Healthy Eating on A BudgetMany people believe or want to believe that healthy eating on a budget is impossible. After all, fast food is convenient and affordable. Depending on what you purchase, buying lots of calories and fat can be very easy on the wallet. I can buy lots of junk food for one or two dollars. Food and junk food are sold at a variety of price points, which helps people like me rationalize any food purchase. On a daily basis, spending that dollar at the drive through made so much sense when I was hungry. But how was I going to avoid fast food? When I was a child, my family was always watching our budget. My mother would try the latest recipe from her woman’s magazine, using the section entitled “Feed Your Family of Ten for 49 Cents a Day”.
Her tuna and potato chip casserole was a family favorite, but her version of Hungarian liver goulash is still a discussion topic at family gatherings.
I can feed my family of five for under $15 at the local fast food store. But if I shop carefully, I can take that $15 and buy ingredients to prepare a healthier meal. Was I becoming my budget conscious mother in my quest to feed my family of five on $15 dollars for dinner? Were the days of Hungarian liver goulash right around the corner?
Grocery Shopping StrategiesEating partially hydrogenated vegetable oil or high fructose corn syrup is easy and cheap. I can walk into any grocery store or convenience market, and for one dollar I can have a snack cake or a bag of chips. One dollar buys a hamburger from the fast food restaurant. For that same dollar I can purchase one organic apple or one bell pepper.Maybe I wouldn’t pay twenty dollars for a pound of fish, but would I pay five dollars for a small four ounce container of blueberries? It is too easy to buy inexpensive food that does not deliver the right ingredients and nutritional contents. I found myself once again contemplating why we don’t eat candy bars for breakfast. Driven by a sense of responsibility to my young family, I had to find a way to eat “whole foods” without spending our “whole paycheck.” Click here for a quick list of healthy cheap food.
To manage my healthy eating on a budget, I shop at a local specialty market called Trader Joe’s. They sell reasonably priced nuts, meats, and dairy products and now have over 280 stores nationwide. Click here to open a new window and locate a Trader Joe's in your area. If you don’t have a Trader Joe’s nearby, some regional stores are rising to meet consumer demand for the same types of products. Sometimes I can’t find healthy items that fit my budget at Trader Joe’s or at my local supermarket. In that case, I shop for good food choices in larger quantities at Costco, which is a local bulk retailer. When I was single, I laughed at anyone who shopped at a bulk retailer and thought they needed six pounds of hamburger meat or eight jars of organic peanut butter at one time. Then I had three kids. Now, lugging home 10 pound bags of frozen skinless chicken breasts makes perfect sense to me, especially when it costs less than $2.00 a pound. But what else did I buy to keep the family finances intact? Try these easy strategies for healthy eating on a budget.
Strategies for Managing
Cheap healthy food that the whole family will eat. Check out these 16 inexpensive, nutritious foods that can be found in any supermarket. |
