The boxed meal helping Americans stay on budget

0:01NPR.

0:11This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong, and I'm joined today by British business journalist Tala Visrum. Hi. Hi, Waylon. Great to be here. Now, you are here today to talk about one of my favorite culinary inventions, and you've even got a clip from a classic ad. What would you guys like? Hamburger helper. What? One pound, one pan. Ugh, hamburger helper. This is always like a little treat when I was little, so it would come in a box, right? You have a seasoning packet, you've got some dried pasta, and then you throw it in a pan with some ground beef and you got yourself a meal.

0:46Right, and hamburger helper sales have spiked in recent months and I had to find out why. But first I had to find out what it actually was. I grew up in the UK, so my childhood was more Marmite and Ribena. I was joined on my sampling journey by a friend, Grayson Dangle. What would the British hamburger helper be? Like Sunday roast or like Yorkshire pudding powder? Maybe add your own bangers. Yeah. But many Americans did grow up with it, including Grayson. I feel like it was a weeknight thing, especially when me and my brother were little, probably when my mom was just like, let's get something quick.

1:21Just two Brooklyn millennials casually sampling Hamburger Helper on a Monday morning, which is maybe more of an economic indicator than anything. You gotta start your week off right. So today on the show, what is driving so many shoppers back to a nostalgic one box, one pound, one pan meal? Hamburger Helper has become this meal for an anxious economic moment. It's part low consumer confidence, part savvy business moves from a new corporate owner.

1:54Eagle Foods, which now owns Hamburger Helper, says sales shot up by double digits last year. So how come? Well, the first reason is it's cheap. Even now, it's about$2 a box at Walmart. That's without the meat. And if you don't know, like I didn't know, Hamburger Helper is somewhat of an American pantry staple. It's essentially a packet of dry carbohydrate, like pasta or rice or potato, along with some sort of mysterious powdered mixture. You mix it with milk and water and a protein, usually ground beef, and it turns into a quick casserole of sorts. It's really like the original meal prep or what are those like meal kits?

2:36Some people might know it as like goulash. It's noodles and sauce and cheese to mix with your hamburger meat. Jadrian Wooten, an associate professor of economics at Virginia Tech, has framed it as kind of a response to economic hard times for families. So it's not necessarily something that people want to consume, but rather something that people need to consume. In fact, the product itself was invented during a downturn. Multinational giant General Mills created the concept in December 1970 as the U.S. emerged from a recession. That one was partly caused by the Nixon administration's fiscal tightening measures to plug budget deficits from the Vietnam War.

3:13The original slogan was one pound, one pan, and they advertised it as an easy meal for hyper-cost-conscious cooks. Now, what do you think this cost per serving? $1.25? 75 cents. 57 cents. 35 cents. The answer is with hamburger helper less than 35 cents a serving, including the cost of the hamburger. They were teaching about unit economics of meal planning right in a TV ad. We used to be a proper country. And it tends to do well in hard times since then. In mid-2009, during the financial crisis, news reports from the time cite sales going up about 9%. And in 2020, during the pandemic's stay-at-home cooking moment, sales also briefly spiked.

3:57And as we've reported on the indicator, food prices are up. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, food is up 3.1 percent over the 12 months ending in December. But that's more like 4.1 percent when you eat out. So rising food prices are pushing people to cook at home and look for bargains. And then beef is a part of this. We did a recent episode on how beef prices are at an all-time high. And remember, Hamburger Helper is basically designed around ground beef. So part of why I wanted to do this story is it's kind of surprising to see this booming popularity for a foodstuff that relies on beef, right as it's getting more and more expensive.

4:35But it has to do with the economics of different cuts of meat. Ground beef is a very versatile product in terms of how it's made. Here's Darrell Peel, a professor of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University. Ground beef consumption represents 45-ish percent of our total beef consumption in the U.S. So the ground beef market is extremely important. And generally, ground beef is the most economical beef product to turn to. Interestingly enough, ground beef has actually gone up more than the other muscle cuts in the last two years. $6.82 a pound in November versus about$4 pre-pandemic.

5:13But in absolute terms, it's still going to be one of the cheaper beef products. And this is the real explanation. Ground beef and hamburger helper are what economists call inferior goods. Not inferior as in bad or worse or unhealthy. This is economists' way of saying these goods behave differently from normal goods. A normal good you buy more of when you have more money. But an inferior good you buy more of it when you have less money. Some classic examples are public transportation. People might take the bus more in hard times and taxis more when they're feeling flush. Or store-brand foods. Or vacationing at a national park instead of the Caribbean.

5:54And with an economy where many people are feeling strapped, inferior goods grow more popular. So when we asked the company, where is the growth coming from? They said, yes, new customers have jumped onto the hamburger helper bandwagon. But the company also stressed that existing customers are buying the product at a higher rate. Restaurant prices are up, food in general costs more, the inferior goods sees a rise in demand. Classic. Again, inferior not meaning low quality. It's about the demand conditions. And the company even kind of acknowledges this. They call Hamburger Helper, quote, the meal for the moment.

6:32I like the alliteration. Right, but it's not just the price. Can I tell you about reason two? Hamburger Helper is having a cultural moment. Is this because of the bear, the TV show? I'm from Chicago, so. Well, sort of, but it's more than that. There's a surge in demand for high-protein diets, driven by wellness fads from social media, and people on GLP-1 drugs consuming more protein to retain muscle mass. Products labeled as protein-rich were up almost 5 % in the U.S. between March 2024 and 2025, according to research group Nielsen IQ. Okay, but also the bear, right? I thought you'd at least have, like, Hamburger Helper.

7:14What's that? It sounds nasty. You serious? Dead serious. And that also coincided with a whole social media moment of making, like, souped-up Hamburger Helper at home. And if you thought I was making Hamburger Helper from a box, that's cute. Not in this house. I'm not going out to buy special boxes of Hamburger Helper when I have all the components at home. Well, I mean, that kind of defeats the purpose because the whole thing about Hamburger Helper is it's super fast. Fair enough. Okay, so agree to disagree on how to take your helper. But the point is, more attention on TV and social media put the idea in front of new people.

7:49And then the company helped that along by branding this as a cost-conscious, easy, high-protein meal. Call that reason three. Okay, reason three. So a new company bought Hamburger Helper in 2022, Eagle Foods. They marketed some new versions of the product as, quote, takeout at home. Oh, that's like a direct response to the high prices of eating out. Exactly. And they added a bunch of new flavors like sweet and savory teriyaki and the very takeout-inspired Brewpub cheeseburger. Interesting. I'm now wondering how Brewpub cheeseburger is different than the standard hamburger helper, which also has already all the components of a cheeseburger.

8:30But you know what? Maybe we'll just have to make it and find out. My flavor of choice was spicy jalapeno cheeseburger. Ooh. Okay, let me take you back to my taste test with Grayson. I'm excited to hold the mic up to your mouth for like an ASMR hamburger helper experience. Okay, I'm going in for my first bite.

8:53Thoughts? You know what? It's actually pretty good. Yeah? Yeah. So you liked it? I didn't hate it. I understand the appeal. Okay, well you should try tuna helper next. That's another one from my childhood. You're not the first person to say that. And by the way, a can of tuna is cheaper than a pound of beef, just about. News we can use. Thanks very much for joining us today, Talib. Thanks so much for having me, Waylon.