The Recession Proof Meal Plan
How to Get Top 1% Nutrition at a Fraction of the Cost
The Recession Proof Meal Plan
GM everybody. Times are hard. Feds keep printing money, people are getting laid off, a couple gay dudes in San Francisco are actively summoning the antichrist. We’re at that stage in societal collapse where everybody turns to degeneracy. Gambling, OnlyFans, doomspending. It’s feeling like the end times are near.
Unfortunately instead of some mass revolution fought Terminator style it’ll likely be something more like AI forcing mass layoffs which prompts universal basic income but only if you sign up for Digital ID and effectively give over your rights to privacy and sovereignty so now all of your actions thoughts and behaviors are closely monitored in your surveillance dossier and any level of subordination is met with algorithmic social and fiscal punishments.
All that to say, food’s getting more expensive.
There are two types of people in this world: Those that spend a lot on food and those that spend as little as possible. You’ve probably seen Blobfish O’Leary chastising Gen Z for spending $28 on lunch, and although totally tone deaf, he’s not wrong.
Boomers flex eating spam and wonderbread for two decades while we are the ones out here subsidizing their dialysis and insulin shots. You can no longer AFFORD to eat like a boomer (read my detox series to understand why). Nor can you afford to be DoorDashing a $30 burrito.
The average person is financially illiterate. They are incapable of making price-to-value comparisons, the per-quota test of nutrition. They either:
a) Spend way too much money on flashy health food
b) Spend way too much money on Doordash/restaurant food
c) Do both
This is foolish. First of all you must understand the restaurant dynamic:
Restaurants Don’t Care About Your Nutrition
Restauranteurs have two priorities and two priorities only:
1. Make the food cheap enough to spin a profit
2. Make the food tasty enough to keep you coming back.
They do not want you nourished, for a nourished person might snap out of their leptin-induced feeding frenzy. They might stop becoming a slave to their impulses. Bad for bizness.
Instead what they do is lean on food sciences: How can I make this taste as good as possible for as cheap as possible? How can I mimic the real thing (nourishing, healthy, quality food) at a fraction of the cost? The outcome is usually a food science abomination that would give a Victorian era child rickets.
This is just the restaurant game. Our government hates small business and independent food supply and act accordingly. Most locally owned restaurants went out of business during COVID. What remains are goyslop conglomerate chains you see on every street.
It’s almost impossible to flip a profit without a catch. You are incentivized to use small portions of the good stuff (particularly protein and healthy fats) and leverage filler (wheat, starches, etc).
Use restaurants for what they are: an opportune gathering point outside of home. If you’re eating out for sustenance you might as well tattoo “#1 GOYSLOP ENJOYER” on your forehead.
Farmers Markets are Fraudulent
Do you really think local farmers are having a market in downtown Tampa? Of course not. 90% of farmers markets are craft markets. And 90% of those “crafts” are overpriced gimmicks. Farmers markets are theme parks. Places where suburbanites can larp about the communities that boomers burned away under the guise of individualism.
It’s no different than those Moroccan dudes that sell bracelets in every European city center (except nobody at the farmers market has threatened to harvest my kidneys... Yet.)
The Patrician’s Guide to Pinching Pennies
Between boomer-maxxing saltines with spam, Gen Z goonermaxxing Doordash, and Middle-of-bell-curve natural-pilled unemployed aspiring health influencer ribeye on wooden cutting board, there is a secret fourth option: Using discernment.
I used to be very broke. Like living on $1 tacos in Mexico broke. Even with those financial constraints, I was able to live a better and healthier life than people making literally 20x.
To this day I am still intentionally frugal. I have no problem spending money on things that matter but nothing grinds my gears more than paying more just because. Lifestyle creep is a hell of a drug and one I’d prefer abstaining from.
This is why I built my recession-proof meal plan. An S-Tier nutrition protocol that will give you better nutrition than 99% of the population for a fraction of the cost.
The Recession Proof Meal Plan
The recession proof meal plan is based off of principles. Immutable frameworks that can be sliced and diced to meet your unique proclivities. Rich or poor. Fat or skinny. Vegan or carnivore.
Understand that implementing the RPMP doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the finer things. Quite the contrary. Having an economically feasible meal foundation allows you to splurge financially when appropriate just like how having a dialed diet allows you to splurge calorically when appropriate.
This is what “those who wouldn’t know how they’d feel if they didn’t eat breakfast yesterday” can’t comprehend: Discipline breeds freedom. I can drink alcohol and go out to eat because I can afford it. Not fiscally, but metabolically. I have dialed my baseline to the point that I don’t need to count calories. Coronas and tacos get steamrolled by my blast furnace metabolism.
If you know that at the end of the day, you can have S-tier nutrition on less than most people spend on Fortnite skins, you can order whatever you want at that special occasion.
I’m going to break this guide down into two parts: Principles and Applications.
Principles: Fundamental frameworks you can apply to your own dietary preferences
Applications: An actual Recession proof meal plan you can plug and play today (For paid subs)
The Art of the Deal
RPMP is all about shopping smart. Being savvy. Embracing arbitrage. Grocery stores are casinos and you’re George Clooney in Oceans 11. Every store has its “one thing” it’s good for. Publix for BOGO on meats. Aldi for fresh and cheap produce. Trader Joe’s for fringe snacks. It’s up to you to map out which has what. Gerolsteiner costs $4 at my local health store. It costs $2.46 at Publix. Same bottle, different supply chains.
Build your heist plan. Swing by your three stores in one swoop. Get your loot and get out.
Never Pay for Niceties
Want to know why Aldi, Lidl, Trader Joes and Wild Fork are so cheap? It’s because they are masters of supply chain optimization. Not because their products are worse than Publix or Whole Foods (often the opposite). Never underestimate the utilitarian, borderline autistic efficiency of a German supply chain.
Aldi is cheap because they’ve stripped every unnecessary cost. One cashier. Vertically integrated supply chain. No middlemen ramping up prices, which means fresher, faster produce. The savings get passed straight to you.
Wild Fork applies the same principle on steroids: 2 employees, small stores, zero inventory turnover because everything is frozen. The Erewhon enjoyers will be the first to go when times get tough. Why are you, as a man, paying $21 for a smoothie? “But Noah it’s made with cruelty free camel milk!” Shut up. Don’t be so impressionable. You must become immune to marketing. Focus on ingredient lists.
Embrace Economies of Scale
The expense of something is often less the thing and more all of the things around the thing. It costs more to box, wrap, ship, and package cereal than the actual cereal. So buy in bulk.
50lb bags of rice. Duffel bags of potatoes. Do not look at price per package, look at price per ounce.
Understand Turnover Offset
The reason delicate foods like berries are so expensive is because their price factors in turnover. You aren’t paying for that single bushel, you’re paying for the 6 packages that spoiled for every one package sold. This is why frozen is king. Frozen food offsets the turnover tax. Frozen food is often fresher than non-frozen.
Find Local Markdown Cycles
Food goes on clearance because every grocery store has their local food inspector breathing down their back. Not because the food is bad. Grocery stores with in-house butcheries end up with a lot of meat that they have to sell. Find out when they get new shipments and when they start markdowns. You can easily become acquainted with store staff and they’ll be happy to tell you when and where the best deals are (as long as you’ve been charisma-maxxing).
Once you start getting Sirloin for $7 a pound it’s hard to go back to paying full price.
Asymmetric Foods List
Save money on the simple things so you can pay up for the important ones. Generally speaking, fats require higher quality. Toxins are fat soluble, fats oxidize, and fat-soluble vitamin content varies significantly.
Pay up for specialty oils, organ meats, eggs (pasture raised), dairy (at least organic), and organic-dependent produce (some produce is more important than others, which I’ll explain later). When it comes to fats, quality beats quantity. Eat less, just better. Lean proteins and carbs have a lot more leeway.
Voting with Your Dollars
My rule of thumb is: Save as much money as you can at chain stores, spend as much money as you feel comfortable at local stores. There is a concerted effort to wipe out mom & pop shops and replace them with the Publixes of the world. Find a couple local stores, shop liberally even if it costs a little extra. Supporting local will feed your soul more than a supermarket ever will, and that’s worth a premium.
And besides, that’s the point of making money. To spend it on things that are important to you. So ask yourself, what’s really important? What makes you feel good? What makes you feel ripped off? I’ll gladly pay a premium to shop from somebody that knows my name. That takes pride in their business, and makes their products with love & care.
Remember that these are frameworks, not doctrine. No need to live like an ascetic. But no reason to give extra money to corporations that hate you. Maybe it’s my Midwestern roots or could be German genetics but I absolutely hate being ripped off and so should you.
What follows is my exact stack: Every store, every cut, every price point I aim for. The Nuclear Option for when you’re truly down bad, and the optimized version I run today.
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