I'm Brazilian, but whether you consider Latin America western or western-adjacent, here healthy food is definitely not cheaper than processed food at all. Yet,

I'm Brazilian, but whether you consider Latin America western or western-adjacent, here healthy food is definitely not cheaper than processed food at all. Yet, you can see populations and regions dropping from food insecurity directly into obesity as soon as people do have access to more food. The time argument might be relevant, but even then, most Brazilians do have cheap and easy access to a very healthy lunch in restaurants or to-go meals, purchased or prepared, with rice, beans, meat, salad... The breakfast is probably bread, but I'd say most people don't eat a lot of that in the morning. Getting proper nutrition at night will probably be problematic, but it's also a smaller window... But, like I said, processed food is quite expensive here. For instance, a 1 kg of chicken breast goes by less than a third the price of a McDonald's combo. A pack of cookies or snacks will be like double the price of a 1 kg of bananas...