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Some notes- At base, the recipes eat for ~21$/week/person. After I lost my job, I definitely got below 20$/week, less protein, more rice. I have seen HN disput

Some notes- At base, the recipes eat for ~21$/week/person. After I lost my job, I definitely got below 20$/week, less protein, more rice. I have seen HN dispute 19k/yr living, so I also wanted to share with HN, the 3 things that allowed 2 people to live on $19,000/year. We lived like this for 3 years as my wife got her Doctorate. >Health Insurance- Don't pick the wrong one. Too often I hear people choosing 'a good plan', but the reality is, the Payments(preimums) + Max Out Of Pocket exceed the cost of a Bronze plan. >Used cars are better than new. Nothing quite like not caring if your car gets a ding. Nothing quite like not having a car payment. >Stop eating out, the 6$ meal is 6x the cost of the meals in the cookbook. Doing a Calorie Per Dollar comparison is a wakeup call for value. Thought this is useful for everyone. I'm planning to study another round of Calorie, Protein, and Nutrient Per Dollar data. Any requests?

joe-collins 8y ago
I would love sorted summary lists of their relevant statistics: active time, total time, cost/calorie, etc. Finding fast (=easy) meals is critical for me.
- jackvalentine 8y ago
  It would be interesting to see. My experience with meal prepping on Sundays has seen an hour of cooking eliminate “food seeking” behaviour and given me back a lot of time. I didn’t realise how much of my day revolved around food until I planned out every meal in advance and eliminated the need to!
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  Fast+Easy always: stirfries. Soups. Salads. Blended fruits (and some vegetables like cucumber). And since you're only using what you buy on sale, they taste different every time! Learn what doesn't need peeling. Potatoes - don't peel. Cucumber - don't peel. I don't even peel carrots. Just rinse and scrub. Being lazy, I buy frozen vegetables to bulk it up. Don't buy anything if it's not in a clear bag, otherwise you're buying expensive chopped carrots. For things that are canned and "require" rinsing, rinse in the can. Anything that involves an oven takes too long. Find out where you can use the microwave instead. When I make a stirfry, I put the potatoes in the microwave first to mostly cook them, then finish them in the stir fry. Same for carrots if I'm feeling a softer texture. If you're parking for work, invest in a good set of glass Tupperware-style containers that seal well. Don't buy a big set: you won't use 75% of them. I just buy plastic cutlery and keep them in my desk at work and dispose 50/50 (sometimes they'll fit in my container to take home, other times they won't and I don't want to deal with it).
  - wyclif 8y ago
    Any recommendations on the specific Pyrex/Tupperware set?
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      Just did some research, you want this kind with the lock on 4 sides and a rubberized gasket: "Glasslock". Square should be better than round. These are 2 compartment, which sounds even better. This is the style you want: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07CZPZ87F/ https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07CZPZ87F/
      - OneWordSoln 8y ago
        We just got a set of the single-compartment version and they are absolutely fantastic. The flat top allows a small post-it note for the date the food was made and lets them be stacked in the fridge. We got ours at Sam's Club.
        Scoundreller 8y ago
        Does Sams club have large sets of 1-person lunch sizes? Or can you only get the 38 packs or whatever of different sizes?
        OneWordSoln 8y ago
        I dunno for sure as it was the work of my wife and daughter, but it was a fairly big box of `em. We rarely go out to eat so lots of food goes into them, from olives to butter to thawing blueberries to hummus to leftovers. It looks like they got the 24-piece Glasslock set for $25.
    - Blackthorn 8y ago
      American Pyrex isn't, it's a Chinese knock-off that was deified as the brand. But it's not the original Pyrex and it doesn't stand up to heat.
- robertAngst 8y ago
  These are the three closest things I have to time studies on food: High protein per second foods- https://efficiencyiseverything.com/protein-per-second-fastest-ways-to-eat-protein/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/protein-per-second-fastes... Cooking protein faster- https://efficiencyiseverything.com/protein-per-second-part-2-cooking-proteins-fast-reducing-effort/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/protein-per-second-part-2... Foods that can be prepared in under 3 minutes, sorted by calories per dollar- https://efficiencyiseverything.com/3-minutes-of-effort-calories-and-protein-per-dollar/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/3-minutes-of-effort-calor...
gunn 8y ago
Could you add split-peas to your analyses? They're the best value food I've found - 25% protein, and 1/3rd cheaper than lentils, at least where I am.
moltar 8y ago
Fats are cheap, because Americans have vilified them. But they are a great source of calories at 9 kcal per gram. Would be a good opportunity to reduce expenditure while increasing caloric intake. Ofc, I’m talking good fats only. Animal fats mostly. No oils.
- wahern 8y ago
  Which animal fats? Beef, for instance, is quite high in trans fat.
  - chii 8y ago
    Butter. Olive oil. Occasionally use peanut or vegetable oil but only for frying.
    - moltar 8y ago
      I wouldn’t use any plant fats for cooking. All of them oxidize pretty quickly. Olive oils are often fake, unless you are paying around $20 for a small bottle.
      - Djvacto 8y ago
        There are a number of reputable olive oils you can buy that aren't fake. I buy from the costco lineup personally. We prefer Ottavio, the one from Spain, but I believe the Kirkland Brand was also tested. Also, can you elaborate more on why you don't use plant fats for cooking? We do the opposite here, so I'm curious.
        moltar 8y ago
        Yup, Costco is a great source. I emailed them and asked about the fake oils. They said they do random testing of every shipment. First, I avoid most of the m vegetable oils in general. Not just for cooking. The only exceptions is olive and coconut. Most oils are high in omega 6 fatty acids. This skews the ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 that our body desires. But cooking or heating the oils makes them even worse. It destroys good properties, oils become rancid / oxidizes during heating. I just don’t see the reason to even use veg oils. Food tastes so much better cooked in butter or ghee, or bacon fat, or beef tallow.
jdc 8y ago
Include protein quality/digestibility scores for each food.
auber 8y ago
The whole used car thing is just flat out wrong. If you are a mechanic and you know how to asses the health of a car perfectly and you are able to actually find a car that she not unreliable then maybe buying a used car would make sense. But even then you are giving up backup cameras, good mileage/hybrid tech and most importantly you are giving up the HUGE amount of progress that has been made in safety that is designed into the structure of the car. And on top of that you have to drive around an old beater that you aren’t proud to be seen in. Just buy a new Toyota Corolla. It’s guarnteed to be as reliable as possible, has a backup camera and modern safety features. And it looks good. But if you pay in cash it’s only 17k so you won’t be worried about dings anyway. In my opinion thats worth ~8k. But for the average person buying a used car will result in huge reliability problems, being stranded on the side of the road multiple times and you’ll end up paying thousands for repairs anyway. Yes, we all know that one guy who bought a used Toyota and never had problems. There’s a reason why it’s an anecdote about “that one guy I know.”
- Cerium 8y ago
  You bring up some valid points, yet I remain a used car advocate. A used car does not mean an old car. The last car I purchased was two years old and in quite nice condition. It has a rear view camera, heated seats and steering wheel, and advanced stability controls. I enjoy it, and enjoy that I spent about half as much as if I brought new.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
  So, if a new Toyota Corolla is reliable, surely a lightly used one ought to be too? I mean, provided the owner changed the oil regularly and what not. For the record, I have bought and driven a number of used cars and never had a significant reliability issue. Cars don't magically become unreliable when bought second-hand. I don't know anyone who buys second-hand who has had significant issues. So if anything your claim about anecdotes would be inverted for me.
  - auber 8y ago
    > provided the owner changed the oil regularly
xtreme 8y ago
I have lived on $20k/year when I was in grad school. I was also into body building, so my staple diet was rice, chicken, eggs, and veggies. If I was pressed for time, I would go for whole roasted chickens which I found quite tasty and full of protein. Other good sources of cheap protein I loved were greek yogurt and cottage cheese.
frankosaurus 8y ago
Nutrition per dollar numbers are a bit dubious. https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food-nutrition-per-dollar/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food-nutrition-per-dollar... Flour tends to beat everything since it is so cheap. For example, flour has 83.3 mg of iron per dollar. However, if you tried to hit your DRI for iron using flour, you would greatly exceed your daily caloric intake. One could argue just using a vitamin pill for micronutrients, and optimizing protein/dollar for macros.
- robertAngst 8y ago
  I hope that using Linear Algebra I can make flour useful. Current plan is to collect the data, match it to recommended amounts of nutrients/calories/etc... and see what the outcome is. I fantasize that it tells me to eat ~50 calories of flour a day, but until the equations are finished its merely an outlier.
jimjamarnold 8y ago
The nutrient-price analysis sounds cool, let me know if you're looking for help or someone to bounce ideas off. Here's my request - assuming data for a corpus of recipes with ingredients and ratings, plus food nutrient data and prices, I'd like to pull top n most nutrient-dense/price recipes and order by rating per regional cuisine.
- NowThenGoodBad 8y ago
  I went further for myself and looked at protein per dollar and several others as well. This was 12 years ago and I no longer have the spreadsheet, but lentils and other beans were absolutely stellar, shrimp and turkey are great for protein and tryptophan. Tailor your diet to your needs, are you exercising mentally or physically or both?
gexla 8y ago
More ideas. Organ meat is relatively cheap because people don't like it. But loaded with nutrients. Another good one is sardines. You are getting the whole fish and bones and people don't like sardines either. Some keto diets are heavy on using coconut oil for fat, which is cheapish for the number of calories you are getting.

joe-collins 8y ago

I would love sorted summary lists of their relevant statistics: active time, total time, cost/calorie, etc. Finding fast (=easy) meals is critical for me.

jackvalentine 8y ago
It would be interesting to see. My experience with meal prepping on Sundays has seen an hour of cooking eliminate “food seeking” behaviour and given me back a lot of time. I didn’t realise how much of my day revolved around food until I planned out every meal in advance and eliminated the need to!
Scoundreller 8y ago
Fast+Easy always: stirfries. Soups. Salads. Blended fruits (and some vegetables like cucumber). And since you're only using what you buy on sale, they taste different every time! Learn what doesn't need peeling. Potatoes - don't peel. Cucumber - don't peel. I don't even peel carrots. Just rinse and scrub. Being lazy, I buy frozen vegetables to bulk it up. Don't buy anything if it's not in a clear bag, otherwise you're buying expensive chopped carrots. For things that are canned and "require" rinsing, rinse in the can. Anything that involves an oven takes too long. Find out where you can use the microwave instead. When I make a stirfry, I put the potatoes in the microwave first to mostly cook them, then finish them in the stir fry. Same for carrots if I'm feeling a softer texture. If you're parking for work, invest in a good set of glass Tupperware-style containers that seal well. Don't buy a big set: you won't use 75% of them. I just buy plastic cutlery and keep them in my desk at work and dispose 50/50 (sometimes they'll fit in my container to take home, other times they won't and I don't want to deal with it).
- wyclif 8y ago
  Any recommendations on the specific Pyrex/Tupperware set?
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    Just did some research, you want this kind with the lock on 4 sides and a rubberized gasket: "Glasslock". Square should be better than round. These are 2 compartment, which sounds even better. This is the style you want: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07CZPZ87F/ https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07CZPZ87F/
    - OneWordSoln 8y ago
      We just got a set of the single-compartment version and they are absolutely fantastic. The flat top allows a small post-it note for the date the food was made and lets them be stacked in the fridge. We got ours at Sam's Club.
      - Scoundreller 8y ago
        Does Sams club have large sets of 1-person lunch sizes? Or can you only get the 38 packs or whatever of different sizes?
        OneWordSoln 8y ago
        I dunno for sure as it was the work of my wife and daughter, but it was a fairly big box of `em. We rarely go out to eat so lots of food goes into them, from olives to butter to thawing blueberries to hummus to leftovers. It looks like they got the 24-piece Glasslock set for $25.
  - Blackthorn 8y ago
    American Pyrex isn't, it's a Chinese knock-off that was deified as the brand. But it's not the original Pyrex and it doesn't stand up to heat.
robertAngst 8y ago
These are the three closest things I have to time studies on food: High protein per second foods- https://efficiencyiseverything.com/protein-per-second-fastest-ways-to-eat-protein/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/protein-per-second-fastes... Cooking protein faster- https://efficiencyiseverything.com/protein-per-second-part-2-cooking-proteins-fast-reducing-effort/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/protein-per-second-part-2... Foods that can be prepared in under 3 minutes, sorted by calories per dollar- https://efficiencyiseverything.com/3-minutes-of-effort-calories-and-protein-per-dollar/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/3-minutes-of-effort-calor...

gunn 8y ago

Could you add split-peas to your analyses? They're the best value food I've found - 25% protein, and 1/3rd cheaper than lentils, at least where I am.

moltar 8y ago

Fats are cheap, because Americans have vilified them. But they are a great source of calories at 9 kcal per gram. Would be a good opportunity to reduce expenditure while increasing caloric intake. Ofc, I’m talking good fats only. Animal fats mostly. No oils.

wahern 8y ago
Which animal fats? Beef, for instance, is quite high in trans fat.
- chii 8y ago
  Butter. Olive oil. Occasionally use peanut or vegetable oil but only for frying.
  - moltar 8y ago
    I wouldn’t use any plant fats for cooking. All of them oxidize pretty quickly. Olive oils are often fake, unless you are paying around $20 for a small bottle.
    - Djvacto 8y ago
      There are a number of reputable olive oils you can buy that aren't fake. I buy from the costco lineup personally. We prefer Ottavio, the one from Spain, but I believe the Kirkland Brand was also tested. Also, can you elaborate more on why you don't use plant fats for cooking? We do the opposite here, so I'm curious.
      - moltar 8y ago
        Yup, Costco is a great source. I emailed them and asked about the fake oils. They said they do random testing of every shipment. First, I avoid most of the m vegetable oils in general. Not just for cooking. The only exceptions is olive and coconut. Most oils are high in omega 6 fatty acids. This skews the ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 that our body desires. But cooking or heating the oils makes them even worse. It destroys good properties, oils become rancid / oxidizes during heating. I just don’t see the reason to even use veg oils. Food tastes so much better cooked in butter or ghee, or bacon fat, or beef tallow.

jdc 8y ago

Include protein quality/digestibility scores for each food.

auber 8y ago

The whole used car thing is just flat out wrong. If you are a mechanic and you know how to asses the health of a car perfectly and you are able to actually find a car that she not unreliable then maybe buying a used car would make sense. But even then you are giving up backup cameras, good mileage/hybrid tech and most importantly you are giving up the HUGE amount of progress that has been made in safety that is designed into the structure of the car. And on top of that you have to drive around an old beater that you aren’t proud to be seen in. Just buy a new Toyota Corolla. It’s guarnteed to be as reliable as possible, has a backup camera and modern safety features. And it looks good. But if you pay in cash it’s only 17k so you won’t be worried about dings anyway. In my opinion thats worth ~8k. But for the average person buying a used car will result in huge reliability problems, being stranded on the side of the road multiple times and you’ll end up paying thousands for repairs anyway. Yes, we all know that one guy who bought a used Toyota and never had problems. There’s a reason why it’s an anecdote about “that one guy I know.”

Cerium 8y ago
You bring up some valid points, yet I remain a used car advocate. A used car does not mean an old car. The last car I purchased was two years old and in quite nice condition. It has a rear view camera, heated seats and steering wheel, and advanced stability controls. I enjoy it, and enjoy that I spent about half as much as if I brought new.
asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
So, if a new Toyota Corolla is reliable, surely a lightly used one ought to be too? I mean, provided the owner changed the oil regularly and what not. For the record, I have bought and driven a number of used cars and never had a significant reliability issue. Cars don't magically become unreliable when bought second-hand. I don't know anyone who buys second-hand who has had significant issues. So if anything your claim about anecdotes would be inverted for me.
- auber 8y ago
  > provided the owner changed the oil regularly

xtreme 8y ago

I have lived on $20k/year when I was in grad school. I was also into body building, so my staple diet was rice, chicken, eggs, and veggies. If I was pressed for time, I would go for whole roasted chickens which I found quite tasty and full of protein. Other good sources of cheap protein I loved were greek yogurt and cottage cheese.

frankosaurus 8y ago

Nutrition per dollar numbers are a bit dubious. https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food-nutrition-per-dollar/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food-nutrition-per-dollar... Flour tends to beat everything since it is so cheap. For example, flour has 83.3 mg of iron per dollar. However, if you tried to hit your DRI for iron using flour, you would greatly exceed your daily caloric intake. One could argue just using a vitamin pill for micronutrients, and optimizing protein/dollar for macros.

robertAngst 8y ago
I hope that using Linear Algebra I can make flour useful. Current plan is to collect the data, match it to recommended amounts of nutrients/calories/etc... and see what the outcome is. I fantasize that it tells me to eat ~50 calories of flour a day, but until the equations are finished its merely an outlier.

jimjamarnold 8y ago

The nutrient-price analysis sounds cool, let me know if you're looking for help or someone to bounce ideas off. Here's my request - assuming data for a corpus of recipes with ingredients and ratings, plus food nutrient data and prices, I'd like to pull top n most nutrient-dense/price recipes and order by rating per regional cuisine.

NowThenGoodBad 8y ago
I went further for myself and looked at protein per dollar and several others as well. This was 12 years ago and I no longer have the spreadsheet, but lentils and other beans were absolutely stellar, shrimp and turkey are great for protein and tryptophan. Tailor your diet to your needs, are you exercising mentally or physically or both?

gexla 8y ago

More ideas. Organ meat is relatively cheap because people don't like it. But loaded with nutrients. Another good one is sardines. You are getting the whole fish and bones and people don't like sardines either. Some keto diets are heavy on using coconut oil for fat, which is cheapish for the number of calories you are getting.