The discussion about eating a meal for $3.00 was mentioned by US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins recently, when she expressed that people could get a nutritious meal for three dollars. She made the example of “a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing.”
There has been much ridicule toward this statement, mostly because of its austerity motivated sentiment (more on that later). But there are plenty of people challenging that it can’t really be done.
Well, it can. I eat three meals a day for under nine dollars a day. Actually, under eight dollars a day.
But I am not saying this to defend the Secretary of Agriculture, I am not. Before we use me as an example, let me explain what changes I had to make to reach this low amount.
The first thing I’ll mention is shifting to a whole food plant-based diet. I happen to exclude all animal products from my diet – and have for a decade – but this isn’t mandatory. What is needed is the whole food plant-based part. Processed food products take time and labor, they will always be more expensive to produce than whole foods.
It isn’t switching from ground beef to a plant-based substitute, it’s building meals from whole food, instead of prepared food. I don’t eat any meat, but if you do, eat very small portions, and use plants for most of your calories. Meat is expensive to raise. People need to quit thinking of cows casually grazing in otherwise empty grasslands, and then being herded off for slaughter when they get big enough. Most of all meat consumed in America is raised in factory farms. From beef to pork to chicken to fish, if you are eating it, it was probably raised in some kind of agricultural factory. These farms have huge costs, and are only profitable because of the scale at which they produce the meat, and the government subsidies provided to them and those who produce animal feed.
The needs of land, feed, veterinarian care, transportation, etc., make producing meat much more expensive than the vegetable equivalent. Remember, the animals eat plants, much of which humans could eat, or at least the land could be used to grow human food. And the conditions those animals are raised in produce many illnesses and conditions for which veterinarian services are constantly needed.
That leads to number two: make meals from scratch.
This is probably the most important factor: preparing mostly plant-based meals from scratch, or nearly so. This takes a shift in use of time. More time must be devoted to this part of your life.
No matter who you are or where you live, nobody gets more than twenty-four hours in a day, or more than the number of days in the calendar. And regardless of what it is we do with our time, we are already doing something for all of those hours and days. If you want to do more of anything, be it exercising, reading, visiting museums, or cooking food, you must do less of something else.
When we wish to do more of something, we intend for that time to come from something of low value, like watching television or gaming, or some other pastime we may consider wasteful. But we were doing those things because we wanted to. More time cooking must mean less time doing something else, be it watching TV, working, sleeping, or whatever. We have to make ourselves spend more time managing our meals. There is no doubt that shifting more time to meal prep will cause you to miss something else. This is why people tend to fail in February the exercise programs they started in January. They can’t go to the gym and continue to do all the stuff they did before they made their resolution.
I managed to do this for years, but not as well as after I retired. Today I spend on average close to a couple of hours a day doing some sort of task related to feeding myself, be it shopping, preparing, or cleaning up.
This can be mitigated by using technology to gather groceries. Stores will do the shopping for you, and you can pick it up at the curb or have it delivered. But this is not the path to saving money. Nobody does your shopping for free, nor should they. It is labor that must be paid for, and jobbing out your chores costs money.
Next, you must become a storekeeper of your own pantry.
To effectively reduce your cost of groceries, you must be able to make the meals you want with minimal waste, from items you have on hand. This requires a different mindset, as it isn’t enough to decide what you want to have for dinner that night on the way home from work, you must have a deep knowledge of the kinds of things you can make and what ingredients you’ll need to make them. You’ll need to plan menus that make smart use of perishables, in particular fresh produce. It helps to understand the seasonality of produce, and which choices will be gentler on your wallet.
You’ll need to do batch cooking, as many meals are simply impractical to make as single servings. You’ll need to make meals that work well as leftovers, and stored for you to take with you to work – because you must plan for the meals you eat away from home too.
My budget per day was higher when I was working, though still atypically low because of my approach. The key here is to do the preparations yourself, which will drastically lower your cost. But it very much helps me to have more time.
So, eat all meals at home, preparing them from scratch (or nearly so), mostly from plants, using beans and lentils, along with rice and potatoes to build your meals around, and getting flavor in the combinations of foods, and by adding herbs and spices. Use expensive things sparingly, but be sure to include greens. The steak that sits at the center of your plate would be enough for a whole family in traditional Asian households, perhaps for more than one meal, instead of part of one meal for one person.
This can – with good shopping and food storage practices – get you under $3 a meal per person. Even less with careful practices.
This would not be a pragmatic approach for many, if not most people in America, and it would have knock-on effects to the economy at scale as any austerity-based program will.
But even if someone wishes to do this, there’s still a long learning curve.
The first is learning how to cook such meals. You can buy or borrow books, watch videos, follow blogs, and more, but you must practice anything to get good. It takes time to figure out what sort of dishes you like that you can prepare well, within the time and energy constraints you have. You need to learn what foods work together, what spices and herbs do to make plain food into gourmet meals, and the timing needed to make the various parts come together. A bowl of cooked spaghetti sitting on the counter waiting for the sauce to finish cooking will, in time, end up disappointing the diners.
And you need to do this every day, all year. As I mentioned before, you need to shift a considerable amount of time from something else you were doing to cooking, shopping, and managing your pantry, not to mention increased time spent cleaning up the dishes and pans.
The ease of picking up takeout, or ordering in prepared or semi-prepared meals, has changed our behavior over the decades, even though buying prepared food was always a thing for some. Fast food takeaway has replaced the diner in American cities, which used to feed great numbers of single people who had few cooking facilities.
That practice has shifted to more people, and more geography. Suburban and even small town people get far more food prepared for them, than they would have even a half century ago. But even then Americans were inundated with prepared foods, even if they needed to be heated from frozen. I grew up in the seventies eating frozen pot pies and TV dinners, having had peanut butter or lunchmeat sandwiches earlier. All of these include a premium for having the work done by someone else.
On your way to work some morning, notice the lines of cars at fast food restaurants waiting patiently for a fat-laden meal of fried food that they are paying someone else to make. And they are waiting in line as long as it would have taken to make it themselves – all the while burning fuel. Maybe you are in those lines many of those mornings?
A former coworker was grumbling about money, and I pointed out that his morning coffee and donut bill of $6.00 equaled $15,000 in ten years. That is half the cost of a car right there.
Cooking is something that has been waning over the years. More than a decade ago, Americans began spending more money in restaurants than in grocery stores. Accounting for the difference in cost, that still means people are cooking, but they are doing less of it by far.
Consider for a moment sewing. As a boy, most of the families I knew had someone who could sew, but most of them were in the older generation. At least one of my sisters made some of her own dresses. Today, sewing is a niche skill, with many people not even having a needle and thread to replace a button, and will pay money for someone else to do even this simple task. Or they simply replace the garment, as fast-fashion has become cheap enough and short term enough to not bother repairing the items. This is a disaster for the planet and still expensive for the individual over time, and should be addressed too.
Cooking has been shifting that way as well, as the convenience of jobbing out much of one’s meal prep has allowed us more time to do other things. But like sewing, paying someone else to do the task isn’t free. You might save a few dollars by having a seamstress mend a tear, or let out a dress instead of replacing it, but not as much as if you had those skills yourself. But even here, these costs are occasional, as nobody needs to have something sewn 21 times a week, like three meals a day equals.
A typical example of many contemporary people – including myself some years ago, would be to eat breakfast at home, perhaps some healthy bowl of grain-based cereal with added berries, or some avocado toast, or even some microwave breakfast sandwich; then get fast food for lunch, whether burgers, salads, wraps, or whatever; then pick up takeaway food on the way home, perhaps only an entree, and eat that with some rice or pasta made at home.
Breakfast $3.00
Lunch: $8.00
Dinner: $15.00
That’s more than $8.00 a meal. For one person. 8x3x30 is over $700 a month.
If you want to get your food budget under $3 a meal, or even under twice that amount, you need to stop paying others to cook food for you. You must do the work yourself, and figure out for yourself what activities you give up to make the time.
Stocking the pantry.
By keeping pantry staples stocked up you always have them on hand, and you can restock when items are on sale. But remember to rotate your stock, ensuring that the “best before” dates are arranged with nearest dates to the front.
Buying in bulk is another factor in keeping costs low. This means setting up storage at home to store this food. I use the word pantry, but this does not necessarily mean an actual separate room. My laundry/storage room holds some of my stock of staples, and I have more kitchen cabinets than others, even though I live in a small house. I prepared for this by prioritizing food preparation when I remodeled the house after buying it. Yeah, having a kitchen big enough to store food and cook meals comes from intentional choices.
Eating for under $3 a meal means having food storage and becoming good at being your own storekeeper. Being able to calculate your costs per calorie, and ensuring you get a broad enough range of food for a healthy diet.
*A note about healthy diets.
The evidence shows clearly that eating a diet of mostly plants leads to the lowest rates of the big killers, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, and all-cause mortality.
The dietetic associations of every advanced nation say that a well-planned diet that omits all animal products is suitable for anyone.
But even if not omitted entirely, animal products should be minimized for best health.
I am not here to advocate for veganism. I am here to address cost, and meat is expensive. As are the costs of healthcare related to the conditions eating meat tends to lead to. It is also unnecessary, so do not feel that reducing the amount will adversely affect your health – it’s actually the opposite. Remember “well-planned” when building any diet.
As a general note about information, don’t take the word of someone trying to sell you something. Advertisements from food industries promoting their products will often make health claims that do not match dietary science.*
As an individual path, I find great satisfaction in managing my dietary intake the way I do, but it does come with tradeoffs. As mentioned before, you must spend more time getting meals, but this also means less time at restaurants with friends, and fewer occasions of grabbing something tasty while out and about.
Picnics can be fun. Pack meals to take with you, so you don’t need to buy prepared meals.
Have friends over for dinner. You get the meal, you get the company, you probably get some help clearing and cleaning the dishes. And the tip you get is the savings in cost. Engage the whole family in making meals, it will build togetherness and instill good frugal habits.
Austerity.
But if everyone did this it would have a bad effect on our communities as a whole. Every restaurant experience, every takeaway stop, every prepared meal marks someone else’s income. The money earned in restaurants rolls through the economy as wages turn to purchases, which become wages for others. And taxes are extracted from these sales and incomes to pay for the common needs of the people. Economics show that each dollar spent has a multiplier effect as high as five to one.
And while it is good personal advice from my perspective, it is a terrible stance for a Secretary of Agriculture to take.
It amounts to austerity, and such programs typically begin a spiral into recession. Fewer dollars spent leads to lower employment, which leads to lower purchasing, and so on. More people out of work, means more people struggling to feed their families, and more people needing public assistance for help.
It isn’t troubling that someone should suggest an individual can lower their cost of feeding themselves and their family – you’ve just read me do just that. It’s troubling that a rich person in charge of a White House Cabinet is telling Americans they should spend less on food, while cutting food assistance to hungry people.
She is cutting off small amounts of food assistance from millions of people, and then telling them to be more frugal. A practice which will lead to more people needing that assistance. It’s cruel and harmful to us. And there is a near zero percent chance that she practices what she is telling the people to do.
It reveals the priorities of this administration. It is an intentional move to bring more poverty, which will bring more fear. The fear will allow them to take more power away from the People.
The truth is food costs are going up in direct relationship to policies enacted by Trump’s second term in office. Be it tariffs, cutting food assistance programs, or deporting the workers who pick the crops, the higher costs fall at the feet of the People, and the federal government’s response is to tell the people to eat less food.
Whatever one does with their own food budget, remember that the higher cost isn’t your fault. And rich people telling you that their bad policies must be paid for with your frugality is a reason to oppose them.