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£5.09 is about 25 minutes work at National Minimum Wage ( £12.21 per hour ), about 5.6% of daily income at NMW and standard working hours.

A bacon & egg McMuffin provides 336 kcal, which is 13% of an adult male's RDI. So on a purely kcals:price level it does seem to provide decent value.

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On the kcal/£ basis, Tesco biscuits (for Americans: cookies) are more than an order of magnitude better, 487 kcal/100g, £0.22/100g, about £0.15 for as many kcal as that McMuffin: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/290329100

On the basis of an actually balanced diet, boiling a pot of water and adding lentils, rice, and value frozen veg on a timer, are likewise. Which is of course why that's a staple diet in parts of the world much poorer than the UK.

For £5.09 you get the hash brown, so it's 500+ cals. It costs 25 mins of paid labour and it also saves N minutes of domestic labour if one were to have similar hot protein+cals at home. High-income people tend not to understand this part, they'll say you can eat beans and rice for nothing.

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