Why ‘What’s for Dinner?’ Is Harder than Ever

Alice Avalar (0:07)

We have a pretty small kitchen, so everybody's kind of running around and kind of passing by me as I'm trying to get in the fridge and get things working on the stove.

Imani Moise (0:21)

Alice Avalar is an insurance specialist and a mother of two who lives just outside Chicago. She recorded a typical dinner prep for us on her phone.

SPEAKER_3 (0:29)

You think there's a lot of ovens broken?

Alice Avalar (0:31)

I'm just going to drop off some today. My husband comes in to check in and see what's cooking, see if he can get a little taste.

Imani Moise (0:44)

How much of your time is spent thinking about making dinner?

Alice Avalar (0:47)

I feel like I think about dinner multiple times a day, for hours a day, and it doesn't have to be just tonight's dinner, but I'm sourcing recipes, or I'm trying to think about what we could potentially eat or how I could change those recipes to fit our needs as a family.

Imani Moise (1:07)

That sounds like a real job. You know, when I talk to Alice and ask her that question, what's for dinner, I could see the stress rising.

Jesse Newman (1:20)

Yeah, across the country, different people from all walks of life, everyone seemed to be struggling with some version of this question.

Imani Moise (1:29)

Our colleague, Jesse Newman, covers the food industry. And lately, she's been asking lots of people, what's for dinner?

It's a seemingly simple question, but the answer often involves a ton of work.

Jesse Newman (1:42)

That requires, you know, coming up with ideas. Someone's got to write a grocery list. Someone has to do the grocery shopping. You know, what can I make that isn't the same as what we made two nights ago? What can I do within our budget?

Inflation is a huge piece of this.

Imani Moise (1:58)

How much are rising grocery prices adding to the stress of making dinner every day?

Jesse Newman (2:03)

Pretty much everyone we talked to talked about both rising grocery prices and rising restaurant prices. Often the conversation around restaurants was, you know, this used to be sort of a fallback for us on a busy night or this used to be a go-to and how prohibitively expensive that had gotten.

And then grocery prices too, because food prices have gotten so expensive, that's just another calculation that is added to the mix. Now, I not only have to figure out like what to make, but I have to figure out how I can do this in a way that, you know, my family can afford.

Imani Moise (2:45)

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Imani Moise. It's Monday, September 28th.

Coming up on the show, that annoying question we have to ask ourselves every single day. What's for dinner?

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Imani Moise (4:48)

What's your relationship to that question? What's for dinner tonight?

Alice Avalar (4:51)

It's definitely like the biggest cause of stress in my life. It's like every day, it's frustrating to think about, you know, what we're going to have, when we're going to have it, and how we're going to make it all work out.