I was just wondering if anyone had any good ideas for snacks and/or meals for someone that is on a tight budget?

Hi Jessica,

I have a very similar problem, diets are very expensive in food, particularly to increase variety, eat more often and reduce carbs which are generally cheap.

Here's how I overcome:

General stuff:

Plan your meals in advance. This is my Number 1 way of reducing my food bill. You buy less snacks from expensive places, have far less waste and can take better advantage of seasonal specials etc. This also helps with weight loss because you have better control over the size of meals.

Shop once a week: daily shopping increases what you end up spending.

Fresh food: buy exactly what you need. Dry ingredients, meat and canned goods: buy in bulk. ( I plan a budget for groceries and whatever I don't spend goes into a kitty which is spent on bulk purchases. )

Farmer's markets are great for reasonably priced vegetables.

Buy in season. The food is nicer, more nutritious and much cheaper.

Whole foods are cheaper than processed foods - often you are spending half your money just on the packaging.

Potato and rice are more filling than pasta - you use less and it ends up much cheaper.

Be careful when opting for deboned meat: often it works out cheaper to debone it yourself - even if you pay for the bones.

Air-popped corn is a cheap snack.

Overall, I'd say my biggest compromise is that I sacrifice variety on a daily basis for variety on a weekly basis. ( I eat the same fruit / cereal / etc. one week, another the next rather than different ones every day ) it means I can buy food in larger packages.

I've realize that I spend more money at the grocery store when I buy extra stuff.

Now I buy:
-fresh veggies (broc, carrots, onion, lots of leafy greens, mushrooms, zucch, squash),
-lean meat,
-rice or oatmeal or wheat bread (only one),
-eggs,
-a little cheese, and
-milk.

That's it!

When I buy some chips (not for me but if we have friends or family over) or other foods to entertain (that I still don't eat, or try not to) is when it get's expensive.

Also get away from, "i have to have eggs and toast and bacon for breakfast." and "lunch should be a sandwich an blah blah blah" Eggs are cheap, I eat eggs for dinner half the time. (Only the whites, but whatever), sometimes if I know I'm going to have a busy day, I eat, chicken breast, a big salad and rice for breakfast (dinner for breakfast) so I have lots of energy throughout the morning.

I saved a lot of money when I stopped buying pop. juice, dessert (which i don't miss), chips, crackers, that went stale before i finished them anyways.

Eat before you go to the store.

Other things to try:
-Check out the other food sellers in your area. Co-ops, farmers' markets (already mentioned) and butchers likely have much cheaper prices than regular super-markets.
-Buy meats on sale, cook food in bulk, and freeze it for later.
-Frozen veggies are usually as good as fresh, and frozen veggies (1) last longer and (2) are cheaper. Some veggies suck frozen (broccoli) but others (peas, corn, carrots) are good. Still can't usually snack on them, but at least they're great for recipes.
-Frozen chicken breasts at places like Sams/BJs/Costco are usually really a good buy. (Plus these places usually make non-food items cheaper, leaving you more $$ for food.)

I hear the gripe a lot that "it is too expensive to eat healthy". I tend to disagree with that. And, like you, I have been in the situation where I really am on a budget as far as food goes.

I am in agreement with Chereen and Nathan that if you plan your meals, stick to the basics, and buy in bulk when possible, then you will save money. It is when I start trying to buy snack foods, convenience dinners, and pre-packaged items that the grocery bill climbs. Also, like Aoife mentions, frozen veggies are a good way to get a lot of veggies with good variety without having to worry about spoilage. Good luck!

Thanks everyone for the very helpfull info! I will try some of these ideas and see where it leads me. Good luck to all

Just another idea--pasta is your friend. You can cook up some pasta and add pretty much anything to it to create a meal; if you get the healthier, enriched variety, then it's even better. If you're in the market for recipes, try linguine with some sauteed mushrooms and garlic and a little bit of olive oil and lemon juice; you can buy whole heads of garlic, which keep for quite a while, and one bottle of olive oil should last you a while, too. My favorite pasta recipe, though, is for the tri-color pasta swirls with sauteed portabello mushrooms, garlic, kalamata olives, fresh basil, and a tiny bit of olive oil.

Good luck.

Well, it's certainly more expensive than ramen. (that's been my sister's complaint. heh.) In all honesty, I've known people who have eaten so badly that it really is cheaper to eat "bad" than "good"... 70% beef, crappy hotdogs, ramen noodles, etc... all really cheap. Red peppers here this time of year... $3. each. For a red bell pepper. That's like 30 packets of ramen.

I tend to agree that it is, overall, more expensive to eat healthily. You make up a lot of the extra expense by not eating takeout, rubbish food etc. However, variety is pricey- 20 small, different items come to way more than a bulk pack of 20 of the same. It does help to buy in bulk, but for a lot of people on budget, you simply don't have enough money for that pack of 50 chicken breasts and your regular shopping. Added to that a lot of processed food is made a whole stack cheaper due to the fact it doesn't need to include expensive ingredients like, well, real food.

That said, there is stacks you can do to reduce the cost and make it affordable - particularly if you are willing to put in a little extra work ( like price booking, shopping around ,etc. ). And this is your life we are talking about, who can put a price on that?

Pamela, I disagree with this whole sentance. First off, pasta is cheap, yes, but it isn't really good for you. Thereisn't much nutritionally in pasta. It's just simple carbs that you don't need.

Secondly, DO NOT BUY ENRICHED ANYTHING! Enriched bread = bad, enriched flour=bad, it is simple carbohydrates and unless you are blessed with the metabolism of a ferret, you're going to store it as fat.

I am sure that is true in some cases…in fact, I have known people like that myself. My point was just that if people would be more conscious of how often they eat out, how many convenience foods they buy, and how little they spend time cooking, they would realize that they can save money.

For me, it was hard to get the motivation to cook when when I only had myself to provide for, but what I started doing is cooking larger portions of food and freezing portions for a later time. And, when I was on an extreme budget, variety was something of a luxury. Red bell peppers were out of my budget then, but certainly green peppers were not, and I ate a lot of those along with celery and cucumbers which are also relatively cheap. The seedless red grapes that I love can get expensive, but basic apples and bananas are reasonable. I buy the large container of oats and make it myself every morning rather than buying the packets, etc... There are plenty of smart choices that you can make. Overall, I generally stuck to the BASICS like the list that Nathan provided earlier in this post.

Also, I agree with Nathan about the pasta and enriched foods. I find that when I eat those items, I end up eating too much, and I am just more hungry the next day. Again, pasta is cheap, but maybe not the best "filler" choice.

I agree with mostly everyone up here. I buy dried foods in bulk (rice, pasta, dried beans, nuts, etc.), cheap cuts of meat (you just know how to prepare them the right way), I avoid buying unnecessary beverages (i.e. bottled water), and I make a weekly cooking plan and stick to it. I try to avoid pre-packaged items or frozen dinners, no matter how much I enjoy convenience foods.

My favorite easy-snack/meal to do is to make a large amount of some sort of healthy soup (crockpot lentil soup, North African Cauliflower soup from the Moosewood Cookbook), save some for the week, and freeze the rest.

I honestly save a lot of money buy eating animal products 2 to 3 times during the week, and eating beans, grains, and nuts for protein on the "off" days. My grocery bill is much lower if I don't buy meat.

Enriched means they're putting chemicals in to make up for the naturally healthy bran and embryo they rubbed off the grains during polishing/refining. A lot of long-term diets and health plans recommend staying away from enriched anything.

I'll echo what others have said -- when I stopped buying canned and frozen food, my food bills dropped. I was buying grain, veggies and fruit, meat, and spices for months from the local farmer's market. This also meant no soda, cookies, cakes, or candies but that wasn't as hard a sacrifice for me. It does mean you put in extra effort to prepare and cook meals, plus you have to manage your inventory to prevent spoiling and waste. It's worth it.

ETA: Off topic, but the Nissin Cup Noodle guru dies at age 96. Presumably, he could afford to not eat Cup Noodles most of his life. Also, "ramen" gets a bad rap from it's association with instant ramen and noodles-in-a-cup. Real ramen is quite good. If you live in New York, I highly recommend Sapporo Ramen on 49th St between 6th and 7th Av. Sadly, it's the only ramen house I've been to outside of Japan, but they are every bit as good as a genuine Japanese ramen house.

@Nathan: you're misunderstanding me here, at least partly. The enriched pasta I'm talking about is, specifically, Barilla Plus. By "enriched," I mean that it's healthier for you than regular pasta. I don't think that anyone would ever say that a diet composed entirely of pasta, Plus or not, would be a healthy diet--but for someone shopping on a budget, having Plus's whole wheat pasta a couple of nights a week will neither break the bank or expand the waistline. Barilla Plus has 17 grams of protein, 7 grams of dietary fiber, and 360 mg of omega-3 per serving; the pasta is made of oats, barley, flaxseeds, lentils, chickpeas and spelt. There are 200 calories per serving.

I need to repeat--the product has not been labeled "enriched," it was simply my way of describing it as healthier than regular pasta. My misstep.

And on a different subject, Nathan, your shopping list looks a lot like mine--lots of fresh veggies, lean meats, etc. I found that when I stopped buying five Lean Cuisines for lunch for the week and started making my own salads, pitas, etc., I saved a lot more money and for some reason felt more full; I think that sometimes, the process of putting food together, cooking, contributes to me being not as hungry. Nuking a meal is easy, but making it yourself requires you to put energy into it. My 3:00 snack every day is an orange, and I sit down, peel it with my fingers, and pull it apart slowly so that I can enjoy it.

True.
Of course, for us it really IS more expensive to eat our version of healthy and that includes no eating out or buying of extra crap. In part this is because of taste and ecological preference, in part because of the leanness of the meat we buy, and, of course, in part because of time of year and the price of certain foods in this part of the country.

But yes, it just takes a little looking around and paying attention to all the foods in the store to find things that are within your budget and healthy. And sometimes it requires sacrificing a bit of variety. Variety is highly overrated anyway. People usually forget that they got a burger and fries for lunch every day for years... then they complain about always having chicken. At least you can add different spices to your chicken and make different dishes.

Another good idea to keep the budget down is to try the store brands. Many of them are just as good as big name brands, but are alot less expensive. I'm not saying to dump all your favorite brands, but it's worth it to try a generic brand. If you don't like it, go back to your favorite brand. If you do like it, you save yourself some money,
Juan

i just read a study on cereal - apparently, nutritionists lately have been raving that if you could only eat two things for the rest of your life it would be cereal and lowfat milk.

so i would say ALWAYS keep a healthy cereal (make sure it has a decent amount of fiber and less than 10g sugar) and some fatfree or reduced fat milk. these will keep you full on days you're out of groceries and can't afford to buy more.

could you link to this study?

I just read a study that says 47% of all statistics are made up. It's true, Doug told me.

My biggest food expenditure is going out to eat when I'm too stressed/tired to cook. What I try to do is buy everything for dinners for the week and make everything on the weekend and refrigerate/freeze all the meals. I also tend to double and triple recipes, especially if there is an ingredient (like fresh basil) that will be left over and might go to waste if I only make a single recipe and then forget about it in my fridge. It's also a lot easier to track calories with home food.

the study was in a fitness mag - i think shape...i'll find it and let you know.

Frozen and canned veggies have been my health and budget salvation. They are both quite cheap, and it's easy to make a meal out of them. The other night I pureed some canned roma tomatoes, added a little tomato paste, and added frozen brocolli and spinach. A little garlic and salt, and it's pasta minus the noodles, with a lot of iron, fiber, and other goodies. I also make a lot of stir frys and indian-style lentil dishes this way.

I find that if you concentrate on non-processed foods, such as potatoes instead of potato chips or frozen, its a lot cheaper. I bought a bag of potatoes for about $3.00 and it took me more that a week to get through them all. I would just wash them and bake them on a cookie sheet, viola'. Onions, apples, just check out a Wal-Mart grocery. They usually have a great selection of fruits, nuts and veggies.
Also try getting meats or fillets in larger packages from places like Costco or Sam's Club. I bought a 'bag-o-chicken breasts' for about $15. It should last me for the month!

We don't have Wal-Mart in NYC, but we do have a Costco. So, when I'm there about every month I load up on meats, nuts, garlic, canned stuff. The membership costs $50 a year but i share it with a friend, so its actually $25.

After buying unprocessed foods for a while, I realized how cheap it was and how easy it was for me to keep track of everything I was eating.

Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.

Cans of tuna can be had for 80 cents a piece, a finer source of protein has not been yet canned by man.

Ugh, DON'T buy fresh produce/veggies from Wal*Mart. In fact don't buy ANYTHING from Wal*Mart. They are the King of Cheap and if you think that it doesn't affect the quality of their products (baked goods/produce/fruits/etc.) than you are kidding yourself.

The cheaper the supplier will sell it to them, the better. So you're getting the crappiest stuff they can find.