#mango's rambles

Now I know you can absolutely get more when it comes to shopping in bulk but when you're at the bottom of the barrel in terms of money and can only scrounge together a few dollars for groceries, adding some variety of meat can make or break your happiness in terms of food. Eating canned tuna (which can arguably be a very cheap source of meat) all the time can lead to a boring palette, which of course adds to the unhappiness of poverty or low-income.

Almost every culture has a poor-time meal that can be made with relatively cheap materials but a lot of them contain meat to help prolong the fullness you get when you eat.

Since I'm filipino I'm thinking of giniling. Giniling is a meal made with stupidly cheap ingredients. The most expensive things for giniling would be the ground beef and the spices, and you absolutely don't need spices (they're nice to have and if you can afford them, a lot of spices last a long time!) However some salt and pepper can go a long way and tend to be a lot cheaper.

Anyways, when I make giniling, I use russet potatoes, carrots, tomato paste, ground beef, and I mix the giniling with rice. That is like the bare minimum of what I add to giniling. If you can afford more, you can always add more (peas, peppers, raisins, etc.)

I know some dollar stores already carry some raw produce that you can buy, so if you're in a food desert except for that dollar store, you can get most of the materials you need for those poor meals. Being able to buy meat at one of these stores would be tremendously helpful to poor people in general, particularly families that depend on these dollar stores for food.

If I could buy raw meat at a dollar store, I could make about 3 days worth of meals off 1/3 lb meat, 1 can of tomato paste, a carrot or two, a nicely sized russet potato, and a bag of rice. That's around $5. Add some spices you can get at a dollar store, it could be around $10 (if you use a lot of spice variety)

Anyways small portions of raw meat being sold at a dollar store could be incredibly helpful to people with restricted incomes, such as college students, homeless people (who can manage to find a place to cook said meat), and families surviving off low incomes.