Some people believe eating healthy is very expensive and not feasible if you’re running on a lower budget. However, this is completely untrue – healthy eating can really happen even when you don’t want to break the bank on your monthly food bill.
How? We have gathered some of the most important tips to help you with this – so read on if you want to save money while eating healthy.
Cook at home
This comes without saying, but cooking at home is the best thing you can do for your health AND for your finances. Eating out is not only expensive, but it can also affect your health as well – simply because you don’t know what the restaurant is putting in your food. Ergo, you don’t know how many calories it has, if it’s actually healthy, if there’s no added sugar, and so on. When you cook at home, you know what ingredients you use and you know if they’re healthy or not.
Buy from local farmers
…as opposed to supermarkets. Even when they’re on discounts, the produce in supermarket has already been through a few filters that added to their price. Buying from local farmers and producers instead will actually help the local economy, it will be much healthier than whatever you get in supermarkets (which frequently comes from imported sources or very large industrial farms that use a lot of chemicals in their food growth process), and it will be much cheaper as well. Sure, it may not be as comfortable to go out of your way and buy from the local farmers, but it can actually be better from every point of view!
Do your shopping list
Yes, we know you’ve heard this a million times before – but creating a shopping list can ACTUALLY help you stick to your budget. It takes a few minutes to make a list before you go shopping and to include all the items you’ve run out of or the items you need to cook certain foods – but it can save you from one of the most dreaded mistakes you could make: buying things you don’t need or actually want.
Use fish from cans
It’s not as healthy as fresh fish, but if you pay attention to what’s written on the label (how much salt it has, whether or not it’s in natural brine or in oil, etc.), you can actually pull this off. Fish is very important for your diet due to its Omega acids that help every single part of your body, but, depending on where you live, the healthy types of fish can be quite expensive – it’s thus a better financial solution to use fish from cans.
Eat less meat
We’re used to adding meat to every single one of our meals – but that’s not necessary, nor is it actually healthy. Plenty of vegetables can successfully replace meat: beans, mushrooms, and soy for example. They are cheaper and they are healthier – so why not use them to replace your meat every now and again?