| Amount | Ingredient | $ / day | Source | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 325 | g | Maseca White Corn Masa Harina (Nutrition based on USDA Corn Flour, Masa, Unenriched, White) | $0.49 | Grocery Store |
| 55 | g | Now Foods 100% Whey Protein Isolate | $1.34 | Amazon (S) |
| 0 | ml | Extra Virgin Olive Oil | $0.00 | Grocery Store |
| 45 | ml | Soybean Oil | $0.19 | Grocery Store |
| 0 | g | BulkSupplements Potassium Citrate | $0.00 | Amazon |
| 0 | g | Iodized Table Salt | $0.00 | Grocery Store |
| 0 | g | BulkSupplements Choline Bitartrate | $0.00 | Amazon |
| 1 | pill | Kirkland Signature Daily Multi | $0.04 | Amazon |
| 1 | pill | NOW Foods D3 & K2 | $0.06 | Amazon |
| 1 | pill | Kirkland Signature Omega 3 Fish Oil Concentrate 1000mg (Optional but Recommended) | $0.04 | Amazon |
| 25 | g | Garden of Life Super Seed Beyond Fiber | $0.58 | Amazon |
| 500 | ml | Simple Truth Almond Milk | $0.78 | Kroger |
Amounts for: Total Daily Cost: | $3.51 | Add Ingredients to Amazon Cart | ||
Here are the goals of this recipe:
- 100% nutrition from good sources, with the goal of being roughly comparable in ingredients to the more popular recipes
- Cheap on a per-day basis
- Low initial cost - you can get a 3 month supply for under $250, and many of the ingredients last way longer than 3 months.
- Accurate prices - I've noticed that on some of the more popular recipes it may say that it costs $X to buy a product, when in reality the price is more expensive. Thus the daily price is way lower than it actually is. I've gone through and updated the prices to reflect the prices I saw on 10/8/14.
- Use pills rather than powder sometimes, since they tend to be cheaper for some things
- Make use of Amazon Subscribe and Save (if the source is listed as "Amazon (S)", the price per unit is based on a 15% discount of the original price due to Subscribe and Save. If you aren't doing Amazon Subscribe and Save, you should be)
- Rather than linking to Amazon for everything, use the local grocery store sometimes - things like oil and masa are way cheaper locally than online, and I wanted a recipe that reflected that.
- Utilize accurate nutritional levels for the masa - a lot of the recipes out there quietly use enriched masa to hit 100% nutrition, when in reality pretty much everyone is buying Maseca or another brand of unenriched masa. This results in nutritional deficiencies, most notably in iron. I've based my masa nutrition on the USDA unenriched white masa levels, which I believe is the most accurate way of ensuring that micronutrient levels are good since micronutrient breakdowns don't really exist on the brand level.
- Fix issues relating to the fat source debate - there's a lot of controversy out there regarding olive oil vs soybean oil vs etc and omega 3/omega 6/vitamin K. I won't get into it here, but I've settled on an olive oil/vegetable oil blend with a vitamin K supplement a fish oil pill. This should make sure we're getting the right omega 3 as well as enough vitamin K while keeping costs down and hitting the right fat content. What I've done is probably overkill but I'd rather be safe than sorry; People Chow 3.0.1 uses 100% soybean oil, which is the oil most of the controversy stems from, and it's the most popular recipe here, so this is pretty minor in the scheme of things.
This recipe can be cut down to be even cheaper if necessary by removing the fish oil pill, changing out the protein powder to something cheaper, lowering the protein content and upping the masa or the oil, cutting out olive oil and upping the soybean oil, etc. While I don't recommend this as personally I don't think those changes are worth saving a few extra cents, the option is there. Feel free to copy the recipe and make these changes on your own if you so desire, just be sure to play with the numbers to keep it 100% nutritionally complete.