The cost of a healthy diet - its madness!!

Yes - it can be more expensive, and yes, if you don't watch out, you can end up doing what I did last month - spend all your food money early & end up w/no food for a couple of days (well, wasn't actually *no* food, but I was really getting tired of beans, beans, beans & brown rice... and there's only so much you can do w/that old cauliflower in the fridge, lol!!)

Can you find ways to save on other things you eat? I went out of my way - isn't long in distance, but I need to take public transportation as the car is not working right now.... so it took me all day... but I did it. Found out I can freeze fat free milk, eggs (can separate egg yolks & whites) in ice cube trays... going to look up the rest of the fat free dairy I bought to see if I can freeze it. Right now the freezer is packed with frozen veggies - not anything near as good as fresh, but it's now my back-up.

Finding farmer's markets are a good idea - here in the Boston area they can actually cost more at times, but they run deals for people on food stamps (need to post a topic about that to let people know). Are there any farms w/in driving distance to you? Maybe you can strike up a deal - I'm going to try to see if I can trade some work for fresh veggies - esp. where my garden being invaded by either a rabbit or groundhog & I realize I might end up losing this battle, lol.

You can see that I think outside the box, so to speak. Oh - check stores to see if they have veggies & fruits that are past their prime for discounts - esp. in the upcoming summer when things ripen faster. Certain places I've found have discounted produce that are as good or better than the regular priced produce in other stores.

In the end, even if you can't find ways to cut down costs - look at it this way: it's a very small price to pay for your health. You would have paid much, much more if you went to one of those expensive spas to lose weight, and it still wouldn't have taught you how to continue afterward as you are now doing!!

It can be a lot, so I try to get as much as I can at the local supermercardo. They have most fruits and vegetables for cheap, like cantaloupe is 2 large for $3. Their meats are reasonable too. Unfortunately, if I can't find it there, I'm paying an arm and a leg for it somewhere else. Yesterday, I went shopping at the Farmer's Market and already spent $35 for what seemed like nothing.

Flipin' heck, where are you buying your cherries M&S? - I got a small punnet at Asda for £1. It did about 3 servings.
I find I'm spending more on fresh, but saving what I would spend on wine and convenience style foods.

Quorn's a good option, low fat and you can get 3 bags for £5 - each bag's enough for me to do a bolognese/lasagne etc for a family of 3.

At first I found it was quite a bit more expensive to be more healthy, each trip to the grocery store was costing so much more. But then as I adjusted to eating less in general, found that healthy stuff goes further, and quit eating out so much, our food bills (combo of eating out and grocery bills) have decreased quite a bit. Fruit is expensive but it fills you more and goes further than the junk stuff like chips, snack cakes, etc. Our cupboard are way more bare now -- cleared out all the processed stuff taking up so much space -- and we go to the store and farmers market way more often to restock fresh stuff and overall its going great and we are saving money. Its gotten to the point now that I am like "why did we not do this way sooner? Its not that difficult once the lifestyle changes begin to set in."

Flipin' heck, where are you buying your cherries M&S? - I got a small punnet at Asda for £1. It did about 3 servings.
I find I'm spending more on fresh, but saving what I would spend on wine and convenience style foods.

Quorn's a good option, low fat and you can get 3 bags for £5 - each bag's enough for me to do a bolognese/lasagne etc for a family of 3.

Cherries have literally just come into season so for the next two weeks or so they should be a bit cheaper. Tesco have got punnets for 90p at the moment...they are very expensive the rest of the year mind.

I hear this complaint a lot, but I have found my grocery/food bills overall have gone down quite a bit.

This.

Family of three with the kiddo moving from free food to real food and still our grocery bill has dropped significantly since this time last year.... enough so that I've been ^%$ing about my lack of fuel reward points. LOL.

Here's the link for the coupon for Driscoll berries if they sell that brand in your area. Just sign up for their newsletter and the coupon comes to your inbox. Yeah it's 50 cents off but every little bit adds up.

http://www.driscolls.com/email/

Just a note here, most have posted what I would say, but my thought is ;

"I would rather spend my money of healthy foods now and not on the medical bills for eating unheathy "

Frozen cherries are wonderful . . .I prefer fresh, but sometimes we have to make the cheaper way work on healthy items.

I went to the local mega club here and no BlueBerries :grumble: to be found ($4.00 for 20 oz) , but wonderful cantelopes in season (4.00 for two) needless to say I wanted blueberries, but got the melons. Will enjoy the change . :grumble: Still spent the same amount of money when you think about it. :bigsmile:

Do you know how much monthly supplies of medications cost? Even with health care insurance, when you add up all the co-pays, it's a hefty chunk of change! All this money you invest in healthy foods vs cheap unhealthy products is paying off in the long run! Would you rather spend a few extra dollars (or pounds in your case) and be healthy, or eat cheap food, but also pay for five to six medications a month to control your blood pressure, diabetes, acid reflux, and impotence? I would rather choose the former. This is the way I look at it when I read that grocery bill. I walk away with a smile knowing I'm saving on prescription medications.....

We do our local farmer's market. And this year we put in a "square foot garden." It's one of those raised bed garden boxes that is so easy to plant and maintain -- no weeds, easy watering and picking, and we can do it year after year.

We have a 3 foot x 3 foot square bed and have it packed with peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and herbs. The plants were only a couple of dollars at our local market, so they were organically grown and already starting to mature when we put them in the ground, so we had veggies FAST.

Doesn't solve the fruit issue, but could free up some $ for the pricier fruit at the store!

Awesome idea!