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I have a theory that there is a impossible trinity (like in economics), where a food cannot be delicious, cheap and healthy at the same time. At maximum 2 of the 3 can be achieved.
Is there any food that breaks this theory?
Edit: I was thinking more about dishes (or something you put in your mouth) than the raw substances
Some popular suggestions include
Kebab plate with vegetables.
A coleague of mine was eating it when he was on a diet to lose weight. It's basically kebab/gyros meat and a vegetable salad with a dresing (usually tzaziki). You have basically no sugar in it, it's just protein and vitamins.
Back in the day it cost like 4-5 € where I live which was pretty cheap for a lunch. Now it'd more like 6-7 € but that's still decent
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.
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.
Another one is curry, which is actually real easy to make. I bought a bag of curry powder for a few bucks years ago and it's still just fine. You can get cans of paste too but honestly I can go either way, both are great, and I love that the curry powder is so absurdly cheap per serving.
I just julienne an onion and red pepper, saute for a bit, add a few teaspoons of curry powder, throw in some garlic and ginger, then add a can of chicken broth, and a few drops of fish sauce. I simmer for a while to let it reduce, then add a can of sweetened coconut milk at the end. Also at the end I add a ton of basil. Maybe some other stuff in there too that I'm forgetting, you really can't go wrong with this either.
For protein you can obviously do chicken or something, but if you want to go ultra cheap and healthy, just throw in a cup of lentils to that curry you got going. Give it 20 minute or so and you're in flavor city. I'm always blown away at how insanely tasty it is, like it's just impossibly good. You can add literally whatever spices and flavorings you want and it just gets better.
There's an asian grocery store near me with all these ingredients for super cheap so I can make that curry sauce for literally like $5-10. It's delicious, cheap, super easy, and healthy, if not a bit calorie dense from the coconut milk.
The biggest problem with this is subjective metrics.
"Healthy" depends a lot on both what your needs are and the rest of your diet, there's no one-size-fits-all.
"Delicious" is even more subjective.
'Cheap' at least is fairly objective, but even so different qualities, different locations, or different seasons can change prices drastically, and that's before you get into the fact that what really matters is the more-subjective 'cheap to someone of your means.'
Oatmeal with bananas, cinnamon, soy milk(unsweetened), flaxseed and sugar + extra fruits according to preference.
I eat it everyday for breakfast and I never get tired of the flavor. Sometimes I even get a bit greedy and eat it more than once. It's very filling, healthy, and cheap.
Everything from my garden!
Right now, lettuce, kale, dill, peas, strawberries, oregano... the lettuce is on its sixth year of re-seeding, same with the dill.
Dill & vinegar flavored kale chips are amazing.
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
The Instant Pot or equivalent is the best invention for this. Throw in whatever ingredients (beans, veg) were previously too much hassle to cook. Add water, press button, wait for beep, open pot, eat. Well better find some recipes first, but it's almost that simple.
Here's a favorite of mine: 1 cup dry beans, 1/2 cup tomato powder (yes that is a thing), 2 cups water, cook on high pressure for 35 minutes, stir in a can of corn kernels from trader joe. Done and delicious and nourishing, due to the protein combination from the corn and beans mixing. Or use rice instead of corn, except that's more hassle since it's best to make that separately.
Well, first we need to define what healthy means, because you could die of water intoxication, meaning there is a point where quantity matters.
Are cheese and butter healthy ? Not if it's your only diet, but there are tons of very healthy things in cheese and butter. And of course, the same goes for every thing. So we must have balance in mind when defining an healthy food.
The second is to define what is cheap. In most of European countries, fresh food is relatively cheap, but in other countries they can be super expensive. And there's nothing more healthy than fresh food. So you definitely need fresh food as a base for an healthy balanced meal.
The third is highly subjective.
As for my healthy delicious cheap meal:
One scrambled egg by Gordon Ramsay with a melted slice of cheddar on toast and A fruit salad of one orange, one kiwi and one small apple
Spaghettis with fresh garlic, olive oil, fresh basil and tomato wedges
Pan-fried chicken fillet with frozen peas and carrot rings
Any fruit really
This is a really good writeup. At a glance, I'm guessing these three meals don't collectively exceed 1,000 calories, which is important to note since OP will probably be very hungry.
This is a really good writeup
Thanks
At a glance, I’m guessing these three meals don’t collectively exceed 1,000 calories
Except for the breakfast, I didn't specify the quantities. So I guess some could adapt those "recipes" to their needs.
Oatmeal with butter, brown sugar, and salt.
The above 3 primary ingredients will be cheap, healthy, and delicious when prepared properly. Adding milk and/or cinnamon to taste can improve the deliciocity.
But maybe don't eat it for every meal or you'll be shitting after every meal. Very clean colon though.
🥑
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.
BEANS
Addictive carbs and salt, dirt cheap, and healthy as shit. Also convenient and compatible with most dietary/ethical restrictions.
If you learn to like beans when you're 20 and throw it into an index fund, you'll have a modest retirement fund just on the money you saved (yes, I calculated it based on money saved and growth of the S&P).
Mushrooms!!
The thing with mushrooms is that they can get pretty expensive in stores, especially if you're looking for a specific kind of mushroom. They can also be very easy to forage though, which does make them free! This is different from growing them in a private garden (which is something you can do with most produce, and requires time and resources). DELICIOUS AND HEALTHY OH YEAH BABY!!
Fruit is definitely the best answer though.
Also, beans!
Rice, tuna from a packet, and soy sauce - cheap, delicious, healthy, and easy. You wanna get fancy, you can add some sesame oil, furikake, chop up some green onions, whatever you got kicking around.
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.
That's choccie heaven right there.
I like pickling things. Pickled Red Onions are delicious and easy, and Pickled Green Beans are probably my favorite. Fresh Green Beans can be had by the big bag for about two bucks. Throw in a couple Habanero peppers for spice, maybe $.50 worth of seasoning, $.50 worth of vinegar if you buy it by the gallon, and you have some delicious cheap snacks that are also relatively healthy. The worst ingredients would be salt and sugar, but you can minimize its use to taste when you make them yourself. I guess it's all relative, but to me a few bucks for a quart jar of quality homemade pickles checks all the boxes when it comes to cheap, healthy, and delicious. It does take a bit of prep work though so it's definitely better if you enjoy that type of thing.
Thanks for this prompt. Reading this thread was the first time I felt like I was on reddit since I've joined this instance. I laughed and learned.
The one thing missing from the trinity is "effort". For instance, you could make any Dal, which would fit the trinity, but takes a lot of time. There are books with hundreds of Dal recipes that all taste different and work, too. And this is just one example. Less than a dollar a meal if made in bulk with rice.
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.
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
I was looking at similar requirements for my daily lunch during the workday. I live in London so you're paying between £5 and £10 per day even for just a sandwich-based lunch. I needed a packed lunch that was cheap, tasty, healthy and additionally: filling, easy/quick to prepare and low carb. So that's a big ask.
I settled on a kind of custom Greek salad. One cucumber, some red onion, pickled beetroot all diced up, olive oil (or cold-pressed rapeseed oil) and some feta cheese. Sometimes I add chickpeas and coriander.
It's perfect, I've been eating it for years now.