We’re in an obesity epidemic and most people don’t know how to cook even very basic meals.
Make space for it, squish other classes if you need. Make it mandatory, everyone has to take it. Maybe even ongoing through multiple grades.
Edit: Rice, beans, and even basic meats are cheap. To eat healthy you don’t need your meal to be 100% Bell peppers and tomatoes.
First of all, I have not discounted any of the foods you have mentioned. I apologize if I came off that way at any point. It is certainly possible to find ways to make healthy meals relatively cheaply, but it is much more effort. The only reason I ignored anything is because it’s tertiary to my original point. Which is that the healthier alternatives for most foods are quite often more expensive and more difficult to access for large portion of the worlds population. The same population that is most affected by obesity, at least in developed countries. This may admittedly be somewhat difficult for someone to understand unless they have personally had to struggle to pay for the most basic necessities.
Second, unless I missed something (entirely possible), you haven’t really addressed the costs of creating and enforcing a mandatory cooking class. You have merely stated that it is affordable and may actually save money over time. But, you haven’t offered any logical reasoning to support these claims.