If you do like to eat out, pinch and save your pennies until you can afford a meal at an expensive restaurant. I mean one where the menu is entirely or largely a la carte (paying for individual items, meat, potato or other starch, side dish veggie, etc.) Generally, such places use few or no highly processed packaged ingredients. Instead, dishes are assembled from the basics--meats, fresh produce and fruits and possibly a few unseasoned frozen ones.

That said, it ain't likely that costrel will find such anywhere nearby. I used to live in a tiny town in southwest KS and had to drive 200 miles into Wichita or about the same to Amarillo, TX even to FIND a restaurant of this sort. At least, the nearest Mickey D's or the like was about 20 miles away, so I rarely ate fast food.

Now that I live in the St. Louis metro, we usually save up for a "payday" meal (every two weeks) at an expensive place where my need for gluten-free, mostly dairy-free can be accommodated. Otherwise, I grab lunch from the food bar at Whole Foods when I'm there. They have terrific prepared salads that aren't swimming in mayo or some other gloppy dressing. There's a vegan deli not far away that I mean to try eventually. Sure is easier to eat out healthily when you live in a city this large!

I've gotten so accustomed to buying a few carefully selected processed natural foods and making just about everything I eat from scratch that I honestly don't want to eat out most places. The food simply tastes awful!

Hubby demands some processed "5-ingredient-plus" foodstuffs, but I won't eat that crap. I occasionally get something packaged like Amy's Tofu Scramble but not more than a couple times a month. 

As for salt, I buy Redmond's Sea Salt. Takes us 6-8 months or more to get through a 9-oz. shaker of it. In fact, we use so little salt that a few years ago, my doctor said my blood sodium level was borderline low. He suggested I use more salt since I did a lot of yardwork and probably needed more. The only food that I salt moderately is mashed potatoes. Just don't add the stuff otherwise while cooking unless it's something baked that calls for salt, and then I generally use half or less the amount specified.

I can't understand people who drive really nice cars and live comfortably but scrimp and save on cheap food. Plain suicidal, I think.

I don't eat fast food at all, except for sandwiches from places like Subway or Quiznos.  It helps to be a vegetarian.  Most fast food places don't have anything I can eat, so why bother?