# The can of ravioli

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "The can of ravioli," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-can-of-ravioli/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's confession that he eats tinned ravioli cold, straight from the can, and refuses on principle to pay more than ninety-nine cents for it — used, when the price reached $2.49, as his own answer to the polling finding that Americans care about prices more than anything else.*

- **How he eats it:** Straight from the can, unheated
- **His price ceiling:** 99 cents — he waits for the sale
- **Normal price:** A dollar and a quarter
- **The price he found:** $2.49
- **His response:** "I'm not going to pay it. I won't spend the money"
- **The poll it answers:** 57 per cent of Americans say falling prices matter more than any other issue

**The can of ravioli** is a domestic confession [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) volunteered on 19 November 2025, and the closest thing in the corpus to a first-person account of what inflation feels like to him.

## The polling problem

The context was a new poll showing Democrats far ahead in a generic congressional ballot, and one finding inside it: that 57 per cent of Americans said they wanted prices to drop more than they cared about any other issue. The host's objection was technical — prices are not going to drop, cannot drop, and should not, because that is deflation — and he then put the alternative to Kiriakou as a question: was not what Americans really needed higher incomes?[1][2]

Kiriakou agreed with the economics — *"oh, absolutely"* — and immediately identified the gap between what was needed and what was wanted. *"But I think they're not thinking about higher incomes. They want prices to go back to what they were a year ago or two years ago."* And then, in unison with the host: *"It's not going to happen."*[2]

## The confession

Having established that the public's wish is impossible, he then admitted to sharing it, and produced the evidence.

*"I'll admit to everybody — and I'm not proud to admit it — but I really like raviolis. Like, just right out of the can. I don't even heat them up. I just open the can and eat them out of the can."*[2]

The rule he attaches to this is absolute and, by his own account, not entirely rational. *"I don't know why, but I just have this thing where I refuse to pay more than 99 cents for a can of raviolis. And so I'll just wait until they're on sale for 99 cents. They're usually a buck and a quarter."*[2]

## $2.49

*"So I went to the grocery store the other day and the raviolis are $2.49. Two forty-nine for a can of lousy raviolis. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to pay it. I won't spend the money."*[3]

And then the concession that gives the anecdote its point: *"I want everything to come down to where it was a year ago, too."*[3]

## Why he tells it

The function of the story in the argument is to deny himself an exemption. Kiriakou has just explained why the electorate's demand is economically incoherent; he then demonstrates that he holds the same incoherent demand, in the same aisle, over the same kind of purchase. The host's response was to agree — *"me too"* — before returning to the position both had already stated: that the solvable variable is wages, not prices, because *"higher prices are not a solvable problem, because of the way that the system is currently set up."*[3]

## See also

- [The Arlington house](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-arlington-house)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)

## Sources

1. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-11-19), at 52:15. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqfGXMDtams&t=3135s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-19-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/
2. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-11-19), at 52:45. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqfGXMDtams&t=3165s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-19-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/
3. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-11-19), at 53:17. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqfGXMDtams&t=3197s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-19-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-can-of-ravioli/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt