Healthy Eating Myth – I Can’t Afford It

I love talking to my baby brother lately, because every time he sees me he says thing like, “Hey skinny sister!” or “Wow, I just can’t believe how skinny you are!” (Good boy, baby bro, keep it up. And remember these things for when you have a wife, it’ll make your life easier, k?) Not long ago we were talking and he was saying something similar, and he asked about what I’ve been eating and mentioned that he would like to eat better. Of course I said, “So do it!” And his response was, “I wish I could but I just can’t afford it.” And then he got a long, unplanned lecture about how much I hate that everyone has this idea that eating healthy is just too expensive, and how incredibly wrong they all are.

To give you an idea what I mean, I’m going to tell you a little bit more about our own spending. First, I found this website. This how much the USDA says the average family spends on food. If you look at the thrifty level, that is supposed to be for people who are living at or near the poverty line. If you add in my little family (not including CG because she is here so rarely), this says a family our size at poverty level usually spends $547.90 on food per month. When I saw this number I was completely shocked! 547 dollars? Wow, if we had $547 to spend on food per month there would be some crazy awesome food coming from our kitchen, that’s for sure! If you look at those families on food stamps, the amount of money they receive each month varies depending on how many  people are living in the house. We don’t quite qualify so I don’t know for sure how much money we would receive, but from what I’ve been able to figure out it’s between $450 and $670. Again, I was completely shocked when I found this out, that just seems like so much money! For food for our family, including all meals, snacks, treats, work food and drinks for Marquis, eating out, everything, we usually try to spend about $100 total per week. That still seems like a lot to me and we keep trying to get that down even further. I would love to get to $250 a month!

Despite spending only this little bit per month on food, I would say that the way we eat would be considered healthy by almost anyone’s definition. Eating this way, on only this much money, I’ve been able to lose a bunch of weight and I feel better than I ever have. Marquis has also accidentally lost weight and is feeling better, and his test scores from the doctor’s office prove that things are getting better and better. Plus we have very healthy, happy kids. So, we eat healthy for cheap, right? Myth busted, right there. But now, how do we do it?

Cook from scratch at home – This is the biggest change you can make, and I can’t emphasize this enough! If you are eating out, you are paying for not just the food, but the people who cook it/clean up/etc., plus you are paying for the packaging, the shipping, on and on. If you made the same meal at home, you would pay at least half the price, and the food usually tastes better anyway. When Marquis and I were dating, I cooked a meal for him one night. I think I wanted to prove to him that I could be a cute little domestic wife? Something, anyway. What he found out is that I could dump a bottle of BBQ sauce on chicken and serve it half raw and half burnt, that I could microwave frozen veggies like a champ if you don’t mind a few ice crystals, and that store bought rolls just aren’t as good if you forget to buy butter. He married me anyway, and after many years of watching him cook, reading lots of cookbooks and watching Food Network whenever I could, I am now a pretty confident little cook. I tell you this because if I can learn to cook, anyone can. And it turns out it’s actually a pretty fun thing to do! Just for the record, heating up a premade, prepackaged frozen meal doesn’t count as cooking from scratch. Think about what you are buying and with a little internet searching you can find a million recipes to make the same thing from scratch. A version made at home will be cheaper, and it will be healthier simply because you won’t have to add all the preservatives, extra sugar and the other junk they add to keep it looking “fresh” and tasting halfway edible for a long time on the shelf or in the freezer section.

Plan a menu – If you have a menu and you know you have all the ingredients already in the house for a fast, nutritious meal, you are less likely to pick up the phone and order pizza or pick up Chinese on the way home. Also, it seems like no matter how diligent I decide I’m going to be about sticking to the shopping list when we go grocery shopping, we always come home with something extra. The less often you go to the grocery store, the less often you will be able to pick up the extras, and if you have a planned menu with a list of needed ingredients, you can go to the store just once a week or even less. Having a menu board on display can really help keep you on track.

Eat more fruits and veggies, and in season – I know, I know, you’ve heard this a million times, but just because it’s true! Fruits and veggies are cheaper than pretty much anything else in the grocery store, if you are buying what is in season. How do you know what is in season? There are links to this all over the internet, but the easiest way to tell is by looking at what is on sale. It doesn’t always work, but most of the time it does. If it’s in season, there will be a lot available, and they will have a sale on it. Plus, if you are filling your body with mostly fruits and veggies, you will be healthier and you won’t have as much room for the more expensive ingredients like meat. Fresh fruits and veggies aren’t processed at all, most can be eaten after just a quick wash, no cooking required. Is there  anything bad to say about them? A few days ago Sweetheart asked me for a treat. When I asked her what kind of a treat, she said, “Can I have some grapes, please?” How awesome is that? I love that she chooses fruit as her treat. I like to keep any produce that doesn’t need refrigeration on a big platter on the kitchen counter so that hungry snackers (including me) see that first and snack on that. It also helps me see what needs to be used quickly so I can add something extra to a meal if needed so we don’t have waste.

Plant a garden – Even if it’s just a few planters of food on the patio, anything you can grow is something you don’t have to buy. This is something I need to do way better on, we have a lovely little spot for a garden where we are living now, but I have turned it over entirely to our neighbor because I need to find some time. This is my big goal for next year, though, and I already have so many exciting things planned!

Find ways to preserve the bounty – I have recently stepped into the exciting world of making and canning jam thanks to a generous donation of apricots from my parents. It is so fulfilling to see all those pretty jars lined up and know that for just pennies I was able to provide my family about a year’s worth of jam. I can’t wait to can more! It’s not hard to find someone giving away produce in the summer, to find a heavy apricot tree with an owner willing to let you pick some, a coworker who brings in about 20 zucchini he just isn’t sure what do to with. Grab them! There are so many different ways to preserve food, and a quick internet search will give you many options.

Take advantage of food co-ops and local farms – I love using a co-op for most of our produce. Love it! For a long time we used a very large co-op calledBountiful Baskets. We still recommend them, but for various reasons have started using a new co-op called the Utah Co-op. I love that all their produce is organic, and that you can buy other things while you are there. We have even gotten great deals on meats and cheese. We usually get about $100 worth of produce for only $26.50, and with the huge amount of produce we go through every week that much savings is a very big deal! The problem with using a co-op and ordering a basket this way is that you don’t get to choose what produce you will be receiving, but I’ve actually found that really fun. We have tried so many things that we wouldn’t have tried otherwise, and have found some new favorites. Plus I like having a starting point for planning my weekly menu. Make sure to also check out local farms and farmer’s markets, you can find some incredible deals on really good food. If it’s local, it’s fresher, and that means yummier!

Ration expensive items – I used to buy the cheapest gallons of milk on the shelf. My girls drank tons of milk and with the volumes we used, the cheapest made sense. But then I started to research food and nutrition, and the info I was finding on dairy worried me. Soon I had turned into the crazy lady who calls the local dairy farm and asks them what they feed their cows and why their milk isn’t labeled as organic. I liked their answers, and now their milk is the only milk we buy. Unfortunately, this milk also costs more than twice as much as the cheap stuff. And yet, we still spend the same amount of money on milk each week. How? Simple, we drink half as much! My girls have learned to appreciate water and milk has become a special treat to be had just once or twice a day.

Soup is your friend – One day that I found out a friend of mine was having a miscarriage. My heart hurt for her and I tried to figure out something, anything, I could do to help. It was just a day or two before payday, the bank account was looking sad and we didn’t have much in the fridge besides some veggies and one lonely chicken breast that I was going to make into soup for dinner. I didn’t let that stop me and I let her know I’d be bringing soup over for dinner. I chopped the chicken smaller, I added more veggies and rice to the broth, and I had plenty of soup for two families in no time. Homemade soup is a great way to stretch meat further, use up any veggies that need to be used, and provide a nutritious, filling meal very cheaply and very fast. We usually have soup once a week, especially in the colder months.

Shop sales for meat and use less – We usually buy the meat that is on sale, and we buy enough to put some in the freezer. If I buy a whole bunch of chicken when it’s at $1.69 per pound, then I don’t need to go buy chicken when the cheapest you can find is $2.99. Simple, right? Also, we try to use less meat overall. When we have chicken, we will usually cut the chicken breasts in half. We have found that we really don’t need an entire chicken breast per person, but we will eat it if that is what is put in front of us. If we just dish up a half of a breast and fill the rest of the plate with veggies, that is enough to fill us up, and we’ve spent half as much money on meat.

I’m sure that there are people out there with even better ideas than me, and I’m always looking for new ways to save money. So what do you do to eat healthier on the cheap?

(This post was shared on the Unprocessed Fridays link up, go check out the other great links here!)