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Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

miketuritzin.com

41–50 of 361 posts

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#41
I've thought about putting together a brief founders' cookbook with a dozen or so of the recipes for things that I survived on in the lean days that you can make for about a buck or two and in about 20 minutes.

The real trick is not buying prepared foods at all. Things like flour, rice, eggs, beans, pasta, potatoes, fresh fruit and vegetables, milk, yogurt, cheese, ground beef, fish filets and chicken breasts are all reasonably cheap and you can have a lot of variety with a relatively small set of ingredients on hand. With some practice you get to where you know how to parallelize the cooking steps so that you can get everything done and even cleaned up faster than you could run out for fast-food.

Secretly I want our next office to have a full kitchen since one of the things I miss when I'm at our office is being able to cook in the middle of the day.

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#42

as somebody who exercises a great deal (and consumes over 3000cal a day), I can't recommend egg whites enough. for $4 (canadian) you can get almost a liter at costco. construct your menu right, and you can easily consume a great deal of healthy food for very little. another tip: while YMMV, stay away from most beans other than black or chickpeas. those are the ones that tend to cause the least disturbance in the forc…

Just curious: why do a lot people recommend only the white of the egg, and not the whole thing?

Because they're misinformed about the benefits of eating saturated fat.

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#43
post #30

The real problem with this diet is it doesn't contain any fruits (Avocados, Cucumbers, Olives, Bananas, Grapes, Berries, etc). Our ancestors lived primarily on raw fruits so they are definitely the healthiest natural/uncooked foods for humans.

Evidence for your assertion that our ancestors ate mostly fruit?

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious: why do a lot people recommend only the white of the egg, and not the whole thing?

honestly, I'm not sure. I've seen studies both saying egg yolks are high in cholestrol, and I've seen studies refuting that claim. considering the levels I ingest, I figured better safe than sorry (and cheaper 12 dozen eggs = 750ml of egg whites. crazy!) and just went with the egg whites.

>12 dozen eggs = 750ml of egg whites

I just want to make sure (12 and dozen right next to each other confuses my tired mind) is this 12 Dozen (as in 1 gross) eggs or 12 (a typo)?

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#45
post #41

I've thought about putting together a brief founders' cookbook with a dozen or so of the recipes for things that I survived on in the lean days that you can make for about a buck or two and in about 20 minutes. The real trick is not buying prepared foods at all. Things like flour, rice, eggs, beans, pasta, potatoes, fresh fruit and vegetables, milk, yogurt, cheese, ground beef, fish filets and chicken breasts are all…

Please do. I'll gladly pay for it.

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#47

as somebody who exercises a great deal (and consumes over 3000cal a day), I can't recommend egg whites enough. for $4 (canadian) you can get almost a liter at costco. construct your menu right, and you can easily consume a great deal of healthy food for very little. another tip: while YMMV, stay away from most beans other than black or chickpeas. those are the ones that tend to cause the least disturbance in the forc…

Soaking beans for 6-12 hours while changing the water as frequently as possible makes a big difference.

canned beans are also... calm.

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#48
post #30

The real problem with this diet is it doesn't contain any fruits (Avocados, Cucumbers, Olives, Bananas, Grapes, Berries, etc). Our ancestors lived primarily on raw fruits so they are definitely the healthiest natural/uncooked foods for humans.

Fruits cost more than $3. I think the real problem, though, is that the whole "sugar is poison" has gone to everyone's head, and it's now socially unacceptable to recommend anything containing sugar. The problem is that fruits have a lot of fiber wrapped around that sugar, while soda does not. Have a cup of blueberries with breakfast, an avacado and some tomatoes at lunch, and strawberries for desert. A few servings…

It is not only the fiber, but many fruits either have anthocyanins or citrus bioflavanoids that reduce the rate at which the sugars hit the blood stream by inhibiting digestive enzymes or other mechanisms.

If you add in supplements, such as the liquid berry stuff at brownwoodacres or something like green tea, it can add to the health of the diet at a very cheap cost.

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#49

My wife and I tried to do this recently on $1.70 per person per day. We didn't last our intended 28 days. A few observations we found: Meat and organic food was too expensive. Fruit is crazy expensive so we bought OJ from concentrate with no additives as a cheap source of Vitamin C. Eggs were are very expensive, but we needed the protein and nutrients, so rationed ourselves to 3 each per week. We had to remove all su…

if you want to save on coffee, buy green beans and roast. I pay around $30 for 5lbs of green beans that are extremely high quality. you can do far cheaper than that though.

It definitely is cheaper, but pan roasting coffee on a stove can take quite a bit of time, is a fire-hazard, and causes quite a bit of irritating smoke and fumes for a few days. It sure tastes good though.

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#50
post #32

As a vegan on a limited budget, this approximates many of my meals (though I could stand to eat more nuts and seeds and fewer grains), and I can attest that any day I eat roughly this mix of foods is a day I feel superbly healthy. I would suggest replacing the low-fat dairy milk with a non-dairy alternative such as soy or almond milk. Although this would up the cost to $3.50ish/day, non-dairy milks are usually fortif…

[deleted]

Even less constructive is whining about it.
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