Ask Lemmy

Humans measure our food in dietary calories, and our caloric food can be broken down into four groups. In order of ascending caloric density:

• Carbohydrates,, like potatoes and other plants.
• Protein - beans, meat
• Fats (oil,.butter, etc)
• Alcohol

Those of us in affluent countries tend to have too much caloric intake, so strive to limit using fad diets like dropping the bottom or the top while keeping vitamins and those proteins human bodies can't generate.

If you have the opposite problem and limited funds, you need to think in a budget of "calories in vs money spent." Bread and potatoes are relatively low-calorie, so may not be enough to have an effect.

Two actual suggestions:

1. If you're buying store-bought bread, investigate if you can bake your own. I can make a loaf of covid-era sourdough for almost just the cost of flour, and since the flour was milled it keeps a long time and I can stretch dollars buy buying in bulk.

2: if you do have a kitchen anyway, consider beans. Good bean recipes can be very cheap if you start with dried instead of canned, are relatively calorically dense, and respond very well to long cooking. Especially if you need something easy to chew.