The numbers you're using sound wrong now. In the last year or maybe 2 years food prices have skyrocketed. I'll go to store to pick up a few things and end up with a bag or two of groceries, and the bill is like $100 -- I know I could scrimp and figure out ways to spend less, but it wasn't always like that. The same stuff costs way more now.
If you want to talk about really healthy food, especially if you have a strange diet like veganism, then forget it, your bill will be huge.
No, you're just buying the wrong things. If I walk out of the store with $100 of groceries for my family of 3, it's an entire shopping cart full of food and lasts for weeks!
4-5 lbs of "on sale" meat, 10 lbs of bread flour, 5 lbs of sugar, 2 lbs of cheddar, a gallon of milk, cereal (from local mill, not the national brand stuff), vegetables, butter and lunch meat will cost around $60 here in the Upper Midwest. But if I spend that $60 on mostly processed food, I will barely get two grocery bags full.
With a bit of land you can go further. I keep chickens for fresh eggs, but I realize most people can't do that. However, my potatoes, corn, carrots, broccoli, squash, pumpkins, salad greens and some herbs come fresh out of the garden so for summer/fall at least, I don't buy those things.
This is pretty much what I mean. You buy fairly average food, but I wouldn't touch most of what you mentioned with a barge pole.
Meat? No.
White Flour? No!
Sugar? Hell no!
Chedder? Maybe a little.
Milk? Maybe, but expensive.
Cereal? Probably not, unless it's real like granola or muesli, in which case it's expensive.
Veggies? of course, but those also cost.
Butter? Maybe a little.
Lunch meat? No.
Try doing without white rice, sugar and pasta, and getting fresh greens and fruits, whole grain everything, brown rice, etc. Even if you make a lot of it from scratch, it adds up.
There's a huge amount of "food fear" going on in this country (USA).
What exactly is nutritionally wrong with white flour, sugar and meat (unless you're vegetarian)? In any case, I probably have 3-4 different kinds of flour in my pantry right now, plus wheat germ flakes. And the bread I'll be eating tomorrow will be home made sourdough. I'm neither fat nor malnourished.
What's a "real" cereal? This morning my 8 year-old son asked to make his own breakfast. He had Malt-O-Meal (a local Minnesota mill) raisin bran. Is that "real?" Generic corn flakes and oatmeal are probably the cheapest cereals on the market. Are they real? If you like granola so much, buy the oatmeal, honey & nuts and make it yourself. It's simple and infinitely cheaper!
To the earlier comment about organic vs. "pesticide ridden crap." Newsflash! Organic farming also uses pesticides, just different ones. That said, my veggies (pesticide free and fertilized with our chicken & horse manure compost) are no more nutritious than the (non-organic) ones in the grocery store. The difference is that the freshness makes them taste better and improves the texture.
In both Berlin and Mountain View (two cities where I spent a lot of time of late) I can go to the local market and get a huge bag of fresh veggies for $5-10. If you're really spending $100 on a couple bags of fresh food, you're doing something very wrong.
Meat- I guess that's your choice, but can be healthy and cheap.
White Flour- He said bread flour, which is technically white, but sort of a necessary evil if you're making your own bread regularly. I make a good multi grain and rye which has bread flour in it.
Sugar- Not that bad if you use it in small amounts. I make my own ice cream (real cream), add sugar some to sauces, etc.
Veggies- looks like he grows a lot of his own, as I do. Defiantly not free but cheap if you have some experience and the right tools.
It's definitely more economical to buy lots of food in bulk. It also helps to have lots of refrigerator and other food storage space.
Unfortunately, buying in bulk isn't going to be an option for many single people with lower incomes and not much refrigerator/storage space... (maybe with the exception of beans and rice, which can be stored relatively compactly and for a long time without refrigeration).
Another thing that works against people with lower incomes is that much of the nutrious food is more expensive than the less nutritious food.
Bread is a prime example. The cheapest bread is highly processed white bread. The more nutrious whole, multi-grain breads are usually two or three times as expensive as the cheap crap.
Same with organic, cage- and cruelty-free produce vs the pesticide-ridden crap.
The numbers are very regional (cheese in the northeast is 1/2 what it is in Colorado, for instance) and were lower a few years ago (you are right). If you shop the right stores at the right times, I am sure you could come pretty damn close, even today.
Veganism can be spendy. I've only tried once (for a week). It didn't work out too well.
This doesn't have to be true. Purchasing mock meats and the like will probably get to be expensive. But cutting out meat and cheese are two of the very easiest ways to lower your monthly food costs and improve your overall health.
Rice, beans, pasta, and (frozen) veggies combined with different spices and sauces isn't a bad way to go when saving money and trying to stay healthy.
I'm much more skeptical of the health consequences from a diet including large quantities of eggs, cheap ground meat, and inexpensive cheese.
I also think the key to living this cheaply would be a multi-vitamin to help replace whatever you're invariably missing from your diet.
As a vegetarian who eats like a vegan 98% of the time (and for several years lived on no more than a $60.00/month food budget), you don't have to let budgetary constraints keep you from participating in a healthy and environmentally friendly way of eating.
If you want to talk about really healthy food, especially if you have a strange diet like veganism, then forget it, your bill will be huge.