For where I live, the last time I looked into this (in 2024), if you wanted to make a burger with the same amount of meat and toppings as a basic mcdouble, you're looking at spending almost $50 upfront for ingredients (meat, bun, cheese, onion, and ketchup) and even by weight you're barely breaking even.

You can go to the grocery store and buy frozen French fries and frozen patties and heat them in a toaster oven and it will be cheaper and better than McDonald's.

Granted for that you need a freezer and a toaster oven and a grocery store, and many people don't have those.

I know people in their 30s who don't know how to cook beyond microwave meals and actively don't want to learn. Some of them have enough money they basically always go out to eat and drive throughs are convenient

Are there people who can't prepare the most basic foods themselves?

Sadly yes, either because they were never taught or never learned the basic skills, or live in food deserts that basically prevent them from access to groceries they can purchase and cook.

It's actually a problem that people usually doesn't prepare food tried to, and have to spend an hour on everything to make mediocre food, to the point that there's thousands of video teaching how to preo food quickly. Internet Shaquille's video are basically made to combat that.