Most of us have a limited amount to spend on necessities. Monthly budgets can get busted rather quickly. According to a recent personal finance article from Business Insider based on 22 major U.S. cities, Americans spend between $314 to $516 on grocery food items alone (Loudenbach & Knueven, 2020). When we consider the other necessary costs of living including housing, utilities, and transportation, often times every penny counts.
Many of us know the importance of choosing healthy options at the grocery store, but those grocery bills can seem to grow very quickly. That makes tossing less expensive, less healthy options into our carts appealing. Those items are packaged and priced to sell. The ingredients in those items, however, often leave us unnourished, unfulfilled, on a blood sugar roller coaster, and lead us to eating more and perpetuating this cycle. How do we balance health with cost?
Luckily, there are many ways we can help ourselves with cost for our food budget. First and foremost, choosing to buy food at the grocery versus fast food on a regular basis is one way to keep that budget in check. Preparing meals at home can be a major money-saver. An added health bonus is that we know exactly what we are getting in terms of ingredients and how that food is prepared.
I would also suggest shopping in bulk when possible. Individually packaged, single-serve items are generally more expensive (and produce more waste). More often than not, as the size goes down, the cost goes up! Many stores have tags on shelves that will show the price per ounce or pound. Check that out the next time you shop, and take note of how that differs in regard to package size. In the produce section, loose produce is nearly always less expensive than box or pre-washed. A few other example include 90 second microwavable rice pouches versus larger bags of unprepared rice and single-serving yogurt containers versus larger tubs of the same product.
A question that comes up often is whether or not we should purchase organic foods; they can be expensive. While I do think that organic produce has many benefits, it isn’t always an option due to availability or cost. Since one of the worries with purchasing non-organic produce is pesticides, I want to address how we can help combat that. In the video talk here below, I mention homemade washes for fruits and vegetables. This is an easy and inexpensive way to help rid produce of some of those harmful and undesirable substances. Just add one-part vinegar to four-parts water. Soak your produce items in the mixture, gently use a scrub brush (not on items that have very thin skins), then rinse, and dry. The Environmental Working Group also puts out annual lists of the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen. This is an amazing resource for making those decisions while shopping. Please visit their website here.
For more tips on saving money while shopping for healthy choices at the grocery, let’s walk and talk here with a video!
References
Loudenbach, T., & Knueven, L. (2020, March 5). https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/what-americans-spend-on-groceries-every-month-2019-4. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/.
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