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
- fruits (in season) and vegetables
- lentils, beans, rice
- mushrooms
- chicken
- just eat in moderation
Edit 2: Thanks for the various answers. Now there are a lot of (mostly bean-based) recipes for everyone to try out!
Also someone made a community for cheap healthy food after seeing this topic!
Well chicken maybe as it is the most cheap meat. And it is subjective, but something like chicken soup (if cooked at home) can be relativly cheap and really delicious.
Also, just thought about it - fruits and berries also easily break this trinity
Meat is an expensive luxury product
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.
If you make the bread yourself (i.e. with a breadmaker) it’s dirt cheap. I buy flour and yeast in bulk and it costs bugger all per loaf.
You could maybe argue bread isn’t healthy because it’s technically a processed food (flour, carbs, etc.), but as others have pointed out moderation is key.
My reply to the the whole thread would be bread/sourdough. Healthy might be pushing it, but a whole grain, hard wheat (bread flour) at least has a bit more protein. Plus I usually add eithe a bit of olive oil to the dough (good fat) and brush the top with butter (extra taste).
I’d put steel cut oats in this boat too, with a bit of honey to sweeten.
And then there is mc Donald’s and similar chains. They managed to avoid all three of those things
I wonder if they are actually that unhealthy. After all a burger is just meat, bread, and some veggies. Doesn’t seem that unbalanced.
I assume the most unhealthy part there is the gallon of sugar soda that people also drink there ._.
undefined> Kebab
It’s all the additives to these otherwise quite wholesome ingredients that make them less healthy and not as nutritionally dense as they should be. McDonald’s burgers are not JUST meat, bread, and some veggies unfortunately.
Well-seasoned, air-fried chicken is super healthy and cheap.
Chicken has been heavily, heavily marketed as a health food, and while it’s not the worst thing you could eat, if you actually look at its nutritional profile it’s not particularly nutritious or “healthy”. That’s just Tyson Foods & co working their magic. It’s more like the ultimate neutral food - nothing terrifying, nothing great, a bit like its taste.
Today I learned that what I consider healthy is very different from what others consider healthy. Fried chicken would not be in my top 10 healthy choices for example. Not criticizing the other guy, but just noting that what is considered to be healthy is sooo wildly distorted by corporate indoctrination that there are likely people who think KFC has some healthy food.
I think you are the same kind of post brigader that I’ve seen on reddit before from a certain 5 letter sub
Please know that what your doing is bad faith and you shouldn’t be policing or harassing other users online for what they consume
stick to your own personal dietary preferences and let others stick to theirs
Are you kidding? Name a cleaner protein source than chicken lol
Chicken breast lean protein. What do you mean by “nutritional profile”?
Lean protein =/= healthy. Like, at all. This is a myth from the freaking 1980s. Nutritional profile is a breakdown of the micronutrients that a food has, and it determines whether a food is “nutritious” and therefore, in general terms, “healthy”.
Please, oh please, don’t go around telling people that food is healthy if it is a lean protein. I’m sure it’s well intended, but it’s also misinformed. If you want to learn about how to assess whether a food is healthy, go make an appointment with a dietitian - your insurance will often cover the first appointment.
You sure typed a lot without explaining what the nutritional profile of chicken is or why it’s not healthy.
Sorry, unfortunately nutrition is more complex than what you can sum up in a few sentences. To answer that though:
-
Chicken isn’t categorically “unhealthy” in the same way double stuf oreos cooked in lard are - I said in another comment that it’s the ultimate neutral food, and if you look at its profile I think that’s a fair statement. It’s not completely devoid of nutrients, it has a couple of things in significant quantities - phosphorus, selenium, and B3 for example - but overall it’s not very nutrient dense. It doesn’t have a ton of huge negatives either - a bit of saturated fat, but nothing to write home about. If you’re looking at a “Hitler-Hanks” spectrum where the lard oreos are on one end and a spinach chia seed broccoli whatever salad on the other, then chicken is probably right in the middle somewhere. Its D&D alignment is True Neutral. The point I was making in my earlier comment was that “protein” doesn’t make a food healthy, and that there’s a lot more to it than that, and if people use that mental shortcut they might end up making misinformed decisions.
-
The nutritional profile of chicken would be a lot to type out, but you can look at the NCCDB or Cronometer Gold (which uses NCCDB among others) for an elaborate breakdown. Just keep in mind that it doesn’t capture everything - it’s an amazing tool, but it won’t cover the catechins in your tea, for example.
Ultimately though, if you’re reading this, let me take this opportunity to encourage you to GO SEE A REGISTERED DIETITIAN. Your insurance will often cover 80+% of your first appointment, but even if they don’t it’s an amazing investment. You’ll live longer, probably spend less on food, and spend a lot less on hospital bills after your first heart attack.
-
8oz of skinless breast has 250 calories, 0 carbs, and >50g of protein. That’s really nutritious and healthy in my book.
That’s very similar to something like lentils, and a lot better than something like rice which other people are saying but is essentially empty calories with barely any nutritional value.
Macronutrients are not what makes a food healthy. In particular, high-protein does not make a food healthy. By that reasoning a lot of fast food could be considered insanely healthy, but it’s not. That’s just our downright shitty levels of education surrounding nutrition.
What actually makes a food healthy depends on a lot of different factors, but a common one and relatively reliable standard bearer is whether it is “nutritious”. When a food is nutritious or nutrient dense, it is micronutrient dense. This includes things like spinach and beans and seeds and broccoli and all of the other foods that your parents made you eat. Micronutrient poor foods are ones that have relatively few micronutrients, but usually are relatively calorie rich. This includes things like mozzarella sticks, wonderbread, fruit gushers, heavy cream, twinkies, and so on. We do need macronutrients, but virtually anyone who gets enough energy (calories) from food also gets enough of them, except in specific cases like being a professional athlete. The athlete wouldn’t die of protein deprivation if they didn’t pay attention to their intake, but it would make it harder for them to perform well.
So no, chicken is not, by any standard, “really nutritious and healthy”. It’s not completely devoid of nutrients - it’s relatively rich in phosphorus and selenium if you eat it on its own, for example, but it’s far from what anyone would consider nutritious. It’s somewhere in between fried mars bars and spinach.
Chana masala is pretty delicious and I’m pretty sure it’s healthy. I think it’s mostly chickpeas and vegetables which are both pretty good for you.
I don‘t know about economics, but this is my entry to research:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=0Xa7Dp3-eYA
And cucumber prices went up more than 50% for me in the last 2 years alone, so maybe you‘re onto something.
good price is hit or miss
Onion. It’s cheap, nutritious, acts as a low-key anti bacterial solution, can be served in a multitude of ways, or eaten raw.
Subscribe for more onion facts. 🧅
eaten raw
You, sir, are a monster.
Hmm time for a snack
Takes a bite from a raw onion like an apple
Tony abbott is that you?
Listen for some of us that’s a delicacy.
I thought your facts would lean more towards the lemon lifestyle.
Followed. Don’t let me down!
Great fashion accessory too
Scrambled eggs.
Popcorn is very low calorie per volume, especially the types without a lot of fat.
When I was in college, I had the rule of not buying anything that is >$1.50 per pound. This is what I was reduced to (prices may be different now due to inflation and geo area):
- Apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries when they are on sale
- Milk, yogurt
- Pork shoulder, chicken quarters, thighs, drumsticks
- ground pork, ground beef
- Carrots, broccoli, potatoes, cabbage (you’ll be surprised at how good thinly sliced cabbages taste in a sandwich)
Beans! Especially stew with them, you can throw in pretty much anything (veggies, meat, adjust your spice levels…) and once you learn the correct balance it’s very tasty and filling.
You already mentioned them, but I’m a huge fan of lentils. They go with so much stuff and you can combine them with a variety of spices. Give me any leftover ingredients and some lentils, and I’ll cook up something delicious. I can and will eat lentil soup for days.
They are also a pretty solid crop, they can grow in a variety of climates, require little water and are good for the soil.
Tacos and burritos could absolutely meet this criteria If you’re doing them well at home, with the most unhealthy thing being the tortilla itself (You could argue that those are empty calories). Of course that means no sour cream or cheap cheese abuse among other things
< deleted. pls find info on fb/yt > …
Sorry for my ignorance but what’s an “empty calorie”?
Im not an expert but people argue that bread and esentially most products whose base is just flour aren’t good. The reasoning is that those are carbohydrates that just add calories and nothing else (protein, vitamins etc…). So eating 200kcal of tuna is healthier than 200kcal of bread since those calories come with Proteins, phosphorus, omega 3 a bunch of vitamins etc. Whereas bread/tortillas are (basically) just carbohydrates which arent bad by themselves, but also arent good in excess
That’s true for white bread, not the other kinds. Whole-grain bread is both delicious and healthy. I remember visiting the UK for the first time and being amazed that all the natives were eating white bread for breakfast and lunch. Here in Northern Europe, white bread is more on par with a dessert item.
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.
My vote too.
If you expand the format to rice + dried bean/legume/grain (e.g. lentils, quinoa), you can really expand your possibilities without breaking the bank.
Carters’ peanuts :)
Nutritious is very relative to industrialized food production. The most nutritious natural products are perceived as wild and are not objects of agriculture. Basically the objects of agriculture were selected on the ease of reproduction, not their nutritious value, or their cost. It just so happened that those that were easy to plant and grow were the leanest in quantity and complexity of nutrients. Many of the most nutritious seeds, fruits, and vegetables are becoming extinct with the elimination of natural forests. Planted forests would take thousands of years to stabilize as ecosystems (if ever) and be concidered sustainable food sources.
Cheap means the industry hasn’t been able to monopolize, but labor is very exploitable (see bannana republics, tea and coffee plantations). It also means the quantities produced have saturated the markets and the product is in abundance (wheat, corn, soy,…).
Delicious … only N.Europeans (and their N.Am. Oceania descendants) would consider eating a single element alone and judge it by taste. The rest of the world eat what they can get, spice it up, mix it, and make taste a final product of a mixture of things with a labor intensive process of preparing it. The dairy industry (waste of nutritients and exponentially waste of land use) and the sugar industry (it should have been banned under substance abuse addictive product that is a health hazzard as well) have blurred what “delicious” really means. Take as an example banana split ice cream, there is little nutritious value, if not harmful as a whole, made of three industrial products that maximize labor exploitation. If it wasn’t for capitalism nobody in their right mind would have come up with this one. It only exists because of capitalism.
Nutrition has been a dead end disaster since its early days of being industrialized.
