Eating out can be pretty expensive these days, and restaurant food doesn’t really beat a home cooked meal if you know what you’re doing. Here’s a couple ideas for a quick, healthy meal:

Tofu - This stuff is gold. It costs a $1 or so at any Chinese supermarket. It’s healthy, it’s low calories, and it’s filling. What more can you ask for? Just mix it with your favorite sauce, add a few spices, and it’s lunch in less than 5 minutes. Or if you’re watching a movie, toss it in some water with some oil, veggies, and chicken, and you got yourself a soup in 30 minutes or so.

Cereal - It’s pretty amazing the kind of nutrition people can pack into stuff these days. These days, cereal is filled with 100% DV of most of the important vitamins and other minerals. It’s also cheap and widely available, so just pour some milk on it when you’re hungry and you got a meal. Heck, if you’re lazy and no one’s watching, you can even eat it straight out of the box!

Baby Carrots - Here’s another healthy insta-snack. Those little bags of carrots are crunchy and help you digest your other food. A whole bag is only around 150 calories and it’s extremely filling. Not a bad way to get your veggie intake for the day.

Corn - Another one of those snacks that fills both your carbs and veggie intake. It’s great tasting and not a pain to make, since all you have to do is steam it and eat it in 15 minutes. IF you’d like it simpler, can even buy premade corn and just eat that. Corn also has the virtue of being one of the cheapest veggies you can find, while tasting really good!

Grapefruit - Most health experts advise eating grapefruit as something for weight loss. Due to their giant size, a single grapefruit should be more than enough for lunch and probably dinner, and yet, the whole thing is only 70 calories or so. What better way to get your daily vitamin and fruit intake without taking in a whole lot of calories? A whole grapefruit also only runs you a few dollars.

And there you have it. A couple of cheap options that are both tasty and healthy. Why go for expensive caviar, which honestly doesn’t taste all that good, when you can have something cheap and healthy like grapefruit?

Remember that cheap food is cheap for a reason. Generally, it’s because people really like them and because of the demand, have devoted a great deal of resources into making the food cheap!