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What if a few minutes with God could change the direction of your entire Day? With pray.com you can begin each morning with powerful daily prayers, inspiring Bible stories, and messages created to strengthen your faith. Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday Life. Download the prey.com app today does America actually have an Affordability Crisis? Ask the players that be on the interwebs and they'll tell you conflicting stories based on their personal political preferences or personal experience. And this has been an ongoing debate for years, especially for Generation Z Coming into adulthood and realizing we can't really buy a house, most of us have a really hard time finding a job and going out for lunch is now considered an extreme luxury on your hour lunch break. But I never expected a burrito to the luxury item defining America's affordability crisis until today. In the last 24 hours, the great grocery wars of 2026 and burrito gate have plagued the Internet with very angry people weighing in on Twitter on whether or not it's okay for a burrito to cost $20, whether it's Chipotle or making burritos for a family of eight based on what you bought at the grocery store. People have very strong feelings about this. So today my daughter and I are taking a trip to our neighborhood grocery store to see what it would cost to put together the ingredients for burritos. A family of four to answer once and for all, is there an affordability crisis in America? Let's go check it out. I am on a mission to settle Burrito Gate once and for all today in this grocery store. But here's the thing. Call me Maha. Call me a little granola crunchy Mom. I'm not settling for a tortilla, refried beans and stretched ground beef. As in we're doing less meat in the burrito as suitable dinner for my family. I'm just not doing it. I'm not doing it. So I looked up on Chat the average ingredients that would go into a burrito, and that's what we're tallying up today at the grocery store. If, like me, you remot care about preservatives and all of those things on food, you're probably buying organic and chances are in your burrito. Unless you're worried about Taco Bell diarrhea gate, you're buying a head of lettuce for your burrito. $1.99 for a head of organic romaine lettuce. Add it to the tally. Is that it? That's all we have for organic. That's really sad. I'm actually curious what the alternative is, though. Collard greens. I guess the closest substitute is iceberg. If you're not buying organic, which is still $1.69, that's like a difference. It's not sustainable. Is the only way to buy non organic lettuce in plastic? Because if so, that's kind of sad. That's sad. Okay. Organic tomatoes, 4.99 for a pound. But you obviously don't need a pound for this. So let's say, I don't know, $50. But these non organic are $1.69 a pound. So that does save a lot of money. Let's say a dollar. It's a avocado. Thanks. It's avocado. Thanks. They only sell organic avocados. Oh, no. They do. Right here. $3.99 each. They are expensive right now. So let's pretend we're doing this on a budget. You can get a large avocado for 279 a pop. Is that good? Squish. Not too squishy, but squishy enough. You know what I mean? We like it. Fun fact. I love onions. Love onions. Cannot get enough onions. Much to my mother's chagrin, it's okay because she hate onions. Apparently my daughter's not in an onion mood either. Ogres are like onions. They stink. Yes. No. Oh, they make you cry. No. Oh, you leave them out in the sun, they get all brown, start sprouting little white hairs. No. Got a few options in a burrito. I'd probably do a yellow or a sweet onion, both of which are $1.99 a pound. So I don't know. Let's say an even dollar again. These are heavier than tomatoes, though. $50, just to be safe. Can't have a great burrito without a little bit of seasoning. If you don't have seasoning already, which actually a lot of people don't, it's pretty surprising you can just buy a single taco seasoning packet. I wouldn't recommend this personally. I would use actual seasonings. But it's $1.79. So we'll add it. We'll add it to the list, which we could have a whole gigantic debate over healthy rice and not healthy rice. Okay. I feel like rice will vary a lot because it depends on what brand you're buying. If you're buying a gigantic bag or box versus one of the instant microwave ones, it totally does just depend. So let's err on the cheaper side, the cautious say you're not paying attention to what kind of rice you're getting. What's in the rice? If there are preservatives, the healthier kind. Whatever. Here is a bag of America's favorite rice. Apparently enriched rice. No, this will be just. If you're not caring about what's in the bag, I know you're weighing in too. This has 30 servings per container, and the whole thing is on sale normally $4.59. Now it's $3.49. So we'll do the math per serving, which I guess we'll put. Same problem with salsa. Are you paying attention to what's in it? Is it healthy? It's not healthy. Is it organic? Is it not organic? You can get a lot of variety here, but again, we'll err on the side of cheaper options for you. Let's just pick a general mild salsa, 359 per container. And be honest with yourself. If you're really having a burrito without salsa, is life actually worth living? I don't think so. I don't think so. No. It has to go in the burrito. Of course it goes in the burrito. Do all of these ingredients, like, is rice? Yes. Everything is in the burrito. Sorry. Producer Jess has a lot of questions for me. Look, maybe it's because most of the people having the burrito debate today are guys. They just would eat anything. Like guy dinner. I'm not. I'm a woman, and I'm a mom, so call me crazy, but I think it should be relatively reasonable to have more than a tortilla, refried beans, and, like, this much ground beef all wrapped up in one as your healthy, nutritious dinner you're giving to your children. I know you agree we are not making boy kibble burritos in this household. We're making the good stuff. I, for one, would never put beans in a burrito, even if I'm at Chipotle or Qdoba. Blasphemy. I know, but my tummy doesn't like beans very much. Sorry to be that specific. We all know the song from elementary school. Beans, beans, the magical fruit. No, no beans for me. But if you are putting beans in your burritos. $2.69 for America's favorite based bean brand. I used to freaking love Chef Boyardee when I was a kid, and Jess just reminded me of the commercials. Like, do you guys REM dude roll home. Your lolly used to feed it to me. It was good enough for your mommy, but it's not good enough for you. As she reaches for it longingly, the children yearn for the Chef Boyardee. A huge component of this conversation I think we're missing is how to feed your kids a healthy meal to nourish and sustain their life, which moms think about every day. But it's not just about what food we feed our kids. It's about protecting life from the moment of conception. Right? Somewhere in America, there's a young woman sitting alone today contemplating an abortion for the baby growing within her. She's looking for someone, anyone, to help and reach her with the truth when it really matters. And that's exactly where our friends at Live Action come into play. They meet women right at the exact moment that they need the truth the most. Before an abortion, before a life ending decision that she can never take back. Live Action every day is reaching millions of people with online content, changing hearts and minds about abortion. Telling moms that they are not alone, that their baby has value and that they can have hope. About one in five women who see their content and up deciding not to have an abortion, which is incredible. A single video, a single message, a single moment can save a life forever. And for about $50, you can help another woman who is struggling to make the choice to courageously protect her child's life by continuing to support Live Action. If, like me, you want to jump into the fight for life and help this next generation, you can text isabelle to 70723 or head to liveaction.org donate isabelle. Also a super based maha friendly, very healthy for you brand. These are our absolute favorite tortilla chips if you're ever in the market. We love them. We literally can go through like five bags in one sitting. It's not good. And the churro ones, most underrated. So good. Okay, again, one of those things that if you're not paying attention to what's in it, typically you'll probably go for like your mission tortillas, which actually tastes really good. You need the burrito size for a burrito or it's all gonna fall out. A taco is not a burrito, people. And these are two for $6. So $3 a pack right now. That's a nice special. Don't read the ingredient list. Okay. Oh, it's so bad. It's just seed oil central. Everything's enriched. You've got every type of seed oil you could possibly imagine. Soybean oil, lovely. That's disgusting. Yum. But two for $6, not a bad deal. Good factor. Sour cream in there if we want, but don't have to like salsa. If you are genuinely eating a burrito without cheese, your life is really sad and needs some immediate psychological evaluation. I'm just saying that. However, also like every other product we've talked about, you kind of have to not care about what's in your cheese because most shredded cheese, massive preservatives in it. So just be aware when you are buying it for said burrito. This is also on sale right now, normally349, currently 2.99 for your bag of Mexican cheese, which you need on your burrito to be a sane person. Okay. It's actually insane to me, by the way, that in America you can put on your meat products, product of the usa. Like you can put a sticker that says product of the usa. And it doesn't actually mean that the meat came from America. It could have been raised, butchered somewhere else in a whole other part of the planet and then sent here for processing. And that makes it count as a product of the usa. So just so you know, that's why we buy our meat from good ranchers. I don't ever buy meat at the store ever again. Given the limited options at the grocery store, let's look at a generally higher end option and then just the value pack. Value packs down here are 6.99 a pound. I wish I had a scale. I don't have a scale on. We might have to take this up to the front. Whereas these are 8.99 total for much less meat. Okay, so what's the math on that then? If it's like 2 and some change pounds, $6.99 a pound, we're talking 16, $17 for the value pack of a lot more ground beef. The healthy one being 8.99 for all of this. And our objective is to feed a family of four. I don't know if you could feed a family of four with this. In my husband's house, probably not. I grew up with a family of all girls. We do eat a little bit less. Yes, it gives and takes a little bit. But the people waging this war online over burrito gate claim that they are stretching the meat anyway, meaning they're not putting very much meat in the tortilla with the refried beans. So I'm gonna say yes to this for a family of four. If we're stretching the meat, I think that's fair. Right? And we're also putting more in the burrito than just beans. And a tiny bit of ground beef. Okay, so I'll give you the total in a second. But that's not including chips. That's not including sour cream. If you're one of those people. I love sour cream in my burritos. That's not including any of the seasonings in your seasoning drawer and or spice cabinet. That's if you bought the singular packet. So I think that was a pretty conservative estimate beyond the sad refried bean tortilla combo that seems to be dominating burrito gate on the Internet today, let's see how much it all costs. Turns out for a family of four. If you're a psycho woman like me and want to feed your family more than refried beans and two tiny crumbles of ground beef and a tortilla, here's what it's going to cost you. $3 for the pack of tortil tortillas and about $8.99 for the ground beef. 2.99 for your cheese. $3.59 for your jar of salsa, $3.49 for a bag of rice. $1.50 for an onion, $2.79 for an avocado. Guac is extra, but everyone wants it. A dollar for tomato, $1.99 for lettuce. And that brings us to a grand total of. Drum roll, please. $29.34 for a family of four for your burrito night tonight. But I think there's a bigger point in all of this that we're severely missing in the affordability crisis conversation. Because here's the thing. A burrito should not be our indicator of whether or not we have a healthy, thriving economy or even just remote opportunities for the next generation. It's cute and it's trendy to see burritos all over our social media right now. My personal favorite take in the last 24 hours being from Mr. Michael Knowles. It's a breakfast burrito. Oh, wow. Okay. I don't really care for burritos. I don't really like them very much. They're a little exotic. They're a little unpleasantly exotic for me, I would say. I don't really care for burritos. And yet he's eating one. Coincidence. But when young people today are complaining about an affordability crisis, what we're actually confronting is not just the laziness of doordashing every single meal. Which can be a problem. Yes. Or a lack of desire to want to work. Despite our reputation, Gen Z is not a lazy, work, hesitant, entitled generation. That is lacking the drive to succeed. Forbes magazine years ago said 62% of us had already started our own businesses while we were still in school. So I'm tired of the laziness thing. But the truth is young adults today are facing new economic challenges that our parents at our age never could have conceptualized. Period. Full stop. And that's what we mean by affordability crisis. Housing by far is the largest expense for vast majority of American households. And we just did a whole episode on this the other day about how it's not really about saving money by skipping coffee out. The housing market today is insurmountably more difficult for young people to get their first foot in the door, literally than it was for our parents at the same age. Did you know 49% of Americans who are under the age of 30 still live with their parents? Half and 23% of renters in America have reported falling behind significantly in their rent payments in the last year, a lot of which has all been exacerbated buying or renting a house or apartment by illegal immigration. But no one wants to talk about that. Speaking of, There are about 10 million unemployed Gen Zers in America today who desperately want a job. And meanwhile, instead of promoting economic policies that help young American citizens who did everything right, crossed all their T's and dotted all their eyes, got the magic diploma and are trying to get into the job market today there are Republicans down the street on Capitol Hill introducing mass amnesty bills for, you guessed it, 10 million plus illegal immigrants because it's good for the economy to have cheap labor. But sure, unemployed idiot living in your parents basement, it's your door dashing that's the problem in promoting my daughter's health real quick because I have a new obsession that you have to hear about. I grew up snoring my entire childhood and now into my adulthood I grind my teeth at night, which means I have tmj. I've got a lot of issues that ideally I don't want to pass on to my daughter. And I recently came across a new company that is seeking to change all of it forever for the next generation. Tooth Pillow Toothpillow is focused on guiding a healthy airway and jaw development for our kids while they sleep as they're growing up from ages 3 to 12 with a really simple device they wear while they're sleeping at night that can change the entire trajectory of their jaw health. They offer a free virtual assessment followed by a consultation with an airway dentist, which I love because frankly we as moms have enough we need to worry about out there in the world. We shouldn't have to worry about our kids soundly sleeping in their beds every night. If you've noticed your child starting to grind their teeth or snore at night or sleep, sleep with their mouth open, breathing through their mouth, Toothpillow is such an easy place to start learning more about how you can direct your child's health in the right direction. Head to toothpillow.com today and use code Isabelle to get a free video assessment upgrade whether you personally feel the strain of it or not, and most of the people weighing in on this on the Internet don't do their own grocery shopping, so I'd imagine they're a little out of touch from the subject. About half of Americans today say that grocery prices are a major source of financial stress for their family. They just are. And another third on top of the existing half say that they're at least a source of minor stress. In the last decade per se, From May of 2016 to May of this year, 2026, grocery prices have risen about 34% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index. And if you incorporate overall food prices, including restaurants or takeaway food, the cost of food has risen about 41% in the last decade. Most of that, of course, was driven by the pandemic. And that goes without saying. I mean, Bidenflation was a real problem. We did it, we did it, Joe. But to act like that never happened all of a sudden because you think it might make the current people in power look bad somehow, or we're afraid to just acknowledge that there is a problem still happening is not the solution. One of the main people weighing in on all of this conflict is Joel Berry, who used to work with Babylon Bee. Now he is the producer of the Jeremy Boring show, and he was going back and forth with Matt Walsh about the price of burritos as an indicator of a healthy economy. But interestingly, under the Biden administration, Joel Berry regularly was twee about the increasing price of groceries and how it was so unbelievably difficult for young families to afford basic goods and services because of rampant inflation. Working people are struggling to feed their own children while supporting people who don't work. That was true a few years ago. It still is true in a lot of places around the country. Before long, we'll all be millionaires, and we still won't be able to afford groceries because of inflation. Or even Replying directly to Kamala Harris, I'd like to go back to A time when there were no wars and I could afford groceries. Countries, please. But now there's a new attitude adopted by a whole bunch of people on the political right suggesting that there is no such thing as an affordability crisis. Because maybe there's a fear that it would make conservatives currently in office look like they don't know what they're doing. So now we say, I'm beginning to think that the affordability crisis is really an I don't know how to cook crisis. But under the last president, totally fine to admit that things cost way too too much money. Not to add a whole nother wrench into this conversation, but the question shouldn't just be can families afford food either. All of this debate, as mentioned several times in this video, has been centered around the idea of putting a can of refried beans, a couple morsels of ground beef and nothing else into a tortilla for eight people and calling that a nutritious, healthy dinner. But we are in the middle of a vastly important national conversation about making America healthy again and not eating preservative, chemically loaded crap, but to feed our children with nutritious food that actually supports long term health also. So the question really should be can families afford the kind of food that is going to sustain and nourish us that supports long term health? We can't just encourage cheap food. We also need to be encouraging affordable, healthy food in the process. I don't know why there is such a massive hesitancy from conservatives with large platforms to admit that young people do have have serious economic concerns about the country. We are coming into adulthood in the fact that housing prices have virtually doubled in the last six years. But boomers on the Internet will tell you that burritos are still relatively cheap. So clearly there isn't affordability crises happening is the most spiritually boomer take I think I've ever seen on the Internet. And the great irony of this entire conversation is the people saying don't look over there. There is no such thing as an affordability crisis. Just like laziness from young people are virtually handing a victory on a silver platter to the radical socialist left in the midterm elections and beyond, simply because it is only virtually the socialists who are even using the word affordability in the political sphere at all. And yet it will be the socialistic policies that end up getting adopted because they're the only thing talked about with how to fix the economy that ultimately will worsen the affordability crisis beyond the point of no return. Matt Walsh called it political suicide that conservatives and Republicans are refusing to weigh in on the affordability crisis in a meaningful way, especially weeks before one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime. And he's getting roasted all over the Internet for it. But I think he's pretty spot on. So please, I am begging you, as loud as I possibly can, out into the ether. Can the right push literally any other messaging whatsoever than this? Going into midterms, all I can hear the past several days on loop in my mind is a scene from the Emperor's New Groove. Perhaps you may remember it. It is no concern of mine whether your family has. What was it again? Food. Ha. You really should have thought of that before you became peasants. We didn't choose to be peasants. And you don't have to stay a peasant in America. That's the beautiful thing about the free market. But when the market is no longer free and has way too much bureaucracy weighing into artificially inflated prices for health care and housing and groceries and every basic good and services, why are the free market conservatives refusing to fight for deregulation? Wouldn't you think that's a political win? I don't know. Well, feeling like burritos for dinner? I don't know. What about you?