There is a misconception that eating healthy has to be expensive and that is not true. Eating healthy is simply avoiding unhealthy foods. A fast food meal or pre-packaged microwave meal doesn’t cost less than a healthy home cooked meal. Eating healthy and cheap is not hard to do.

Eating healthy conjures up images of rich people shopping at gourmet grocery stores. Eating healthy is wrongly seen as buying the priciest vegetables, meats and expensive fish. Unhealthy foods are usually the fast foods and pre-packaged processed foods that contain a lot of calories, fat, saturated fat, sugars and addictives.

Healthy and cheap is using healthy simple ingredients, buy in bulk whenever possible, always look for the sales, use coupons and use leftovers. Here are some ideas for eating healthy and cheap. The information in this article is a guideline since food prices can vary depending on the time of year and your location. It also depends on how many people you have to feed.

Healthy and Cheap Chili

This pot of chili makes three dinners for two people. You can control what you want in a meal and control the fat, sodium and calories without the added unhealthy and strange sounding preservatives. This meal is healthy and cheap. These prices were current in October 2009.

Using a 5-quart pot.

1 medium or large yellow onion

1 green bell pepper

1 red bell pepper

1 pound minimum 85% lean hamburger (optional)

1 15-ounce can of tomato sauce

2 15-ounce can of kidney beans

2 15-ounce can of chili beans

1 10-ounce can of diced tomatoes

1 package of chili seasoning or you can make your own

Using hamburger will make the pot of chili last longer. If you use beef, it is healthier to use grass-fed beef. I have found 85% lean grass-fed beef recently at $1.97 per pound. Grass-fed beef is higher in vitamin E, omega-3 fatty acids and lower in total fat. These ingredients will give you plenty of protein from the meat and the beans. Vitamin C and A from the vegetables and plenty of fiber. Sauté the vegetables in a small amount of olive oil before adding to the chili. Olive oil is also healthy. The cost of this was $9.39 and depending on the serving sizes, should be a dinner for at least two nights for four people and several nights for two people. You can sometimes lower the price of the chili by using 1 pound of ground turkey instead of beef.

Other Healthy and Cheap Meals

These are other ideas you can experiment with each time you make a meal, which is the fun and healthy part of cooking yourself. They are not just healthy and cheap but they also taste great.

• Beef stew. Onions, carrots, potatoes, beef, stew seasoning, a little olive oil and flour for browning. The 5 qt pot will last several nights. Depending on the meat you use, this cost $6.00 to make in the 5 qt. pot. The meat used for this price was stewing beef.
• Spaghetti sauce is healthy and cheap. Add peppers and onions to the sauce. The cost is $3.70 without the hamburger and $5.61 with the meat. Mushrooms are also healthy, if you find them on sale.
• Burritos. Sauté the vegetables first, then add and brown the meat with the vegetables. Then add taco or other seasoning if you like. Add the beef, vegetables and black or pinto beans to the shell. 4 big burritos cost $4.27 or $1.06 per burrito. Instead of hamburger, scramble eggs and have a breakfast burrito for dinner with the vegetables. Using four eggs, this brings the cost down to $2.58 total for four burritos or 65 cents per burrito. I don’t use cheese since it raises the cost, calories and fat content.
• Lentil stew: Onions, red potatoes (not creamer potatoes), carrots. Dried green or brown lentils, diced tomato, olive oil to sauté the potatoes and onions, curry seasoning (optional), 6 cups of water, chicken or vegetable broth, this is your choice. Total $4.69 in the 5-quart pot. Lentils are healthy and cheap.
• You can also make a pot of tomato soup that will give you about 10 bowls, healthy, cheap and filling that you can have before or with dinner. Total cost for the soup is $5.40 or 54 cents per bowl.
• Breakfast; rolled oats cost about 2 1/4 cents per bowl. Oatmeal and one egg at 8 cents is great carbohydrate and protein healthy breakfast for 10.25 cents.
• A couple of healthy and cheap ideas for the summer could be a taco salad with or without beef and a side dish of quinoa or a cold pasta salad using whole-wheat penne pasta.
• Any seasonings and dried herbs you initially buy should last awhile.

Healthy, Cheap and Filling Side Dishes

Grocery store ads have some great buys all of the time. They all have buy 10 for $10, you can buy 10 bags of frozen vegetables for $10. Brown long grain rice in bulk is $1.49 per pound or 12.5 cents per serving. Sweet potatoes are currently 99 cents per pound and white potatoes are cheaper.

Final Tips on Eating Healthy and Cheap

Buying and cooking enough for more than one night is healthy and cheap. Buying what products you can in bulk can save money. Look for ads in the paper and each week in your mail.

In addition to the main grocery stores, check your local health food stores, they can be cheaper on some items. You can also shop online with many grocery stores, this way you can make your menu and get prices and don’t forget the coupons, you can also upload coupons to your Kroger cards. Eating healthy and cheap is using simple healthy ingredients, buying sales and in bulk and making enough to last several meals or freezing.

© 2009 Sam Montana

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