Eating Healthy On A Budget?

Beans are a great way to fill out a vegetable soup or chili. They add protein and fiber to almost anything. Buy dried beans - and soak and cook up a bag weekly. Then, you can use them to put on top of salds, wrap up in a whole wheat tortilla for lunch and make a veggie chili for dinner. They are about $1 a bag where I live and can go so far.

Sorry I don't mean this to sound rude but why do you have a severly restricted budget to buy healthy but your family can blow money on fast food?

I agree... in that case it should be 50/5 budget for each, leaving you more room to get the things you need, its only fair.

It doesn't sound rude at all. Think of it this way - you can get a burger at McDonalds for a dollar. I can't say how much off the top of my head how much 1/4 of beef costs, but I'd wager it's more. My family just goes for the cheapest option, even if it isn't the healthiest.

Really, there isn't a huge budget for food in my house to begin with. Hell, there isn't a huge budget for anything. There was actually one week where I was sick and had to decide "OK...do I want to eat, or do I want to go to the doctor?"

I usually don't do the shopping, but now that I'm eating differently I am shopping for myself.

Conventional ground beef is often $1.99 - $3/lb where I live, and I live in an expensive, major metropolitan area. I'll edit to add that I have spent some time researching and comparing prices at different chains in the area, and I've sacrificed going to the gourmet or "prettier" supermarkets in favor of less, uh, trendy or aesthetically pleasing ones, to get some great deals.

Anyways, let's say the beef is $2 one week - that would make the meat of a 1/4 lb. hamburger 50 cents.

Everyone else is giving great advice! While *calorie per calorie* fast food may be "cheaper," you will almost always get a healthier and less costly -- dollar for dollar -- meal by cooking in.

I could talk about this forever but my biggest suggestions would include buying dried beans and grains, buying whole chickens, etc. and skinning/cutting them yourself, buying frozen vegetables, and store brands of staples like oatmeal, low-sodium pasta sauce, etc.

Get your local store circular a couple days before you need to go shopping for the week, and plan a menu or at least many of your meals based ONLY on the fresh produce/protein that's on sale. And skip most everything in the middle aisles except for things like aforementioned beans and whole grains That's where both the unhealthiest and, often most expensive items are.... A bag of store-brand chips where I live is $2 or $3, but you could get 2 pounds (or more) of apples on sale for that much.

If you have access to a club store like Costco, BJ's, etc. that is another great way to save money. The trade-off of course is that you have to buy in large quantities, which requires some storage space and an outlay of more cash at the outset. However, the bigger outlay of cash at the beginning will save you SO MUCH money in the long run. You may have to buy a huge bag of frozen chicken breasts, for instance, but maybe the chicken breasts will average out to, say, $1/lb, where they can run upwards of $3 or $5 at the regular grocery store.

If you want to get into couponing a bit (though not to the extreme level, which is really only good for getting huge stockpiles of unhealthy crap), go to a site like couponmom ... That site has a search engine where you can match national coupons against sale items at your local store. While again coupons are mostly for processed/packaged foods, sometimes the occasional gem turns up. It's also a good way to get cheap hygiene and household cleaning products, which is a way to free up a little bit more money for your food budget.

Good luck! I do all the grocery shopping and menu planning for my household (three adults, most meals in) so I would be happy to give more in-depth suggestions! Everyone else on this thread has had great suggestions so far.

I ate really well on $20-25 a week by myself in grad school so it can be done.

I did stock up on just a few things, rather than a huge variety.

Here's sample:

Breakfast: cereal, milk, frozen berries

Lunch: tuna, crackers, celery, tomato, cheese

Supper: ground beef (93/7), 1/2 can corn, 1/2 can beans, rice

snacks would be apples or similar fresh fruit

I agree with others - buy in bulk and at sales and go for raw, fresh foods that you can cook rather than packaged foods. Dried beans, rice, greek yogurt, etc are great quick lunches that are still healthy and relatively inexpensive.

Good luck!