Eating (mostly) clean on a budget

I think the reason it might have been so expensive is your over-enthusiasm. I'm sure that the higher grocery bill won't become a trend. Especially if you were reducing your meat purchases as you mentioned, you might have just swung too far in the other direction to compensate. Meal plan, learn how long everything lasts, and see how much you really end up eating this week. I'm sure your next grocery trip will be much more well-informed and less expensive. Good luck!

Th3Ph03n1x wrote: »

softblondechick wrote: »

I guess I don't get how eating clean is so expensive. For me, the food bill is reduced. We don't eat out at all anymore. I don't buy any processed foods at all. My Costco bill was less than $ 100 last week, eggs, pot roasts, lettuce, tomatoes, a whole cart of stuff.

Our food bill has gone down significantly. No more booze is another way our food bill has gone down.

I'm sorry I can't make you get it. I can only tell you that first bill nearly doubled. Let me mention here we did not eat terribly dirty to begin with. Some ramen and/or mac and cheese now and then, crackers, chips, soda (again occasionally except the crackers) some breakfast foods. The main two things that changed this grocery bill were 1. more veggies/less meat and 2. more low fat/non fat dairy.

We were not really worrying about dairy fat before at all. We bought full fat sour cream, whole milk, regular cheese and so on. The last trip I bought almond milk, some greek yogurt but only a couple small containers and a very pint container of fat free milk (I also got the whole milk for the kids). It seems like there were a few non perishables that I bought that I don't normally buy but I can't recall exactly what.

I expected it to be lower than our normal bill too but it was almost double what I normally spend. Maybe this was just due to the initial changeover or possibly because there was too much variety in the menu. Time will tell.

Of the two main things you changed, here are my tips:

For fruits and vegetables, buy what's on sale and/or in season. On sale means cheaper and in season usually means fresher. Also, don't rinse or wash your food until you are ready to eat it. Storing damp greens or berries or most anything will cause it to go bad much more quickly.

You said you don't have a Sam's club membership, but I find that they are an excellent source for fresh "greens". I buy the organic baby spinach or kale blends for about $5 for a 16 oz tub (about 3 times what you get in the "bagged" stuff at the store and way fresher). I also get a 6 pack of romaine for less than $4. Both of these stay good for at least a week and the romaine usually 2. You can also get 3 lb bunches of bananas for about $1.35 and great deals on other seasonal fruits throughout the year.

Invest in some mason jars. I love the quart sized and use those for storing my fresh greens or fresh cut fruits. They stay fresher so much longer because they are more air-tight. I once found a 3 week old jar of chopped romaine in the back of the work fridge. I obviously threw it away, but it wasn't slimy and barely had brown on the edges. Baby spinach will easily last a week this way. If you do have some produce that is getting over-ripe, you can always freeze it and use it for smoothies later.

On the 2nd item, there's really not the need to spend a significant amount of extra money on the fat free or low fat dairy replacements. Unless you really like almond milk and skim milk, you don't need it. Since you only bought a small thing of skim milk, that indicates you probably don't use it all that much. If you only use a couple cups a week, is saving 50 or 70 calories a cup really worth the extra cost? For me, it wouldn't be, plus flavor is definitely lacking. If the kids are over the age of 1, you could consider switching the whole family to 2% and then even eventually 1% milk. This will save money since those options are cheaper and it will also help you save on calories. If you still feel like you must buy skim, just buy the gallon and freeze the extra in portions you will use.

You also don't need low-fat cheese, either. Sure, you'll save 20 or 30 calories a serving, but is the cost in both taste and money worth it? Buy the cheese that's on sale and use a serving and enjoy it. If you're buying yogurts or other things, I've found the costs aren't that different, unless you bought these things when you normally don't. If you don't usually buy yogurt and cottage cheese, then why start now? If you really want to eat it, great, get it and replace something else with it. If you don't, then don't buy it just because it's a "diet" food or something.

Sam's club can also help when it comes to dairy. In my area, the milk at Sam's club is at least $1 less per gallon than at the grocery store. The whole milk is $3.25/gallon and it goes down in price from there to $2.65/gallon for skim. If you're buying cottage cheese or yogurt, the Sam's club sized prices are usually much better, too. Since we go through 8+ gallons of milk a month in our house, the membership cost is paid for with milk savings alone.

Another way we save money is that we don't buy diet anything really. For meats, we shop the sales and buy "regular" meats like 80/20 ground beef and don't worry about the extra low fat stuff. We do prefer boneless skinless chicken breasts, so we stock up when they are on sale, or, in our area, it's always less than $2/lb at Sam's club. For breads and crackers and other processed foods, if we buy them, we find a reasonably healthy option for the whole family to enjoy and get it and enjoy it. The "diet' type of products are usually twice as expensive for 1/2 the amount of food.

I'm moving in 2 weeks (out of state) and we broke down our bill the other day to this. Please keep in mind this is 2 weeks worth of food for 3 people - myself, my husband, and our 12 year old daughter. All done at Costco, so this is A LOT of food. We eat a lower carbohydrate diet at the moment so it's why we have so much chicken and eggs in our diet.
- 2 bags of boneless skinless chicken $44
- 1 bag of spinach $5
- 2 bags of green beans $12
- Oat bran $4
- 5 dozen of eggs $9
- Walden farms calorie free barbeque sauce $6
- Tea $5
- (We also got some chocolate but of course, not a clean food)
- We paid around $80 for everything after tax, and that includes a treat...it would have been about 70 something for everything. We also did Walmart for sweet potatoes, avacadoes, and a few extras, came to about $100 for 2 weeks of not having any convenience foods and eating out of the crockpot. Kind of boring and bland but we're getting ALL of our nutrients. It broke down to $50 a week, we normally spend $100 a week (or $400-$500 a month for just the three of us), and quaterfly we buy coconut oil, avacado oil, and other extras that run our bill up sky high but we justify it since most people we know with our family size spend almost double. I CANNOT imagine getting unhealthy food on our budget. We'd likely starve!

Th3Ph03n1x wrote: »

goddessofawesome wrote: »

Why not make some of your own yogurt and cottage cheese if it's something that you eat often? Like others said, buy items in season or on sale. If you can't do that then opt for frozen fruits and veggies. They're just as nutritious as the fresh. Plan your meals too so that you're not having a lot of wasted food at the end of the week. If you do buy fresh veggies and fruit and it doesn't look as though you're going to use them before they go bad freeze them.

We have a freezer filled with vegetables from the garden we had this summer along with canned tomatoes and sauce that we made. Now I only go to the grocery store for ancillary items like chicken, beef, fish. I buy raw milk from a local farm and make my own yogurt and just recently made some cottage cheese that came out awesome. Now I really only go to the store once every few weeks.

I do buy some of my veggies frozen. Our stores don't have near the selection of frozen that they do fresh unfortunately. I don't think we do enough yogurt and cottage cheese to make it worth the time to make my own. I think a big part of it is going to be less variation and managing keep times. Thanks for the tips.

You can freeze a lot of things though like meats, and meals that you make. Also as time goes on your bill should become lower as you'll only be running out for the staples.

As I continue to read these posts, I wonder do certain areas charge more for healthy food? I live in Canada and the only places I know of that charge significantly more is wayyy up in the northern provinces where transportation costs sky rocket. Where I live, it is significantly more expensive to eat prepackaged/convenience foods. Those in the states or other countries, what is your take on this? Could this be a region- related issue?

bkerr30 wrote: »

As I continue to read these posts, I wonder do certain areas charge more for healthy food? I live in Canada and the only places I know of that charge significantly more is wayyy up in the northern provinces where transportation costs sky rocket. Where I live, it is significantly more expensive to eat prepackaged/convenience foods. Those in the states or other countries, what is your take on this? Could this be a region- related issue?

I think in most areas foods are higher priced when they are not available locally and have to travel more. In the midwest, diary, chicken and beef seem to be cheap cheap, but seafood is significantly more expensive. I was stoked that shrimp was less than $10/pound recently when I can get boneless skinless chicken breasts any time of the year for $1.88/pound. We can also get usda prime steaks (rib eyes/strip) for the price of a pound of shrim on sale. Mussels and fresh tuna or salmon are rarely available in our local grocery store, so you have to get them when you can. Most seasonal fruits and veggies are also more expensive, but as they get in to season, the prices drop dramatically even though they still have to be shipped in. Over the winter, berries were up in the $5/pint range and during the summer they can drop to $1/pint. At the beginning of the season, clementines were as high as $10/box and can be found for less than $2 in season.

Tuna is pretty cheap, along with eggs. One meal I like a lot is 2 eggs and one banana blended, and cooked like a pancake. It taste like a banana pancake but no flour and very clean. I also like chicken cause you can buy a pack for like $7 and that can feed you a few meals. It may seem like it's costing you more spending say $100 a week in food but if you compare it to spending money on fast food I bet you will notice its about the same.

bkerr30 wrote: »

As I continue to read these posts, I wonder do certain areas charge more for healthy food? I live in Canada and the only places I know of that charge significantly more is wayyy up in the northern provinces where transportation costs sky rocket. Where I live, it is significantly more expensive to eat prepackaged/convenience foods. Those in the states or other countries, what is your take on this? Could this be a region- related issue?

I live in Finland, and here are my insights: living in a place with one growing season and four distinct seasons, buying what's in season helps a lot. For example, tomato prices are almost tripled for winter. The options are expensive Finnish tomatoes that have been grown inside with heat lamps and don't even taste like anything, or slightly less expensive Spanish tomatoes that taste a little bit like tomatoes (not much) and have suffered a lot during transportation. So, less tomatoes right now.

OP, don't worry. My first "clean" grocery shopping bill was also doubled compared to what I usually spent. There were a lot of staples, some I haven't finished yet, and some I purchased because I went a little overboard (despite having preplanned the meals and having a list in hand). For example, instead of buying the frozen berries needed for the two smoothies I had planned for, I bought enough for probably 8. The next two shopping bills were about 20% smaller than pre-MFP, but they last us longer and there hasn't been "refill trips" in between, except for some things that were actually forgotten. Before MFP I didn't really do meal planning or look for discounts, and I had to go to the store almost every day for something.

If you're using a recipe and notice in the store that some ingredient is crazy expensive (this happened to me and fresh rosemary, which was double the price compared with other fresh herbs), just skip it if possible (one of 5 veggies in the recipe, a spice etc.), or substitute it with something.

Is there more than one grocery shop in your area? Find out what's on sale in each one before making your meal plan, but also figure out how much extra you'll pay for gas when driving to several different stores, and see if it's actually worth it (money- or time wise). If not, see what's on sale in the store you frequently go to, and start planning there. The store might also have some extra sales they don't advertise, if they have too much of something. Since prices often wary, you might even want to write your grocery list in a way of "3 pieces of fruit for snacks" and then go to the store and see which fruit is cheapest.

I try to go to a bigger and cheaper store about once a month to do the grocery shopping for that week, and to buy non-perishables for the month. I don't have a car and usually use a store that's within walking distance, for the bigger one I need to commute with public transportation or get a ride from someone.

Also, organic doesn't automatically mean it's clean. Example: organic bananas come to the store packaged in the same preservatives as the regular ones.

jmauerhan wrote: »

softblondechick wrote: »

I guess I don't get how eating clean is so expensive. For me, the food bill is reduced. We don't eat out at all anymore. I don't buy any processed foods at all. My Costco bill was less than $ 100 last week, eggs, pot roasts, lettuce, tomatoes, a whole cart of stuff.

Our food bill has gone down significantly. No more booze is another way our food bill has gone down.

Exactly. This x1000

How is that "exactly" anything other than "not helpful"