It seems at my house we average right at a dollar per person per meal (this is counting only cases where we cook at home). It’s a surprisingly fixed figure as well–particular meals don’t seem to deviate very far at all from the one dollar mark.
On average, how much do you spend per person per meal? (And how many in your family?)
One person, more than a dollar per meal. Probably closer to $3-5 for eating out, closer to $1-3 when made at home.
Fish my daughter ate for lunch: $3.25 (~3oz)
Potato, leek and carrot soup: ~$6 for the vegetables.
Tofu and peas curry $3 for box of tofu and half bag of frozen peas.
Half a loaf of crusty bread (from Panera) $1.85
Three oranges $2
About $16 not counting spices, olive and vegetable oils, tablespoon of butter, bullion cubes. But we have some leftovers. Call it four meals for $4 each.
We spend about $150 on groceries a week. The three of us eat about 20 meals a week at home, plus another 5 packed lunches for the kid. So average maybe $5 per meal, plus juice, coffee, tea and snacks.
I can’t imagine what we could eat for $1 per person per meal.
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Somewhere around $3-$5 per meal. (Two in the family, as the baby is still on her own food.)
My wife and I average $4-5 per person per meal, normally. There’s a lot of stuff that can mess with that (our schedules have been nuts lately, family around for holidays, a “treat” trip to Whole Foods will come in at 4x that), and long term it may get more difficult to hit because of increasing meat prices, but that’s the goal.
Depends on the meal. For breakfast, it averages less than a dollar. How much does a bowl of cereal cost? Sometimes I’ll swap the cereal for a piece of salmon and fruit. So then it jumps up to $2.50-ish.
Lunch is small. A Kind bar and a bunch of grapes. Or a tortilla with hummus smeared on it, and a bunch of dates. So $3.00, tops?
Dinner is always more substantial. I make something big on Sunday and try to make it last for three or four more nights. I’m gonna say it comes out to be about $3.00-$4.00. Sometimes less (spaghetti) and sometimes more (shrimp with lobster sauce).
I get take-out twice a week. I probably drop $12 each time.
I’m an old bachelor, and get by with pasta and beans, so I generally keep myself to about $2 or $3. For me, a can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Ravioli is “splurging.”
When I go out to chow-down, I like to hit “all you can eat” buffets, and wipe the place out. Plague of locusts. I come rolling out of there. The managers all know me and hate me.
Bon appetit! (“Ginsberg.”)
A pair of empty nesters: I think we must average at least $5 per person per day, maybe closer to $10. We eat a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables.
For me, it’s probably about $4-$5 for food for dinner. But you have to add at least $12 for wine. 
Two in my family. We spend about $1.00 per meal. We eat a lot of beans.
I would estimate our dinners are $4/person. 3 people.
I am not counting other meals. Doing so would lower the cost/meal, but I think miss the OPs point.
I would estimate $2/meal average if one counts all three meals.
FTR the average I gave in the OP included all three meals.
(And the invariance I mentioned came from the cost per day, averaged out to meals per person, but of course breakfast is a lot cheaper than dinner.)
As low as $0-0.20 cents (eggs - which I currently get via barter from a friend + two slices bread) to maybe $5/person for corned beef and cabbage, but that’s a special occasion dinner. A more typical dinner (rice, chicken, greens) comes in around $1-2/person depending on portion size and how well my garden did that year (in good years, everything but the rice and chicken comes from the backyard).
This. Maybe more. Breakfast and lunch aren’t that expensive, but dinners are pricey around here. I buy fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, and expensive meat that makes claims as to the treatment of the animal prior to slaughter.
Breakfast is usually milk, cereal, and tea. Or maybe cereal, yogurt, a banana, and tea. Lunch is often leftovers, or PB&J. But supper is often a hunk-o-meat and some nice produce. I’m really enjoying being able to buy a tub of raspberries because I want to eat them, even though they are expensive.
I feel like I need to count the soap to wash the dishes and the napkins and paper towels etc. We spend about 125.00 per week for two.
My total food budget is about $70-80 a month, which works out to about $2.50 a day, which includes nighttime munchies. My main meal would rarely run much over a dollarf, consisting of a smallo potato (or equivalent, rice, etcl), about two ounces of meat, usually organ meat but sometimes fish, and a serving of vegetble, like broccoli, peas, brussel sprouts, lots of onions. Nothing to drink, ever, except tap water and occasional tea. Fruit for sweet snack, or I bake my own cookies. No eating out, no ordering in, except maybe a burger a month if I am out shopping.
I get 4-5 meals out of a potroast, with about four pounds of potatoes, onions, carrots, a green pepper, and about 6 ounces of roasting meat. usually beef heart. No more than about a dollar a meal.
Mexican beakafst, is 2 eggs, canned refried beams, tortillas. Or else milk and a handful of cold cereal. Of French toast.
I supplement my food acquisition from dumpsters and trash cans. People throw away a lot of food.
For dinner (we do breakfast and lunch on our own) just the wife and I average $4.30 per person for the past twelve months. Before retiring (in 2012 for example) we averaged $9.50 per person. This excludes dinner parties and does not include eating out (which we don’t do that often). And, as John Mace points out, these numbers exclude any cost for either wine or beer. Wine tends to run around $13.00 per bottle per meal. :eek:
$3.20, by my quick calculation. Which seemed high to me. But the we nearly never eat food I haven’t made myself. (order in, eat out, food at events, etc.)
So that number includes every snack or extra meal as well. Lots of fruit including exotics through the long cold winter. There is not much we won’t buy if it strikes us, however beef seems extremely expensive just now, so we’re not eating much of that for the time being.
Here lately I’ve been addicted to those damn Bertolli frozen meals in a bag, so that’s 6 to 8 dollars a pop.
It’s worth it though, I don’t much feel like cooking after a 12 hour shift. The meals are top notch and they take almost zero effort to prepare.