There's a lot of good, cheap foods out there if you're willing to find them and put in the time. Buy a ricemaker and a couple bags of brown rice/beans and you're set for the apocalypse. Just put enough sriracha on the rice to make you forget about the blandness. Pasta is cheap, too. You can buy a lot of pasta for very little cash. Bananas always seem to be the cheapest fruit I find. Cigarettes are cheap too, only 8 bucks a pack!

Also, if you eat slowly, you'll get full faster and enjoy your food more.

[quote name='francoispress' timestamp='1330632391' post='4918336']
[quote name='SteveDeFacto' timestamp='1330616602' post='4918211']
[quote name='francoispress' timestamp='1330616216' post='4918208']
I grow my own food in various places like my yard, family members houses, and out in urban forests. Anyways, I buy rice, beans, mushrooms, onions, yams, sweet potatoes, rice noodles, squash, sardines and get about 2 - 3 months worth for about $40 - $50. However, as my diet is quite varied I eat something different every day so that's why this food lasts me so long. There are other things that I don't buy that taste good - like Walnuts. I just pick these up in the forest. Food expenses have never been a problem for me. Mackrel is good and I like to fry it with mushrooms, sage, mallow, eggs, some salt and black pepper and grape seed oil.

The dollar store has fish for $1 and other stuff like noodles and canned clams and shrimp. I also go to
Chinese stores and buy mushrooms super cheap. It stuff like this that hasn't gone up much in price. Other things like wheat, corn, etc. (which is not good for you anyways) has gone up. I take it you're trying to save a buck?

I'm about 200 pounds which is about 20 pounds over what I should be but every time I try to eat healthy I end up broke. So yes I am trying to save a buck and improve my health.
[/quote]

Hormone balance is key to maintaining healthy weight - not so much calories. Try eating foods rich in DHA (testorterone) like yams, sweet potatoes, onions, broccoli, cabbage (red), walnuts, or squash, aged cheese, red whine, berries. Avoid milk fat (like butter, cheese, ice cream, whole milk), eating chicken and eggs too often, chickpeas, soy (yes, very bad - even natural), too much corn, and fruits high in sugar. The problem is that most people have diets rich in estrogen so put on weight that is hard to get rid of. Adding DHA to the diet helps balance the hormones. This is how I lost weight - yet I eat a lot!
[/quote]
No wonder americans are turning into girly men. There's no meat on that list of testosterone laden food. So, can I make hamburgers and lasagna that is good for me, or is tuna and salmon (the best male food apparently) the way to go from here?
[/quote]
Red meat when eaten in moderation (eat in evening) can increase testosterone but chicken is not on this list. This is mostly red meat and fish. Perhaps meat from a male animal is best. Not saying other foods should be disregarded just that the foods that I mentioned should be added to the diet but meat is not really a problem - milk fat seems to be the biggest problem with hormone imbalance according to research. Soy is not better and poisonous unless fermented. Even fermented soy can only be eaten occassionally! Soy is not a good source of protien!

If you're looking for cheap fish you can get as much Asian carp as you can eat for free.

If you're looking for cheap fish you can get as much Asian carp as you can eat for free.

I go to the lake to fish that's how I eat.
I'm not even kidding. Some of my meals consist of beans that I have grown and walnuts that I collected from the side of the bike trail!

This is actually a very sad cultural trend. One can go to McD's and get a full meal for $2-3, or go to the freezer aisle of the supermarket and get a microwave dinner for $1-$3. If you stock up when they are on sale, junk freezer food can be had for half that. By contrast, unless I live on pasta, rice, and beans, I would have a hard time producing a full meal for $3.

Pooling resources with my friends, or cooking a week's worth of food at a time, can get me down to those prices, but it not nearly as convenient as cooking/buying individual meals...

You know I've been living by myself for about two years and cooking pretty much every single meal, and what wears on me is not so much the cost (it's not bad if you shop at Food4Less instead of Safeway), but the repetitive, time-consuming tediousness of it. With take out and frozen food, there's always the temptation that "I can have a nice and elaborate meal in minutes!" versus recreating the same stuff yourself can take an hour or two at a time and leaves you with a stack of dishes to clean. And if the frozen/takeout food is ladden with MSG, it will actually taste better than your homecooked meal (except veggies, fresh veggies always taste better than frozen ones).

Now my issue is I usually cook just enough I can eat and people say "make big batches for a few days" but then the problem is I end up eating the same dish for a week and, again, that tends to get pretty monotonous after a day or two.

Red meat when eaten in moderation (eat in evening) can increase testosterone but chicken is not on this list. This is mostly red meat and fish. Perhaps meat from a male animal is best. Not saying other foods should be disregarded just that the foods that I mentioned should be added to the diet but meat is not really a problem - milk fat seems to be the biggest problem with hormone imbalance according to research. Soy is not better and poisonous unless fermented. Even fermented soy can only be eaten occassionally! Soy is not a good source of protien!

Interesting, I drink a ton of soymilk as I like it better than regular milk. Care to share any studies to back your claims up?

[quote name='swiftcoder' timestamp='1330631792' post='4918325']
This is actually a very sad cultural trend. One can go to McD's and get a full meal for $2-3, or go to the freezer aisle of the supermarket and get a microwave dinner for $1-$3. If you stock up when they are on sale, junk freezer food can be had for half that. By contrast, unless I live on pasta, rice, and beans, I would have a hard time producing a full meal for $3.

Pooling resources with my friends, or cooking a week's worth of food at a time, can get me down to those prices, but it not nearly as convenient as cooking/buying individual meals...

You know I've been living by myself for about two years and cooking pretty much every single meal, and what wears on me is not so much the cost (it's not bad if you shop at Food4Less instead of Safeway), but the repetitive, time-consuming tediousness of it. With take out and frozen food, there's always the temptation that "I can have a nice and elaborate meal in minutes!" versus recreating the same stuff yourself can take an hour or two at a time and leaves you with a stack of dishes to clean. And if the frozen/takeout food is ladden with MSG, it will actually taste better than your homecooked meal (except veggies, fresh veggies always taste better than frozen ones).

Now my issue is I usually cook just enough I can eat and people say "make big batches for a few days" but then the problem is I end up eating the same dish for a week and, again, that tends to get pretty monotonous after a day or two.

Red meat when eaten in moderation (eat in evening) can increase testosterone but chicken is not on this list. This is mostly red meat and fish. Perhaps meat from a male animal is best. Not saying other foods should be disregarded just that the foods that I mentioned should be added to the diet but meat is not really a problem - milk fat seems to be the biggest problem with hormone imbalance according to research. Soy is not better and poisonous unless fermented. Even fermented soy can only be eaten occassionally! Soy is not a good source of protien!

Interesting, I drink a ton of soymilk as I like it better than regular milk. Care to share any studies to back your claims up?
[/quote]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=soybean-fertility-hormone-isoflavones-genistein

Its got to be fermented otherwise it's harmful and you can only eat very little a day. I like almond milk better.

Eating sardines out of the tin is good to test you haven't become a pansy, and can still cope with all the spines and weird stringy bits. A bit like eating shell-on prawns (yum).