Healthy Eating on a Budget Tips

Given that I’m a qualified Chartered Accountant and we are all known to be tight (which has varying degrees of truth depending on which accountant you are talking too and what in particular they are tight about as I know some accountants who are rather frivolous but I digress!). I thought it would be a good idea to share with you some of the Healthy Eating on a Budget tips.

Healthy eating does not need to be big and scary, nor does it need to be expensive. You just need to have some basic guidelines such as a weekly healthy shopping list and some tips on how to keep costs down. So let’s get into my healthy eating on a budget tips! 

One of the first things you will learn when it comes to living a healthy lifestyle is to shop the peripheries of the supermarket. Shopping the peripheries of the supermarket means that you will be less likely to be temped by the three bags of chips for $5 hype and more likely to buy real food! Remember that bargains that get wasted or are bad for your health are not in fact bargains! 

Generally meat and nuts are two of the biggest expenses when it comes to the weekly grocery shop so what I like to do is to have a quick look at meat prices at our local supermarkets and butcher. If you have a mad butcher near you then sign up too their mailing list and you’ll get an email at the start of every week with their specials which you can keep in mind when you go to your supermarket. Even better if you have a local butcher then try to go to them as you will generally get better quality meat and you can pick up some bargains as well.

If chicken breast is $8.99 at Mad Butcher and $19.99 at your local supermarket then you clearly need to be making a trip to the butcher! (Within reason clearly it depends on how far away your butcher is, similarly if Pak n Save has a meat week on then it may be a good idea to shop their this week if it’s not too far away for you). These are times when it pays to shop around! Obviously it’s not worth it if there is a .10c per kilo difference in the price of banana’s or other such items where you don’t buy a lot but both meat and nuts I find it can make a substantial difference! 

When you do find bargains such as the $8.99 chicken breast (it doesn’t happen often but oh boy it’s a good shopping week when it does!) you need to Stock up! Of course for perishable items such as meat you need to make sure you will eat it or have the space to store it and freeze it. If you see three tins of crushed tomatoes for $3 then buy them! So long as the food is actually good for you, will get used and not wasted and you have the space then definitely stock up.

There is nothing worse than needing an ingredient and finding out that it’s three times the price it would have been if you had purchased it the week before when it was on special. Buying items when they are on special or in bulk is a great way of getting savings! It requires a little bit of forethought but once you are in the rhythm of doing it, it will become second nature. 

One tip that gets thrown around a lot is to Shop in season, there is a reason why it is thrown around a lot – it’s a great tip! Strawberries are ridiculously expensive when they are out of season (and often not as tasty as well!), but come summer they are super cheap so buy them then! Even if you’re a fussy eater like myself you can still shop in season. You won’t see me adding asparagus to the shopping trolley no matter what season we are in, but come summer you will find fresh pineapple and strawberries along with avocados in the shopping trolley. 

Don’t be afraid to use frozen or dried ingredients if the fresh options are pricey or you find you will waste them. Whilst I would prefer to eat fresh herbs and vegetables at all our meals the realities of modern day life and our current lifestyle is that we just do not have the time to prepare everything from scratch and often buying a whole cauliflower and broccoli for the two of us would go wasted as we couldn’t physically get through it before it went bad.  Obviously fresh is best, but be aware that sometimes frozen or dried is fine!

We always have a bag or two of frozen vegetables in the freezer to add to our meals and have a large selection of dried herbs. I often find that when broccoli and cauliflower are crazy expensive that the frozen bags of them mixed are still relatively cheap! Having a bag of frozen spinach in the freezer is also great as you can use it in smoothies or slow cooker recipes to add more vegetables to your diet. 

I pretty much never buy our nuts from the supermarket because they are too damn expensive! The same goes for coconut oil. This is where my next tip comes in handy – make use of speciality stores.  If you can get items cheaper somewhere else then do it! A decent chunk of the rest of the world does this best! Europeans and Asians often don’t head to supermarkets to buy all their goods – in fact we only ever saw one supermarket the whole time we were in Vietnam! Europeans are known for buying their bread at the bakers, meat at the butchers and fruit and vegetables from vendors who sell precisely just that! Take a look around any market in Asia and you will find the same thing, stall holders sell one main item, ie. meat or fruit or vegetables and the purchasers walk around and find what they need from each vendor.

While supermarkets are convenient I’d much prefer (from a health and wallet standpoint) to get my groceries from the different vendors when possible. We head to a bulk food store to buy our nuts and coconut oil because it works out cheaper overall, we also do this to stock up on larger quantities and then we don’t have to visit as often either. 

Unless it is a special occasion don’t be dead set on certain ingredients for your dishes, buy being smart and making swaps to some foods you can save a decent chunk of change! If a recipe calls for medjool dates I replace them with dried dates as I can buy a bag of dried dates for under $2 whereas medjool dates are over $30 per kilo! If a stir fry calls for beef but lamb was on special this week then make the switch, you may find that you create a new favourite!

I do this with nuts sometimes, sunflower seeds are less than half the price of cashews at the bulk food store we go to, so I created a nut free bliss ball recipe so that I don’t use as many nuts which consequently reduces our grocery bill. I also only purchase cashew pieces and walnut pieces as buying whole cashews and walnut halves are substantially more expensive! An easy way to compare is to look at the handy per 100g price that is generally written underneath the main price for all goods in supermarkets in New Zealand. 

Another great tip is to have a meal or two a week that is meat free. Given that meat is one of the biggest expenses when it comes to the grocery bill it makes sense to have a meat free meal (or two) during the week to help reduce the bill. A super easy quick meat free meal is scrambled eggs or an omelette – it’s hard to go past eggs for cheap meals, this is also a great way to use up some of the vegetables hanging around the fridge that are on their last legs. Other great options for meat free meals include using beans or lentils in place of meat or to make a big batch of soup – my pumpkin soup recipe is pretty good if I do say so myself. 

Last but not least please make friends with your slow cooker, seriously I never understood what the big deal with slow cookers was until a couple of years ago. There is nothing better than coming home to a meal cooked for you! This saves you costs in more than one way – for one if you dinner is cooked for you when you get home your less likely to think ‘to hell with it, let’s get takeaways’ which is better for both your waistline and your wallet. Secondly making friends with your slow cooker means you can cook in bulk which helps to save money as well as you can get away with using cheaper cuts of meat in the slow cooker and it still tastes amazing.

One of the best meals I have found is to get the cheapest cut of beef (chuck steak, or stewing steak works well, as does rump when it’s on sale), throw a couple of carrots and potatoes or kumara into the crockpot with a tin of crushed tomato’s and whatever herbs and spices you feel like at the time. Instant cheap meal, you could also bulk the meal up by adding lentils or beans, or even frozen spinach which is something we often do. It’s a great way to use vegetables that are on their last legs and to get extra vegetables into your diet as well. We always try to make extra when we do a slow cooker meal which also helps save you money as you have lunch to take to work for the next day or so which will mean you’re less likely to go buy a sandwich! 

So there we have it, some of my top tips for healthy eating on a budget! As a quick reminder:

• Shop the peripheries of the supermarket. 
• Bargains that are wasted or junk food are not bargains!
• Shop around
• Use frozen and dried ingredients
• Stock up
• Shop in Season
• Use speciality stores
• Make Swaps
• Have a meat free meal (or two)
• Make friends with your slow cooker

What is your favourite tip for healthy eating on a budget?