Because eating enough has a more immediate payback than eating well, it often takes precedence when push comes to shove. Hunger is a powerful force and left unsatisfied it will grow into a beast that controls every aspect of your life, commanding behaviors that have a lasting impact. Children in developing countries who sniff glue on a regular basis, for example, habitually risk permanent brain damage because the sensation of being high helps them to control the hunger that dominates their bodies.
While in other walks of life, not eating well may be the consequence of poor decision-making, not having enough time to plan meals, or simply not knowing how to cook, for many groups, among them college students, single mothers and children, the mentally ill, and the elderly, it is the consequence of financial hardship.
One of the most disabling obstacles to eating well (aside from a short cash supply, of course) is not having adequate equipment for cooking, refrigeration, or storage. For many, this means out-and-out homelessness, but it could also mean inhabiting a neglected building or simply not having enough money to pay the electric bill. Not having a working stove severely impedes food preparation, but not having a working refrigerator limits the lifespan of food items, meaning that foods cannot be bought in bulk for a discounted price and that the economy of leftovers cannot be exploited.
The catch with this scenario is that fresh foods that don't require much preparation expire quickly while dried or canned foods with a long shelf life generally need to be cooked before consumption. Among those of my acquaintance, there have been some interesting attempts to overcome this Catch-22.
One man I know bought an enormous bag of tangerines very inexpensively and ate only tangerines for an entire week. He noted that by the end of the week, not only did his urine smell "citrusy," but he needed only to inhale to catch a whiff of tangerine wafting up from his pores.
Others have opted to buy foods with a long shelf life and simply bypass or modify the preparation process. Some report crunching on raw ramen noodles or drinking cold spaghetti from the can. Still others have tried to rig more unconventional methods such as heating hot dogs by sticking a fork into an electrical outlet, using a cigarette lighter, or pouring soup into a plastic bag and allowing it to warm all day in the sun. A number of people also report sneaking into gas stations to use their microwaves, though they note this is frowned upon by management and, depending on the filling station, sometimes results in expulsion from the site.
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