8 Ways to Save $$ and Eat Healthfully
By: Stepfanie Romine,
SparkPeople Blogger
1/8/2009 4:17 PM
: 106 comments
Think it's easy to eat healthfully only if your wallet is overflowing and you have a personal chef on call? Think again.
It's easy for the rest of us, too, and all we have to do is alter our shopping and eating habits slightly.
The latest issue of Consumer Reports offers 20 tips for healthful eating on a budget. Here are some of our favorite quick and painless tips:
Plan ahead. Make a menu for the week and aim to get everything you need in one or two trips to save on gas (and impulse buying). Watch for flyers or visit your supermarket online to check for sales, and let those drive your menu.
Buy in season. That means no strawberries in December in Maine, when you'll pay for shipping from some far-off warm place. Seasonal picks include cherries, melon, peaches, tomatoes, and peppers in summer; snow peas, spinach, and strawberries in spring; and carrots, cauliflower, citrus fruits, and cranberries in fall.
Eat beans. They're inexpensive, versatile, and a great source of protein and fiber. Add them to salads, soups, chili, and pasta dishes to increase bulk. Canned beans are the easiest to use, but for maximum economy buy dried beans.
Try tofu. It's a low-cost, nutrient-packed substitute for meat and cheese. Add tofu to salads, or sauté it with vegetables and something savory such as chili sauce or tamari and serve over brown rice. If you don't like tofu, experiment with tempeh, a related product with a meatier texture.
For produce, go frozen. Frozen fruits and vegetables, often flash-frozen soon after picking, can be more nutritious than "fresh" items that have sat on store shelves for a while. And you don't have to worry about the frozen variety spoiling before it's eaten.
Choose store brands. Also called "private label," they are often just as good as the name brand and can save you money.
Buy a whole bird. Get a whole chicken and cut it up (or not) as you wish. It's more economical than buying separate breasts, thighs, etc., and you can get a nutrient packed broth out of it, too. Freeze pieces that you're not using right away in individual freezer bags.
Use your scraps. Cook leftover vegetables and potatoes into a frittata, even for dinner; eggs are a great source of protein. Use bones, meat scraps, or vegetable trimmings to make broth.
For more tips, visit www.ConsumerReports.org.
How do you save money at the supermarket? For me, bulk bins, big-batch cooking and shopping local help keep my grocery bill low.
It's easy for the rest of us, too, and all we have to do is alter our shopping and eating habits slightly.
The latest issue of Consumer Reports offers 20 tips for healthful eating on a budget. Here are some of our favorite quick and painless tips:
Plan ahead. Make a menu for the week and aim to get everything you need in one or two trips to save on gas (and impulse buying). Watch for flyers or visit your supermarket online to check for sales, and let those drive your menu.
Buy in season. That means no strawberries in December in Maine, when you'll pay for shipping from some far-off warm place. Seasonal picks include cherries, melon, peaches, tomatoes, and peppers in summer; snow peas, spinach, and strawberries in spring; and carrots, cauliflower, citrus fruits, and cranberries in fall.
Eat beans. They're inexpensive, versatile, and a great source of protein and fiber. Add them to salads, soups, chili, and pasta dishes to increase bulk. Canned beans are the easiest to use, but for maximum economy buy dried beans.
Try tofu. It's a low-cost, nutrient-packed substitute for meat and cheese. Add tofu to salads, or sauté it with vegetables and something savory such as chili sauce or tamari and serve over brown rice. If you don't like tofu, experiment with tempeh, a related product with a meatier texture.
For produce, go frozen. Frozen fruits and vegetables, often flash-frozen soon after picking, can be more nutritious than "fresh" items that have sat on store shelves for a while. And you don't have to worry about the frozen variety spoiling before it's eaten.
Choose store brands. Also called "private label," they are often just as good as the name brand and can save you money.
Buy a whole bird. Get a whole chicken and cut it up (or not) as you wish. It's more economical than buying separate breasts, thighs, etc., and you can get a nutrient packed broth out of it, too. Freeze pieces that you're not using right away in individual freezer bags.
Use your scraps. Cook leftover vegetables and potatoes into a frittata, even for dinner; eggs are a great source of protein. Use bones, meat scraps, or vegetable trimmings to make broth.
For more tips, visit www.ConsumerReports.org.
How do you save money at the supermarket? For me, bulk bins, big-batch cooking and shopping local help keep my grocery bill low.
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Comments
- 1/11/2009 12:19:21 PM
'carrot hating BF' ate these roasted vegetables with relish. I will try the recipe you sent THANKS - 1/11/2009 11:04:32 AM
Rustic Roasted Veggies
Serves: 6
These bite-sized morsels are so savory and juicy they will explode in your mouth. Roasting them adds a depth and richness that transforms ordinary cooked vegetables into something elegant. Reprinted with permission from HOW IT ALL VEGAN! by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer ( www.GoVegan.net
), Arsenal Pulp Press.
INGREDIENTS
2-4 medium carrots, chopped
2-3 medium potatoes, chopped
8-10 gloves garlic, peeled
6-8 mushrooms, halved
1 small yam, cubed
1/2 lb medium tofu, cubed
2-4 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp dill
2 tbsp rosemary
cracked chilies (to taste)
salt (to taste)
pepper (to taste)
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Place the vegetables and tofu on lightly oiled cookie sheet or lasagna pan and drizzle olive oil over them. Sprinkle with dill, rosemary, chilies, salt, and pepper and mix together until well incorporated.
2. Bake for 40-60 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. Remove from oven when potatoes can be pierced easily with a fork.
NUTRITION INFO
Calories: 219
Fat: 10.4 g
Carbohydrates: 25.1 g
Protein: 9.3 g - 1/11/2009 3:28:33 AM
I batch cook as much as possible. Sunday is the day that I normally cook my biggest meal so I add extra brown rice, or pasta etc to have some left over to freeze for some easy meals during the week.
I plan to join a CSA or Community Sustainable Agriculture group and get fresh local and organic fruits, vegetables, herbs and meats. I did the math and I think economically its a good bet. - 1/10/2009 8:10:13 PM
Now that I’ve found my nutrition and fitness tracking tools on SparkPeople I’m eager to find some great consumer tools as well.
Imagine being able to sign in to an on-line price book. You could fill in information on the stuff you bought at the store you shopped at last and your neighbors all do the same for the other community stores… community after community across the country… and then everyone has instant access to the most complete price-book for their local area with relatively very little of their own time invested. Ideally you could even use it to compare prices from town to town. Then we’d know if it was better to do the shopping where you live, or where you work, or on your next visit to see Aunt Tilly.
The prospect of building my own price-book is daunting, and what a waist of energy it is when everyone has to collect the same information on their own. Much better I think if there was a way to share the information with each other.
Same deal with gas prices. I could provide a daily gas price for at least one local station without leaving my front lawn. But frankly its groceries and household products I need to be able to track the most.
Wow, imagine that there’s not only a web-site with a free consumer goods price-booking tool, but that you could even access it from your mobile phone. I wouldn’t have to wonder anymore if I notice laundry soap on sale while I’m shopping if it’s really such a good buy or not. I could check the price-book and know for sure.
If it doesn’t exist yet, it would be a great thing for some enterprising web designer to tackle. - 1/10/2009 5:57:41 PM
Have a great day!
Sue - 1/9/2009 12:00:46 PM
I recently tried to do a weeks worth of straight Sparks diet plan for my family of five. $356 dollars later I checked out of the store. Ouch!
So what is my suggestion? I'm planting my own strawberry beds and will can/freeze my own (if you don't know how to do this contact you county agricultural extension, or you local 4H. They'll show you how to do it seriously low cal.). And, when we can get the "good" stuff in the summer, it'll be a canning frenzy! Saves the budget and tastes better than the store bought. - 1/9/2009 11:53:54 AM
I grew up in the grocery business, and yes the private labels where the only thing we ever had, but it has taken a lot of convincing over the years for my friends and now husband to believe me that the quality is the same... most are packaged side by side at the producers and just put a different label on the final product!!! - 1/9/2009 11:20:01 AM
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