It’s no secret that healthy eating doesn’t always mean inexpensive eating. Frozen pizzas, for instance, can be cheap, but you can’t feed those to your family every day. Unfortunately, it often seems that the foods that are easiest to afford are often the foods that you should eat the least often. How can you maintain a reasonable food budget and still eat healthy food?
The answer is to invest some of your time into shopping for and preparing your meals. If you’re willing to do some work, you can get healthy foods that your family will love at a price you can afford.
Grow a garden. Fresh fruits and vegetables are some of the healthiest foods you can eat. However, they can be some of the most expensive foods in the grocery store, too. You can get affordable produce, though, by growing it yourself. Seeds and bedding plants aren’t expensive, but you’ll have to spend a little time in the garden. Imagine how proud you’ll be to serve foods you created from the ground up.
Skip fast foods. Fast food is expensive and unhealthy. There’s just no reason to frequent these restaurants. Planning meals ahead of time will reduce the temptation to “pick something up” when you’re in a crunch to prepare dinner. On those occasions when cooking isn’t an option (perhaps you’re on a road trip), you can always pack sandwich supplies in a cooler and have a picnic along the way.
Drink lots of water. You don’t need expensive soft drinks in your diet. Water is cheaper and better for you. You can probably also skip bottled water. My kids each have their own water bottle that they drink out of when we’re out of the house. They fill them at drinking fountains in stores or parks (depending upon what we’re doing that day) for free.
Cut back on sugary snacks. We try to avoid buying pre-packaged sweets like Hostess cakes or candy bars. Then, on the rare days that we do treat ourselves to a sweet treat, I try to rely on things I’ve baked myself. This allows me to control the ingredients that go into my family’s food
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Of course you can! I do it everytime I do groceries and never go over budget. If anything I’m always way under budget.
I live by my budget and I will never go out of it. The only time I exceed my budget is when it is a holiday and I am feeding many more people. Budgets are a great thing and without them I’d spend too much money on pointless things.
I’ve cut my grocery budget in half over the past year. I’ve always lived with the motto, if it comes in not only a box, but a bag as well it can’t be healthy. Why waste money on all the packaging when you can buy fresh for cheaper.
I’ve stuck with healthy foods now for a year and have really seen the results both health wise and financially. You can easily keep within your budget if you avoid those pesky middle aisles of unnecessary junk, well for the most part.
Check out my post today! Amazing we’re on the same wavelength! My wife has done an amazing job of cutting our food bill while feeding us healthy food and she wrote about today. I’ve lost 30 lbs so far! And we cut $320 from our monthly grocery bill!
I have recently started to try to eat healthy – and keep it all within budget. What happened was this: My food expenses actually went down!
I started really thinking before putting every item on the basket, both for nutritional value and cost. I stopped allowing myself to get expensive treats “just once a week” (I used to go out for a burger each Sunday, then buy two packs of expensive imported cookies. “Once a week can’t hurt, right?”).
And this is how, little by little, I taught myself that eating healthy is easy, practical and even tasty.
Cut back on useless and unhealthy snacks. A lot can be bought in bulk and certain fruits and vegetables are cheaper than others, and you should concentrate on those.