Eating a dinner with (lets call it) 8g of protein leaves you to source (lest call it 60/per day) 52g of protein in breakfast and dinner. Lets say our bunhc of

Eating a dinner with (lets call it) 8g of protein leaves you to source (lest call it 60/per day) 52g of protein in breakfast and dinner. Lets say our bunhc of kale is $3, bread $4 other stuff is "free". This leaves us with $7/2=$3.50 food cost. So we get about $1 to split for extra stuff for lunch. We can easily make egg/toast for breakfast, for $.50 cents (egg and a tbsp of jam), and get 5g protein. So now, we need to eat our lunch: 1/3 loaf of bread, 3/4 jar of sardines, and some mustard. Mix in the olive oil and its a reasonable amount of food. But there is only 15g of protein /per 100g in preserved anchovies. So, lunch plus breakfast is ~20g and 1/2 salad is 8g, total of 28... In other words, you are missing your protein intake by 50%. So, the price for eating kale salad while sticking to $4/day--even with generous assumptions--is that the rest of your meals need to make up for it. This is only realistic with a certain level of culinary sophistication. The type of basic re-purposing of ingredients illustrated above is much more likely in reality. And the tradeoffs there are you have to stomach a sandwich that some may condsider an aquited taste (although with 1/2 a lemon and some parsely not so bad) for lunch. But the real issue is scalability ans sustainability: over time missing 30g protein a day...is no problem for one day...but it is a problem as a lifestyle. If you have the skills/education and priveledges needed to access cost-effective fresh ingredients, whilst maintaining an active pantry...and/or you are the type of person to do spreadsheets of food cost...life isn't so hard...but one is assuming away many of the difficulties that face the $4/day folks on food-stamps, IMHO.