Almost anything locally grown or harvested will come in under something in the same food group as an item that has to be shipped. For example, bluegill or catfish from my local waterways is going to be lower in price than cod or shellfish because I don’t live near the ocean. Therefore, they score higher on the cost in my location than they would for someone in, say, Maryland.
I think 3 still seems logical – 3 isn’t unhealthy, it’s just not especially healthy. Most foods are probably going to be around a 3. And a homemade sauce, with quality ingredients and decent olive oil might bump the cheapness down to a 4 (or even a 3).
They still don’t rate particularly high (cheap) on a cost-per-calorie basis.
Eggs are a good choice. By themselves, though, eggs are pretty boring – I’m not sure if they rate higher than a 3 on taste by themselves.
How about chicken thighs? You can can buy them very inexpensively, and removing the skin and extraneous fat takes no time at all. Sear them off in olive oil, then add onions, mushrooms, garlic, crushed tomatoes, and a bit of basil and oregano.
Now I’m hungry. Curses!
Carrots lose their flavor quickly if they aren’t directly hand-pulled. The good ones from the local farmers’ market still get a 3 on the taste axis from me.
Too much trade-off between taste and healthiness. That probably applies to all cheap meat products.
Sugar where? It’s tomato, salt, olive oil, garlic and laurel. Does tomato have a lot of sugar, or are you talking about the kind that comes in a tetrabrik?
The reason no food will score high in all categories is because cost, as defined, is directly at odds with healthiness.
Extreme caloric density is directly related to unhealthiness. This doesn’t mean that all calorically dense foods are completely worthless healthwise – fruit juices tend to have vitamins that redeem them at least a little bit for instance. However, anything healthy enough to score a 4 or 5 I’d argue cannot be calorically dense enough to score above maybe a 2 or 3 on the cost scale.
Maybe if ready-to eat. Dry rice and beans as bought in the store has a tremendous amount of calories per dollar, and is not considered particularly unhealthy.
No idea what a tetrabrik is. A lot of cheap and ready-to-eat tomato sauce (jar or can), IIRC, has added sugar.
Like a juice box, but for liquid and semi-solid foods, like tomato sauce, stock, etc…
I’d say that it’s more ready-to-eat **spaghetti ** or **pasta **sauce has a lot of sugar.
Pretty much most anything labeled “Tomato sauce” or “passata” or something like that is usually just straight tomatoes and maybe a few other vegetables, salt and possibly calcium chloride. Same as canned tomatoes, except maybe with a spin through a blender.