Flavor does not matter, presentation does not matter but the food shouldn’t make you sick, and should ideally have enough calories per day for the average person to survive (2000 kcal min).
Edit: I am not in any danger of starving or malnutrition, nor am I insolvent. I’m mainly asking this question out of curiosity on how people would approach a solution :)
SNAP.
…but for real, fortified short-grain rice, and dried beans are probably single best bang-for-buck you’re gonna find. Mix in whatever’s on the clearance wrack or provided by things like food pantries, and you should have no issues keeping yourself fed. Won’t always be good, but it’ll be dirt cheap.
Makes sense - I always heard of the ol’ rice and beans combo. I was just thinking in terms of avoiding things like vitamin deficiencies - I’m trying to think this from a desert island or fixed shopping price POV.
Not necessarily just rice. The thing is that both beans and cereals contain protein, but each has only some of the essential amino acids, while human body consumes these acids in a particular proportion. Well whaddayaknow, beans and cereals in combination have all of those acids, complementing each other. So wheat or other cereals also work instead of rice.
They even have about 10% protein, which is on par with sausages and such.
For the rice, look specifically for “fortified” - it has things like vitamins added in. From there, unless you want to actually track your micro and macro nutrients, your best bet is to just shoot for a good variety, and that’s where things like food pantries will shine, cuz (for most of them at least) their inventory will be changing constantly, so it’ll force you to try things you wouldn’t normally have the desire or financial access to.
This is assuming your local area has food pantries - you’ll have some homework to do to find those kinds of resources. Also look into langar kitchens if there are any Sikh churches near you. I’ve never been to one, but heard nothing but good things.
the fuck is this all ai
…I mean…
Optimal would be in-season local vegetables, in-season local fruit, and remaining calories from a variety of grains (and legumes) and occasional varied inexpensive meats.
You could make it cheaper with frozen vegetables, but you’d lose some nutrition (maybe, and taste if you did care), and by skipping fruit (losing some nutrition) and meat (again losing some nutrition)
Nutritionally, dried fruit is pretty ok if it’s not sweetened. Canned fruit is pretty worthless, and juice is worthless.
Canned vegetables are fine if cheap, but lose some nutrition over fresh. Fermenting in-season vegetables can preserve most nutrition to tide you over for when nothing is affordable.
Most calories would be from grains and legumes: lentils, peas, rice (brown has more nutrition, white is usually cheaper), beans, corn, etc. Whole grain breads are nutritionally great if they aren’t full of preservatives. If you dont have a local baker just skip bread altogether.
Avoid coffee (maybe), beer, wine (probably), cider, liquor, smoking, and drugs. Tea might be fine but it has no nutrition so it might also be avoided. (or not, see comment below)
If you can afford it (and enjoy it), meat is very nutritious and calorie-dense in moderation, so a small reduction in starch for a proportionally small increase in meat can be beneficial for some lifestyles. Obviously you dont want to reduce fruit or vegetables since they have the most nutrition per calorie in general, but a diet exclusively of fruit and vegetables is expensive and unreliable (and possibly not nutritionally optimal). The type of meat depends on where you live: shrimp, anchovies, chicken, goat, beef, whatever is cheap and available.
Some spices, oil, and salt would make it all a lot better tasting, and wouldn’t add much to the cost. This is pretty much the diet of working people all over the world, just with different specifics.
This is some good information. Thanks.
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Oatmeal and rice in bulk is cheap as fuck and great foundations to build almost any style or cuisine type from. Add protein and/or fruit and/or veg that best fits your budget and nutritional needs. Meal prep the fuck out of your favorites and you’ll have a great system to tweak and fit to an adapting budget.
Try figuring out cheapest vegetables available year-round, from which you can make a salad. In the US, this probably includes corn. Where I am, it’s potato, carrots, and beets, which coincidentally make a traditional salad. I boil a pot of them once or twice a week, and chop them in large-ish cubes right before a meal, so preparation takes very little time. Of course, I typically add onions, mayonnaise, maybe herbs.
I’m currently spending about twenty bucks a week on food, and that’s only because I’ve been too lazy to prepare the vegetables, making sandwiches instead.
Beans, I love black bean burgers or pinto beans as a side. You can little bags of them from dollar tree but I think a bigger bag is a better deal. 3 bean salad. As for meats or fish, use your store apps to clip digital coupons, never buy meat that’s not on sale. That $40 roast will go on sale for 10.
Actually buy a small chest freezer. I usually buy proteins on sale and portion them out into the freezer.
Casseroles are cheap and filling. Buy two cans of green beans and a mushroom soup, fried onions.
Homemade granola is pretty simple.
Instant pot soup recipes are quick and cheap. I love beet soup, cabbage soup, chicken soup (from a whole chicken)
The pre seasoned meats from Aldi are usually a good price.
After Thanksgiving giving I usually purchase two turkeys, really cheap, they just want them out of the stores .
For anyone lucky enough to have a WinCo foods in their area, they’re the cheapest I’ve been able to find for bulk dry goods. You can order 20-50 pound sacks of grains, beans, flour, etc., with a pretty decent discount on top of already low prices.
If you want lowest possible cost then canned stuff is out. Buy beans and rice in 20 lb bags. Hard to beat that!
Unconventional, but meal replacement shakes could be an option. E.g. Huel or Soylent. They don’t recommend using it exclusively, but there are plenty or anecdotal stories of people doing just that. They (at least Huel the one I’m most familiar with) is designed to be >=100% of all 27 vitamins/minerals with a set macro ratio.
It’s much less active than it used to be, but there is a DIY Soylent community. There’s a pretty good site at:
that ranks the most popular recipes and has a pretty decent app that calculates nutritional value and per meal cost of the various recipes.
edit - looking at it now, I’m not sure if the price calculations per recipe are up-to-date. In particular, I know the cost of protein powder has increased substantially, so your mileage may vary in terms of the listed costs, but the calculator is still very useful for concocting your own recipes and forking/modifying other people’s recipes.
chicken, beans, rice, mixed veggies.
i basically lived on that as the primary cheap sources of nutrition my entire 20s.
basically ate vairations of a meal of carrots, peppers, onions/garlic, potatoes, with a rice base and beans or chicken for protein.
For my government mandated starvation month I picked potatoes and rice, just 2 cups of rice and a potato or two a day helps me… enough… rice for a 50lbs bag is around 40 bucks and potatoes for 10 pounds is around 5 bucks.
Beans & rice would be my choice, and grow some greens (not marijuana. Collard greens, mustard greens, kale greens). If you can afford some onions, garlic, canned or fresh tomatoes, and spices, you are going to do fine. Cilantro grows in the winter here, basil in the summer.
Because flavor is important to me. If it was just for a week, I can do water and a bottle of electrolytes for like $5 total, not eat at all, but if it’s an ongoing situation I would need to enjoy the food at least enough to eat it.
With enough of a runway, buy one potato (if you are in the cold) or sweet potato (if you are in the heat) and plant it, those are not difficult to grow, don’t need fertilizer or anything. I do the Stokes Purple ones down here.
So yeah, I would buy beans and rice (and oil or nuts of some sort, can’t get around that, body needs fats). and try to grow some veggies to make it complete, if going for the lowest cost most healthy diet.
Idk why not cannabis. It’s very good nutritionally. Hemp seed has all proteins.
Go for it then! I was just thinking smoking pot wasn’t going to help you with nutrition. But you are right, it would have fats and protein in the seeds. Or could provide income.
My guess would be live like an aboriginal. Your diet consists of all natural unprocessed food. You wake up with the sun every morning, hunt your prey with weapons made from sticks and sharpened rocks. You have fire so you cook the meat, and you have fresh picked fruits and veggies to boot.
Thats pretty good body nutrition and the cost per meal is only the energy that it takes to slaughter and cook the meat. And gather the fruits and veggies of course.
Soylent. Comes down to $3.42 CAD per meal if you have a year long, *pre-paid subscription (I have that price grandmothered in). All the amino acids and all the vitamins. I suggest having a normal meal once a day though, even if it’s just a sandwhich. I think not chewing anything really bums one out.
Maybe there are cheaper meals with beans or something, but those estimations don’t include the cost of travelling to and from the store or the energy it takes to actually cook it. On average it costs 35 cents to cook a meal and assuming one drives to the store; that’s another 78 cents for a 5km roundtrip. Soylent is shipped to your door, and you just mix it with water, so no cooking or travelling.
For years I used to do Soylent for a bunch of meals per week. I stopped when there was a postal strike / delivery issues for it in Canada, and with the US’s recent trends I haven’t really tried to renew subscriptions to it on “fuck you for saying 51st state” grounds, but it was a pretty good product.
The powder option is about $60 for 35 meals, about $2 per meal. Broadly provides about 1/4 daily nutrition per meal, 1/4 daily calories per meal (they assume 4 meals per day if I remember right). It’s also delivered to your door, so no fussing/time spent with grocery shopping. And practically no dishes/cleanup or prep time.
It’s not too ‘fun’, in that all meals basically taste the same. But it’s simple, consistent, scientifically nutritionally balanced.
Two scoops of original soylent + 1 banana with water is the most amazing smoothy ever.
I hate it by itself, I hate it with othet fruits, but for whatever reason, a nice ripe banana with soylent is chefs kiss my favorite drink.
