I live in Montana which isn’t quite the Midwest, but close. I checked my previous store in coastal California to see if that was what was making the difference, and the pizza is the same price there - Kroger branded $1.25 (Ralph’s in CA, Smith’s in MT)

There are frozen pizzas near me (a relatively expensive food area, for America), that cost $1.25 (~17c an ounce) and have almost 500 calories. I’m not advocating for the frozen pizza diet at all but that level of price/calorie ratio is pretty impressive.

Ciao also