kotterr, I am guessing you are trying to be frugal now to build your preps for later? If that is so you should consult a nutritionist guide to plot out your daily/weekly low cost menu. Try like heck to get live fruits and vegetables, when in season, and learn how to use cheap cuts of meat in simple meals. Now is not the time to get sick and weak. Now is the time to begin experimenting with Rice, Potatoes and Pasta as a carb base with fresh vegetables and inexpensive cuts of meat to round things out. There are articles on You Tube about tenderizing meats. There are recipes for the single guy as well. Starving yourself or depleting your system by eating cheap packaged foods is not the answer. Now is the time for a good diet and exercise, starvation and privation will come soon enough.

 

could try hunting for your meat.

 

The most economical and healthy diet imo, is based on fresh nuts, fruit and eggs.

This is only the case if you have the ability to produce these yourself. Otherwise, yes a bean based diet would be the case, you just must be careful that you get a complete protein intake, remember there are different proteins your body needs which often don't all come in perfect proportions in one product.

I will second the checking with a nutritionist, would suck to wind up dead because you ate too much rice and too little chicken!

 

Beans and rice with spices will go a long way. Add in some canned meat and grow your own sprouts. Multi grain pasta, olive oil and supplemental multi vitamins with minerals are also in my supplies.

Learn you native plants. Green Dean on u-tube "eattheweeds". A shotgun and snares with fishing gear can help with meat protein.

 

As others have said, beans and rice form the core of a low cost diet.

Adding wild foods and tree foods is also very low cost. The first never has a cost other than time and knowledge. The latter only requires planting once and time to grow.

Rabbit ranching also makes for a very low cost meat source. About the cheapest way there is to get meat unless you are blessed with prime hunting grounds and lots of cheap ammo. Renewable protein like eggs and nuts is important to look into. Learning to trap will likely put more meat on your plate than hunting will. You just have to get used to eating smaller animals.

You should also learn what is easy to grow in a garden in your area too. Easy to grow also means abundance. Consider forest and guerrilla gardening too because both are low maintenance. Also look into growing Amaranth too.

Variety is certainly the key to health. The more discreet foods you eat the more likely you will round out your nutrition needs. "Eat all the colors" is an old health food saying that actually works. Color in food is phytonutrients.

 

Examples of Cheap meals:
Cajun Style Beans & rice with corn bread.
Mexican/Spanish rice with pintos and corn tortillas(Corn tortillas freeze well!)
Soups (Meat, veggies) with bread, noodles, rice.

Make large batches and freeze the leftovers so you can rotate and not get bored. Use leftovers creatively. Such Fry the corn tortillas into chips and have beans & chips.

Cheap veggies are Carrots, celery, onion and potato. They are staple veggies in many different types of foods and store pretty well. Buy fruits & other veggies in season.

Breakfast... don't neglect that! Oatmeal, cream of wheat, grits, etc with fruit, nuts, and egg, toast, etc

Learn to cook from scratch.
Here is a good site... It has a menu to feed a family of 4 to 6 people for $45 a week with shopping list and recipes. While this is not ideal ... it would save you some cash and you could freeze leftovers if you are single so that would make this 1 months worth of food for $45. It would give you time to explore your options and make your own plan. This includes breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack. http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/40dollarmenu.htm

 

Almost anything Mexican.

 

Like others said, rice and beans. 3/4 of the world lives on mostly just that.

 

What is the most economical diet that will allow me to survive and live well ...

It really depends on what you mean by "live well". If not being dead and starving is "living well", then rice and beans will do.

If you want to look forward to the next meal, and not feel like shoveling it into your mouth is yet another form of drudgery, you need a much more varied diet.

 

Long term and factoring in medical costs in the future I would say following the Paleo Diet would be the most cost effective.

If you could raise some of the protein yourself such as chickens, rabbits, fish (aquaponics) and grow your own greens then it is not that expensive day to day either.

Plus, you want to eat the fatty cuts of meat and the organ meats that tend to be cheaper anyway

aman

 

Plus, you want to eat the fatty cuts of meat and the organ meats that tend to be cheaper anyway

As long as you need the extra fat then that is fine, but organ meats definitely raise the danger of gout disease.

make sure you take your vitamins

Vitamins don't store well or for very long, which isn't useful for SHTF. Also their expense can easily throw off a food budget. Remember the OP is looking for a low cost system. If you learn basic nutrition and how to get it then vitamins are not important.

 

make sure you take your vitamins...check out The Health Ranger Mike Adams

he has a lot of good advice

 

if sealed and stored properly they can last a while in a SHTF...

in a situation where you have to bug in like a pandemic they might not be a bad idea

 

Even in hermetically sealed factory packaging you are looking at a barely a year or two. Fine for short term disasters, I guess, but not for anything that goes long term. Believe me, I have tried to find a good quality LTS variety of vitamin. No such luck. The fact is that the better the vitamin the shorter they last. The best kind, liquid injectable, are good for mere months unopened and refrigerated, but go bad within days of opening. The real issue is that the various vitamins in a multivitamin will react with each other. It is the worst low potency and low bioavailable oral vitamins that will last the longest because the useless fillers hold things together longer.

If you want complete nutrition that will withstand LTS then you should focus on the foods themselves. If your goal is only to have something handy for a scenario that lasts less then two years then most commercial brands will work well enough without doing anything more than putting them on your pantry shelf.

 

A 50-pound sack of barley is less than $10.
Oats are $8
Corn is $12.
Wheat was around $14 the last time I looked.

You can make a lot of porridge for real cheap.

 

As others have said- rice and bean are going to be your staple for eating on the cheap, but here are a few ideas that I use.

Avoid processed foods at all costs. Avoid more packaged/ advertised/ name brand goods. All that processing, packaging, advertising, etc cost money, which the manufacturers and supermarkets are happy to pass on to you.

Eat seasonally. If you eat stuff when it’s in season, you can eat well (and tasty) on the cheap. For instance, when asparagus was in peak season, it was about $1.50/lb in my farmer’s market. A few months later, it’s almost $5.00/lb. Limes are 5 for $1.00 right now. In a few months they will be 3 for $2.00… you get the drift.

Speaking of farmers and farmer's markets- pay cash. You can often wheel & deal with farmers if you have cash.

Learn to do some light butchering- you can get a whole chicken for what a few boneless breasts costs. Once again- more work done by others, the more it costs you. Plus, not only do you get more meat, but you have the carcass for the soup pot.

Which brings me to the next point- make stocks and use them to make soups. Not only are they a great way to use up leftovers, but they are a great way to extract nutrients from things that you can’t or don’t want to eat.

Learn to use “inferior” cuts of meat. Often times an inferior piece of meat can become a delicious dish with the addition of the right herbs and spices and a judicious application of time. (Barbeque for instance)

Eggs- lots of protien per $.

Plan out your meals ahead of time to make the most efficient use of the food that you have.

Make “recyclable” dishes- Take a piece of chicken for instance. If you roast it, you can use the leftover meat for sandwiches, enchiladas, salads, etc. Left over veggies- chop them up and put in a risotto.

Bottom line is to learn some cooking techniques (search youtube for Alton Brown or Goodeats), plan ahead, eat seasonal, be creative, and look for sales. If you do that, you can eat well while saving a lot of cash.

 

I seem to recall MikeK posting links before to articles about how decades of storage are required before even 10% of vitamins are lost.

I store grains in steel drums with rechargeable desiccant every year. It works great for my livestock and works great for basic porridge too.

A mixture of grains can easily provide 80% of your dietary requirement for years. It is very cheap.

A pound of corn has 1660 calories for around 25 cents.
A pound of barley has over 1600 calories for only 20 cents.
A pound of oats have 323 calories for 16 cents.

Many times in our history folks have survived through hard times by eating porridge.

 

I seem to recall MikeK posting links before to articles about how decades of storage are required before even 10% of vitamins are lost.

That was in relation to canned foods.

Vitamin tablets are a different story. Especially multi vitamins. Part of the problem is that the antioxidants react with oxygen (that's their job). Another part of the problem is that vitamins react with each other.

There are specialty vitamin tablets made specifically for long term storage. The vitamins are encapsulated seperately so they don't interact with each other in the tablet. Of course this raises the cost. Walton Feed used to handle a brand that was rated for something like 20 years. They still have a couple kinds, but they're not the same brand that I remember.

Wild foods are nutritional powerhouses. Many of what we consider to be "weeds" are actually high nutrition super foods. A lot of places don't grow enough wild edibles to live on, but as a supplement to our stored and raised foods, they're like a mega multi vitamin.

Sprouting is a great way to seriously increase the vitamins in the beans and grains we store. As well as adding important live enzymes to the diet. For those who aren't gardening, sprouting is even more critical. And for everyone, it gives us an easy to raise source of live greens in the winter.

 

I am going to go against the majority once again. I key my food preps around high quality protein. Namely meat.

As long as one gets 60 grams of protein from meat while fairly sedentary, and up to 100 grams of protein or more from meat when very active, the healthier a person will be, and the more energy they will have, and the less they will I need of everything else. Of course you do need all the other things mentioned, to round out a healthy diet, but the core of the planning should be around sourcing that high grade meat protein.

Next most important in the diet is quality fats, like that found in coconut oil and nuts. It doesn't take that much quantitatively to get the calories you need from fats, but it is important to get them.

Carbs/sugars come last in terms of need. You do need carbs. Quite a few of them. But if your diet centers around carbohydrates, you will not be as healthy as you can be, and despite the low cost of the items, the overall cost of the diet will only be slightly lower than if getting your primary calories from fats and protein from meats with vegetables for flavoring, vitamins, minerals, and variety, fruits for the sugars, and comfort foods just to keep one happy.

For a 3,000 calorie diet for hard work in the PAW, 400 calories/16oz of beef/chicken/eggs, 2,250 calories18 tablespoons of coconut oil (or equivalent in other fats in other foods, and including that used in baking and cooking), and 350 calories 2 cups or so of rice/beans, and other Carbs/sugars, will keep a person working, healthy, and feeling good.

And the expense will be well worth it as you will be getting much more value per dollar.

Just my opinion.

 

Vegetarian Bulk Long Term Storable Food Diet

Excellent answers already given and thank you. If memory serves, years ago I had to do some silly paper in school on this very subject. Lucky us. This diet appears to be well balanced and is certainly cheap and does lend itself for long term storage.

Various beans, #2 hard red winter wheat berries, (requires grinding into fine flour) white rice, (stores longer) soy beans, whole dried peas, oatmeal, hard yellow field corn, (requires milling) ground prepared corn grits, salt, pepper, sugar and spices.

Add various types of baking powder, soda and bread yeasts. Condensed whole milk powder, vegetable oil, and a good 110 vac/12 vdc grain grinder/flour maker with a manual ability. All of this stuff should be organic quality SEED grains that can be planted.

Most of this stuff can be sprouted, which is necessary for the vitamins. Do not get animal feed. Such is laced with nasty chemical additives/pesticides and antibiotics. Stay away from GMOs. All of this stuff requires long preparation and cooking time.

You do not need ANY animal products, expect for the whole milk powder which is used for the cooking process and not for drinking. This is a vegetarian food storage program. Finding a good source for all of this will be difficult. Hope this helps. HB of CJ

Expect to pay big bucks for just a little bit, but much $$$ for quantities. It will all store well in big barrels placed in a dry, cool, dark location. Prepare for rodents. I have forgotten the ratios of the certain grains. Try the LDS network...they are into this stuff.

 

The typical vegan/vegetarian diet tends to be deficient in long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, calcium, zinc and vitamin B12, plus iodine if not in a country where salt is iodized and consumed by the vegetarian. You have to make sure you stock foods to cover that shortfall because supplements likely won't be available after SHTF and some like Vitamin D can be downright dangerous. Vegans and vegetarians also commonly suffer from low bone density because they don't enough high calcium vegetables. Vigilance is very important to cover this common shortfall in a vegetarian diet.

The risk of hypocobalaminemia or B12 deficiency is very high, especially with true vegans. Your choices for B12 will be extremely hard to find. Your average vegan is commonly deficient due to the lack of options other than supplements. Supplements being of low shelf stability a vegetarian will run out of options fast to maintain healthy B12 levels. B12 is not made in plants or animals. It is made by bacteria. Because herbivore animals consume dirty food they pick it up from soil, whereas meat eaters consume herbivores and get B12 that way. Possibly eating dirty food will provide necessary B12 but that brings a host of other threats. It is said that fermented food, especially certain Korean dishes might have a high level of B12 nutrition. Fresh sea algae has also been listed as a possible source. But no source other than animal products and dietary supplements have been positively proven to give the necessary nutrient.

Here is a good link on the matter: http://www.vegansociety.com/lifestyle/nutrition/b12.aspx

Short of something being found to carry B12 in the future that isn't from animal sources then once supplement stores are gone then every person must accept they are obligate omnivores. The true vegan is only proven possible through modern technology.

 

I have found the most economical recipies to be the ones that I was raised on. My Mother was a depression baby, and she could cook on very little.

Yes, she did use either beans and meat, or rice and meat, or meat and noodles.

We ate cassaroles and spaghetti and goulash (for my rice and meat I prefer Chinese) and so forth. She also had a small garden and she raised a lot of tomatos to make her own spaghetti sauce with.

A typical meal would be spagetti, with home made sauce and a pound of ground hamburger, served with milk. Mom would fuss if we did not drink enough milk. She also would serve a salad with the meal, with vinegar and oil salad dressing. Our salads were mostly lettuce with plenty of homeraised tomatos.

The ingredient breakdown would be hamburger (usually bought on sale), spagetti noodles, iceberg lettuce, milk, spice for the home made sauce, and garden tomatos. At today's prices that works out to about $5 for my family of 4.

Secondly, always use your leftovers. Leftover spagetti sauce makes a good topping for home made pizze, and the crust is simply rolled out bread dough. Add a handfull of cheese and it only costs about $1 to make because the cost was figured in the above meal. The hotter oven makes the crust more crispy: I bake pizza at 500 degrees.

This is inexpensive eating that will help you save for preps. The most inexpensive preps I have found are bought at the grosery store, though they are not packaged for long term storage. I buy raisins, spagetti noodles, canned meat of various kinds, rice, soy sauce, ketsup, and anything else that looks good. I also have a garden, and I am capable of growing black eyed peas as my husband prefers this to beans. I only raised them twice because it is a lot of picking when summer is at its hottest.

I have found that if I use my preps as a pantry that it saves me money. I buy on sale and if it is not on sale then I take from the preps, and I restock the preps when that item goes on sale again. The only thing I do not want to buy on sale is raisins: the sale raisins are always dried out.

By the way, if you are wanting to store beans, cumin is the spice that gives chili the expected chili flavor. You get a better dish if you also throw in onion and tomatos and other good things but cumin is what makes it taste like chili.

 

My parents were 6 and 8 when the Dust Bowl hit. My mother told about having a sack of black-eyed peas to eat one month. As a tween - teen she cooked a lot of suppers made of cornbread, beans, with any greens she could forage that day.

 

Thank You lamZeke

Great post and thank you. I forgot to add daily vitamin/mineral pills and the additional milk powder consumption. Sprouting also addresses most additional requirements, along with using sea salt. This also begs the question as to why some animal husbandry is a good idea living on the solar homestead. Thanks again. HB of CJ (old coot)

totally unrelated...but about 2 weeks ago we were invited over for dinner with good friends and we had homestead raised rabbit. I was very surprised. Much better than chicken and one bunny fed 4 adults. They also had some laying chickens. HB now I'm hungry, but dieting. Yumm yumm.