Eat This Not That recently tweeted that it cost something like $3 a day to eat junk food and $36 dollars a day to eat healthy. I don't know where they got that statistic, but it is true that eating healthy can be more expensive than the dollar menu. Luckily, there are some ways to stretch your dollar a little further. Buying healthy groceries and preparing them in a super savvy way can help make eating healthy a little bit more reasonable. Here's how I do it!
Plan ahead:
Make a tentative menu of what you want to cook, and shop with those ingredients in mind. Don't buy more than what you can use before it will go bad. Making your food at home will let you control what goes in to your food and save you lots of money.
Make your own:
If you're avoiding buying junk food and frozen dinners, you're already saving money, but by making things from scratch like soup, baked goods, and sauces, you can control the quality of the ingredients and the price tag. Making soup and pasta sauces is really easy, and if you have a crock pot, they practically cook themselves. And I've already shown you a lot of recipes for these! Eating at home is wayyyy cheaper than eating out, and if you make big batches, you'll always have leftovers for cheap, easy meals.
Prepare your own:
It may seem convenient to buy pre-sliced or chopped vegetables, but it is much more cost effective to chop them up yourself. This is why one of my time saving tips (from a previous post) is also a money saving tip. As soon as I get home, I chop up my fresh veggies and pack them in water in plastic bags so they are just as convenient, and it takes just a little longer. I also cook my own beans and rice, rather than buying canned or frozen products.
Grow your own:
If you have the time, space, and patience to grow your own vegetables, these foods are practically free! I don't have much of any of those things, but I do manage to grow my own green onions. I'm going to try really, really hard to grow my own herbs again (I always end up killing them), and I found some really easy ways to grow other veggies. I'll get around to it one day. ;)
Avoid waste:
Planning ahead will help avoiding some waste, but using every part of your food will help too. After you've prepared all your veggies, you can save the ends of carrots and celery, the ends and skin of onions, mushroom stems, or tough ends of asparagus or broccoli stalks. You can throw all these in a pot with some water and salt and make your own vegetable stock. You can do the same thing with bones and leftover pieces of chicken, seafood or meat too. If you are really ambitious, you can make compost with leftovers. Or you can save the leftovers, and have someone pick it up to make compost (like Project Angelfaces if you're in Las Vegas!!) They do all the work, all you have to do is put the food you were going to throw away in a different bin. This way, if you recycle too, you'll have practically no waste!!
Buy in bulk:
I buy things like beans, rice, flour, oats, bread, pasta and meat (when I buy it for little bro) in bulk. The beans and grains keep forever, and the bread and meat can be frozen. This way, I can buy stuff when it's on sale and only buy what I need, rather than buying a pre-packaged product. These are really cheap products and can be inexpensive building block to your meals.
Pick your battles:
Buying everything organic is really impractical with the expense and the small selection at most grocery stores, but there are some things that you should definitely buy organic. These foods are called the "Dirty Dozen" and have the highest level of pesticides. These foods include (in order of chemical content): apples, celery, bell peppers, peaches, strawberries, nectarines, grapes, lettuce and other greens, cucumbers, blueberries, potatoes, and green beans. Luckily there's the "Green Fifteen," the foods that have very low levels of pesticides and can be bought conventionally: onions, corn, pineapples, avocados, cabbage, peas, asparagus, mangoes, eggplant, kiwi, cantaloupe, sweet potatoes, grapefruit, watermelon, and mushrooms. A good rule of thumb is if it has a thick skin that you peel or don't eat, it's ok to buy it conventionally. If it has a thin skin that you eat, buy organic. More good news is that there are some foods with very little price difference between organic and conventional. The beans that I buy in bulk, for example, are the same price for organic or conventional and are only 99 cents a pound, rather than $2.50 for a can of organic cooked beans. Celery, carrots, potatoes, and greens are all only a little more expensive for organic varieties.
Avoiding junk food and animal products will save you money too! I hope this helps you all live a little healthier for a little bit less. :)
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