Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt
That quote is from the 2nd century and attributed to the Roman poet Juvenal, however, at its core it is still valid today.
Why does the USA have food stamps? To keep hungry people from storming the houses of the rich.
How do you keep people : Make sure they have food to eat and something to entertain themselves.
However, when I look at ever increasing food prices and unrest around the world it seems that governments have forgotten the wisdom from long ago. In many places people are hungry and dissatisfied. I'm looking at my friends in Nigeria wondering how to get enough to eat and hear the discontent in their posts and wonder...how long before things change?
It is not just people in developing nations that are having food issues. Even in Canada there are an increasing number of people suffering from food insecurity. Eating outdated food. Looking for deals on short dated product. Some people even dumpster diving to find something to eat. People going to the food bank to keep themselves from going hungry.
The price of food is bad and only getting worse.
So, in my own little way I want to write about that and I'm hoping to put food prices and nutrition under the microscope and work to find the most nutritious and least expensive way to get proper nutrition. Using this account and in the Earn Spend Give community I'll look at prices of different foodstuffs and their nutritional value.
Once I've highlighted the best nutrition per dollar I'll be using the 
The overall goal : The best nutrition at the lowest price.
If anyone wants to chime in on the prices of products in their country I would love to hear about it. I'll actively be looking to give out GLD tokens to those who give quality responses to my article...or maybe even post articles of their own.
Bread, Rice and Potatoes
Different countries have different foods that are the base of their diet. If you go to the Philippines you will find that Rice is on the menu for every meal. Traditionally the Irish would have Potatoes as the base of their diet. The French are well known for their love of breads. As for the Mexicans lets go with Corn for their tortillas.
Now of course those are just stereotypes. Only a fool would believe that a nationality exists on only one type of foodstuff. That's just plain silly.
However, it can't be denied that simple starches such as Flour (for bread), Rice, Potatoes and Corn can make a nice base to a person's diet.
So, today I'm going to take a look at the price and nutritional value of each.
A little look at Carbohydrates
At their core all of those basic foodstuffs have something in common. They are all simple carbohydrates. They are packed with energy needed for people to get their work done. Oils are great for taste. Proteins are great to help a body grow but its the carbohydrates that provide the cheapest source of energy for people to get by on.
Now all of those starches are based on sugar molecules. I have been debating adding sugar to this section today but I'll decline. I'll save it for later when I start writing about spices :)
Flour
Rice
Potato
Corn
Price Breakdown
Flour : $4.00 for 5kg
Rice : $35.99 for 40lb
Potato : $7.94 for 20lb
Corn Flour : $16.99 for 20lb
Now when we look at those prices it is very hard to compare them against each other. So, when I'm writing I'll going to try and find a way to compare them. One way to compare them would be cost per lb or cost per kg. However, that just looks at their cost per weight and not nutrition.
Instead I'm going to look at cost per calorie. In general people need 2000 calories a day so I think I'll use cost for 2000 calories as my basis for basic ranking. As time progresses I'll break that down to cost per gram of protein (people need a certain amount of protein daily). I'll look at cost per RDA of different vitamins. But at its core I'll be looking at cost for 2000 calories--the amount of calories you need just to survive and get your work done.
How does that look for our four competitors today?
Well :
Flour
- 3.6 calories per gram of all purpose flour.
- 5kg (5000g) would have 3.6 * 5000 = 18,000 calories for $4.00
- 18,000 calories / 2000 daily = 9 days for $4.00
44.4 cents per day
Rice
- 3.6 calories per gram of dried rice
- 40lbs --> 18.18kg --> 18180g * 3.6 cal/g --> 65,448 calories for $35.99
- 65,448 calories / 2000 daily = 32.72 daily for $35.99
110 cents per day
Raw Potato
- 0.77 calories per gram of raw potato
- 20lbs --> 9.09kg --> 9090g * .77 cal/gram --> 7000 calories for $7.94
- 7000 calories / 2000 daily = 3.5 days for $7.94
226.8 cents per day
Corn Flour
- 3.6 calories per gram
- 20lb -->9.09kg --> 9090g * 3.6 cal/gram --> 32724 calories for $16.99
- 32724 calories / 2000 daily = 16.4 daily for $16.99
103 cents per day
How do they rank cost wise?
Looking at it from a purely cost point of view:
Flour : 44.4 cents/day
Corn Flour : 103 cents/day
Rice : 110 cents/day
Potato : 227 cents/day
Flour costs half as much as corn or rice while potato costs roughly twice as much.
Ever wonder why companies love adding breading to their product? Because flour / bread is the cheapest filled they can add to make something tasty. Want to make your meat bill less expensive -- deep fry the meat in a flour batter. Want to make onions less expensive? deep fry the onions in a flour batter!
So, if you are on a tight budget consider bread or biscuits as its the easiest way to make flour edible. Want to add a few calories to a meal without adding a lot of cost--find ways to add flour 😁
But how about nutrition?
Talking about cheaper food is great but what other nutrition can we find in the flour, corn flour, rice and potato? Is there anything other than just carbohydrates? Let's look and see if there is any protein, oil, of vitamins in them. Again here is the breakdown.
for 2000 calories we would need :
2000/3.6cal/g --> 555.5 g of flour, corn flour or rice
2000/0.77cal/g --> 2597g of raw potato it has a lot of water in it
In 2000 calories of each you would get the following amount of protein:
Flour : 57g
Potato : 52g
Rice : 47g
Corn Flour : 39g
Here's a little interesting tidbit. A typical 80kg man would need between 65 to 160g of protein daily. Trying to survive on cheap carbs just won't give enough protein to properly function. None of the carbs above will have enough. Even worse, none of those carbohydrates is a complete protein source.
What about oil content?
Again taking the same 2000 calorie amount you would get :
Corn Flour : 16g
Flour : 7g
Rice : 3g
Potato : 3g
What does a typical 80kg man need for oil daily? 60-140g of oil daily. Again you wouldn't get nearly enough from a diet of purely carbohydrates. Again you wouldn't be getting the essential fatty acids you would need from these food either
Wrap up for today
What's the take home message from today's analysis.
It is possible to get enough calories to survive for less than $1.00 if you can turn flour into food. However, it won't have the protein, oils, vitamins or variety to keep you healthy. Other starches like rice, corn, and potato are more expensive and also have the same problem of not providing adequate nutrition is you solely rely on them.
In my next two articles I'll be looking at different oils to see how they compare price wise and nutrition wise. I'll also be looking at different proteins to see how they compare again with respect to nutrition.
It is only when we have a balance of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats can we start to look at proper nutrition. So.... after getting the macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbohydrate) down I'll look at micronutrients, vitamins, minerals and "complete" proteins and "essential" fatty acids plus where to find them.
Hopefully once I've found all the best sources for the best prices I can find tasty recipes to match :)
Today's winner: Flour
But when all is said and done there was a clear winner for the title of "Cheapest Carbohydrate".
Plain old all purpose flour just can't be beat when it comes to cost for calories to keep a person going.
Thanks for reading...
Until the next article :)