There used to be something I would believe, for a long time, for many years, even: that healthy food is awfully expensive, and out of my reach.
It’s a fact that, through my childhood as well as through my college years, I’ve never had much money, nor did my family. We were often living off pasta, pancakes and other foods which, either by themselves or through the ingredients composing them, were considered as cheaper. In a way, it is true; it doesn’t cost much to slap together what is needed to make pancakes, our variety of thin ones, on which you can put ham and cheese, but also, more unfortunately, sugar and jam, as well as this horrible chocolate-flavoured paste that is known as Nutella (let’s take note that it’s horrible from a nutritious point of view, but that I’m one of these people who’re totally able to just dip their fingers in it and lick them until the taste has long vanished). It doesn’t cost a lot, at first sight, compared to fresh meat, right?
This is the way I grew up, thinking that in order to eat right, you needed to have money. Lots of money. Tough, because extra money for healthy foods is something I’ve never really had, even now that I have my own job. However, being determined to learn how to eat better, I decidedly turned into a supermarket-scavenger, earlier this year, and started to thoroughly compare, notably with what my own family used to eat. It took some time at first, to not only grab what I had under the eyes on the store’s shelves; still, once I got the drift, it was easier than I had thought.
The end result? Taking a closer look at what exactly we ate, at what I’ve been eating for so long, and at what I’d be supposed to eat now, there isn’t such a big difference. In fact, depending on where you live and how lucky you are, sometimes it can even be a little cheaper. I can even allow myself the “luxury” to look for integral products, or at least less processed ones, with less added sugar.
Here’s what I’ve been able to gather so far:
- Check the shelves more attentively. Sometimes, you will find little treasures hidden in the bottom row, where all the cheap, not-trendy stuff is. It’s this way that I found packs of 1 kg of whole-wheat pasta, that were actually a little cheaper than two of their 500 g equivalent with added egg and processed ingredients.
- Fresh meat and fish, provided one chooses well and doesn’t plan on eating a whole kilogram at each meal, are manageable. Prices can vary as well from one week to the other, and some products are cheaper than others (chicken meat, for instance).
- Choose fruits and vegetables according to the season (raspberries in February will be very expensive, I admit), and look for the cheap ones. You need to pile up quite a stack of lettuce before reaching the fatidic kilogram at which it’ll be priced for a grand total of 1 $ or 1.5 $.
- Healthy foods are more filling than junk foods, and even if the new box of whole-grain cereals is more expensive, it fills you more (and you don’t eat it as fast) than the old chocolate-flavored cereals that make you feel hungry by 10 am when you ate at 8.
- Buy farm’s products if you can - not in huge stacks that you’ll never finish, but in reasonable quantities. It seems more expensive on the moment, yet these products can be kept longer than their supermarket alter-egos, and the price per kilogram is often less expensive too. Here also, put some in the freezer (strawberries…).
- Planning meals. Already knowing what you’re going to buy before entering the supermarket avoids useless expenses on the premises that “this food looked yummy, and I wasn’t sure of what to buy anyway”.
- Alternate expensive and cheap meals. If allowing yourself an expensive fish on Monday, plan a vegetarian meal on Tuesday to balance the added costs, and so on.
- Compare prices and quality in different stores. There’s one supermarket in my area where, for instance, I buy all my fresh products (cheaper and better), while I go to another on a day when all I need is some house-cleaning items or frozen foods.
These are only but a few tips, and anyone can find their own, as long as it works for them. I am not even talking of bio foods here, simply of what can be found in nearby supermarkets. Evidently the bio is better, in the same way that growing one’s own food in one’s garden is better, yet there are ways and means without going to the highest extents. What I observed while changing my own habits was that it’s not so terrible. It will be more expensive, this is a fact that we musn’t blind ourselves of, but it doesn’t have to be this “horribly costly” that I used to be afraid of. A meal at McDonald’s, this is something horribly costly, given the nutritious quality/price ratio.
It’s different for everyone, for every family, as our lifestyles are different as well, and whether you have to support a whole family with children or are living alone can also cause differences in what you’ll need to buy. However, there is one thing I am sure of, for having been able to observe and experience it: since I started to compare prices, carefully plan about what I really need and what isn’t essential, check the prices variations, and actually stop buying the unnecessary foods, I cut my meal expenses down by a noticeable enough percentage.
- Kery
