You don't have to be wealthy to do that, but you do have to have the storage space and to shift your mindset in a more long-term direction. It's also a lot of work. I grew up relatively poor, but in a rural area, so we had enough land to put in a garden, and we slaved away all summer and fall picking and processing food that got stacked up in the basement cold-cellar and in the freezer. We also bought meat in bulk, either a half or a whole beef from a local farmer, so you had to plan for that lump sum expense and, again, have the freezer space ready to take hundreds of pounds of meat when it went to the slaughter house. We'd also try to shoot a deer or two each year to supplement that, and catch a mess of trout that we'd can up. Then there were the trips to the pick-your-own berry fields, where you'd pick a hundred pounds of strawberries, and then have to freeze them or turn them into jam, and the trips to the orchards where you could pick grain sacks full of the dropped apples for a dollar apiece; then you had to go home and sort out the bad ones. My aunt had a Sam's Club membership, so a couple times a year we'd go with her and load up on staples - again, you've got to save up for it, and then you have to have the storage.

You can do that kind of thing when you are relatively settled and have roots and connections in a community, and the know-how to do all that home-making. We didn't have any money, but we were rich in a lot of other ways. If you are isolated and precarious, living reactively day-to-day, it makes something that is already hard nigh on impossible.

You're also handsome, charming, and incredibly humble.

Whether or not he meant to his comment illustrates the problem perfectly: those with the means to do so can eat healthy food and absorb the cost/time/distance inherent in that, those that cannot will suffer and chose whatever they can get. Good healthy food at a sustainable price is hard to come by in the US. There are food deserts everywhere. Good food is treated clearly as a lifestyle luxury. Let them eat cake indeed.

My point exactly

I get where your comment is coming from, but I think they acknowledged that their situation is somewhat privileged. Quote: "All because I can afford to."

It's the old adage about it being expensive to be poor, only in reverse.

Yes, actually. But I didn't want to bring it up.