Not to diminish the point you're making about the financial situation, I don't see how most people nowadays have high caloric needs. In fact I believe most peo

Not to diminish the point you're making about the financial situation, I don't see how most people nowadays have high caloric needs. In fact I believe most people today have very small caloric needs. Definitely compared to the olden days, where a 4000+ calorie diet for a farm hand would totally be OK and nobody would get fat from that. But even physically active people won't need that today. What most people have is cravings for sugary stuff and way too easy access to sugary stuff and they get fat and unhealthy from it (even if they stay lean because of their specific metabolism and not putting on the kilos but they might still be diabetic, have high cholesterol etc.) You parent probably eats a diet that (costs more but) is skewed towards proteins and fats and fiber and more akin to a diet one might have found prior to us discovering cheap and easy ways to make sugar and mass produce grains and process them into dead white flour. Personal anecdote to corroborate your parent's view (i.e. `anecdata+=1`): When I went full on Keto I could easily go for just one meal a day. I just wasn't hungry and the body used up my fat stores instead. It somehow learned over some time that it no longer had access to all that quick sugar and the cravings stopped. And when I did eat, it was lots of veggies, fat and protein and only incidental carbs from those veggies basically. On the other hand, when I came off Keto I immediately noticed again that if I do eat normal carb-y breakfast, I get hungry for lunch time again, while on Keto with nothing but a coffee w/ some butter or coconut oil in it, I wouldn't get any feeling of hunger during the entire day. Now with that said, it's probably cheaper for people to eat a sugary 3 meal diet than to eat a healthy diet of lots of protein, fat and veggies, as that's even more expensive if you don't grow a lot of it in your own garden from heirloom seeds. And who's got the time (or garden) for that like grandma did.