photo credit: Dan4th

When you’re shopping for food, you often find yourself torn between wanting the best of both worlds. You want to buy high-quality, healthy foods, but you also want to stay within the constraints of your food budget. How will you ever find a way to stretch your food dollars to allow you to make nutritious choices?

Getting creative with your meal plan will allow you to find healthy foods that you can afford. By following a few simple guidelines you can buy affordable food that you’ll be proud to serve your entire family.

Avoid “convenience” foods like frozen dinners. Frozen dinners are typically pretty expensive (when compared to preparing meals from scratch) and are often loaded with salt and preservatives.

Don’t be afraid to serve a vegetarian meal or two each week. The high price of meat may make it impractical to serve meat with every meal. Instead, try serving a simple pasta salad or spicy bean burritos.

Take advantage of sale prices on typically pricey nutritious foods such as organic products. Although these items may usually be out of your reach, sales can make it easy to treat yourself and the rest of your family.

Keep plenty of seasonal fruits and vegetables on hand as a healthy alternative to snack foods. Seasonal produce will be a much better value than potato chips or sweets.

Plan ahead to avoid the temptation to purchase fast foods for lunch or a quick dinner. Make an extra batch of soup or casserole and freeze it so that you’ll always be prepared when you need to make a meal quickly.

Shop without your children. As nice as it would be to have an extra set of hands at the grocery store, it will be much easier to avoid any temptation to buy junk food if you don’t have your kids with you. It’s very easy to give in as your little ones clamor for snack cakes and chips. Avoid the argument altogether by leaving the kids at home.

Buy store brand products whenever possible. There is virtually no difference between these generic products and their brand name counterparts, except for the difference in price.