Buy Walking VideosEating Healthy Isn’t Expensive
I hear people say it at Weight Watchers, “This dieting is just too expensive.” There is an attitude in the world that eating healthy food is more expensive than eating whatever is handy. I’m not buying it.
The truth of the matter is, we SAVED money when I started eating healthy. Fresh veggies are a little more expensive in the winter, but not nearly as expensive as the frozen dinners that I was buying. You don’t need to shell out the bucks for Lean Cuisine in order to eat less calories, you just need to be willing to plan ahead.
Pre-packaged fresh vegetables (like the kind you find in a vegetable tray) are more expensive than the uncut variety. If you’re willing to wash and prepare your own food, you can save a lot of money. The prices for fruit and vegetables are highly dependent on the season. If you buy what is in season, you can usually save money and still enjoy fresh produce. Sure, you might be a little sick of clementines this time of year, but they disappear after January, so enjoy them now.
Rice is CHEAP if you buy it in bulk. It keeps for a long time and it is a healthy carbohydrate to supplement your diet. Brown rice and wild rice varieties tend to have more fiber, so watch for sales on them and stock up when they their price falls down to the white rice prices.
The most inexpensive meat I have found is the frozen chicken breasts that you can buy in a huge bag. One of those bags will feed us for a month. That’s ten bucks of meat for an entire month for two people. Dried beans are another source of protein that are very inexpensive and will store for a long time if you buy them in bulk.
It seems to me that you can feed a family on very little money and keep it healthy as long as you’re willing to put in the work of planning and preparing everything. Sure, ramen noodles are cheaper than Lean Cuisine, but fresh veggies with rice and beans beats them both.
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January 5th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
Thank you for this article. This is really helpful. I’ve been wondering how to get cheap protein. I love when I have bags of bags of veggies and my grocery bill is $40. It’s awesome.
January 6th, 2006 at 12:59 am
This post is really helpful. I’m forgetting about rice though, I’m reducing carb on my diet.
January 6th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Eating and preparing food at home is very cheap besides healthy, just imagine somebody who eats 2 hamburguers per day at Mcdonalds or any other fast food restaurant easily could spend $8 or more dollars a day and that is not eating healthy, but count the calories!, eating out there’s no way of knowing how many calories you are packing in!
January 6th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
I know I prefer cooking at home to eating out. I always feel I have less control over how the food is prepared.
I only wish that brown rice tasted as good as white rice. I just limit the amount of white rice in consume. I do like the whole wheat pasta or the multi-grain past, but that does cost more than the white flour version.
And, another way of thinking about it–eating healthy helps your body stay healthy–meaning less trips to the doctor and less prescription drugs in many cases. That is definitely a savings.