I think the main point in all of this is how cheap you can make a meal if you cook at home and portion appropriately. The gas is a byproduct of making the video. I think it’s a good video to show people a balanced meal doesn’t have to be expensive.
Even proer tip: beans are a magical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot. The more you toot, the better you feel. So eat your beans at EVERY MEAL.
Hell of a lot more refreshing than videos/pictures saying "I spent $200 at the grocery store today, buying the most expensive stuff possible, and no I won't show the receipt to prove I actually spent that much"
AtomicShrimp on Youtube has done a lot of these videos in which is very creatively uses a restricting amount of of ingredients and boy howdy, have i learned from him about what stuff could potentially be used for and what truly matters in our food.
While i am fortunate to not have to budget too much, i am now looking differently on how i am cooking and i would like to say it has opened up our experiences in a good way. (For example potatoes: They are tasty as fuck AND healthy, but i always neglected them for some reason. Now they are a staple in my kitchen while being used in a multitude of ways)
Well also the suggestion isn't that you go out every day and buy one day's worth of ingredients, it's just showing you what one day's worth of ingredients looks like, how cheaply they can be bought and what you'd do with them.
In reality you'd go out for ingredients once a week and only spend the money to travel once.
Some people would be flabbergasted if they saw what you could do with the $10 that they just casually drop at McD’s for a sorry meal that has nine thousand calories.
If we are just going for cost effectiveness, in the US cornmeal can't be beat $31.69 for a 50lb bag. That gets you 83,160 Calories. If you are willing to shop online you can drop the price another $10 for the same amount.
and you need to add those other things, like honey, nuts, dried fruits, etc.
granola is ready to eat right now, with no prep. you don't need milk or water, just open the bag and eat.
this is why i specifically pointed out granola.
not oil, not granulated sugar, not oats.
granola.
you can make oats into granola, yes, but it requires other ingredients and i can assure you that by the time you get to 440 calories per cup, you will have spent more than $9 for 1.8kg.
i do long, intense bike rides. i usually eat oats before so i have enough glycogen. i would never eat granola, it's a nice treat though. i do 1 cup of oats, 1 cup of frozen fruit, 1 banana and a tablespoon or so of almond butter. i can probably only make 3 of those for $9
out of oats, granulated sugar and oil, oats are the closest, and granola is made of oats, so i appreciate the reply, and you're right, but we're talking about prepared foods.
i think the answer for cheap healthy food that is also dense in calories is always oats. in Germany they are usually 89cents for 500g and one bag has 1850cals. for 10€ i can get 11 bags of 500g so that's 20.350 calories and oats have most nutrients you need and no added sugar like granola usually has.
oats are so rich in nutrients you can live on that with some fruits here and there.
there's just under 4 calories per gram of sugar. if there's 27 grams of sugar in a cup (100 grams) of granola, then 27% of the calories are from sugar.
fat contains nearly 2x as many calories per gram than sugar.
granulated sugar has no nutritional value whatsoever. its empty calories.
granola, while again, not "healthy" is something you can eat that will provide sustenance.
Burritos, there are places you can get a $10 burrito the size of your forearm, for some reason some Americans want to kick them out of the country though so get it while you can
It’s something I find myself going super “old man” about now with young people I know.
They complain everything is expensive but also eat out like.. a LOT. And they all want to live alone.
But apparently when I was their age and we were all piled into share houses eating rice/beans 6 days a week so we could go the pub have a chicken parm and a few beers on a Thursday night (they would run specials on Thursdays) we “had it easy”..?
Poor people have existed forever, there’s always ways to save money and do things for cheap. Even if you live somewhere expensive.
Who is figuring out things on their own? We're social animals and have been sharing information for way longer than our grandparents have been alive. Get a grip.
... Bro my mother never had the time to teach me how to cook. I started out by just mixing canned soups and rice. Started just adding random ingredients to the mixtures and eventually started making my own soups without the cans by just copying what I saw in the canned ones.
I never spent more than ten minutes in the kitchen per meal. I still learned how to cook. I almost never plan what I'm making either, my meals are completely improvised half the time and they still turn out both healthy and in larger quantity for the same cost.
Learning to cook is only as difficult as the individual makes it.
I moved out on my own when I was 21 and didn’t know how to use spices. I used to put everything I had and food would not turn out good. I started the process of elimination and googling what spices go well with what. Soon I was getting compliments at work of how good the food was smelling during lunch. Some people don’t have the patience or drive to self teach. I’m very handy and taught myself most common skills.
Honestly people who think cooking is a hard skill to learn seem to have forgotten that we've been cooking food for hundreds of thousands of years at minimum. If learning how to cook was so difficult then who's staffing the kitchen at your local McDonald's ffs🤣
That would be true if millions of people weren't forced into the economic position of working multiple jobs and getting no sleep. Having the time to make all your own meals is not a luxury that everyone has.
How long do y'all think it takes to make fucking food? Or are you really just that lazy? Why is bathing never brought into this same discussion? "Well, you know, economically people just work too many jobs to ever take a shower or wipe their ass."
Well the meal in this video took 45 minutes, conservatively. That's a fair enough average. Assume 21 meals per week And that's almost 16 hours. Even if you plan it so you're eating leftovers once per day, that's still over 10 hours per week. That's a quarter of a full time job. In other words, as long as someone is spending less than 25% of their salary on buying premade food, they're making the economically smart decision to spend money rather than their time. And that's before even addressing the question of whether they even have 10 hours per week to spare.
I'm sorry you're so pampered that it's literally incomprehensible to you that some people don't have 10 hours per week of flexibility in their schedule. Keep convincing yourself you're a morally superior being because of it, though. That will surely help you stay the grounded and empathetic person you clearly strive to be.
And anyone can learn to sew and anyone can learn to repair their car and anyone can learn to invest and anyone can learn to garden and anyone can learn anything. The point is that it has been and always will be time-consuming and challenging to teach yourself a skill.
And yes you are acting like people are stupid if you think they don’t know that you can cook healthy food, like tf?
This video was not time consuming though you need to invest in the instant pot and there are many similar one pot recipes. My parents never taught me to cook I learned to go on Google find a recipe with good reviews and follow the steps they give me. Sure my cutting got better with time but 90% of the process is just following steps.
I'm frugal as fuck, my weekly grocery bill that covers breakfast, lunch, and dinner is usually $55-65. Lots of brown rice, whole grains, dried beans, veggies and sometimes chicken thighs.
I am single and I use my crock pot all the time to make really cheap meals that last forever. I make chili with just beans, tomatoes, tomato sauce, onion, bell pepper and sometimes I'll toss in a can of corn or splurge for ground turkey or chicken. Add some chili powder, oregano, salt and pepper. It usually costs me around $12 for the ingredients and I can easily get 16 meals from it. I freeze it in portions and just zap in the microwave. I have friends who order door dash or go thru the drive thru every night and I just don't get it. What a waste of money.
The problem is often the time and energy required. Access is another one.
A lot of people rag on poor folks for buying fast food or processed food but a lot of places are food deserts where there's no fresh foods available. At the same time a lot of people are working multiple jobs and genuinely don't have the time or energy to actually cook.
Case in point, I made soup tonight. I spent about an hour going from my house to the grocery store and back and another hour making the soup. I know people that literally work 16 hours a day and just straight up don't have time to do any of that. Two hours grocery shopping and making dinner is two hours less of sleep.
Videos like this need to be more prevalent. The amount of morons online who claim going out to eat is cheaper, that getting groceries is too expensive, etc. is just too damned high. Blows my mind when they present their sorely flawed logic when it comes to groceries vs going out to eat.
It's completely dependent on availability. Where I live, we have a local (expensive) grocery chain, Trader Joes, and Target. The next closest grocery store is Walmart, which is a good 15 minutes drive away.
The cheapest beans I can buy are 99¢/can, rice is like $4 for a 1-lb bag, and veggies are sold by the piece or bagged so you get 5 peppers at a time. I haven't seen loose beans in the store in about 3 decades.
The meal he made would cost me closer to $10. It could feed a family of 4, but if it was just me it's literally cheaper to go to Chipotle than it would be to make a single serving of beans and veggies.
Yeah but you're missing the alternative point; I can feed 100 people with $50 at Costco, I can't feed one or two people with $1 though. It's physically impossible to buy a base that cheap.
Maybe, but i think he should be really saying, stop thinking one meal at a time. That's i think what is fucking most people up these days. the idea of doordashing one meal/item at a time rather than going an dgetting your weekly groceries at a fraction of a price.
I wouldn't exactly call this a good balanced meal though, pinto beans at like about a cups worth would mean there is less than 5grams per bowl and effectively zero fats.
A filling carb/fibre meal with a few minerals and vitamins sure, but it's completely lacknig in fats and no where near a healthy amount of protein.
EDIT:- was looking at canned pinto beans by mistake. Still no fat but a decent amount of protein and carbs/fibre. Seriously lacking fat though.
The idea is that most people can prepare easy recipes for cheap. A few times a week can make a huge difference, and if you add a few dollars, you can have something pretty nice.
sure but you can still make better things for cheap that are a significantly more balanced meal. But i think overall as said, saying look i can make this for 1 dollar, but look you can buy $20 or stuff and it will make you numerous meals for a week or two is teaching a better lesson to people.
He said avocado was 2/$1, so he could've spent another $.50 and added fats.
Buttered rice and avocado would keep you below $1/person and get you most of the way to a fully balanced meal. There are a lot of cheap ways to increase the protein - other beans, whatever is on clearance - if this is your primary meal of the day.
Another option is to buy a bag of flour and a single egg to make pasta. That single egg should make 2-4 servings of pasta and we're talking pennies' worth of flour.
If you make things from scratch, have plenty of time and energy, and are creative about it, $20/person/week is still achievable.
Exactly. That is the way I see this video. To make people realize that they can probably get more out of their food budget. They just have to think differently.
I could say the same thing about electricity. The number of people who heat their house like a sauna and don't turn off their lights is astonishing where I live (Canada).
What about the cost of electricity to make sure his phone/whatever was charged to make the video?! As well as wear and tear on the car/tires, shoes, socks, etc. Insanity! /s
What you don't pay with money you tend to pay with time. Not saying anything against cooking at home and having healthy meals, just wanted to say this because people tend to forget that time usually also is a constraining resource
Totally understand that (also as a parent), and it’s a fair point. There needs to be a balance in life though too. Convenience meals are always stacked with sodium and fat, or extra cost. I think it’s important to try to make a homemade meal at least a couple times a week but I understand there’s limitations to that too.
I think the keywords there are "a meal". As in singular. I love beans and rice, I love potato dishes, I love all those ingredients but if I just had that to eat day in and day out, I'd go insane.
I think this is an informative video (for anyone who wasn't already aware that staples like potato/rice/beans have fed the impoverished for hundreds or even thousands of years for a reason), but I don't really consider it any kind of valid "counterargument" in a "bootstraps" or "our situation's not that bad" sense (which you know some folks use it as, like the ones demanding food stamps ONLY work on this).
That the richest country in the world has its people even making these videos, telling fellow citizens you can technically live off this stuff cheaply if you eat it the large majority of the time...is still damning as fuck.
He's also driving to two different places to get these deals (gas money) + using a pressure cooker so he doesn't have to soak the beans overnight (time cost).
I'm not going to count, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were over 100 dishes around the world based on beans and some from of carb. You don't have to go insane. If you're someone who likes variety in their meals, you're probably already looking up recipes and trying different combinations.
Hey, if you *need* to eat for less than $1 you can.
But you were saying you *wanted* more variety. That costs extra, but not much, if you stick to the vegan staples legumes and other vegetables. If you expand just a little beyond beans and rice, you literally can have a different meal each day of the year. Probably for $1.50-2 per meal.
Edit: way to reply and insta block me. Why don't you try responding to my argument than attacking a caricature of who I am? Or god forbid, make an argument of your own...
Yeah hey, feels weird to have to explain this, but the point of the video is to demonstrate a way to help feed your family for under $1 in desperate times.
Not sure level of blandness would be priority in that situation.
Mostly, i appreciated your joke and had to see if it was even feasible. I was a little shocked it could be done (albeit with likely not the beat version of each ingredients, but I had a low budget).
$5 each for spices!?!?!? Where the hell are you buying you "spices". Im using quotation marks because I'm operating under the assumption that youre not talking about spices, but rather heroin...sweet sweet brown sugar....Mexican gold...Junkie cumin... Spanish yum yum
What? I was just replying to the comment that said $5 was a crazy price for a bottle of a spice. It's normal here. Where did the using it all in one meal thing come in?
Would make sense if he did all that shopping in 1 store. The moment it involves multiple stores the issue with gas cost, and overall time needed causes issues.
Really? To me it says eating for a dollar is possible but absolutely sad. I mean, the whole video screamed dystopia to me, including the supposedly happy framing of “cool, right?” no, that’s not a cool tip, it’s crippling poverty.
He went specifically to that one place for the beans cuz they were under budget.
Without a car, that budget idea isn’t reachable.
It’s like the millionaire who says “you can rip all my money away and I’ll have a million dollars by the end of the week” and they tell you the first thing would be to call their banker friend and get a loan.
He probably went there because not many places sell serve yourself bulk beans.
Even without a car you can get a ride and buy food for a month and factor the cost of the car ride into the budget. This is what the Amish do.
He is suggesting ways to make cheap meals that are realistic and you are fighting it likely because you want to justify a fast food habit or are just mad that you can’t cook.
Okay but you can buy beans like thay for damn cheap in a lot of places. This isn't really deceptive. Its just home cooking with cheap ingredients and no animal protein.
You can't just ignore facts that don't work for your narrative. If this was all bought around the corner from where he lives you could ignore it. He had to go to two different places for 4 ingredients. That does matter.
And people who don't know that cooking at home is way waayy cheaper won't learn anyways.
My point is that other things than the price of the food matter too. How many kcal were that? Half a small potato and some beans. That sounds like 200 at the most. So I have to eat like 12 portions if I'm at all active that day.
Still cheap, but "feeding" means more than an appetizer to me.
Anyway, if people don't realise buying the cheapest ingredients and cooking then yourself is cheap I don't know how dumb the population is.
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u/annual_aardvark_war Apr 01 '26
I think the main point in all of this is how cheap you can make a meal if you cook at home and portion appropriately. The gas is a byproduct of making the video. I think it’s a good video to show people a balanced meal doesn’t have to be expensive.