Shera Avi-Yonah

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197 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 13 Aug

Shera Avi-Yonah’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.

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The Intelligence from The Economist · Caracas under pressure: democracy in Venezuela · 13 Aug 2026 podcast

It may shock some listeners, but Americans appear to be falling out of love with fast food.

Shira Aviona is a business correspondent.

In the first half of this year, traffic is down.

We saw in McDonald's most recent earnings report that US sales, which is kind of their key market, are not going particularly well, and share prices, including McDonald's, have fallen in its case by some ten percent this year.

Dang on.

So for one, as any American will tell you, inflation is part of the story.

So price increases at quick service restaurants, which is kind of the industry lingo for what we would think of as fast food, have really outpaced grocery inflation.

So federal statistics track food at home inflation and food away from home.

And food away from home has been on a tear, but particularly so.

At fast food establishments.

That has led consumers to turn elsewhere, no matter how much they might love a burger and fries.

And more recently, they have not been helped by the fact that America is currently going through a parasitic outbreak that has been tied to lettuce that is used in some fast food chains, but also has kind of just made consumers a bit afraid of going to places even where.

iceberg lettuce is not kind of a common part of the menu.

Aaron Powell Not in particular, but they've been forced to wean themselves from their beloved burgers, at least for now.

So low-income Americans who are the kind of core customer for fast food chains are eating at home more in response to cost pressures, especially as gas prices have risen.

Supermarkets and convenience stores are kind of eating at fast food chains' market share, in some cases with.

with more reasonable prices and possibly in the kind of longer term, slimming drugs like GLP1s might be changing the way that people choose what they want to eat.

Yes, they're trying their best.

And as I was writing the story, I thought to myself, this has really become a gimmick or meme based industry in response.

So they've thrown everything at this that they can think of over the past couple of years.

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