How to Eat Healthy On a Budget

In October, I moved to my own apartment. Altought I don't have to pay the rent, my wallet has been much lighter since than. Suddenly the fridge doesn't fill itself. And since one of the things I was looking forward to, when I moved here, was my own space to cook ... I started to think more about ways I could eat healthy and save money at the same time.

I love cooking, recreating old recipes and trying new things. Sometimes I don't have a problem with buying a bit more expensive tropical fruit, coconut sugar, high quality dark chocolate or cashew nuts. Their prices don't "hurt" me that much, since I know that the base of my diet consists of basic, cheap foods. It's not about limiting yourself all the time. When I crave something, I take it, even if it's not the healthiest and the cheapest thing in the world.
The rule number is to simply prepare your food from the natural, unprocessed ingredients and to learn to use spices and herbs, which raise a simple cheap food to another level. Not only your bank account but even your body will thank you.

Plan

One of the most important things for keeping a healthy diet and save money, is to plan your food ahead. You'll avoid those shopping sessions, when you run into a supermarket and put a lot of useles stuff into your shopping cart - unhealthy semi-finished products, too expensive things and food which you will throw away because you don't know how to use it. To avoid this... 

• At the weekend, write down a diet plan for another week (you don't have to follow it stricly, just choose every day from all the meals you have written there) 
• Find recipes for each meal 
• Make sure you have all the ingredients at home 
• If not, then finally go shopping - just for the ingredients, you will need this upcoming week

Avoid over-processed food

When I see what some people put into their shopping carts, it sometimes makes me kind of sad. A big part of their food is made of highly processed food, packed in plastic packaging and full of additives, which do not benefit our body at all. On one hand - I understand this. It's more convenient. If you spend all day at school or at work, you simply don't want to waste your only free time in the kitchen, preparing spreads, sauces, bars ... and you rather buy a product, that is ready-to-eat. One thing you can do is to follow the "advice" above and plan you meals ahead. If you take time, just once a week or so, to prepare the ingredients and think about what you actually will eat, you will not only make everything easier and cheaper for you, but your diet will be even more eco-friendly, since you'll reduce your consumption of single-use plastic packaging, which are these ready-to-go products usually sold in.

Prefer local & seasonal food 

The rule number one when shopping for groceries should be their origin and seasonality. Even the prices can tell you a lot about it - local food which is currently growing in your area is often much cheaper than when you want to buy it in the other part of the year, when it's transported from the other part of the world. But it's not only about the price. Fruit and vegetables which are transported like this are environmentally unfriendly and since they're often picked unripe, they contain just a small percent of the vitamins and minerals they would normally have. 

Simply look at what you grandparents used to eat in the past. You'll see that you can get all the vitamins and minerals from local sources and save money at the same time. For example in winter, when a lot of us tend to get colds and flu, we often turn to citrus fruit to give us the dose of vitamin C we need. But in fact, there are many better options. Citrus fruit cools down our body from the inside and therefore it's not suitable for winter season. Try for example sauerkraut or rose hip, which give you the same dose of vitamin C and warms up your organism at the same time.

Keep it simple

Simplification of our meals will not only speed up the preparation of your meals - it will also benefit your digestion. Imagine preparing a smoothie from couple types of fruits, vegetables, plant-based protein, seeds, cacao and spirulina powder. Not only you spend a lot of money on this drink but you also make it hard for your body to digest this mixture. 

Keep it simple. Use unprocessed, real food and try to use 3-5 ingredients in each meal. 

Don't waste

Planning your meals will also help you to avoid food waste. I had quite a big problem with thigs in the past - I often bought too much fruit and veggies that I just wasn't able to use all of it and a big part ended up in the garbage. Simply because I didn't even know what do I actually want to do with these ingredients. Also, you may want to give a try to these leftover-tips:

• bake cookies from the breakfast porridge leftovers (you can add nuts and dried fruit as well) 

• mix nuts and dried fruit (thess will not get off, but if you have just a bit of everything ...) with oats, some oil, honey or maple syrup and make your own granola 

• ... and what to do with granola leftovers? Combine it with date paste and make unbaked balls or bars

• store cooked legumes in the freezer and use it next time (you will also speed up the cooking time) 

• ... or blend it, add spices and prepare hummus-like dip for baked vegetable chips

• combine vegetables and legumes leftovers, blend the mixture and prepare patties for burgers

• use vegetables from vegetable stock for spreads or patties