Ask Lemmy

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 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.

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.

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.

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 .

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.

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.

Rice, lentils, cheap vegetables (vary a bit) and dry broth.

I ate this for every meal for a couple of months when I was really poor. I took vitamins and fish oil as well.

Got some meat and dairy when eating with friends and family.

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.

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 (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, beer, wine (probably), cider, liquor, smoking, and drugs. Tea might be fine but it has no nutrition so it might also be avoided.

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.

Flavor does not matter, presentation does not matter

You will get sick of it pretty fast. You can do ok on rice and beans (protein combination) and a few spices though. Take some vitamin supplements if you can. Don't stay on this diet for too long. Add some fats too, peanut butter is a decent source. For free food, no idea if dumpster diving is still a thing, but it was back in the day.

If you're in a rural area maybe you can grow a small vegetable garden. If you're in a city you are probably hammered by housing costs even more than by food costs, so that's another thing to work on.

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.

(2000 kcal min)

A large segment of the population would get fat eating that much every day.