Healthy Eating on a Budget: 4 Tips to Help You Save Money and Stay Healthy
Healthy Eating on a Budget: 4 Tips to Help You Save Money and Stay Healthy
Making healthy recipes at home can be both cheaper and healthier than dining out or choosing prepackaged foods. However, eating healthy doesn’t have to be costly either!
To help you save money on groceries and stay healthy in the process, here are four easy tips on how to make healthy recipes on a budget.
1) Breakfasts
Whether you’re eating them every day or just occasionally, breakfast is an important meal. Unfortunately, restaurant breakfasts are typically not very budget-friendly.
Try saving money at breakfast by purchasing ingredients and whipping up your egg dishes, waffles, muffins, or pancakes at home.
For example, you can buy nonfat Greek yogurt for $0.99 per six ounces at Walmart and mix it with fresh fruit for a creamy parfait that will cost far less than any bowl of gourmet granola from your local diner!
Breakfast burritos are another great option. Simply scramble two eggs in a skillet, add some salsa and wrap them in a whole wheat tortilla with shredded cheese.
Breakfast burritos cost about $1 each when you make them yourself and they take less than five minutes to prepare.
If you have kids who don’t like eggs, try making oatmeal instead—you can get 32 servings of Quaker Instant Oatmeal packets for under $10 at Sam’s Club—and top it with raisins or dried cranberries for added flavor and sweetness without adding sugar.
2) Lunches
Shopping for groceries can be expensive. Even if you don’t shop at Whole Foods, it’s easy to rack up those $10 bills just on your lunch break.
The good news is that healthy meals don’t have to cost as much money—or as many calories—as you might think.
Try preparing big batches of soups and stews in advance, so you can warm them up at work during your lunch break.
They last for several days, too, so they’re great if you want to make them on Sunday night and eat them all week long!
If you’re not interested in making soup or stew from scratch, canned soup is still a relatively cheap option (and it’s far healthier than fast food).
Just remember to check nutrition labels before you buy anything; some brands are loaded with sodium and sugar.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about eating healthy on a budget, it’s that frozen vegetables are an amazing substitute for fresh ones.
Frozen veggies are picked at their peak ripeness and then flash-frozen immediately after harvesting, locking in nutrients while preventing spoilage.
3) Dinners
On any given night, people have a couple of options. They can spend $50 or more at their favorite local restaurant, or they can spend less than $15 by preparing something at home.
It’s easy to assume that takeout is always cheaper than cooking yourself, but doing so overlooks an important fact: you’re paying for labor.
When you dine out, you don’t cook—you pay someone else to do it for you. This means that your meal is far more expensive than it would be if you were home and cooking yourself.
If you want to save money while eating healthy, it’s worth thinking about how much time you’re saving when ordering in versus how much time you’d save if you prepare food yourself.
If there’s no significant difference in terms of time saved, then consider making dinner at home instead.
4) Snacks
Did you know that eating just two extra servings of snacks every day can increase your weight by five pounds in one year? To avoid unnecessary calories, you should aim for no more than three snacks per day.
That said, while some types of snacks are better than others (fruit beats a bag of chips every time), it’s best to snack consciously, rather than mindlessly.
Make sure you’re paying attention to what you’re putting in your mouth. No matter what type of healthy recipes you choose, pay attention to serving sizes.
A half-cup portion size of cooked vegetables is better than zero vegetables, but cooking twice as much is still better—just cook double portions twice a week and refrigerate or freeze leftovers.
