by hwayne on 1/6/25, 1:56 AM with 442 comments
by neilv on 1/6/25, 6:36 AM
A working-poor friend also used to buy steel-cut oats, to eat breakfast for pennies.
If you buy fresh vegetables, learn how to keep them from spoiling on you.
With canned soup, instant ramen, and a lot of other packaged foods, pay attention to the sodium. (I avoid a lot of those, or end up diluting it, or, say, using only half the seasoning packet.)
Where you shop matters to budget. Where I live, WFM has bought out, or driven out, most of the other grocery stores (and one of the remaining stores prices similarly, but without the cachet), but a Market Basket is just a short hike over the train tracks.
For specialty groceries, a small grocery store serving some ethnic group for which that's a staple, can be cheaper than most broader grocery stores.
Don't get scurvy, or other nutritional deficiency. If you can't make sure all your nutrients are covered, I've guessed (I'm not a nutritionist) that a mainstream multivitamin pill can't hurt.
You should also count your calories, to make sure you're getting enough. Once you start being more penny-pinching with eating, you might find yourself getting hungry less, rather than more, and it's not hard to slip into caloric deficit that will make you sick. There are calculators on the Web for how much you should intake.
by tomxor on 1/6/25, 10:15 AM
Optimising for economic cost with the only requirement being "fill your belly" and "be palatable enough", tends to result in poor nutrition. This is roughly how the industry optimises food - minimise economic cost, maximise yield, and maximise sales (make everything artificially hyper palatable), with terrible results.
In the long term this is partly covered by the economic cost on a personal basis because of the cost in health care and loss of ability to produce income due to deteriorating health. But this is displaced in time, and you do not want to do this experiment on yourself, it's not reversible.
Calories are not equal, as a general rule, buying cheap food often means cheaping out on nutritional value. If you want to frame it in terms of money, buying good quality food now is an investment in your future.
by unsnap_biceps on 1/6/25, 3:19 AM
For day 1
1/2 can Campbell's Tomato Soup - 135 Milk, half of 10.7 floz - 133.75 4 slices white bread - 600 Tillamook Italian 3-Cheese, 58 g - 186.43 Butter, 32 g - 228.57 Homemade Kimchi (73 g) - 25.75
135 + 133.75 + 600 + 186.43 + 228.57 + 25.75 = 1,309.5 calories which is generally well under weight maintenance levels for anyone moderately active.
by doix on 1/6/25, 10:06 AM
Whilst it costs a bit more, you save so much time and possibly money. It allows you to not have any dishes -> no dishwasher needed -> no cupboard space needed -> no kitchen needed -> no fridge needed -> cheaper rent. You don't need to go grocery shopping (no car needed), food never gets wasted, you take out significantly less trash. There's 0 "mental load", you never have to think/plan about how you're going to eat/cook/whatever.
If you're willing to adopt a bit of an "ignorance is bliss" attitude, you can happily pretend that you're eating a perfectly balanced diet ;).
I have no affiliation with Huel, just an extremely happy customer. Now that I'm traveling around the world, it's pretty much the only thing I miss from my old life. If I could get it shipped anywhere in the world for a reasonable price, I'd probably still be eating it right now.
by ghxst on 1/6/25, 6:34 AM
by alexjplant on 1/6/25, 2:58 AM
- Natto on rice with scallions, egg, and kimchi
- Chicken curry with daal and spicy raita
- Chicken fajitas with refried beans
- Hummus and carrots
I spent ~$50 for everything delivered via Instacart not counting spices and staples like rice and lentils and I live in southern California... not as cheap as this gentleman but not too shabby all things considered. I need to start cataloguing my recipes so that I can make them more repeatable and share them easily with friends when they ask.
by ezfe on 1/6/25, 5:42 AM
by gnabgib on 1/6/25, 2:07 AM
by sotix on 1/6/25, 2:26 PM
I wasn’t as cheap as this post, but my groceries with fresh produce, rice, and beans cost about $40/week. Eliminating meat made it pretty easy to keep costs low. After I got a job, I began hitting the gym and bulking up. Getting rid of all my excess fat during that previous period proved to be pretty worthwhile, and now I’m in better shape than ever.
by nwah1 on 1/6/25, 3:43 AM
by latkin on 1/12/25, 4:51 PM
But he isn't honestly accounting for the cost of the salmon, even by his own rules ("Food that I don't use needs to be factored into my costs.", "if it goes to waste, I have to charge myself for it.").
The salmon, at $1.99/lb, costs $4.48 for 2.25lbs (36oz) of whole fish. From that, he's only able to extract 3x 6.25oz portions (19oz total) of meat.
Despite consuming everything he could/would from $4.48 worth of fish, he only charges himself $0.77 * 3 = $2.31, ignoring the cost of the waste that he was required to purchase in order to obtain the meat.
IMO a fairer accounting for 3 equal servings would be $4.48/3 = $1.49 per serving. Nearly double.
by troyvit on 1/6/25, 4:07 PM
https://leannebrown.com/good-and-cheap-2/
It uses a lot more whole ingredients than the link above, although it doesn't talk as much about food conservation as this does. Combined I think you can get some amazingly cheap and amazingly fresh food.
While we're at it, I bake bread and each loaf costs about 20 cents per loaf and tastes great.
by eulgro on 1/6/25, 12:52 PM
However, if I had to save the most money, and the most time, I would definitely opt for something like Soylent or Huel. Except these are not available in Canada, and they cost way too much. I found a website where people share recipes for DIY soylent (completefoods.co) and tried one. I only bought a small batch of ingredients so the cost per day was around 3.30$, but if I had bought in bulk I'm sure I could get this down to about 2$/day. And technically, this would be the most nutritionally complete diet I ever had. If a multivitamin pill cost about 0.05$/day in bulk, so why would I spend so much on vegetables?
That said, the taste isn't great, there's no variety, and I'm sure it gets boring after a while. But it was a fun experiment, and it's enlightening to know how little one can spend to eat while the average spend for food is like 400$/month.
by Havoc on 1/6/25, 10:48 AM
Most people probably have a lot of scope for some easy wins on reduction though.
I found that batch cooking and freezing is a remarkably easy win. Especially something that is lentil based. Bit bland but reasonably nutritious dirt cheap and entirely passable if you only substitute let’s say every 6th meal.
Some with beef stews. Beef is expensive but even a little bit of good quality beef in a mostly veg one can impart a lot of flavor.
Pressure cooker ftw
by sudosteph on 1/6/25, 4:00 PM
- Sweet potatoes. I eat one almost every day. I live in NC and can buy bulk local-grown ones in the fall and they last a very long time, but even at the grocery store it's only like 1.50 for 3 good sized ones. Eat them cooked in oven at 400, wrapped in foil for 1.5hrs depending on size, with butter or just salt.
- Sardines - I just eat from the can or over toast. Can also be good mixed with mayo. Lots of good deals available here, but try to prefer Morroco or Poland sourced ones vs the bottom tier ones from China. Bonus is sardines are lower in mercury than bigger fish like tuna.
- Goat cheese from Aldi - It's like $2/8oz there, my regular store is more than double that
Then I pair it all up with toast. The toast part isn't very healthy, but it's cheap.
I don't have a real cost reason to prefer cheap eating, but I'm the kind of person who would happily eat the exact same meal my whole life if given the option. So it's fun to optimize a little.
by 29athrowaway on 1/6/25, 2:43 AM
Refrigeration can be costly if you are on a budget, and can be a non marginal factor in the total expenditures.
Other ways to save are:
- buy large bags of rice, flour, lentils, which last for a long time.
- forage mushrooms (they're online communities for this), or grow.
- grow vegetables and fruit. Lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries are easy to grow.
- hunt or buy an animal, get it butchered and store it in a freezer.
- farm animals.
by chasd00 on 1/6/25, 1:33 PM
by aerioux on 1/6/25, 2:43 AM
by mrayycombi on 1/6/25, 3:57 AM
Rice, beans, vegetables, fruit and nuts in moderation, produces a relatively inexpensive diet.
by mythrwy on 1/6/25, 5:27 PM
Over the past 3 years I have supplied around 30% of my diet from an 800 square foot garden and chickens. I can't say it's really "cheaper" (although there are times of bounty) but the food quality is excellent. We can and vacuum seal and dehydrate what is left.
I also eat much healthier than previously from looking for ways to utilize what is on hand (large amounts of produce). It does take some work and planning but is very rewarding.
by psadri on 1/7/25, 3:43 AM
by purplezooey on 1/6/25, 2:47 AM
by giardini on 1/7/25, 5:15 AM
Plenty of wild pigs and possums in Texas. Although possum are the easiest wild animal to catch by far (you can chase them down and pick them up by their prehensile tail), I don't know how to prepare a possum and am unwilling to experiment.
by graycat on 1/6/25, 11:29 AM
Get 2 Picnic Pork Shoulder roasts, ~9 pounds each. On a 'V' roasting rack (I found a strong one, no moving parts, in stainless steel) in a common turkey roasting pan, place the two roasts, skin side down. Roast in 210 F oven to internal temperature ~180 F, ~22 hours. This time and temperature is an example of the old rule "low and slow".
Three old food chemistry claims:
(1) For food safety, it is sufficient to cook meat to 165 F.
(2) Cooking meat much over 180 F for too long results in the proteins unwinding, expelling their water, and becoming dry and tough.
(3) Meat, not overcooked, is tough only due to collagen. If not overcooked, the meat fibers are always tender. Collagen melts at ~160 F. So low and slow achieves food safety and melts out the collagen without overcooking the fibers.
Once at ~180 F, separate skin, fat, bone, and lean meat. Can freeze the lean meat in 2 quart covered plastic containers. Freezes well.
To eat, one version: With one of the 2 quart containers unfrozen, weigh out some of the cooked pork, say 6 ounces. Add ~3 ounces (weight) of some BBQ sauce. Cover and warm in microwave. Then, with a knife and fork, the meat fibers will separate easily, and that will also mix in the BBQ sauce.
Serve on hamburger buns or toasted bread slices.
A cheap pizza recipe:
At Sam's Club can get Fleishmann's Active Dry yeast, 2 packages, each package 1 pound, $6.18, $0.19/ounce.
So, ~750 milligrams of water, 1 tablespoon of the yeast, and 1 kilogram of "bread and pizza flour" (Sam's), can make 8 small pizzas. To one of the 8, add tomato sauce, Mozzarella cheese, and pepperoni.
Novel way to cook, without an oven: Get e.g., Amazon, $7.59, a roll of sheet Teflon, and cut a piece to fit the bottom of a standard 10 inch top, inside diameter, cast iron frying pan, $7.88 at Walmart. Will want a cover, and I use one, perfect fit, from a glass casserole dish, but Amazon sells some such pans with covers. Place the raw pizza on the Teflon in the frying pan, add the cover, place over medium stove top burner heat, can be ready to eat in ~19 minutes.
About $1 and 750 calories.
by FrustratedMonky on 1/6/25, 1:27 PM
I really don't think you can get enough protein for $2.50 a day (3.33 adjusted inflation.)
Just a block of Tofu costs $3.
by dan353hehe on 1/6/25, 3:09 PM
https://leannebrown.com/good-and-cheap-2/
I get a hard bound copy for everyone I am friends with when they go out on their own. It’s a great resource!
by lelandfe on 1/6/25, 6:37 AM
It's technically a meal! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk4EC6-YFbs
by b8 on 1/6/25, 1:15 PM
by polynomial on 1/6/25, 3:05 AM
by matthewmorgan on 1/6/25, 3:07 AM
by alecco on 1/6/25, 9:50 AM
I wonder what would be the budget for all this today.
by mtwtkman on 1/6/25, 4:19 AM
by m3kw9 on 1/6/25, 2:51 AM
by niemandhier on 1/6/25, 6:04 PM
by aziaziazi on 1/6/25, 1:26 PM
- great protein source stuffed with fibers, minerals vitamins and probiotics. Your nutritionist and sport coach loves it.
- intrinsically cheap, doesn’t need tarif or subsidies to make it affordable.
- only two steps from raw beans, you can make it at home if you wish: 1.cook 2.incubate.
- soy beans can be replaced by many others bean. Chickpea tempeh taste like banane popcorn.
- can be adapted to almost any "salty" recipe, like you’ll do with beaf minces. Sauces, woks, lasagna, soups, burger, pizza, sauerkraut, you name it. Even some desserts.
That weird white brick can go from disgusting to delicious depending on how it was cooked. If you don’t like tempeh, it probably wasn’t cooked well.
by jgalt212 on 1/6/25, 1:46 PM
by asdasdsddd on 1/6/25, 2:37 AM
by ksec on 1/6/25, 9:04 PM
Now I looked at those food cost number, I cant help but think certain Food in US are relatively cheap. ( Edit: Ok I only realise it is 2016 ).
It was hard, and not getting enough nutrients. Although I dont believe I have much of a choice at the time.
I wish we could have meal plans for different region across the world, where we have meals and ingredients for nutritious food with the smallest budget.
I really like Food. And out of all the important things in life Food and Water is number one on the list. But it is also the most neglected. Not a single Tech Billionaires invested or moved into Food industry.
by mupuff1234 on 1/6/25, 7:11 AM
by KennyBlanken on 1/6/25, 2:48 AM
The amount of spice you use in most dishes is so small that it's stupid to pinch pennies here.
Ditto for non-organic oats. If you live in North America, there's a good chance your oats came from Canada, where farmers figured out they could spray Roundup right before harvest so heavily that it desiccates the oats on the plant. They harvest, and the dried oats last longer in storage. It's literally soaked in Roundup. You couldn't pay me to eat anything containing oats that isn't certified organic.
We had regulations against the maximum amount of roundup allowed in grain. The Canadian farmers lobbied and had it changed. Anything to make another dollar in profits.
Vegetable oil? No; it's a mix of basically anything oil-like that came out of any sort of seed or vegetable, whatever was cheapest. Canola (which is rapeseed oil) or safflower oil.
Overall this blog post feels like there's this between-the-lines unspoken commentary that really, people on foodstamps should be able to do just fine on $2.50/day, and they should stop complaining.
Among other things, people who are poor generally don't have much free time to do all sorts of meal prep. That's one big reason they go for cheap, ultraprocessed foods. It's fast, it's calorie dense, it's (somewhat) cheap.
The nutritional content of these meals is meh on quick inspection. There can't be nearly enough calories - a bowl of oatmeal and that's it, for breakfast? Then one hot dog?
He seems to heavily rely on ultraprocessed foods, but in general it seems to be 'meat+carb+flavor". I did see potatoes, which is decent, but sweet potatoes have a better glycemic index and more nutrients.
I guarantee if you plugged a couple of these days into Cronometer you'd see numerous missing macro and micronutrients and minerals. And, like I said, lots of ultraprocessed junk.
Legumes and rices will help substantially with nutrition and are very inexpensive. What's expensive? Red meat...
by 1970-01-01 on 1/6/25, 2:40 AM
by nottorp on 1/6/25, 2:18 PM
by j45 on 1/6/25, 6:43 AM
https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food/
(No affiliation)
by Refusing23 on 1/6/25, 10:36 AM
by NotYourLawyer on 1/6/25, 1:29 PM
(By the way, if you think that a pound or an ounce is a unit of weight, and not mass, that's a common (but potentially dangerous) misconception. Read the full discussion of this in this Frink FAQ entry.)
Why is the pound a measure of mass, not force (or currency?)
Well, in the United States, the pound has been officially defined to be a unit of mass since at least 1893 (by the Office of Standard Weights and Measures, and later by its successor, the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), which was formed in 1901. The National Bureau of Standards was renamed the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1988.) It has had its current value since 1959, defined as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms (also a unit of mass,) both by official notice in the Federal Register, giving it the effect of official U.S. policy, and as an official refinement by the National Bureau of Standards.
The latter document is very detailed and authoritative, and shows the very slightly different values it had in 1893 (then defined as 1/2.20462 kg, a mass), the value from 1894-1959 (then defined as 1/2.2062234 kg, also a mass, which only differs from the current exact value of 0.45359237 kg by about 1 part in 10 million.) All are quite unambiguous on this point. No standards body has, as far as I can tell, defined pound as a unit of anything other than mass, at least since 1893. (Legislation before that was ambiguous about the distinction between mass and weight.)
In the United Kingdom, the pound has been officially defined as a mass since the Weights and Measures Act of 1878, which defined it as having a very slightly smaller value (equal to approximately 0.453592338 kg.) The value of the pound was unified to its current value in all countries by 1960.
The "pound-force" or "lbf" is a measure of force, though. But that's not the pound.
If you want the pound-force in Frink, use lbf or pound force (with no hyphen, which would be indistinguishable from subtraction.) The unit force is a synonym for the unit gravity, which is the standard acceleration of gravity, defined to be exactly 9.80665 m/s2. The "pound-force" is defined as the mass of a pound multiplied by the standard accleration of gravity as defined above.
More details from the (U.S.) National Institute of Standards and Technology:
Appendix B9 of the NIST Guide to SI Units. Please note that the pound is only listed in the mass section and not in the force section. This is from NIST Special Publication 811 which is considered authoritative. NIST Handbook 133, Appendix E. (This document and its predecessor, NIST Handbook 44, use italics or underlining to show the units that are defined in terms of the survey foot. (I'm glad to see that the 2007 version of this publication apparently contains fixes for most of the several errors that I reported and they acknowledged but sat on for 3 years since first reporting!) Official definitions from other countries:
From the United Kingdom's National Weights and Measures Laboratory (NWML), the definition of pound as a mass. Also see their FAQ. U.K. Weights and Measures Act part I, section 1.1, defines the pound as a mass of exactly 0.45359237 kilogram. Canada's Weights and Measures Act (this is rather fuzzy-headed; it defines the pound as exactly "45 359 237/100 000 000 kilogram" (a mass) but does so under the heading "Measurement of Mass or Weight".) It correctly defines the kilogram as a measure of mass earlier. If the pound is defined as a multiple of the kilogram, and the kilogram is mass, then the pound must be a mass also. This legislation should be amended to remove the misleading heading. Highly-regarded reference books like the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 83rd Edition (2002-2003) has the definition given above in terms of the kilogram. The pound is, again, a mass and nothing else. (This is also true in the 1960 edition, but the 1960 edition has some non-self-consistent uses of "foot pound" as a unit of energy which has been corrected in later versions, which cite only "foot pound-force" as a measure of energy. Thanks to Bob Williams for the historical research.)
I was surprised too when I first started researching the pound. I had been told it was a unit of force by one engineering professor, and I believed it. It turns out he was wrong, I was wrong, and I realized I had better unlearn my mistakes and start using the right terminology before I made a big, costly blunder. If you don't believe it, please do your own research and it might help change your mind. You don't have to believe me, but I think you should believe your own country's standards bodies (and probably comply with your country's legislative definitions if you don't want to breach contracts!) After all, if you don't use the units properly when they're unambigously defined by both standards bodies and law, then you're the one with the liability.
If you can find any evidence that a standards body in the United States or any other country has ever defined pound as anything but mass (well, at least in the past century,) please send it to Alan Eliasen. Please, authoritative references only--not some individual's webpage or old confused textbook.
Yes, I have this discussion over and over again.
"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." --Leo Tolstoy
If you want the British currency, use GBP or Britain_Pound, or, for the historical buying power of the pound in, say, the year 1752, try pound_1752.
by mproud on 1/6/25, 6:50 AM
by quantum_state on 1/6/25, 3:00 AM
by readyplayernull on 1/6/25, 3:25 AM
by schmookeeg on 1/6/25, 3:06 AM
I'll have my eye peeled for some sort of happy medium, like $20/day, but this feels too much like the masochistic version of frugal-jerk.