Calorie per Dollar List – Eat for 21 Dollars a Week

I'd much rather see a breakdown of cheap foods with a high nutrient density [1], not just garbage food that's cheap.

https://chriskresser.com/what-is-nutrient-density-and-why-is...

I think the list is a good starting point in terms of raw data, but what's with the donation ask on the side of the screen? It's just a list, and it's deficient in a number of ways, the biggest of them being that there's more to the "efficiency" of food than protein and calories per dollar.

Also this copy strikes me as the kind of sales-y humblebrag I see in fitness/self-improvement style online courses sold by "digital nomads":

> We graduated college, Masters and PhD. No Debt.

Why ask for donations then?

Don't fellowships and research grants already cover graduate school tuition? MS/Phd students aren't rich by any means, but they do receive a teaching stipend in addition to not paying tuition.

I get a weird vibe from the way the material on the site is communicated.

I spent a few months eating for £5 per week - not through choice. Most of what I ate was marked down (nearly out of date) loaves of white sliced bread and damaged cans of beans or spaghetti in tomato sauce. I’m quite tall so this wasn’t enough and after a few weeks I was in constant pain from hunger. There are many people in the UK for whom this is their life.

Here is my list of foods that provide complete nutrition, that can be grown on an average-sized yard lot: https://automicrofarm.com/blog/2018/08/complete-nutrition-no...

Edit: I need to replace the stevia with honey, much more realistic from the advice I got.

Helpful. But I think he sounds somewhat naive about why people buy what they buy.

"why do people think canned meats are a good deal?”

Canned meats don't go bad. You also don't have to thaw them out. I'm certainly no fan, but I can understand why people keep such things handy. What is the cost of running to the market more often because you refuse to buy such things? Time, after all, is money.

"we have no idea what nutrition costs."

There's more to nutrition than protein.

Yes, I think there's something here. But as-is it's a bit too simplistic. It needs some meat; pun intended ;)

I love this type of list. I'm frugal, super busy (read: lazy), and powerlift so I try to make a minimum-cost, high-protein, easy meal-prep every week. Having a high protein / calorie ratio is primary, but keeping it low-cost is a close second. I normally use a pressure cooker, 5-6 lbs of chicken breast, brown rice, and lots of veggies. It may sound boring, but it's great when you add stuff like chickpeas, delicious sauces / salsas, and try out different regional styles of cuisine. Check out the author's protein / dollar list - it's very helpful for the protein-obsessed.

https://efficiencyiseverything.com/applying-protein-per-doll...

In case people don't read to the bottom:

* Author's cookbook: https://efficiencyiseverything.com/The-Cookbook-v-1.4.pdf

* Author's weekly grocery list: https://efficiencyiseverything.com/Weekly_Groceries.pdf

I would like to see a version of this list (and the nutrient/calorie list) modified for ethically raised meat and other animal products. Sure chicken can be dirt cheap, but often that's enabled by raising them in unconscionable conditions.

Efficiency is not everything when it comes to nutrition.

Once someone is beyond being able to procure enough food to survive, utility is important to quality of life and long term health. What sort of utility?

1) Total caloric intake depending on if the goal is maintenance, weight loss, or weight gain.

2) Macronutrient split depending on specific health and/or performance goals. E.G. high protein for strength trainees.

3) Micronutrient split and density for general health and/or to correct deficiencies. For example, many people are Vitamin D deficient.

4) Mental health. An extreme approach to diet can create eating disorders and may lead to social isolation.

As with most things in life, there is a cost/benefit equation associated with nutrition choices, and focusing purely on efficiency most certainly has its costs - some of which are not obvious. Those costs can have a negative impact on short-term and long-term health. Health is easy to take for granted - until there’s an issue.

The point of my post? I hope that the takeaway from this article isn’t: “make cost efficiency your primary goal in food selection,” but rather, “carefully evaluate your specific situation, establish nutrition goals, and treat food intake like a solution to a problem - just make sure the problem(s) are very well defined.”

This advice applies to those that have the discretionary funds to facilitate this level of selectiveness, which I’m guessing applies to most people reading this.

Here's the best part of TFA for me:

"We graduated college, Masters and PhD. No Debt."

Good for you. I know it's a lot harder, but as we've been seeing over teh past 5-10 years, borrowing money to live on while you're in school will really mess up the next 10-20-30 years of your life.

This list looks wrong, you get way more than 1600 calories for $1 of pasta. 1kg of pasta is roughly 3,500 calories and shouldn't cost much more than a dollar. They must buy some very expensive brand to pay over $2 per kg, typically you can get it for less than $1 per kg...

Edit: Fixed calories per kg of dry pasta. Their value is still off though.

Edit again: I used Scandinavian prices which are typically much higher than American ones, but looking around it seems like people think it is normal for 1kg of pasta to cost $2? How can that be? Pasta is super cheap to produce and has years of shelf life, there is no reason at all why it should be expensive. It should be the cheapest wheat based product you can buy, certainly much cheaper than bread.

I chuckled when I saw in the cookbook to microwave for 99 seconds because it's more efficient than punching in 1:39. I do the same thing :)

However, sometimes you want to maximize protein per a meal's calories. Some things may seem 'cheap' but to maximize protein with those items you will blow out the calories chart. For example, it's better to rely on cottage cheese for protein instead of flour, despite the monetary cost looking favorable for the latter -- because the former will have your protein needs met with a smaller number of total calories, preventing you from gaining fat mass, assuming the rest of your diet follows similar reasoning.

I wish I could eat in this purely-thermodynamic way but I know I would be miserable. Carbohydrates just don't induce satiety in me like they seem to for other people.

It'd be nice to see data for vegetables, too. For instance, broccoli is relatively high in protein (and definitely micronutrients), but is rather cost ineffective. It'd also be fun to see how absurdly inefficient lettuce is.

Also, soybeans are more efficient than lentils and white beans are more versatile (e.g., https://github.com/nhynes/pbean)

I'd like to see a protein / calorie ratio as well - flour has the most protein / dollar, but I wouldn't recommend it as a protein source.

This is fine except for the low-cost carbs. These have high glycemic indexes and glycemic loads. That means they cause insulin spikes in your bloodstream, which causes type 2 diabetes. And no, that is not just my opinion, it's the research-proven scientific consensus.

It's better to get your carbs from beans and also calories from healthy oils like olive and canola.

It is not obvious, but you can click on the headers of the table to sort it by the criteria you want to see.

It's weird that in the recipes at the bottom they never use eggs, that have a good protein/dollar ratio and are easy to store and cook.

It would be nice to see a dispersion graph of protein/dollar vs calories/dollar.

Potatoes should definitely be on this list, any reason they’re not?

Understanding the science behind cooking is also beneficial:

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/...

You can also use a microwave to do things like cooking potatoes.

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I don't understand the protein/dollar column. Flour has protein listed as "3" and price as 1.68 but I can't see how to get 134 protein/dollar from these numbers. The calorie/dollar column works the way you would expect.

This reminds of the classic early linear programming problem / study, the Stigler diet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler_diet

I am seriously impressed with how efficient flour and white bread are.

They normally focus on carbs as the main calorie producer, one of the popular diet movements is to reduce the artificial sugar ramping up the carbs in foods. I've gone that way, reducing sugar/carbs in almost all my meals. To get enough calories and feel full, and not be full of carbs is trick, I find eggs, mushrooms, cauliflower and broccoli to be the trick to bulk out meals at a more affordable cost.

I had fun building something similar for a vending machine one day I was stuck at a Hotel waiting for an interview:

https://austingwalters.com/cost-per-calorie-from-a-vending-m...

Turns out PopTarts are ridiculously calorie dense per dollar. The breakdown was a bit different as it was what was available at the time.

When you shop organic, things start to add up very quickly. And then there's supplements like Krill oil which (if you buy the proper stuff) can injure your budget substantially. Sure, the so called 'ramen diet' is good for a while but you quickly become mal-nourished and your body will start to crave avocados which cost $1.25 a pop in my area (which injures your budget).

If you use McDonalds coupons, you can probably replicate something close to this efficiency at McDs, though with a worse nutritional profile.

I was in Taco Bell the other day and noticed, a dollar menu burrito has 400+ calories. Sure enough it made this list.

I prefer to think about about how much time I spend on food- buying it, cooking it, cleaning afterwards, plus my labor spent at work to buy the food in the first place. By my calculations, I was spending almost 4 hours a day feeding my self.

Now I have a Soylent subscription and my time spent on food is half an hour a day.

Unsurprising to a college student, peanut butter, Kraft MacnCheese and Ramen are on the list and pretty high up.

> Eating only white bread will cost you about $200 dollars a year in grocery bills but thousands of dollars of medical bills when you get Scurvy! Eat diverse foods for your health and sanity

This footnote should be the headline. Yes, you can eat calorie-dense crap and survive, but your health will suffer.

TIL one year’s worth of raspberry calories is a starting salary for a coder in the Midwest.

I highly recommend Frances Moore Lappe's book Diet for a Small Planet to anybody who's interested in eating inexpensive, nutritious food.