Doing some investigation:
nutritiondata shows
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/legumes-and-legume-products/4405/2 that lentils provide pretty much a complete protein. This is fantastic news, even given the above linked article from Ahnold that complete proteins dont matter once you are above a certain amount of complete protein.
Furthermore, there are 3 metrics that concern the frugal athlete in terms of food selection. I have identified these as:
1. protein per dollar (g/$)
2. calories per dollar (cal/$)
3.
protein per calorie (g/cal)That last one is what concerns me on a cut.
So, I took my diet and calculated these metrics (see OP).
1. (190 g * 7) / $67 =
19.8 g/$2. 2500 cal * 7 / $67 =
261 cal/$3. 190 g / 2500 cal =
0.076 g/calSo, we can evaluate the usefulness of foods in the diet by comparing their 3 properties to my current overall diet breakdown (190g protein per 2500 cal at $67/week or $9.57/day)
Lentils, for example, have the following nutrition data per 200g serving
662 cal
48g protein
$0.44 / serving
(The cheapest I can find them on Amazon, just for academic purposes, is $20 for 25 lbs, or 9000g = $0.44/srv. I assume I can find them IRL for much cheaper)
thus,
1.
109 g/$ (0.9c / g)
2.
1504 cal/$3.
0.0725 g/calto compare to a composite of rice & beans (also a "complete" protein):
rice per 100g:
cal 365
pro 7
can black beans per 100g:
cal 91
pro 6
I combine at 135g rice to 283g bean ratio
composite:
cal 492+257 = 749 / 418g
pro 8.1+19.8 = 27.9 / 418g
$0.68 / srv
1.
41 g/$ (2.4c / g)
2.
1100 cal/$3.
0.04 g/calRice and beans, the so-called cheap staples, fail on all three metrics! nobody explained to me what a wonder-food lentils are!
Per serving $ cal pro g/$ cal/$ g/cal
eggs 0.167 77 6 35.9 461 0.08
steak 3 753 100 33.3 251 0.13
cottage 0.833 163 28 33.6 196 0.17
chicken thigh 0.44 119 20 45.5 270 0.17
whey 0.69 120 25 36.2 174 0.21
rice & beans 0.68 749 28 41.0 1101 0.04
lentils 0.44 668 48 109.1 1518 0.07
sweet potato 0.252 86 2 7.9 341 0.02
bananas 0.077 89 1 13.0 1156 0.01
beer 0.833 177 0 0.0 212 0.00
please excuse the formatting. tables r hard
since protein is approx. 4 calories per gram, the max "g/cal" of any food would be 0.25 indicating pure protein. whey is closest.
so it turns out, lentils beat everything at everything. a diet of lentils and eggs would be almost perfect macronutrients.
SOOOOOO
my next step is to re-work my diet plan for next week and come up with a predicted cost savings. then I'll try a new, lentil-heavy diet and see how i feel throughout the week during training. if I feel good, this could become my new thing unless I start to notice adverse effects from it after a while.
whos got good lentil recipes?