The time, scale, infrastructure question seems to be missing from this conversation. For example a roast chicken dinner with rice and vegetables that serves ~4

The time, scale, infrastructure question seems to be missing from this conversation. For example a roast chicken dinner with rice and vegetables that serves ~4 can be had for ~$10 - which is pretty healthy and seems very cost effective. But you need to assume a. You’re feeding ~4 and not one, you have a home with an oven (and not just say a microwave), you have the time to go shopping, an hour of time to cook (maybe only 15min of active time), and the basic home economics skills to execute on this.