"Healthy food is not expensive. Junk food is"

Jamie Oliver challenges a widespread myth: that wholesome eating is a luxury while convenience foods are the budget option. The surface price of a dollar menu or a jumbo snack looks low, but the real accounting tells a different story. Junk food is cheap per calorie, not per nourishment. It delivers salt, sugar, and refined fats with little fiber or micronutrients, undermining satiety and prompting overeating. Upsizing and combo deals amplify this cycle, turning what seems like a bargain into frequent, costly purchases.

By contrast, the building blocks of a nutritious diet, beans, lentils, rice, oats, seasonal vegetables, fruit, eggs, canned fish, and whole grains, remain among the most affordable items in any market. With basic cooking, a bag of dried beans or a sack of oats stretches into multiple meals for a fraction of the cost of repeated takeout. Batch cooking, using leftovers creatively, and buying in season compound the savings while improving flavor and variety. Even modest investments in herbs and spices dramatically elevate simple ingredients.

There are caveats. Access is unequal: food deserts, time poverty, kitchen equipment, and energy costs shape choices. Skill gaps and marketing pressures tilt people toward packaged convenience. Oliver’s point is not to ignore these barriers but to reframe the conversation: when communities support cooking literacy, improve access to fresh produce, and make time-saving tools common, healthy eating becomes the economical default rather than the aspirational exception.

Hidden costs make junk food truly expensive. Diet-related disease brings medical bills, lost productivity, and reduced quality of life. Environmental costs, packaging, processing, transport, compound the tab. Home-cooked, minimally processed food tends to generate less waste and more value per dollar, per nutrient, and per meal shared.

Viewed through nutrition, satiety, health outcomes, and sustainability, the better bargain is clear. With planning and practical support, nourishing food isn’t the costly option, paying for junk is.