Tips for How to Eat Healthy on a Budget
You might think that healthy dishes have to be boring (like raw veggies) or complicated and expensive (like all the healthy food you see on cooking channels).
That’s simply not true.
Without much skill, you can quickly master plenty of delicious dishes that only require a few minutes and simple tools to prepare. From there, it's up to you how much you experiment and develop your cooking abilities.
The tips below will help you cook healthier, keep costs to an absolute minimum, and have plenty of fun.
Build a Supply of Staple Ingredients
Every good kitchen is well stocked with a repertoire of non-perishable ingredients you can use in a wide range of recipes. You can usually buy them in bulk and safely store in them the pantry, fridge, or freezer for long periods. Keeping stocked up with herbs, spices, tinned beans, grains, seeds, sauces, oils, and much more means your food will never get bland. Such ingredients are usually cheap (especially when bought in bulk), so you can also save a ton of money by reusing them over and over again in different dishes.
Practical Steps
Make space in your kitchen for a wide range of staple ingredients you can use in various dishes.
Make sure you store them properly, so they never spoil or lose their flavor.
Learn how each one can effortlessly add flavor or texture to any recipe.
2. Plan Meals Around Ingredients You Already Have
Rather than choosing meals to cook and basing your grocery shopping purchases on these, take the opposite approach. When planning your meals for a week, take stock of what ingredients you already have at home. Use these to guide what dishes you’ll cook without needing to buy a ton of new groceries.
You’ll save time and money while learning new and exciting combinations of ingredients.
Practical Steps
Use the food you already have to guide the dishes you’ll cook each week. Plan your grocery purchases around topping up your pantry or fridge as necessary to finish off any recipes and restock essentials.
You can download cooking apps that use what you have left in your fridge/pantry to suggest recipes you could cook.
3. Learn to Cook Healthy One-Pot Dishes
You’ll be amazed at how many healthy dishes you can cook in a single, large pot. Risottos, pasta, soups, pork chops, curries, shakshuka, couscous… The list goes on.
One-pot dishes give you a chance to experiment with creating healthy, delicious meals that are relatively easy, filling, and require minimal cleanup or space.
Practical Steps
Look online for healthy ‘one-pot’ recipes and bookmark them.
You can go for traditional stovetop meals, or use modern appliances like slow cookers for the best (and easiest) results.
4. Learn How to Use Leftovers
Cooking at home usually means lots of leftover food lying around in your fridge and pantry. Usually, this food gets thrown out, discarded, or left to spoil. But you can probably reuse much of this food in various ways to create even more healthy, delicious dishes.
Practical Steps
Before dumping leftover food, think about how you could use it in something else you like to cook. Burritos, stews, soups, broth, homemade pizza, salad, stir-fries, and sandwiches can all be made from leftovers.
5. Cook With Friends
If you enjoy the social aspect of eating out but don’t want to spend a lot on restaurants, there is a solution. Studies have shown that people who cook with friends or family have increased happiness, higher satisfaction with life, and stronger relationships.
Practical Steps
Find some friends that enjoy cooking (at a similar ability to you) and plan special evenings where you cook together at home.
6. Eat Oatmeal for Breakfast
It’s true what you’ve been told: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.And few breakfasts are healthier (and cheaper) than a bowl of oatmeal.
Simply put, oats are one of the healthiest grains on the planet. They’re packed with nutrients and have a wide range of proven health benefits. They’re also filling and provide slow-release energy that keeps you going well into the afternoon.
There are few better alternatives to starting your morning.
Practical Steps
Overnight oats are a quick and fun way to prepare tasty, healthy breakfasts in advance. The ingredients usually stay fresh for up to 5 days, so make them in bulk for a weekly supply of breakfast.
You can also use a couple of spoonfuls of oats to bulk up some smoothie recipes.
7. Use Lots of Whole Grains
Breakfast oats aren’t the only grains that keep you energized, healthy, and satisfied throughout the day. They’re just one of many whole grains you can easily incorporate into your diet in a wide range of sweet and savory meals. Brown rice, corn, buckwheat, quinoa, chia seeds are all nutritious, tasty, and versatile whole grains that add flavor and texture to any dish.
Practical Steps
Learn which grains are healthy whole grains (warning: plain white rice is not one of them) and add these to a wide range of dishes.
They’re a quick, cheap, and easy way to add flavor and texture to your food, along with plenty of nutrients.
8. Smoothies and Soups Are Your Best Friends
Maybe you run on a busy schedule. Or perhaps you don’t enjoy cooking (that’s me!). Either way, you probably want a quick, tasty, and varied solution to stay healthy without spending too much time in the kitchen. Well, you’ve got two!
Soups and smoothies can be made in very little time, with minimal appliances (a pot, a mixing bowl, and a blender), and deliver delicious snacks and quick meals you can enjoy anywhere.
Practical Steps
Buy a blender and learn how to make a wide range of healthy, tasty smoothies and soups for breakfast, lunch, and healthy snacks.
Invest in flasks and Tupperware containers to take your smoothies and soups to work (or anywhere else).
9. Grow Your Own Ingredients
Growing herbs, vegetables, and fruits is not just a fun hobby. You’ll save a lot of money in the long run; it gives you greater control over the food you consume (you don’t have to worry about GMOs, etc.); and it’s better for the environment.
Not everyone has the space to grow food at home, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to maximize the space you have.
Practical Steps
Set space aside in your garden home* to grow some basic produce yourself. Focus on plants that are easy to maintain and grow produce you can use in various dishes.
Use Google to find solutions that best fit your living space.
*preferably close to a window in case of insects or strong fragrances.
10. Learn to Cook Eggs
Eggs are cheap, versatile, and healthy. They’re packed full of nutrients and protein, without many fats and calories.
You can cook them alone (like an omelet) or use them to add texture and protein to a healthy dish (like breakfast burritos).
They may not seem the most exciting staple for your diet, but with very little time and effort, you can easily make eggs surprisingly tasty - and filling.
Practical Steps
Learn a few different ways to quickly cook a simple egg and incorporate these into your diet for healthy on-the-go meals when you’re busy.
Add eggs into other dishes like breakfast burritos for a staple source of healthy protein.
But don’t go overboard. Eggs are high in cholesterol and can become quite unhealthy if you eat too many.
11. Make Your Own Sauces and Juices
What’s the best way to ensure the ingredients going into your food is healthy? Making everything yourself.
This isn’t always possible when cooking on a budget. However, there are some products you probably buy at the store that you could be making yourself.
Sauces and juices are two great examples. They’re both easy and cheap to make at home, but most people buy them ready-made in supermarkets - where you have no real idea what’s going into them.
Practical Steps
Before stocking up on ‘cheap’ processed foods like sauces and juices, learn how you can make them at home first.
Tasty sauces and healthy juices often need little more than a few cheap ingredients and a blender.
If you don’t plan on using them immediately, freeze them for later.
Why Eating on a Budget Matters: Food Production and Food Safety Scandals
Energy price hikes, such as those caused by the war in Ukraine, can also cause food production disruptions. With higher energy prices, agri-food companies in Europe have struggled to maintain operations, forcing them to pause production, lay off staff, or close completely.
Rising prices for natural gas, fertilizers, electricity, and packaging caused production costs to skyrocket during 2022. This caused a domino effect of high prices that eventually reached the consumer, who had to pay enough to ensure the retailer still made a profit.
Some factories worked to reduce costs by pausing production during peak energy times. While in some areas this can lower energy bills, it can also cause delays.
The food production process begins with natural gas that’s extracted through wells that are drilled deep into the Earth’s surface. Natural gas has a high hydrogen content which, when mixed with nitrogen from the air, makes ammonia that’s used for fertilizer.
Fertilizers, of course, are used to grow crops that eventually enter the manufacturing process to become food products that are packaged and distributed.
Products with extra processing need to go through even more stages. For example, the extra time, transport, labor, energy, machine maintenance, and packaging used to turn a head of lettuce into a bag of pre-cut lettuce adds a lot of extra time to the process and extra cost to your purchase.
At a local grocer, you can buy bags of processed shredded lettuce, or you can buy a head of lettuce, both for $1.98. However, the bags of lettuce are only 8 ounces, but the average head of lettuce is 10.5 ounces. Even after discarding the core, you’ll get more lettuce per penny if you buy the less processed head.
Inflation and Food Safety Scandals
Another side effect of inflation is food scandals, which are unfortunately on the rise due to the increased costs of ingredients, labor, and energy.
For example, in the UK, chocolate from unknown sources was purposefully mislabeled under big brand names and contained allergens not reported on the packaging. This is highly dangerous for consumers with allergies and could easily cause accidental deaths.
In Italy, quality-tested and approved milk was contaminated during transit. Modified transportation trucks pumped water into the milk to dilute it; water whose origin was unknown, undocumented, and untested.
When authorities catch on to fraud like this, the food products are usually destroyed on-site – that’s how serious the matter is.
These side effects of inflation are completely outside of your control as a consumer, but you can still limit their effects by sticking to a well-planned budget.
