Cheap, Minimally-Nutritious Meal?

Factual Questions
41

i can’t stand Ramen noodles. Just thought i’d point that out.

I find spaghetti a good deal. A plate with a few pieces of toast comes to about 20 cents if you buy the spaghetti and sauce on sale. 33 cents for a 1lb box of spaghetti and 1.19 for a jar of sauce.

Basically any grain based foodstuff can be had on the cheap (macaroni & cheese, bread, spaghetti, Ramen noodles). I don’t know if Rice is a grain, but it is cheap too.

Sandwich toppings like peanut butter or butter are cheap and high in calories too.

I also find that cake and brownie mixes are pretty cheap. They go on sale for 99 cents all the time, and a box has about 2500 calories when you prepare it (you need another 15 cents of ingredients like oil and eggs to mix with the package contents).

A diet of grains and brownies would be cheap.

Have i taught you people nothing with my diet of mountain dew and multivitamins?

42

I have a friend who, during his lean years, lived off of Hotdog sandwiches on the weekday, and as a “treat” on weekends, he’d have BBQ Potato chips and Mountain Dew. (I was reminded of this by The Calculus of Logic’s mention of Mountain Dew.)

When I was living in lean times I stocked up on generic brand (Ralph’s) of vegetarian refried beans, generic pasta and spaghetti sauce, Ralph’s frozen veggies, and I got my bottled water (had to have bottled water) at one of those vending machines (35 cents for a gallon). True, the frozen veggies weren’t the cheapest things, but I afforded that. I had to have bottled water (or some semblance of non-tap-water) because the tap water was creepy where I lived. I also made homemade veggie chili in big batches, and kept extra tupperware containers of it in my freezer.

43

C’mon guys, the answer is People Kibble! I can’t believe no one’s invented this stuff yet.! I yearn for the day when I can stroll into the supermarket and pick up a 15kg sack of people kibble for five bucks. Don’t they realise there’s a huge market for this stuff?

44

I read the “absolutely cheapest diet” (or I’d-rather-be-dead-than-feed-diet) years agao in a Peg Bracken book: one lb. of what flour, a carrot, 2 lettuce leaves and 2 oz. lard.

I’d personally go with peanut butter sandwiches, milk and oranges. Cheap and nutrious.

45

What about the “prison loaf” that was bandied about in the people kibble thread? I imagine that it would be fairly economically efficient as well as being reasonably nutritious.

46

Isn’t Unimix pretty much people kibble? I’m sure we’ve been through that discussion before. (Unimix is a high-protein porrige stuff given out primarily for famine relief – I’ve been trying to find the ingedients but there are too many different products called “unimix.”)

47

I like Lemur’s answer the best overall.

A couple of things to keep in mind-

  1. Your own cooking skill and time. The more time you can invest in this project, the cheaper it will be. Example- you can make bread from scratch for a great price per loaf, AND make it far more nutritious than store-bought stuff- IF you have the time and skill. If you are a not a decent cook, you’ll need to buy more elements ‘ready made’, driving your prices up.

  2. Look at the real, bottom line costs. Example: chicken- the REAL cost per pound is what you pay for the edible meat AFTER tossing the bones and other unedible bits. Strawberries- the real cost is after tossing the basket, wrapper, green bits, bad sections, etc. Often, frozen stuff is the better deal (good quality, few additives, little waste).

  3. Cash flow. If you have a big hunk of cash to make last a long time, buying big bulk makes sense. If, on the other hand, you are on an allowance or living paycheck to paycheck, you’ll have to deal with buying smaller quantities more often, so fresh stuff makes more sense.

  4. Leftovers- these will drive your costs up if they go bad. One solution is modularity. A great example is Mexican cooking- many Mexican meals consist of a few basic elements mixed at the time of serving- such as chopped tomatoes, onions, cheese, salsa, etc. If you can have your leftovers kept in their more reuseable form, you can use them again more easily and save money.

  5. ‘Bonuses’- Without switching to a big-time hunter-gatherer mode, you can nonetheless take advantage of food around you once in a while. Learn about the edible plants in your area, do a container garden or two for things like tomatos and beans, grow your own herbs and/or sprouts, etc. Select those things that provide you with the best ratio of time/money invested and personal benefit.

  6. Variety. One problem you’ll run into with many ‘absolute low cost’ diets is boredom. Even if the basic ingrediants are different, if the result looks, smells, or tastes about the same as the rest of your meals, you’ll get bored with it and suffer in other ways. Vary your presentation as much as you can, toss in some radically different meals once in a while.

  7. Include a multi-vitamin a day in your figures unless you are pretty sure you are getting a balanced meal for your bucks. Consider it cheap insurance.