Healthy eating on a budget?

carlydonathan

Hello everyone,

I am finding myself struggling on eating healthy on a budget. I feel like I'm doing it wrong. It is my husband and myself (plus our 7 month old but I nurse her and make her baby food so $ is minimal) and I'm spending close to 140/week on groceries. I know and understand that a price tag on your health is worth more, but if I can shave some of the cost down it would be great. So, if you can share how you save on eating healthy I would appreciate it!

To give you a backdrop on what I do when I grocery shop- I buy fresh fruit and veggies in season at our local farmers market. I buy whatever meat is on sale- whole chickens, steak, lean ground beef/turkey. I also buy our grains in bulk- quinoa, rice, and couscous. And I try not to buy processed crackers, cookies, or chips. I make/bake the majority of our food. Thanks everyone for your input!

lawtechie

Sounds like you are doing every thing right. Are you throwing away food because it went bad? $140/week seems high for 3 people if you are making meals, freezing, doing your own recipes and not letting it go to waste.

I'd suggest hanging on to the receipts and looking at what food you're buying in more detail to see what is costing you the most.

booboo68

Hi. You can make meals that will be just as good re-heated. Some examples are vegetable soup, chili soup, bean soup. Making a large pot of these 3 things alone in a week will feed the entire family and allow leftovers to be put in the freezer for some other time.
The chili is also good to make a salad, add a little cheese and FF sour cream on the top and it's an entirely new meal.

When I make spaghetti, bake half and then freeze it, the same with lasagna.

Also, I make pulled pork in the crock pot and we eat that 2-3 days at a time. Or Pork roast and sauerkraut. You can cut the pork in half and use 1/2 for pulled pork and half for sauerkraut.

A roast or roasting chicken roasted with potatoes and carrots will reheat well for a second meal.

Large pots of ham, green beans and potatoes are good and one of my family faves.

There are 2 adults in our family and I spend right around $250-300 for food these days per month. I take advantage when the markets have the large family packs of meat and I buy it and then split it and freeze it that way to get the cheaper price. Also that's when I stock up on the meat. I look at the grocery ads online every week and base meals around the sale items.

Good luck!

acogg

I save quite a bit by grinding my own meat. I buy a very large turkey during the Thanksgiving sales and usually get a years worth of ground turkey for whatever the sale price was. I check out the bargain bin for discounts on beef. Beef doesn't go bad as soon as they label. I freeze it as I find it and then about twice a year I defrost it and grind my own very lean ground beef. I look for pork boston butts that are $1.49 or less per pound. I save up until I have about 20 pounds in the freezer, grind it and then make my own sausage, saving some of the ground pork for recipes. Non-link sausage is very easy to make and much healthier than the stuff in the store. Just ground pork and spices. Freezes very well, too.

ilovedeadlifts

Sounds like you are doing every thing right. Are you throwing away food because it went bad? $140/week seems high for 3 people if you are making meals, freezing, doing your own recipes and not letting it go to waste.

I'd suggest hanging on to the receipts and looking at what food you're buying in more detail to see what is costing you the most.

agreed. for me, girlfriend, and a 4 year old child I spend about 350 a month tops.
Most good food is fairly affordable if you're ditching the junk.

cottage cheese
eggs
tuna
beef (steak cuts get a bit pricey so it depends on your calories)
chicken is on sale a lot. just keep an eye out and stock up when its cheap
bananas
rice
quinoa

stuff like that makes up the majority of my diet and with the exception of steak it's not that pricey.

acogg

I have also started buying my most common spices at the dollar store.

Firefox7275

It's worth running a search, there have been several good threads on this since I have been a member. Different fruits and vegetables are more or less expensive, have you priced everything up in categories per 100g? Frozen/ dried/ canned may be cheaper than fresh, even from a market. Dried beans and lentils are super cheap and highly nutritious - can add to stews or stir fries, make thick soups, vegetarian pate, daal etc.

Also are you moderating serving sizes of meat and padding out the dish with lots of root veggies, beans and lentils, do you eat any organ meats? Bolognese and chilli con carne work really well padded out, you can add grated carrot and/ or red lentils that vanish into the gravy with long cooking time (to the point my chef ex did not notice!), also chicken livers are an authentic addition to Bolognese to add richness and cost less than the cheapest fattiest nastiest ground beef/ pork; If you cut them fine there is no texture to know they are present. Homemade chicken liver pate is amazing, can ring the changes with caramelised onions or mushrooms, limit butter by adding low fat soft cheese.

Do you have any/ many vegetarian or vegan meals? Also have you tried writing down every bit of food you throw away? I would have said I didn't waste much until I consciously started paying attention. All the little things really add up - you can make whole meals out of veg that is not at it's best, the bones and scraps on a whole chicken.

xo_mel921

Something that you might want to look into is a food co--op. I often get my produce from Bountiful Baskets (they have a website) and its about $15 per basket full of half vegetables and fruit. You can also make it 100% organic for an extra $10 I believe. They also have a lot of different add ons available like bread and fresh herbs. I find it hard to use all of the stuff that comes with one basket so I usually split it with a friend - which lowers the cost even more

mltdown

Xo Mel thanks for sharing that info!

Mommyjenlynn

On weeks so I am that I do not need meat, I am spending about $50 a week. My family has 4 people in it, and I do daycare so I am feeding roughly 7-8 people a day (not every meal does everyone eat). You are probably shocked but here is some history from the last 2 1/2 years about myself. When I opened my daycare 2 1/2 yrs ago I was spending about $250 a week on groceries. It was killing us!!! I started to look into options. I quickly came to terms with:

1. I was overfeeding the kids (giving them adult sized portions) and then we were throwing out more then half a plate of food. Also overfeeding the adults.
2. I was over cooking so I had a lot of food thrown out because we could not eat it.
3. I cut back on our meat consumption. Beans and eggs are a great alternative to avoid a lot of meat consumption.
4. I learned how to properly feed all so instead of us eating a lot of processed food, I now cook from scratch.
5. I learned how to coupon. HUGE money saver!!!
6. I offer more fruit and vegetables to my family and daycare. It is much healthier for them and us then eating prepackaged snacks!!!
7. I cook 4-5 days a week using my crockpot. I then take what we do not eat from our crockpot and freeze it for a dinner down the road.
8. I only buy in season produce. I also use out local vegetable stands or farmers markets a lot over the grocery stores.

That being said with my learning to coupon, I started my fitness pal at the end of June. I had to go through my food stock pile and I donated a lot of stuff that we could not eat anymore. The only think I will stockpile is healthy food options. I buy meats when they are on sale. Things that I normally replenish every week are: Milk, yogurt, vegetables, fruits. I discovered we have a local bread store (Orowheat) that sells better quality breads for $1 a loaf. They even carry bagel thins and sandwich thins for $1.00 per package. I will go in it and walk out with 20 packages of bread which I put into my deep freezer. My meats I buy on sale but I will drop $100 in meat if there is a good sale and it will last us a log time. At the beginning of the summer, safeway was having a huge meat sale for Steak. I spent $100 in steak. It is now December and I am down to two packages of steak left in my freezer. It has probally made us over 20+ dinner meals. My words of advice are to look into couponing, start a stockpile. Eventually you will be like me were you only have to buy perishables most weeks and replenish stockpile as it gets low.

ladyrider55

Food co-ops are good but be careful some hit you up for a membership. I shop at Aldi's for all my fresh vegetables and fruits (they are less costing then other grocery stores & some Farmers Market's). I make huge pots of homemage veggie soup and pans of veggie lasagna then freeze extra servings. My veggie soup makes 28 (1 cup) servings. Yes I'm just one person left in this household but find if you cook up large amounts it's easy to freeze extras for the days when you don't feel like cooking a big meal. Same with my veggie lasagna, it makes enough for 2 pans (13x9 in) so between the soup and lasagna I switch off daily meals and freeze the rest. Also I'd say check stores, some grocery stores can be higher priced the other stores, check around. Good Luck

Matt_Wild

Buy everything in bulk.

Me and the other half each month buy it this way and it cuts the cost down really low.

jessicawrites

It helps to plan your meals for the week in advance. A typical week of meals for me and my husband:

M: ham steak, "smiley" potatoes, peas
T: pasta puttanesca with chicken sausage
W: lentil and winter veggie soup
T: ground beef patties, couscous salad, broccoli
F: frozen pizza
S: Spanish tortilla (potato omelette)
S: grilled tilapia, lentils with carrots

Shopping list:
ham steak: $3
1 lb 94% beef: $5
chicken sausage: $5
family pack of 10 tilapia filets: $9
frozen peas: $2
"smiley" potatoes: $2.50
couscous: $2.50
lentils: $2
potatoes: $4
broccoli: $2
carrots: $3
cucumber: $1
tomato: $1
lemon: $0.50
dozen eggs: $5
2 cans diced tomatoes: $3
chicken broth (2 boxes): $5
sweet potato: $1.50
spinach: $2
spaghetti: $2
canned anchovies: $1.50
canned black olives: $1
frozen pizza: $5
milk: $4
OJ: $3
2 loaves bread: $5
tub yogurt: $3
frozen fruit: $5

We average $80-90 on grocery bills. Things like fish bought in packs or individually wrapped chicken thighs or beef patties stretch from one week to the next. We eat simply for breakfast (toast and eggs or a bowl of cereal) and take a PB&J or dinner leftovers for lunches. Some weeks we buy lunch meat, others not. What helps us is buying meat in packs that we can freeze and use over time, and buying only as much produce as we plan to eat that week. Dry starches (rice, lentils, pasta) are inexpensive and can hang around forever, and I'll use spices to distinguish meals (curry, cardamom, garlic and cinnamon to dress up lentils, mint mashed into peas, etc.) so we don't feel bored or deprived. On certain proud weeks, I've planned two or three very low-budget meals and made room in my budget for a steak night.