What groceries are fine to buy as cheap as possible without it being unhealthy? (Cw: possible talk of animal harm)

I think if you're eating unprocessed foods you're basically doing well enough for yourself, especially if money is a concern.

This is the most correct answer.
I cook seven nights a week and prepare basic simple food. My diet is 75% vegetarian/vegan (I eat meat infrequently; usually for weekend cookouts and/or big events). I do not eat out often. I'm middle aged. I'm at regular weight and work out periodically.
At my last physical my doctor said if everyone's numbers were like mine hospitals would go out of business.
Best bang for your buck is lentils or dried beans. Salads are also a go-to and economically feasible if you buy ingredients and prepare yourself. Chicken thigh is the most versatile cut, with pork shoulder being a distant second. Both are economical. Beyond burgers are my favorite meat replacement but are pricey.
- How are chicken thighs so cheap when they’re so good?
  ‘Yeah, yeah, i know other cuts have highwr demand from producers

have you considered

Love that beanis in my mouth.
On that note…is it worth to pay a couple of cents extra for the ‘organic’ beanis instead pf regs?
- It's a marginal improvement maybe, but if you're comparing it to processed food it's negligible. The one exception I make is for peanut butter since peanuts are basically hashem's bioremediation tool. They suck everything out of the soil and farmers will use them to condition bad land sometimes.
- If you're going to pay more for beans, shop around for some fancy stuff that comes out tasting like butter soup or chicken. It's not really that expensive since they're still beans.
lentils, my lord and saviour (of my wallet)

check out the cheap fruit and veg at asian markets

Yeah, those places are always slow to the draw on price hikes, thank god. I spent a summer eating largely chili tofu or kim chi (homemade or otherwise).
Do this. Also, if you're nice to the store owner the price might drop. When I go to Asian markets white and introverted as I am, I pay white people prices (still competitive compared to supermarkets), but when my girlfriend who kind of looks like she could be Turkish goes and greets the staff with "Assalam aleikum" she gets ridiculous discounts, sometimes a third of the white people price.

dried beans/rice are stupid cheap and safe. just wash and rinse everything a few times, which you're supposed to anyway even with good beans/rice to remove dust and whatnot to improve the texture.

if you're real suspicious, stick to whole, intact plant material... things you can wash the outside of, especially things you can easily peel like potatoes and apples. most bullshit doesn't penetrate protective, outer layers. kinda sucks, because i like potato and apple skins and the insoluable fiber is good for you. of course, this means leafy greens are suspect compared to like, a turnip or a beet because of the high surface area. but just wash em.

processed and already cut/ground items from shady packers are the vector for weird shit from unsanitary practices. places not training employees, bosses half-assing shutdown/cleaning shifts, skimping on the cleaning materials or the introduction of contaminants... because how are you gonna know when the thing is already sliced, diced, canned/bagged and ready to microwave? but you can look at a potato or a pepper and see if it's been damaged before you buy it.

basically the cheap/nutritious path means processing food at home and working with basic ingredients, which means you're sacrificing your time/labor and having to learn how to make things. and depending on what you buy, having to go to the store more frequently because a lot of produce doesn't stay fresh long, even in the fridge. which isn't all bad, as food can be an expressive art form and a sharing of oneself with others. but sometimes you just want to put in a cheap oven pizza and let it happen. so, it's more of a process than an orthodoxy.

I'm a big fan of frozen vegetables. Even freezer burnt are edible. They don't really go bad, and can be thrown in with potatoes, ramen, or anything else

Carrots. I just bought a five pound bag of carrots for three dollars. Roast them for like 40 min at 400 and they come out like sweet potatoes. Also potatoes are good. If you roast chickpeas with the carrots they turn into like peanuts.

Smart and final will have a 30 pound bag of carrots for like 12. How many pounds of carrots cna you eat a day? Put some hummus on them. Or like barbecue sauce and you are chillin.

Whole Foods plant-based diet is the cheapest, most complete diet you can have.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study
Also don't buy hummus, it's expensive as shit. A can of chick peas, tahini, and lemon juice is much cheaper and all you have to do is blend it. It also tastes much better

Whole foods are typically best. Less processing is better. Obviously theres always concerns about like good regulation keeping them safe, but generally produce when washed is fine. non-processed meats are better than processed meats. etc

If you want a really easy cheap filling meal that actually tastes good i will cook rice, and make a peanut butter sauce(Vinegar+peanutbutter+soy sauce) and mix that with whatever vegetables i have on hand. preferably the vinegar should be rice vinegar but thats not as cheap so just like a big jug of white vinegar will get the job done. Brown like some onions, peppers, carrots, etc in a pan with canola oil, then add in the peanut butter sauce ingredients and mix them in once veggies are browned. Then you add the cooked rice to that and just mix it up. You can add means and stuff too. The best cheap cuts of meat are pork loins (Can find half loins very cheaply atleast where i am. Like 7$ for a big chunk of meat that lasts awhile.) or chicken quarters. Chicken quarters are the entire leg+thigh together and can be found for like 89 cents a pound. Cheapest cut of chicken available. Just have some of that cooked up and add it to your rice. As long as you add plenty of veggies and stuff its very nutritionally balanced. Lots of fat, and protein makes it filling, and its pretty cheap too.

To save money on vegetables look for ones that are on sale, and buy in bulk then dice them up, and freeze them for later. I like to get tons of jalepenos, and carrots and freeze those cuz they're pretty cheap. I just have a couple containers i refill in the freezer with them in it. Same with herbs a small can of dried cilantro can be expensive but you can find a fresh bundle for 99 cents cut it up and freeze it. Way more for your money that way. Doing that with greens in general is a good way to add nutrients to your food. Just make sure you wash them before freezing them so you can toss the frozen ones right in the pan.

) or chicken quarters. Chicken quarters are the entire leg+thigh
I mean, I absolutely love chicken thighs but I’m not talking how cheap it is. My question is am I risking myself eating this over another cut of meat that’s just as cheap (or maybe even slightly more expensive) but is not as risky to eat?
- not really. obviously we don't know what exactly is going on in the farms and no foods are 100% garunteed safe unless you grew it yourself but generally speaking you just want less processed stuff. Like the chicken quarters are whole meats, where as a burger, or hotdog, or something would be more processed. It's easy to put fillers in without people noticing once the meat is ground up, and reshaped into something else. So like chicken leg is better than chicken nugget. Can't garuntee its 100% natural or anything, but if you get the whole meat, and wash it off well you should be better off than most. Same goes for veggies. Get a whole vegetable, wash it off good, and your in about the best spot possible.
  Any food that is like snackified, or made into something already is a lot more likely to have some horrible for you chemical in it.
- Oh also something i just thought of to save money. If you make an account at some of the stores (like kroger is one i know does it) and then you dont go there for a long time and go to other stores instead they will mail you some really good coupons. You can also just have 2 accounts and not use one for awhile to trick them. But u usually need multiple phones and addresses. Easy to do if you share accounts with friends and family. I got coupons in the mail from kroger recently that were just 2 free cans of del monte vegetables any variety no pre-purchase or anything required. You get some pretty good ones that way.

Frozen veggies are kinda underrated for convenience and you can never go wrong with any of the many variations of beans and rice. Dry beans are cheaper, but you do need to remember to soak them the night before which I frequently don't. Canned beans are also solid.

If you consume meat its always best to buy it as whole as possible and process the cuts yourself. It's not as difficult as you would think, but it does need to be learned.

I always keep some tofu in the fridge (buy it at Asian markets for the price) because its always hella easy to chop some up, toss some spices and oil on it, and toss it in the air fryer for about 20 minutes for a easy versatile protein addition to whatever I'm making.

I keep a good supply of dry cannelini and chickpeas. Usually have some soaking in my fridge nearly every night. Just some cannelini beans, garlic, olive oil, and some bread, make up a lot of my work lunches. Maybe some vegan bacon, if i have it. TVP and soy curls are also great. Plenty of stuffed mushroom recipes as well. Rice is a must for anything not stew/soup based.

Rice and potatos are bangers. Lentils also hit but idk how they hold up price wise.

Any ancient grain helps with spicing things up as well. Think Freekeh and Farroh

rice (although rice can be contaminated with arsenic, but that's usually big supplier fuck up, not off brand issue) and pasta? fruits are usually fine though, but something like lettuce can be not cleaned properly (so causing poisoning from shit). Preserved food is whatever, just read the labels one time. potatoes/onions are also fine, i think, hard to fuck up, cheap big tomatoes are very watery though, so better to just buy paste at that point

cheap big tomatoes are very watery though, so better to just buy paste at that point
Yeah, when I'm going for cheap(ish) it's canned (crushed, diced, whole peeled) or lil grape tomatoes, depending on what I'm making.

I once saw a study saying that eating organic vegetables rather than the cheaper conventionally grown ones had no measurable health effects so you should be fine eating the cheaper conventionally grown ones. They're still as good for you. Also, sometimes you can get lower-graded vegetables cheaper. The grading is purely cosmetic, the vegetables themselves are just as tasty and healthy.

As for staples like pasta, rice and flour the cheap versions are completely fine. Higher quality pasta is better at soaking up sauce, higher quality rice has better aroma and larger grain size but the cheap stuff is just as healthy and nutritious.

Maintain a spreadsheet where you track price changes with relation to goal nutrients like protein, potassium, fiber, omega 3s, etc. You can only eat so many beans, for instance, so don't just go off of the math. Vegetables are cool, but chia seeds are a much better source of fiber if you can get them for under $4/lb in bulk (mine are 3.30), in addition to omega 3s, calcium, and magnesium.