Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

If you want to understand why it is cheaper to eat garbage than real food, check out Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" or Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Government subsidies make it artificially cheaper to grow corn (for corn syrup), which is present in a lot of junk food. This makes junk food and heavily-processed food ridiculously cheap, at the expense of farmers growing actual fruits and vegetables. (This is a simplification of just one of the factors involved, but it's a major one.) It is also why obesity and diabetes are more common among people with lower incomes. (As opposed to most of history, when the peasants were rail-thin and obesity was an indicator of wealth.)

Hey LoCo - What's your chicken fettucine with broccoli recipe, then? :)

I happen to be a very very busy person: I work 2 jobs and go to school part time. So, most times, I don't feel like coming home to make myself a proper dinner and get a lunch together for the next day. It's so much "easier" to grab something frozen or pre-packaged. However, I do see the flaw in the reasoning here, because I know I do have time (on the weekends, maybe) to actually do some healthy cooking for myself. I've just gotten into a trap of grabbing something premade.

I think a lot of it is that I was never really taught how to cook, and I still consider myself a miserable failure in the kitchen. It's less about money for me, and more about convenience and lack of cooking skillz.