I want to eat healthy but I have a very low income. Guidence if you can, please. :)
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lauraripson wrote: »Here's a couple comparisons:
http://www.sparkpeople.com/blog/blog.asp?post=what_20_will_buy_at_the_drivethru_and_at_the_supermarket
I don't know where you live but here in NY, I've never seen chicken or beef that low.
In Brooklyn this is pretty much standard, the chicken tenders (as pictured, not whole breasts) might be about .15 more /lb but beef might actually be cheaper in some places. and Milk is about $4.50 at a grocery store and $5 at a bodega. It goes up with the price of cigarettes.
$2 for a half gallon of skim milk (actually pictured) would be right. And the price for the 10 oz Yoplait (actually pictured). The 32 oz tub is $4.50.
I think that they may have listed the prices for the pictures with the descriptions written by a 70 year old man who never did sissy sht liek shopping and wouldnt know a 32 oz tub of yogurt from a gallon of skim milk especially if neither was in front of him.
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I had to LOL at the price of chicken breast...that would be under $1 a lb. Even a whole chicken, bones and all is usually more than that per lb where I live. And a LB of 96% lean ground beef is never under $4 a lb around here any more!
We get whole chickens for sale 99 cents a pound here, and when they go on sale I buy as many as they let me and do total chicken carnage in my kitchen -- cut 'em up, package them, turn the backs into broth. BUT that's something that requires freezer space, enough disposable income to load up and knowledge of how to cut up a chicken. Not everyone has that. Leg quarters go on sale 99 cents here pretty often as well. But for chicken breast... I do agree that the prices for that, not to mention a few other things, are decidedly off in this infographic.
Still, I think the point that groceries are better than fast food nutrition-per-dollar-wise is a valid one.
And an aside -- chicken breasts roast much more nicely if you leave them whole instead of splitting them.
I never see chicken breasts under 1.89 and then only the big bag of frozen ones at the wholesale club.
I frequently get chicken leg quarters (thigh and leg still attached to each other with part of the back) for .59 or .69 cents per pound. Its not too hard to break them down into legs and thighs. They roast well and make great chicken tacos or stir fries.
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Also - just fyi - sparkpeople is exceptionally out of touch with everything.0
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I'll second (third? fourth?) the suggestion to buy frozen veggies. They can be just as nutritious as fresh, possibly more nutritious if the fresh stuff is a week old because it was shipped from the other side of the world. Plus they keep longer so less chance of waste.
Lentils and dried beans are your friends. Dried beans do take awhile to cook but they don't need watching, so you can do something else while they're cooking. TVP, if it's cheap where you are, can be reconstituted and substitute for ground beef - even just half and half will save money.
I don't eat meat but I've heard suggestions to buy regular ground beef (not lean) then rinse with hot water after cooking to get rid of fat - maybe someone else can chime in to say how effective this is?
Make your own stock from odds and ends of vegetables if you use stock/bouillon. You can make a big pot and freeze it.
Check out ethnic markets, they're often cheaper. The farmer's market by me is not cheaper than the supermarket, but some are.
Check out your library for books on frugal living. Tightwad Gazette is a good one for general tips, and More with Less Cookbook by Doris Longacre Janzen is a classic for frugal cooking. I see other people have made suggestions for websites.0 -
It's effective at making your ground beef taste insipid.0
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Batch cooking could be useful - do you have a freezer? Make a vegetable lasagne or stew (with plenty of beans etc) ands then freeze it into individual portions.
Do you have any tupperware or something? We're skint and I always take leftovers to work. It's often just bits that might have otherwise got thrown away and if it's not enough to make a meal, I put some frozen veg (especially spinach, whiich is cheap in the UK frozen but expensive fresh) in it to pad it out.
The freezer generally is a good thing if you're on a budget. If you buy bread and things that are on reduced in the supermarket or at the bakery at the end of the day, you can bung them in the freezer and take things out one bun/slice at a time so it's not as stale.
Things like fresh chillies, ginger, lemon grass and other fresh herbs can also be frozen and taken out as when needed, instead of wilting away in a bowl. They may seem an expensive outlay, but they can brighten up dull food (espcially if brown rice and veg is the order of the day) and can last quite a long time frozen.
Don't be afraid of eating things beyond the sell by date. Especially cheese and yogurts - they're already gone off milk! Of course if there's a green tide of bacteria on the top, you're probably best leaving it alone, but I cut mould spots off cheese or bread (which is then only fit for the toaster anyway) and I'm still here.
Not many ideas about what to cook that's cheap because it'll be different where you live, but tinned tuna, eggs and dried pulses are cheap in the UK. It's more ideas about how to avoid waste.0 -
veggies, large tub of oats, eggs, cream of wheat, yogurt, protein powder, all pretty cheap and very healthy0
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Change_Agent wrote: »Good for you for starting this! I know for the $, one of the cheapest and healthiest things I make is lentil soup. One bag of lentils here (US) costs about $1.50 and it will make two large pots of soup--enough for 8 big bowls a pot or so. I fry up an onion, garlic and a few chopped carrots, put in half a bag of lentils (rinse them first in a strainer), fill with water to about an inch over the whole bit and simmer for maybe 30 minutes. Then add salt, pepper and maybe some tomato paste if you like, stir and keep cooking until its done. Same idea works for dried pea soup (LOVE this). I'm sure there are better recipes on the internet though and you can take that basic idea and run with it. It is low fat, high protein, and tastes good. (Actually good with pasta in it too.) Otherwise, I also eat a lot of black beans and rice or black beans on corn tortillas. Those combinations have lots of protein too. And for breakfast I eat oatmeal--very cheap here, not sure if so in Australia. I usually avoid sugar on mine because I am avoiding too much sugar and use a dollop of apple butter (jam). I definitely hear you though in general--sometimes healthy eating can be made very expensive. I don't think it has to be though and sometimes it seems to me like all the money people spend may not bring great health either. (Like all that protein loading by meat and protein powders?? Not good for you IMHO.)
yum bumping this. I am also on a very tight budget,lots of great ideas here, thank you everyone. I am in New Zealand btw.0 -
Try amazon or costco.0
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Go to the bulk sections and buy beans, rice, lentils oatmeal, and flavor the foods with spices. Farmers markets are surprisingly inexpensive, contrary to popular belief.0
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Look for the sales, and plan ahead0
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lauraripson wrote: »Here's a couple comparisons:
http://www.sparkpeople.com/blog/blog.asp?post=what_20_will_buy_at_the_drivethru_and_at_the_supermarket
I don't know where you live but here in NY, I've never seen chicken or beef that low.
OMG... people are taking this too literally. It was an EXAMPLE, that for the price of a pizza or a kfc bucket, you can go to the supermarket and get MORE food than what you paid for at fast food places.
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Alright mate, fellow Aussie here.. great advice from some people in here, but sadly a lot of things are simply just more expensive here than in the US, where a lot of comments seem to be coming from.
Oatmeal is a good one, you can get a 900g bag from Coles for $1.50 or so, and that's allegedly good for 30 servings. My girlfriend makes overnight oats, 35g of oats and 100ml of some kind of milk put in a jar or bowl overnight, then topped with fruit or something and eaten cold, which can make oatmeal into a decent-ish snack/desert. Long life milk can be got about a buck a litre, and keeps in the cupboard until you want to open it.
In terms of cheap protein, Woolies and Coles have their budget minced beef for about $5/kg. Sadly eating cheap isn't the same as eating low calorie, as it runs about 200 cal/100g as oppose to the expensive 'heart smart' stuff which is 120cal/100g but a whopping 14/15 bucks a kilo.
Tuna can get gotten semi cheaply, if you keep an eye out for when it's on sale. John West 95g tins are $1 on sale, and is pretty versatile. Not going to lie, I have about 50 cans in the cupboards from the last sale they were on lol. If you're on a budget a can of tuna and 2 slices of the 85c supermarket bread is actually pretty good. Or maybe I've just got cheap tastes. A few slices of the cheap bread, toasted or plain in a sandwich with peanut butter isn't too terrible calorie wise, and will give you a bit of protein and fat along with the carbs from the bread.
You mentioned mi goreng, which is one of my poor staples too. To make them a bit better, throw in some frozen veg and a couple of eggs, or stir fry the veg then add the cooked noodles to it. Same goes for rice, you can add some tuna or eggs or even ground/minced beef to it with some veg and it'll keep you full for a while.
Speaking of eggs.. caged ones are cheap. 12 budget range eggs is around 3 bucks, according to Coles online, versus 6 for 3 bucks from other brands. You have to work out what you can and can't live with, in terms of cheapness vs animal welfare, but they can be an option if you're willing.
What kind of food do you like, and what do you have in the house? Might help narrow things down you can make, or buy.0 -
llUndecidedll wrote: »Here's a couple comparisons:
http://www.sparkpeople.com/blog/blog.asp?post=what_20_will_buy_at_the_drivethru_and_at_the_supermarket
I understand what you're saying, but as someoen who shops at Wal-mart and buys Great Value products regularly, I have to call BS. For example, a gallon of milk is twice the price listed. The exact brand of chicken breasts listed is $9.31 not $1.96. I don't know how far these prices go back, but they are clearly outdated.
what kind of chicken is $9.31/lb?
is it from Jurassic farms?
I did not say the price was " $9.31/lb "....
If I did, please point it out to me. I said $9.31 is the price for 2 lb of Tyson chicken breasts. Like $6.28 is the price of that 1 lb of beef listed not $2.98.
It is not listed as per pound in the original post. I am not the only person who caught that slip...........
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I understand the point of the post and in general I agree with it. The problem is that if the prices in the example are ridiculously low, like several of them are, then the example losses credibility.lauraripson wrote: »Here's a couple comparisons:
http://www.sparkpeople.com/blog/blog.asp?post=what_20_will_buy_at_the_drivethru_and_at_the_supermarket
I don't know where you live but here in NY, I've never seen chicken or beef that low.
OMG... people are taking this too literally. It was an EXAMPLE, that for the price of a pizza or a kfc bucket, you can go to the supermarket and get MORE food than what you paid for at fast food places.
Truth is you can't get the assortment of food in that pic for the price it claims and that makes the example kinda useless. To my certain knowledge, you'd spend at least $5 more (25.23 by my addition) on the food pictured. I used the lowest prices I've seen recently and their prices for ones I had no memory of. But, as far off as they are on the items I know prices for, I don't trust them to be right on the others either.
$25.23 is 20% more than they claim. When you're on a tight budget, $5 matters.
I'd love to see a graphic like this done with more realistic prices and with food groupings that could actually make a meal, maybe even a couple of meals to replace the fast food meal. It would be much more compelling.
Edited because I can't math in the morning.
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llUndecidedll wrote: »Here's a couple comparisons:
http://www.sparkpeople.com/blog/blog.asp?post=what_20_will_buy_at_the_drivethru_and_at_the_supermarket
I understand what you're saying, but as someoen who shops at Wal-mart and buys Great Value products regularly, I have to call BS. For example, a gallon of milk is twice the price listed. The exact brand of chicken breasts listed is $9.31 not $1.96. I don't know how far these prices go back, but they are clearly outdated.llUndecidedll wrote: »Here's a couple comparisons:
http://www.sparkpeople.com/blog/blog.asp?post=what_20_will_buy_at_the_drivethru_and_at_the_supermarket
I understand what you're saying, but as someoen who shops at Wal-mart and buys Great Value products regularly, I have to call BS. For example, a gallon of milk is twice the price listed. The exact brand of chicken breasts listed is $9.31 not $1.96. I don't know how far these prices go back, but they are clearly outdated.
If you add up everything, that's assuming $1.96/lb for chicken breasts, which is pretty accurate if on sale. Milk is slightly more, but the prices are pretty right now. Add a dozen eggs on there and you've got quite a bit of food.
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I had to LOL at the price of chicken breast...that would be under $1 a lb. Even a whole chicken, bones and all is usually more than that per lb where I live. And a LB of 96% lean ground beef is never under $4 a lb around here any more!
We get whole chickens for sale 99 cents a pound here, and when they go on sale I buy as many as they let me and do total chicken carnage in my kitchen -- cut 'em up, package them, turn the backs into broth. BUT that's something that requires freezer space, enough disposable income to load up and knowledge of how to cut up a chicken. Not everyone has that. Leg quarters go on sale 99 cents here pretty often as well. But for chicken breast... I do agree that the prices for that, not to mention a few other things, are decidedly off in this infographic.
Still, I think the point that groceries are better than fast food nutrition-per-dollar-wise is a valid one.
And an aside -- chicken breasts roast much more nicely if you leave them whole instead of splitting them.
Amen! There needs to be a "like" button.
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I know for a fact that Boston food prices are lower than a lot of places. When I visit my brother, I've been considering taking stuff home with me. ;-) Market Basket is phenomenal for low prices - and they had that public brouhaha a while ago, so they're in pretty good shape.
Do you get food stamps? You might look into that. too.0 -
Yeah, when we moved from SF to Cambridge we were shocked by the increase in food costs, we're talking like 50% higher than what we were used to in SF. Then moving from Somerville to eastern WA, those food costs went up at least another 50%.47Jacqueline wrote: »I know for a fact that Boston food prices are lower than a lot of places. When I visit my brother, I've been considering taking stuff home with me. ;-) Market Basket is phenomenal for low prices - and they had that public brouhaha a while ago, so they're in pretty good shape.
Do you get food stamps? You might look into that. too.
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