Eating Thrifty and Healthy – Five Ways to Make it Happen

June 18, 2008 | Written by: Kati Chevaux

How to eat healthy for less Food prices are soaring and healthy foods are often premium priced.

We’re supposed to feed our families fruits, vegetables and high quality ingredients, but when it comes down to the price, high calorie and highly processed foods seem to beat out the wholesome ingredients every time. What’s a family to do?

Here are five simple tips to help you eat healthy without going over your budget:

Calculate your daily food budget. It can be enlightening to find out how much you can afford to spend on food in a day or for one meal. Take your monthly food budget (if you don’t have a food budget, use the amount you’d like to spend each month on food), divide by 30 for your daily budget and then take about 1/2 of that for your dinner budget. Breakfast, lunch and any snacks take up the other half. Having these numbers handy will help with food spending decisions like passing up ‘accessory’ foods that don’t add much nutrition.

Say goodbye to processed foods that have none of the benefits of real food. Why spend money on items that provide calories but not much else? Soda, fruit punch, candy, and even refined flour crackers and snack cakes tend to be ‘filler’ foods anyway, adding calories on top of an already sufficient diet. The side benefit is that stocking your kitchen with basic, real foods helps keep the power struggles with your kids to a minimum.

Make smart decisions about buying in bulk. Healthy food in bulk can be a miracle for quick dinners or snacks. Plus, you minimize the amount of packaging you’ll need to throw away. Large bags of frozen veggies and frozen fruits are fine alternatives to fresh on a tight food budget. Buying large tubs of plain yogurt and flavoring at home is much cheaper than buying single serve (and high sugar) yogurt cups. And it’s pretty safe to say that juice boxes have gotten out of hand. Jugs of apple juice are cheaper and better for the environment than wrapping foil, plastic and a straw around every six ounces they drink. Another thrifty move is to shop the bulk aisle of the grocery store for snacks like dried fruit, nuts and seeds to replace pre-packaged granola bars and fruit snacks.

Extend the most expensive ingredients. When you’re on a food budget, meat, cheese and daily fresh fruits and vegetables can seem out of reach. Extending these items is as simple as combining them with less expensive ingredients. To extend meat, create hearty stews or soups but replace half the meat with beans. Serve costly fruits and vegetables with lower-cost (per serving) peanut butter or bean dip to fill up hungry kids.

Prepare food at home. Not everyone has time to create homemade meals everyday. But sometimes so-called convenience foods don’t offer much time savings. Take oatmeal for instance. You can opt for the pre-packaged and pre-sweetened pouches of oatmeal that require about one to two minutes to heat the water. Or, you can choose the much cheaper (per serving) bag of plain oatmeal and spend three minutes heating it in the microwave. And by leaving out the added sugar or using less sugar than pre-sweetened versions, you’re creating a healthier bowl of oatmeal at the same time.

What do you think?

Do you have a thrifty food tip to share? Leave us a comment below!

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Written by Kati Chevaux | Filed Under Kati Chevaux, The Natural Choice

Comments

One Response to “Eating Thrifty and Healthy – Five Ways to Make it Happen”

easiest way to make money on June 30th, 2008 8:16 am
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