Healthy Meals Under $6? Here's My Entire Day of Eating

The average American is now spending over $400 a month on groceries, and for millions, that's not affordable. We've been told that healthy eating is, quote, expensive, that it's complicated, while ultra-processed junk is cheap and easy. But here's the truth: while ultra-processed food might be cheap at the register, it's bankrupting our health and our future. We're saving pennies on our wallets now only to pay thousands later in downstream health costs. You don't have to choose between between healthy food and staying on a budget. Today we're proving that you can eat for your biology without breaking your bank. In this video, I'm gonna show you how to make 3 delicious nourishing meals, all for less than $6 a day. That's just $2 a meal. I'm also gonna walk you through how to build a balanced plate and give you my top tips for navigating the grocery store minefield so you can stop being a victim of the system and start being the CEO of your own health. You don't need a massive budget to reclaim your life. You just need a plan. Let's get started. You know, a lot of people feel like eating healthy is impossible on a tight budget. And I get why. Like for many families, the challenges go way beyond money. There's food deserts, there's limited mobility, there's long work hours, lack of time and access to cooking spaces all make healthy eating harder. But you know, even with those barriers, the truth is this. You still have more power than you think. Now, this is where empowerment happens in the kitchen. Now, when you know how to prep a few simple meals, you remove the stress and you also remove the decision fatigue. And don't worry about taking notes. I put all of these recipes plus a lot more into a free guide you can download below to make this really easy to follow. And every meal we make here fits inside the SNAP budget. Now, it's not about perfection. It's not about expensive ingredients or doing everything at once. It's about starting with small, and doable changes, choices that add up over time to help you take back control of your health one meal at a time. You know, I was born in Barcelona. I grew up eating these yummy Spanish potato tortillas, and it's very quick to make. It's just ingredients you usually have around. Slice up the potatoes. Super simple. You just take these little potatoes. You want to slice them a little thin like this. And you slice them thin because you want them to cook fast. The first thing you do, essentially, is you've got olive oil, you put it in your cast iron pan. You have to make this in a cast iron pan because you end up putting it in the oven. And you want to use plenty of olive oil because you want to coat the bottom of the pan. And you throw in, throw in the garlic, cook it down. Now here's the eggs, and you might need, depending on the size of the cast iron pan, if you use a 12-inch or 14-inch, you can eat more. But I put about 14 eggs in here and whip them up. So the onions are nice and cooked down. Okay, so when the onions and the garlic starts to turn brown, then what you do is you take the potatoes and you sort of layer them on top. Looks like a lot, but it— promise it cooks right down. Little salt and pepper in, and then you pepper it up, and then you mix it up. You got to be patient with this. It takes like maybe a few minutes to cook, 15 minutes. You don't really do much, but you have to make sure you don't burn it and the water doesn't evaporate. Because if the water evaporates, it can burn the potatoes, and that's not good. You kind of smooth it all down so it's kind of even like this. And you take water and you pour it over. You cover the potatoes and you let it cook on simmer until it all is done. When the water starts to get near the end, it's just take the lid off so all the water evaporates. Once you've got all that water cooked down and potatoes are soft, they're delicious, you just take the eggs and you just kind of pour the eggs over until it kind of covers all the potatoes. You get really kind of, uh, I mean, you just take it and you just transfer it to the oven. And you can see how beautifully it bakes in the oven. Just let it cool for 10-15 minutes. And the key to getting it out is just rim around it with a knife like this, and then you kind of cut it like a pizza. Cut it in half, cut it in quarters, and then just take a nice piece of the pizza— the tortilla pizza. I'm really hungry, so I'm gonna eat some. Mm, oh, that's good. Mm, that's so good. The easiest way to shop the grocery store is to stay on the perimeter. The deeper you go into the aisles, the more you're buying food that's been engineered and processed. Let's grab a bag of carrots. Kind of cool that, uh, people don't know this, but Walmart— and I'm You know, not saying Walmart's the best store in the world, but I'm just saying they're the biggest organic grocery for the cheapest. And so you can get healthy food. I like the red small potatoes. They're not so starchy, more phytochemicals, they're better for you. And this is basically a whole chicken. This is $9. This will feed a lot of people. It's a little more than a dollar a pound. Like Easter, trying to hunt for the egg. You want to get the best quality eggs you can possibly get and afford, but sometimes the higher quality ones are more expensive, but any eggs will do. Again, these frozen vegetables are so affordable and they're highly nutrient dense 'cause they're just picked right after they're ripe. And so you get to preserve all the nutrients, they're flash frozen and they last for a long time in your fridge. They put these at the end of the aisles because that's what gets the most interesting. And Cheerios Protein, that sounds really good, right? Anytime you see a health claim like this on the label, gluten-free protein, don't eat it. It's bad for you. It's basically a wolf in sheep's clothing. And so basically you've got per serving, almost 6 teaspoons of sugar in a serving of cereal for breakfast for a kid in a healthy, high-protein fake news cereal. So don't eat that. This is a great way to make your food taste good without all the artificial crap, which is spices. And you can buy spices. They last a long time. Salt and pepper is my go-to spices. We're gonna get some olive oil here. I also love vinegar, so I get, I get balsamic vinegar. Here's what I picked up for my basic cooking essentials. And when possible, choose stainless steel, cast iron, ceramic, glass, or silicone over nonstick. They last longer and they hold up better over time. And remember, use what you have. You don't need perfection to eat well. Okay, so here's another simple, easy to make at home recipe. It's a delicious chicken burrito bowl. First thing you got to do is make the chicken. Basically, you just take a little salt, pepper, cumin. I love spices because they make things really good, but this is actually very anti-inflammatory. Spices literally are medicine. And we have paprika, cumin, and you just buy your spices, they last a long time. Yummy flavors, and mix them all together. And this is Mexican style chili powder. I mean, carefully, don't put too much on. And while you're waiting for the pan to heat up, we're gonna make homemade salsa. This is just simple Diced tomatoes from a can, super easy, very affordable. Squeeze in, you know, if you don't have a lemon squeezer, you can use your thumb. Little chopped onion, you can throw a little olive oil in there for a yummy taste. Little salt and pepper. Mix it all up. The trick to making rice is rinse it, 'cause it's got kind of gummy stuff on it. I've already pre-rinsed the rice. I learned this trick, you put a little bit of olive oil or butter or whatever oil you like to use. In the pan, and that coats every grain of the rice. And basically for brown rice, it's a 2:1 ratio. So remember, it's basically 2 cups of rice, 4 cups of water, or if it's 1 cup of rice, 2 cups of water. And that makes it really kind of yummy. And I'm going to cover the rice and you let it boil. As soon as it boils, you just turn to simmer. And for brown rice, it's about 40, 45 minutes. For white rice, 20 minutes. And make sure it doesn't go too long because it'll get gummy or it'll stick. So just put your timer on your phone and, uh, you got rice. Next step is chicken thighs coming up. They season them, they're all ready to go, and I just put a little olive oil in the pan. We're gonna cook those in the, uh, in the cast iron skillet. So we're gonna just cook the chicken thighs, uh, with the spicy side down. I'm gonna do a little more spicing on the other side while, while they're on cast iron pan. So basically you cook these about 5-7 minutes a side, cook them through. You don't want raw chicken. Take them out, put them on plate, and then you can dice them up. So next we're gonna do is make the veggies that go with the burrito bowl. It's kind of like fajita veggies. A little olive oil. You don't want to heat the olive oil up too high. Usually put onions in first, then carrots and bell peppers, and you just cook them down. A little salt and pepper, and you've got your yummy veggies— carrot, onions, and peppers. The next step is when the chicken's been cooking for a while, you want to flip it over. And the cast iron pans are great because things don't really stick to them. They're really Easy to clean. All right, so we're gonna just make the bowls. This is the hard part. Let's slice up the chicken, take a little bit of rice, and then all the toppings. A little salsa on the top, a little bit of the fajita kind of veggies, a little bit of shredded lettuce, a little bit of black beans, and then a little bit of corn, and we're good to go. That, my friends, is a beautiful, homemade, delicious Burrito bowl. Building a healthy plate is simple. You don't need to count calories or overthink it. Start with half your plate with vegetables, especially the non-starchy vegetables like leafy greens, broccoli, or cabbage. That's the foundation of every meal. Think 2 fists and don't worry about limiting them. You get unlimited refills. Next, add a quarter of your plate as protein. Chicken, fish, eggs, meat, or plant protein. Protein helps keep you full and stabilizes your blood sugar. Aim for a palm-sized portion. Then add a quarter of whole carbs like sweet potatoes, rice, beans, or quinoa. These foods aren't bad, they just work best in the right proportions and paired with protein and fiber. Keep it to one cupped hand. And finally, add healthy fat when you can. Olive oil, nuts, seeds, avocados. Fat helps with satisfaction and nutrient absorption. Think thumb-sized portions or a small handful. Now, this combination— protein, fiber, and healthy fat— keeps your energy steady, reduces cravings, and it makes real food easy to stick with. Some people are chicken-a-chickens. It's so easy to make a chicken. It's so fast. It's so delicious. You will never go back. It may be a little intimidating, but I'm going to show you how to make it really quick. Really easy and kind of no pain. The first thing you do is you get a chicken, you rinse it, we already washed it off, you take out the innards. Now all this stuff looks gross, but it's actually kind of good for you. All the organ meats are the things that have the most nutrition in them. And you want to coat the chicken in olive oil, so you kind of give it a little massage. And the breast side always goes up. What I do is, this is the sort of fun part, you steam it from the inside. This is my sister's recipe. You take basically a lemon, and you kind of roll it like this and you get it all soft and mushy and squishy. And then you stick it with a fork like this, and then you stick it inside the chicken. Sometimes you can even take 2 lemons, stick 2 lemons in if it's a 2-lemon chicken, could be a big chicken. And this makes it all juicy so you don't get dried out chicken. And then you cook it at a high temperature like 425°F. I like to stuff it also with whole cloves of garlic and rosemary, and you stick it in there. Just kind of stuff it in there. And then if you have a skewer, you just kind of skewer it through. We don't have one, but basically the idea is to get it so tight, get all that juice to stay in there. I'm gonna wash my hands. And then you just salt and pepper, and that, that's it. Like, I don't even know, like that, 3 minutes. And then you stick it on a roasting pan and you put it in the oven. And that's, my friend, is how you make a whole chicken. So don't be chicken of chicken. You cook the chicken, it's 20 minutes a pound at about 425, 450. You weigh the chicken, or it usually says on the label, and that's it. And you set the timer and you're done. And then sweet potatoes, also extremely difficult to make. You take them and you put them in the oven on a little pan. That's it. And you get sweet potatoes. But don't cook them as long as the chicken, because the chicken that size takes about 90 minutes, and these only take about 45 minutes at 450, or maybe at 350, of an hour. You know, I put butter and salt in them when they come out. Delicious. We're gonna make steamed broccoli with lemon, garlic, and olive oil, and salt and pepper. That's it. You can use frozen broccoli, use fresh broccoli. All you need is a pot. Basically, just get a little water in the bottom and just throw it in there. It's the hard part, throwing in there. Cover it over, watch it carefully because it doesn't take long to cook, and if you overcook it, it's mush. And the reason people don't like vegetables is because they turn to mush if you cook them too much. So what you do is to make the dressing for the broccoli is just a little garlic, and you can make more or less, you can crush it, a little bit of olive oil, and I don't really measure, I just put a few tablespoons of olive oil in there. Then I take a lemon, and again, you can get a lemon squeezer or you can just use your fingers. I just use my thumb. I stick my thumb in there and I just squeeze it and, you know, all the nice lemon juice in there. A little bit of salt and pepper, and that's it. You know, you can measure stuff, but you kind of just get to know what's what after a while. Once you cook the broccoli, you didn't want to overdo it, but you steam it nicely. You put it in a strainer and you just put it in the sauce, and that's it. I'm going to have a piece cuz I'm hungry. So good. All right folks, we are going to do a lesson in how to cut a chicken. So what you do first is you do surgery. You take out the lemons. They're hot and steamy inside, and they basically steam the chicken from the inside. You take the chicken, and the way I cut it is I cut off the legs first. So you cut up the legs, and you can see if you open it up, you can see it's done because it's not pink inside. You don't want pink chicken. And it just— it kind of falls apart. And then you can just put the legs on there. It's really yummy. That's just chef's prerogative. You just crunch the skin and then cut the wings off. Again, really quite simple. I'm just going to pull them back and Use a knife to kind of peel them off the chicken because it's already, it's already kind of soft and juicy inside. The hard part is, you know, you kind of need a big knife to do the breast of chicken, but I love the crispy wings. The way I do the chicken is I just go right down the middle. I kind of go in the breast from the top, and then you kind of cut down. Surgery. It's a little tough. If you have a, like, a big knife, it's easier. Then it kind of falls apart because it's already cooked delicious, and then The breast, you can just cut in half like this. And now the thing that's really cool is a lemon trick. And basically, they're hot, so you have to be careful. And what I normally do is just kind of stick my knife in there because they can kind of squirt apart. You can just squeeze the lemon without burning your fingers, and the juice goes all over everything. Everything— it's delicious. Little bit of chicken a-chicken. And you can actually take this juice if you want and pour it on a little bit. You like the juice from the bottom of the pan. Pan. Kind of yummy, makes it even more delicious. Then you can take a piece of chicken, put on your plate, little broccoli, and you've got a meal for two, very easy, or more. And there's leftovers for tomorrow. Now I want to be clear, food access is a real issue. Policy matters, food deserts exist, and none of this is your fault. But you're not powerless. Even one small change can shift your health and your future. So here's the challenge: eat a whole foods diet for 7 days on about $6 a day. Now that's the reality that many families are living with, and it's possible to make nourishing choices on that budget. Now, if you plan to do the challenge with me and want a little extra guidance, download my free PDF, A Budget for The Friendly Guide to Healthy Eating. I created this guide to help you take what you learned in this video and apply it in real life. All the recipes you saw me make here are included in the guide, plus about 30 additional recipes, all for about $6 a day. You also get a sample meal planning template, grocery lists, a batch prep guide, and some must-have kitchen essentials. Now, if you're eating on $6 a day for a week and that feels like Too much to do? Start smaller. Maybe it's cooking one whole food dinner this week or swapping out processed foods for real food for a few days. It doesn't matter what you choose. What matters is that you start. Do it with someone you trust because getting healthy is a team sport and it's more fun together. Learn together, help each other, support each other. And if you join the challenge, don't forget to tag me in your journey at @DrMarkHyman on Instagram and all social media.