stir fry beef + soup & rice:
– 1 lb of beef $3-5
– Veggies for soup ($2)
– Rice ($1)
For $6-8, you can easily feed 8-10 people, depending on your beef to rice consumption ratio.
This is might be why our food bill is much lower than yours. Although CAR’s is right that we don’t have 2 full grown kids. Our oldest is already eating almost as much as my wife. But this won’t affect the cost much, because as you can see above, the type of food we cook can feed a lot of people for very little money. It’s better and cheaper than your $1 burger + fries at McDonald. CAR, like I said, my aunt does an even better job than us, since she cooks 95% Asian food while we’re closer to 50%. She also only buy stuff that are on sale and freeze them for future usage. She grows most of the veggies they eat. She feeds two teenage boys and two teenage girls. So, her food consumption is A LOT higher than ours. But, just based on the food she cooks, I don’t think her food bill is nearly as high as ours, even with more people eating.
