Eating Healthy on a Budget

This is long - bear with me - look for enlarged words to get the jist of what will be covered in that section so you can skip some parts if you'd like. 

Myths & Reality 

I stumbled upon a post on a mom website that I frequent. The lady was asking, what I feel, was a genuine question. Her claim was that fresh foods are expensive which makes eaty healthy expensive and her question was how anyone on a budget does it. The reason I think this is a fair question is because I grew up being told we didn't eat healthy because it was to expensive. I grew up believing that.

Here are a few examples of things I was taught growing up and whether I find them to be true or false.

• Buying apples is more expensive then buying chips. - True AND False!
• Buying all the stuff to make a salad is more expensive then buying a can of beans. - True AND False! 
• Fruit goes bad before it gets eaten so it ends up being a waste of money. - True AND False! 

Bullet 1 - You pay more but get less. 

I could go on and on with examples but there isn't really a need to. You all have most likely heard the same things. Now, before you go dismissing me, let me explain why I think these things are both true and false. 

The last time we bought chips was last month (before then it had been a REALLY long time). We bought them because they were on sale for $1.76 if you bought three. That meant we would get THREE bags of Doritos for barely over $5. That bag of apples I just weighed only had five or six apples and was about the same price. So you hold them right next to eachother and one is clearly bigger then the other so you get the bigger one. 

Now, let me let you in on a little secret. Those bags of chips didn't last the month. We went from never buying chips to devouring them. Why? Chemicals but I won't go to much in to that... just know there is a reason you crave them! :p 

Now that I've agreed, the chips do tend to be cheaper, let me explain why they actually aren't. The way food settles in our stomach, these artificial foods don't take up much room. Think about it... take that large looking chip and crumble it up. It practically disappears. Try doing the same with the apple. Unless you dehydrate it, you'll have the same amount of substance in your hand. In other words... you will have to eat MORE of those chips then the apple to get the same "full" feeling.

Bullet 2 - Processed food is cheaper then fresh food.

Next is that a salad is expensive. Okay, I'll give it to you a little. By the time you pay that DOLLAR for the lettuce... the DOLLAR (or less) for the tomato)... the DOLLAR for the entire bag of baby carrots (or whole carrots, whatever floats your boat)... and the DOLLAR for the cucumber... you've got an entire salad that will feed 4-6 people for 4-6 bucks (just in case your salad stuff costs most do to different areas). The expensive part of a salad is all the extras you want in it. 

Bacon - $4 for a jar

Dressing - $2-3
Cheese - $3 - 6 (I always try to give a range for various costs of living)

I'm sure you get the idea of what I'm trying to say. A basic salad isn't expensive, feeds a lot of people and will fill your stomach a LOT more with a lot LESS calories. It's science. It's true. 

Bullet 3 - Fruit goes bad and that's money wasted.

Finally, we arrive at that last bullet point. Fruit and veggies go bad. This is true. This is 100% true, actually. Some people love fruit it never goes bad. I'll be the first to admit I've wasted my fair share of expensive ass produce. Then I stopped. How you ask? By investing.

We have a FoodSaver (my in-laws gifted me) and we replace the bags as needed. That thing has literally saved me HUNDREDS in meat and produce. No lie.

We also have a food dehydrator that we got at wal-mart for around $40. We dehydrate a ton of fruit every month because then it won't go bad. We've all but stopped throwing out fruit that has gotten to ripe or straight up gotten forgotten. And the dehydrated fruit makes a perfect snack. So now, the $20 dollars worth of fruit we just bought will last for a while! We get some fresh and some dried. The nutritional value stays the same as does the calorie count... just be careful because they don't take up as much room without the water so you can rack up some healthy calories pretty quickly on these... but they are amazing for baking and on the go snacks! 

Now for the best part. Check out my next post to learn  just how I buy fresh produce for a reasonable price! You can find it HERE.