How to Eat Healthy on a Budget
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A visit to a health food store can convince anyone that eating healthy is a luxury rather than choice. To the contrary, eating healthy does not require buying the hottest new diet food or piles of exotic fruit. Nor does eating cheaply limit you to a menu of pre-packaged pastas. The exact items that make up cheap, healthy diets vary greatly by location, but the methods to creating these diets vary little. Since most of what you pay for in food is convenience, you can save money and maintain your health by investing time and planning into your diet.
Steps
- Determine what kind of diet is healthy for you. Generally, a diverse diet that is heavily biased towards unprocessed plant products is healthy. Fortunately, grains, fruits and vegetables can be bought for low prices, if you know where and when to look. Potatoes and carrots, for instance, are very beneficial for most people to eat and are often very cheap across the continental United States. Take a close look at your food receipts and cross out any items except meat, unprocessed vegetables and eggs. These are the main foods you should be buying. Meat and dairy products should be treated as side dishes (or eliminated altogether) and prepared foods should be avoided.
- Get an idea of what kinds of foods are cheap in your area. This may require a walk through your local grocery store(s) and other food vendors such as farmers' markets, bakeries, and specialty stores. For best results, take this walk with an educated mind and adventurous palate. Generally, foods that grow well and sell well in your area will be the cheapest, whether it's corn, green chiles, or apples. When in season, squash, onions, cucumbers, celery, and tomatoes can also be very cheap, especially in the midwestern United States. The more willing you are to try new foods in place of (rather than in addition to) your normal shopping list items, the more likely you are to lower the total cost of your shopping list while still eating healthy.
- Eat seasonally. Harvests come in waves, showering consumers with abundance that results in cheap prices. You'll not only save money by eating what's in season, but you'll also get your hands on food that's fresh. Find local farmers' markets and strike bargains with the farmers. Many times, they'll be thrilled to sell at a discount if you buy regularly and in bulk.
- Invest in food storage facilities. If you're purchasing foods that are in season and you're buying them in bulk to realize savings, then you'll need to take measures to store all that food. It's best to have a cool, dark cellar or pantry as well as a large freezer for meat and vegetables. For example, say you find a farmer with a bumper crop of corn; you can buy a year's worth of corn at a good price, freeze it, and have enough to last you for a year.
- Buy the least expensive variation of any type of food. For example, kidney beans come in pre-seasoned frozen packages, in cans, and dried in bags. Usually, the cheapest form of kidney beans is dried. Establish which forms of foods are available in each store and at what prices.
- Stop eating out. On those rare occasions that you do go out to eat, choose the simplest item on the menu, which is often the cheapest, too. Eat only half or one third of what is served (most restaurant portions are enormous) and take the rest home to eat later, combined with healthy side dishes.
- Learn to cook from scratch. Cooking from scratch is the cheapest (and best) way to eat. Get in the habit of rolling yesterday's leftovers into today's meal. Manage your refrigerator: never let anything go bad. Eat it or use it as an ingredient in a sauce, casserole, or soup. For example, old lettuce can be chopped and put into a soup, old salsa can be added to a curry, and old milk can be turned into a quiche. (Of course, don't use anything that has actually gone sour or rancid!) Make your own pasta.
- Use greater quantities of cheap food than of expensive food in cooking. Use a base of enriched or whole-grain rice, whole-wheat pasta or bread, or cooked oats to provide cheap, healthy bulk to more expensive, flavorful foods. For example, you can use less beef in some chili recipes by halving the amount of ground beef called for and adding water and instant plain oats instead. Whether or not that example sounds good to you, be original and try your own variations. Just because no one you know has thought of it before does not mean it is not a good idea.
Tips
- If it's in a box or in a metallic bag, don't buy it.
- Consider giving up dairy products. Not only are they expensive, but they are also suspected to be associated with chronic conditions and diseases. If you can get your calcium elsewhere, it'll likely benefit both your health and your wallet.
- Replace soda with tap water. If you prefer, you can also purchase an inexpensive water filter that will provide you with gallons of the same quality water that is found in bottles.
- Make your own snacks and bring them with you whenever you go out, along with a bottle of water.
Warnings
- In order to eat healthy on a budget, you must sacrifice convenience, which means you'll have to spend a lot more time shopping around and cooking than others do. You can't have it all!
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