I've never had Ramen, so I had to look it up, but... let's take Ramen literally, using Amazon's Ramen pricing as a baseline, and try to inject health concerns!

I've never had Ramen, so I had to look it up, but... let's take Ramen literally, using Amazon's Ramen pricing as a baseline, and try to inject health concerns! At $17.49 for a 36 pack of Ramen, we're talking ~$0.49/meal. Check! Two kilograms (4.4 lbs) of Lentils costs me $2.49 at my local supermarket. According to the fine people at Wolfram Alpha, 1 cup of lentils (cooked) weighs 99grams and costs $0.125. Bags of frozen vegetables cost ~$2. I can get ~8 meals from one bag of such veggies, making each portion cost $0.25. That's a total cost of $0.374, which means we still have ~$0.12 to go. One package of dried soup (with beans) costs $1.99 regular price - but can be on sale for $0.99. Taking the regular price into count, and getting 12 (small) bowls of soup brings the per-bowl price to $0.125. So, you can eat (unfortunately, high salt) soup, beans, lentils, and veggies for ~$0.49/meal. You'll actually need less than a cup of lentils if you do this, which should bring the cost down a bit.