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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
๐ฅ
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.
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.
Scrambed eggs.
Rice with lentils is a good option, add salt and pepper and salad of choice
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.
Sardines are a pretty solid alternative to tuna as well. Depending, they may be cheaper, andnas a bonus they're much more sustainable than tuna.
Cucumbers
Rice and beans, just be a little creative with preparation. Also you can make lots of soups that are cheap and healthy and its super easy to make too.
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.
Most things are unhealthy because we eat too much of it. For example (fresh) bread is delicious, cheap, and healthy, provided you eat it in moderation. Now if you ate nothing but bread all day you would gain a lot of weight.
Same goes for salt, fat, and sugar. To be fair, part of the reason we tend to eat so much of it is because normally this stuff is rare in nature and we are evolved to seek it, but we've made it so accessible and cheap, that we easily let our natural instincts take over. So that aspect explains your trinity. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can have all three with a bit of self control.
Honestly, I think most food can be found pretty cheap, except for proteins. The best bet I think is chicken drumsticks, but even those will add up. Beans are a cheap protein, but it's about just as carby as it is proteiny.
I'd say sandwiches, depending on what you want to put in them. A loaf of healthy (low sugar) bread isn't going to be the cheapest option on the shelf, but if you're dividing the cost by the number of sandwiches you can make out of it, it still ends up amounting to a large number of really inexpensive meals. I normally just add some meat, cheese, lettuce, and tomato, and it's very nutritional and also delicious.
I was looking at similar requirements for my daily lunch during the workday. I live in London so you're paying between ยฃ5 and ยฃ10 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.
literally any bagel sandwich, unless the cost of eggs or ham is still rlly high in your area. low effort, immaculate.
I'm pretty sure bagels are terrible for you. The delicous ones anyway.
Okay maybe not terrible but definitely not healthy due to the high sugar content.
Try making a bean salad some time! It is cheap, tasty, and healthy.
I just buy a few cans: black, kidney, garbanzo, whatever. Some romaine lettuce, tomato, red onion maybe. Mexify it if you want with some shreddy cheese and sour cream, served with tortillas/doritos (not healthy obv). Or plain with an italian dressing or something.
It's basically impossible to fuck up, you can modify it however you want, it takes like five minutes to throw together, super cheap, totally fits all three categories. Try it some time!
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.
Rice
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
When there's a half inch layer of fat, I think healthy has booked it out the door.
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.
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 โฌ where I live which was pretty cheap for a lunch. Now it'd more like 6-7 โฌ but that's still decent
Carrots. Same as potatoes. Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew. Someone already mentioned onions, same idea.
I know your edit says you were thinking about dishes, and I think carrots can be their own dish with very little preparation. I like to bake mine on a sheet for half hour or so at 425f, and they are wonderful on their own. Also so low-calorie you can eat a practically infinite amount of them without spoiling a diet!
parsley in the form of tabbouleh salad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbouleh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley
check out the vitamins and minerals in parsley, it's one of the super foods.
Fried soy beans with garlic. Tastes approx like potato chips, about the same price as beans, and decently nutritious. Just don't use too much salt or oil.