Onion. It's cheap, nutritious, acts as a low-key anti bacterial solution, can be served in a multitude of ways, or eaten raw.

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Carters' peanuts :)

Nutritious is very relative to industrialized food production. The most nutritious natural products are perceived as wild and are not objects of agriculture. Basically the objects of agriculture were selected on the ease of reproduction, not their nutritious value, or their cost. It just so happened that those that were easy to plant and grow were the leanest in quantity and complexity of nutrients. Many of the most nutritious seeds, fruits, and vegetables are becoming extinct with the elimination of natural forests. Planted forests would take thousands of years to stabilize as ecosystems (if ever) and be concidered sustainable food sources.

Cheap means the industry hasn't been able to monopolize, but labor is very exploitable (see bannana republics, tea and coffee plantations). It also means the quantities produced have saturated the markets and the product is in abundance (wheat, corn, soy,..).

Delicious ... only N.Europeans (and their N.Am. Oceania descendants) would consider eating a single element alone and judge it by taste. The rest of the world eat what they can get, spice it up, mix it, and make taste a final product of a mixture of things with a labor intensive process of preparing it. The dairy industry (waste of nutritients and exponentially waste of land use) and the sugar industry (it should have been banned under substance abuse addictive product that is a health hazzard as well) have blurred what "delicious" really means. Take as an example banana split ice cream, there is little nutritious value, if not harmful as a whole, made of three industrial products that maximize labor exploitation. If it wasn't for capitalism nobody in their right mind would have come up with this one. It only exists because of capitalism.

Nutrition has been a dead end disaster since its early days of being industrialized.

humus

the three sisters are very nutritious. corn, beans, squash. add any spices you like, and a good oil (my faves are la tourangelle olive oil and their toasted seasame oil, sold on amazon and not expensive). salt and spices make all the difference.

Well-seasoned, air-fried chicken is super healthy and cheap.

Buy raw material and cook yourself.

Most premade food is expensive because:

• labor on cooking
• restaurant profit
• rent of the restaurant/owner of the place sell you food
• service

Ah yes, a food that you can eat for three days without pooping while you stay in a tent?

So… Are you just unaware of fruits, vegetables, and legumes, haha? In my opinion there’s a huge amount of food that fits all three categories. One of the best example of cheap, delicious, healthy, and easy is beans and rice, spiced up however you like.

It depends where you live (I'm in Bangkok, so grocery choices are quite limited).

I love Oats. I got massively back into them again this year... now I buy around 3kg every month (instant oats).

It's only this year, really, that I discovered that oats are still really good and creamy when not made with milk... and it's really easy to boil a single cup of water to dump on a cup of oats for a perfect breakfast (left standing for a minute - done... no need to 'microwave' oats).

Also, cheap staples include: carrots, potato, broccoli, spinach...

Frozen strawberries are dirt cheap here too.

Breakfast 1:

• Instant Oats (1 cup, 1/4 tsp salt, 3tsp sugar, 3 tsp creamer)
• pulsed to powder in the blender with a cup of boiling water poured over.
• Blend 100ml milk with 3 strawberries and mix that in. The beauty of this is (as my son does NOT like stodgy/thick porridge) I can add an extra 100ml of milk to his breakfast, and it becomes a liquid smoothie.

Breakfast 2:

• Weetbix are not too cheap, but ONE biscuit mixed with ONE cup of oats is a massive breakfast - and tastes of Weetbix... and is ridiculously cheap in comparison.

Breakfast 3

• Oats work great with eggs...
• 1 cup oats, some salt, some cumin (maybe a teaspoon)
• 2/3 cup boiling water (soak a minute)
• 2 duck eggs mixed in
• butter up the frying pan and dump it in there, cover and cook gently for 3 minutes, flip and give them another 3 minutes.

DIsgusting poopy one

• 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder mixed with 4 teaspoons of non-dairy creamer + 1 cup oats
• pulse to powder, add a cup of hot water.

That's choccie heaven right there.

🥑
I think a ripe avocado can be a good meal by itself, it has healthy fat, vitamins & fiber.
One avocado as a meal is cheaper than alot of other options.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/avocados/

You already mentioned them, but I'm a huge fan of lentils. They go with so much stuff and you can combine them with a variety of spices. Give me any leftover ingredients and some lentils, and I'll cook up something delicious. I can and will eat lentil soup for days.

They are also a pretty solid crop, they can grow in a variety of climates, require little water and are good for the soil.

Fried soy beans with garlic. Tastes approx like potato chips, about the same price as beans, and decently nutritious. Just don't use too much salt or oil.

Rice and beans, just be a little creative with preparation. Also you can make lots of soups that are cheap and healthy and its super easy to make too.

Chana masala is pretty delicious and I'm pretty sure it's healthy. I think it's mostly chickpeas and vegetables which are both pretty good for you.

Scrambled eggs.

Mac n cheese.

Ratatouille.

A lot of cuisine that is lauded all around the world embraces all three of those, or at least the original dishes they came from did. A lot of really fancy food today and in the last 50 years is just "peasant food". Sometimes just with fresher ingredients and more butter

This will be controversial. I'm going with Costco rotisserie chicken. $5. They taste good fresh but bad reheated. I don't eat the skin

Tacos and burritos could absolutely meet this criteria If you're doing them well at home, with the most unhealthy thing being the tortilla itself (You could argue that those are empty calories). Of course that means no sour cream or cheap cheese abuse among other things

Sweet potatoes. Very nutritious, very cheap, and taste sweet. Easy to prepare to, you can just boil or bake them for a little while without adding anything and they're great just like that.

When I was in college, I had the rule of not buying anything that is >$1.50 per pound. This is what I was reduced to (prices may be different now due to inflation and geo area):

1. Apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries when they are on sale
2. Milk, yogurt
3. Pork shoulder, chicken quarters, thighs, drumsticks
4. ground pork, ground beef
5. Carrots, broccoli, potatoes, cabbage (you'll be surprised at how good thinly sliced cabbages taste in a sandwich)

Beans! Especially stew with them, you can throw in pretty much anything (veggies, meat, adjust your spice levels...) and once you learn the correct balance it's very tasty and filling.

My very Italian answer is "pizza bianca" . I guess "healthy" depends, but it's generally OK carbs, it's delicious and with few Euros you can buy quite a lot (enough for a lunch).

Popcorn is very low calorie per volume, especially the types without a lot of fat.