When I was in the US last year, I met and stayed with a really awesome lady,
Daniella Silver, a holistic health coach. While I was there, we went
shopping together at Whole Foods, and after seeing the prices there, Daniella inspired me to write this post... Life kinda got in the way, and I sort of forgot about it... until a picture of Daniella popped up on my Facebook feed this morning, and I realized that I never wrote this post that I really wanted to write about, because I think it would be helpful for a lot of people!
So, the question posed was:
Most people know that if you want to buy cheapo processed foods and don't really care much about nutrition, you can get a lot of stuff free or super cheap via couponing, etc...
But what do you do to save money if you actually care about nutrition? Is it even possible to have a low grocery budget if your first priority is health?
So, I must say that if I wanted to have as cheap of a diet as possible, I'd have to sacrifice nutritionally. A healthier diet, bought as frugally as possible, will cost more money than a processed food diet bought as frugally as possible. Sad as it may be, and counter-intuitively as well, the more processed a food item is, the farther it is from nature, the more cheap it'll often be. "Health items" are viewed as a luxury, and you have to pay more for that- even if it takes less work to make/undergoes less processing. Whole wheat vs bleached white flour, and brown rice vs white rice anyone?
Since switching to a gluten free and refined sugar free diet, my grocery bills have certainly gone up. Healthier diets will generally cost more money.
(Those who claim that healthy diets are cheaper are only correct if they're comparing expensive unhealthy grocery shopping- think Pop Tarts, fish sticks, and soda- to healthy from scratch grocery shopping, but if you're going to compare cheaply bought processed foods or from scratch less healthy items to from scratch healthy foods, healthy food is 100% more expensive. I hate all those posts that talk about how the Paleo diet will save you money since it's from scratch- if you're already cooking everything from scratch with white sugar, white flour, canola oil, etc... and serving white rice and beans, switching to Paleo is SUPER expensive and literally unmanageable for many.)
However, despite the fact that healthy diets are invariably going to cost you more money, that doesn't mean that frugality has to go out the window. Here are some tips that hopefully will hope you super healthy eaters save money on your shopping.
When I say "super healthy" I am kind of generalizing, and lumping all sorts of different diets together, including organic eaters, people on Paleo or Primal diets, those who stay away from processed foods like refined sweeteners and refined flours, etc... In short- this is a post written for the average "Whole Foods" shopper, no matter the specifics of your diet. Not every tip will work for every diet, but hopefully you'll get some good tips here
How to Eat Super Healthily on a Super Tight Budget