Actually eat healthily for £1 per day

> I think the main weakness of the diet not listed on their weaknesses is they've made no attempt to break it down into a realistic 3x7 meal plan, because it doesn't really make one. Yeah, it's easy to put together a whole load of things cheaply that conform to predetermined values on a spreadsheet, but sometimes sum of the parts does not give you a realistic outcome.

That's a very fair point, but it seemed like premature optimization to try to nail down a meal plan before all the kinks in the nutrition side of things were ironed out. I do plan on getting to that stage in a later version.

Perhaps I should have waited before publishing this post, but honestly, I tend to lose myself in projects like this, and without some indication that other people are interested I often end up leaving the work in an archive somewhere to finish later.

I hope that there's enough data there to be useful/interesting in its current state, but I agree, needs more work

Working back from a government nutritional RDA is not really the best way to shape a diet.

Instead:

1: Uncover your total daily energy expenditure: BMR*activity multiplier

2: Once you have your TDEE set your macro intake, and try to get them from mostly whole foods:

_2a: Set daily intake of protein to around 0.82g/lb of bodyweight. Higher if you're more active, can be lower if you're more sedentary.

_2b: Set daily fat intake to around 0.25-0.5g/lb bodyweight, prioritizing essential fats.

_2c: Fill remaining TDEE with carbohydrates.

_2d: Get adequate fibre: at least 0.15g/lb bodyweight per day, but stay below ~0.4g/lb so that it doesn't begin to negatively affect the absorption of nutrients.

3: Measure intake and body comp over time, adjust diet as required.

Only if your time is cheap as well.

If I can make $500 in the few hours a week it takes to tend my garden, then it's better to buy off a local farmer.

The same triple constraint nature of the project management triangle exists, I think, with food intake. Quality, cost, and ease/speed of preparation -- pick two.

Every two days, I cook up 2 lbs ground beef, boil 4 cups beans, and 4 cups rice. I let it cool off, and throw it in Tupperware, and into the fridge. I take from that whenever I'm hungry. It doesn't taste the best, but it fills you up, is cheap, and is good for you! If you're feeling the need for some extra veggies/fruit, avocado, frozen blueberries, and frozen kale offer the most nutritional content at the lowest price and least preparation time.

Like work, I don't think this will ever be 'optimal', but it's good for now, in that it saves me time, money, and waistline. Can tweak it as I go.

Yet another reason why non-SI should die a fiery death. 1J is always exactly one joule and nobody talks about 1kJ as ‘large joule’.