Do people not know how to eat cheap and well?

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While people are free to eat whatever they want, I'm often surprised by what people feel they have to eat. Examples: "Healthy eating is too expensive" or "I'm a vegetarian, but I can only afford chips and other junk"

If you live in a "food desert," yes, but many people with these kind of mindsets don't.

For the price of a brand-name bag of chips in my area ($3-4), I can get two bags of dried black beans for dip or burritos, two big bunches of broccoli for stir-fry or cheese-covering, a container of hummus, two bunches of kale, a handful of baking potatoes, two or three mangoes, two small containers of white mushrooms, two bell peppers for stuffing or stir-fry, a carton of eggs for scrambling or hardboiling, a couple small perch fillets, or a big box of minute rice.

"Healthy eating is gross! I don't like salad or celery stalks."

I haven't eaten either in years. I agree that they suck. It's a great lie to spread if you're a junk food company, though, similar to how it's wonderful business for those hawking fad diets to ensure that people don't believe they can eat well without extreme measures, avoiding perfectly safe foods, and contrived products (which only they can sell and guide people through!).

luckily I don't live in quite a food desert, I eat a large salad every evening as my main meal.

Hmmm, I suppose I live kind of in a 'food desert'. Nearest place to buy groceries is 2km down the road. I live in Belgium, in my area the average distance between villages and towns is 7km.
It's easy enough to preach to people that they should eat heatlhy but a lot will depend on circumstances. It's all to do with socio economic status. I'm somewhere near the lower end...
From the wiki link: "Nutritious foods such as whole grain products and fresh fruits and vegetables are more expensive than high calorie junk foods. “Energy-dense [junk foods] cost on average $1.76 per 1,000 calories, compared with $18.16 per 1,000 calories for low-energy but nutritious foods"I have a kitchen that is 7 meter long and 2.2 meter wide. The last time I made a fish pie I found myself putting the pans on the floor due to lack of work top space. Needless to say I rarely bother with anything these days that creates too much washing up these days. There is virtually no natural light, it is an unheated room that is on the north side of my house. In the winter my kitchen is a walk in fridge.
Matter of fact, outside temperature today is near to 17C now but the honey in my kitchen cupboard hasn't emerged from it's hibernation yet. In other words it is still solid.
I stopped buying fresh garlic because it just rots in the damp conditions I have to store it in
Tonight I'm having a ready meal. Macaroni cheese with ham. Costs me all of 1.70 Euro. If I were to cook the same from sourced ingredients it would cost me 2 Euro for a pack of macaroni, 2 Euro for the ham, 2 Euro for the cheese, The rest of the ingredients I have in the house. So 6 Euros and then I would be eating macaroni cheese with ham for the next three days. I would love to have a salad with it but I have thrown away so many half used bags I have come to the conclusion it is cheaper not to bother.
To get the ingredients it would take me an hour cycling to the shops and back or I choose to go by car and pay extra for the diesel.
I'd love to move to a house with a better kitchen. I have no idea how it feels to sit at a kitchen table in so far that I have never had a kitchen that was big enough to put a table in to start with. I would love to move to a house where I can store my garlic without it rotting. But on our budget it is just not an option.

About the macaroni with cheese. If you want by all means, cook all ingredience at once, you can store the rest of the portions in an freezer. Or simply cook a smaller portion, and store the rest of the noodles (they are very longlasting), and for the ham and the cheese, you have about a week for using them until they go bad in an fridge. About the space in kitchen, there are tons of recipes: So I try cooking something fresh for dinner, when I am home from work, but because of my issues, handling more then two things at once is a bit of an issue for me. Because of that I prefer as well all kind of dishes, that can be done at once without handling of three different pots or whatever. Tons of stuff, I simply do in the oven. As example by simply cutting some potatoes, onions, carrots or mushrooms, spicing some chicken parts (legs or breast with skin or arms), and then they all go in the same pot into the ofen for about 45 minutes.

As well that you can combine different kind of processed and fresh stuff. When doing flesh patties, I normall do the patties and the vegetables fresh, but during week I dont have time to additional do the potatoe-cream-mash myself, so I use an already processed one. In the end you should benefit from the fresh food, so if a certain side-dish rather stresses you out of preparation or getting the ingredients, it makes no sense. But when it comes to your Makkaroni, I´d really would have done them fresh, so the rest of the dry noodles wont go bad for a long time, and some cheese and ham is not that hard to use within a week, before it goes bad.

In their defense, some people are incapable of cooking for themselves.

I have some friends I take grocery shopping every month to allow them the opportunity to purchase good, fresh, healthy, affordable food. I load my grocery cart with whole grains and fresh vegetables and meats and share how easy it is to prepare. But I notice frozen, processed and canned foods dominate their grocery cart. I honestly don't think they're capable of cooking from "scratch".... and that's okay. I'll continue to encourage them anyway.

My favorite cooking tools are the oven, a rice cooker, an electric skillet and a crock pot, in that order. Each allow me to cook quickly and easily without hovering over a stove.

Again, not everyone has these skills, and the most I can do is support my friends, teach them as much as they can receive, and love them.

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I am not really capable of cooking from scratch- I tend to burn water and am somewhat absent-minded when it comes to multistep things. so I eat simple things that also are on the healthier side. I concentrate on the biggies [avoiding starchy things, avoiding transfats/saturated fats, main meal of day a salad, etc.]. I don't have much of a kitchen either, and certainly no space to make anything from scratch. but in 99% of places one can buy bags of premade salad, and to that one can add things like shredded cheese/feta cheese, sunflower seeds, chopped nuts, tuna/salmon/TVP, marinara sauce and whatnot to leaven it. salad dressings have fats in them but one needs a bit of fat to better digest the veggies, I've read from multiple sources. just avoid the ones with corn syrup in them. olive oil is very problematic in that it is hard to find unadulterated oils which are fresh, and the ones that meet those conditions usually are premium-priced. rancid oil [or anything else, even a bit] is the worst thing you can ingest, as it is likely carcinogenic. so unless one has a princely location and princely wallet, olive oil is best avoided.

I think what really helped me, where some rather outdated "oldtimer-housewife" cooking homepages. They offer many recipes that can be used to cook with leftovers. So that mentioned noodles with ham, would be such a typical recipe, I do, when some sort of flesh or sausage goes bad soon. Noodles are always in the house, some onions as well, so I only need to buy or use some additional yoghurt, and can use the old sausage/salami/schnitzel "whatever fleshy" and dont need to throw that away. Same is it with bread-dumplings. They are nothing else but a typcial "Ok, the bread has become hard, lets do dumplings from it." and only needed some additional milk, egg, flour and herbs, that I have anyway at home. Before fruit go bad, they get into the mixer and become a desert. Any kind of vegetable sidedish or vegetables can be used in a "strudl-dough" side- or maindish before they go bad.

So I think the key for cheap cooking is really to know some typical "leftover-recipes", that you can do with stuff that you mostly have anyway at home, so that you can avoid stuff going bad. After a certain time that you gather experience, you normally know automatically, that if you plan cooking today this or that, with the leftovers or spared groceries of the meal you will be doing tomorrow this or that recipe...

As well that failures need to be accepted. The first time there will be something wrong, the next few times I will be able to do it according to the recipe, and when I am experienced, then I can start changing the recipe to my liking. Its totally normal, that it does not function the very first time. My mom in laws love to cook, but I think she needed to redo her Tiramisu a dozend times until it worked and finally become a creamy cake and not a muddy Tiramisu swamp. XD

I just don't feel like devoting time every day to cook, it takes a planned proactive approach to buy the necessary ingredients and use them while they're still fresh.

If I buy all the healthy healthy items (produce) at once, while still fresh; I can blend them all in a day and store them in a freezer until I'm ready to eat them. Nobody else seems to like the idea enough to try it themselves, but it's worked for me during the past 2 years. Getting lots of fresh produce into my diet has made a difference.

Okay, first, there's nothing wrong with UNPROCESSED frozen veggies/fruit.

I eat a very simple and easily made diet of frozen veggies (usually broccoli, cauliflower, carrots) steamed and topped with a bit of parmesan cheese, steaks, chops, or a bit of chicken breast or thigh, broiled or fried without breading. For breakfast I usually have a bowl of mixed berries (usually Blueberries, Raspberries and Blackberries) I actually prefer them frozen--I just pop them in the microwave for a minute so they get a bit soft. Then I top the whole thing with a bit of plain, whole fat yogurt and a handful of almonds and a bit of honey...

That diet is good, reasonably cheap, and very easy to cook.

I can feed my family which now consists of 8 people living here, on $200 a week. Thats three meals a day, snacks, tea or koolade, and cooking everything from scratch. My idea of a healthy meal is a meat, a starch and a vegetable, plus bread and a dessert. I make cookies or cobblers that I keep on the table for snacks, and usually there is a fresh loaf of bread and some garlic butter on there too so when somebody wants snacks, it's there.

It is a lot more difficult than just making something out of a box or heating up a frozen pizza but it's a whole lot better and cheaper. While some people may not consider my idea of a healthy balanced meal to be healthy, that's how we eat. I have worked at a health food restaurant for over a year, cooking there, and so I know alll about the whole grains, vegetarian, low fat, etc stuff but I've tried many versions of them and nobody here will eat them. I either cook Southern food (which in other parts of the country is called soul food) or Italian food.

It's really not that difficult and like I've said before I do want to make a series of videos showing how to cook, step by step so people can follow along, but right now I've got so much going on that I just can't.

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I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
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Healthy food is not expensive, and the obesity rates in food deserts are not higher than elsewhere in the US. A carton with 18 eggs, is cheaper than a Big Mac, and milk is usually cheaper than soda. You can get four pounds of carrots at the grocery store for the price of one hot dog at a gas station. Moreover, every country with a low population density (Canada, Russia, Australia, Libya, Argentina, Norway/Sweden, etc.) have food deserts.

Good quality food can be expensive.

Pasture fed lamb and beef, wild salmon and outdoor raised pork as well as organic free range chicken and wild game meats such as venison are not cheap. Meat from grain fed animals pumped up with antibiotics and other nasties to fatten them up quickly is not as healthy and contain less omega 3 fats than their pasture raised counterparts or wild game meats. It is always best if the animal was raised on its natural diet and was kept in human conditions (free to roam outdoors, not trapped in some dingy place sat in their own waste matter etc).

On the other hand fruits and vegetables are easy to come by if you stick to in season produce.

The price of nuts varies depending on type (ie macadamia cost more than hazelnuts in the uk).

I don't eat grains, vegetable oils (except olive), dairy or processed foods due to being paleo. Legumes I am not so strict on, especially as I don't like many of them anyway and tend to pick other veg instead lol.

in America, hazelnuts and macadamias and pistachios are prohibitively expensive for most of the working class.