It is a fairly common concept that eating healthily can be expensive, but that need not necessarily be the case. We are a family of four (2 adults and 2 children aged 4 and 11 years who eat almost as much as us adults!) and as I do most of the cooking at home I would say that our eating habits have more or less been fairly healthy.
Quite recently though, we have had to make some changes because my husband had to undergo surgery for removal of the gall bladder due to it being diseased from gallstones. Almost overnight we started eating more vegetables, fruit and fish, substituted white carbohydrates in favor of the whole grain variety and cut back chips, candies, cookies and chocolate - all of which we only buy on occasion.
Breakfast is typically a brown cereal like weetabix or branflakes, or whole grain toast, followed by a piece of fruit or a low fat yogurt. Lunch is a bowl of homemade soup and a whole grain sandwich of cheese and ham or tuna mayonnaise. Dinner is usually meat/fish or chicken served with whole wheat pasta/brown rice, noodles or bulgur wheat, and plenty of fresh or frozen vegetables. Snacks are usually foods like crackers and low fat cream cheese, fruit or yogurt.
We have always eaten on a budget. We don’t eat organic and buy a lot of the stores own brand label (and these are usually as good as their “superior” named brands). We honestly only spend maybe an extra 20 dollars on our weekly grocery bill since the big change. Foods like extra virgin olive oil, which are normally fairly expensive, we buy in bulk when on sale. Most meals are cooked from scratch; this way they are healthier for sure because I know what’s gone into them. Making your own soup could not be easier - we buy a 10 pound bag of potatoes, 1 large green cabbage and 2 pounds of carrots for the soup, using vegetable or chicken stock cubes (for flavor if you need it). On the whole this is healthier than any store bought soup and soup is filling, economical and nutritious. Whole grain carbs are high in fiber and despite what most people may think, are actually only a little more expensive than white.
It is surprising that by ditching the unhealthy foods that just rot our teeth and are not good for us and substituting them with much healthier foods, we are still able to eat healthily on a budget.
Mark is a publisher of many articles on a wide variety of subjects. At Christmas, his wife asked him to shop around for a new air mattress for when the college kids come home to visit. He quickly researched which is the best air mattress for both his needs. You can learn about the differences between the memory foam air bed and the aero inflatable bed. So if you need to purchase an air bed, visit www.queensizeairbed.net for his experience. Copyright 2010.
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