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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.
Back when I was just off of a stint of homelessness, I had an incredibly cheap rented room where I didn't have to pay the utilities separately. I survived on 50¢/day... but this was fifteen years ago, so call it a 1USD in today's money.
I ate popcorn for lunch. I ate either rice and beans or rice and lentils for dinner. I ate day-old bread for breakfast, with a tiny smear of peanut butter. Dinner would include some vegetable bought in bulk — always fresh, not canned or frozen, since fridge access was unreliable.
I spent about five hours a week on shopping, including the walk; cooking; and cleaning my one pot, cutting board, knife, and spoon (I generally ate straight out of the pot). If you want to add my labor cost in, I was making close to minimum wage at the time, so $8.4x5/7=$6/day... wow, really? huh. $6.50/ day, then, but I was having trouble selling my labor at the time and only had part-time work, so that cost may be inflated by the minimum wage or I'm calculating it wrong; I only had part time work, after all.
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.
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.
I think your list looks solid! The only questions I have are about listing coffee and tea on the avoid list? There are some studies that show that coffee at least helps with longevity. Tea is not as conclusive as far as I’m seeing, but if the caffeine is part of what’s beneficial from coffee then it would make sense that tea also brings health benefits.
On another note, frozen vegetables can sometimes be better for you than fresh veggies since they are frozen immediately and stay more nutritious for longer because of it. You’re spot on about local and in-season vegetables being some of your best bet, especially if you care about other things like the climate.
Thanks! I dont know much about coffee and tea, perhaps they are purely beneficial. I figured they'd be a mixed bag so if you are being "optimal" you'd avoid them.
I appreciate the links and info
Beans and rice has been the poor man’s nutritional meal for millennia. Throw in a plantain or chicken or tofu occasionally for supplemental nutrients / protein. Add hot sauce for heat. Don’t forget to add salt to taste.
It’s cheap, nutritional and has the added benefit of being tasty.
Chili is another option - tomato, beans a can of pumpkin as filler, maybe a sweet potato. Pepper and onions for taste and some TVP or Beyond Meat crumbles for some chewiness…or ground Turkey if you eat meat. It’s simple and can sustain you for a week. Spice it up with chili powder and cumin, maybe some garlic salt and a lime. I made a crockpot full the other day. There’s a reason cowboys out in the prairie ate this stuff.
The other dude is correct about proteins: legumes and cereals both have them, the issue is that they each have only some of the essential amino acids, while the body needs a certain proportion of them. But legumes and cereals combined have all those acids, so they supply the protein. That's the whole idea of the legumes+cereals diet.
chili
I have a cookbook that suggests bulgur wheat for that chewiness. The author writes that her (vegetarian) daughters thought it was a ground beef recipe at first!
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.
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 .
If you want lowest possible cost then canned stuff is out. Buy beans and rice in 20 lb bags. Hard to beat that!
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.
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.
(2000 kcal min)
A large segment of the population would get fat eating that much every day.
Dang, I wonder how outdated that standard is. I see it as the "daily value" in a lot of academic and packaging contexts.
It's the general maintenance calories for a 180ish lb male if I remember correctly. I could be wrong
The standard was never really based on anything to begin with. Not scientifically speaking, anyway.
Interesting sidebar to this, I happened to notice both the authors are/were Master's candidates when they drafted this. Would he interested to see more
If we’re optimizing for cheap and nutritious a lot of the existing answers are probably pretty great, but if there’s no other restrictions on the diet I think we could optimize a little further.
The cheapest way I can imagine to get a nutritional meal is to find someone who eats fully nutritional meals, and then eat them.
But it's per meal. Consistently finding people to eat and getting away with it sounds like a costly ordeal.
It's the most logical.
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.
Where I am, it's potato, carrots, and beets, which coincidentally make a traditional salad.
This is not a coincidence :)
Really, if you want to look into cheap and good food, look no further than what your ancestors ate. They ate it precisely because it was cheap and as nutritionally adequate as they could get.
Sure, some modifications must be made now that we have more foods and clean drinking water available on demand, but this is a good starting point.
Speaking of modifications, soy sauce in vinaigrette salad is great. A few drops of Worcestershire sauce would probably be awesome, too.
Quite unexpected. I love soy sauce in a classic tomato-cucumber salad, but soy sauce + beetroot is something I cannot comprehend. Maybe I'll give it a spin, though!
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.
Short answer: potatoes.
Famously, you can survive on a diet of only potatoes. Starch gives you the caloric energy. Skins give you nutrients. Potatoes can be bought in large amounts for not much money in many places.
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.
Potatoes, eggs and oats reportedly have everything the body needs, even long term.
If that weren't the case, Ireland wouldn't exist today.
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.
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.
Why would you drive anywhere if you're trying to save money?
Sometimes it's necessary and cheaper than the bus. I used to live in a really cold place and if I walked or took the bus all my food would be frozen by the time I got home. Now I live in a warmer place so I walk everywhere; it's 2.70 for the bus so I don't use it at all.
*Also lived in fucking suburbia for a bit... awful. 10/10, do not recommend.
i have heard eggs are pretty good for nutrition. Maybe not as good for cholesterol though.
They contain cholesterol but there's practically no link between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol
