rant · moment 8 of 15
Taco Bell Nostalgia and the $2.59 Beefy Five-Layer Burritos
from Price Of Poison | The Tim Dillon Show #379 · #379
9 min
Riffing on a viral post about old Taco Bell prices, Tim contrasts early-2000s fast food nostalgia (Wendy's Monterey chicken sandwich, KFC honey BBQ wings) with 9/11 and Abu Ghraib, then muses on how no one gets mad about food poisoning us, only about the price of the poison.
- Tim notes that $20 at Taco Bell now buys significantly less than it did in the early 2000s when the chain first became popular.
- The late 1990s and early 2000s represented a golden age of fast food, when Americans comforted themselves with cheap meals while watching 9/11 unfold and the Iraq War escalate.
- A woman discovered a Taco Bell receipt from 2012 showing two Beefy Five-Layer Burritos for $2.59 total.
- Tim argues the rage about fast food is never directed at the poison itself, but only at the price of the poison—people just want to die cheaply.
- He describes 1 a.m. Taco Bell runs as a moment when people knowingly consume poison but demand it be affordable.
- The Beefy Five-Layer Burrito nutritional breakdown reveals it contains no real food—just plastic, grade D meat, and processed ingredients.
- Tim recounts Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and how muckraking journalism about meat packing abuses led to food safety reforms, unlike today's endless books about food poisoning that nobody reads.
- The woman's point is simple: you used to be able to eat a thousand calories of garbage poison for under $3, consuming half a day's calories in five minutes.
- Americans accept that corporations are poisoning rivers, lakes, water, and food because they want a good deal and are prepared to make moral compromises to survive.
- Tim insists nobody in America fails to become wealthy because they're too moral—the country is built on preparing people early to accept moral compromise.
Taco BellUpton SinclairRobert F. KennedyThe JungleKFCWendy'sAbu GhraibBill Burr