Maintaining a healthy diet can be expensive no doubt. But is it possible to maintain a healthy diet at a minimal cost? Yes it is.
Meal planning has its challenges when you have a low budget. It is more challenging when you are committed to eating a healthy food.
There are actually few ways one can save money and still eat healthy a food. It is not rocket science. You only need to have the necessary knowledge that will make this possible.
9 Tips for Eating Well and Maintaining A Healthy Diet At a Minimal Cost
- Plan Your Meal
Planning your meal is very essential. It doesn’t just help you to save money. Planning meals also helps you in making the right choice of food. It is best to plan meals weekly.
Steps on How To Plan Your Meal
- Prepare a Menu
Create a food menu. In this menu decide what food you’ll eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Then make a list of the items you will need for them.
- Let Your Meal Planning be Based on Food in Stock
Check for food raw materials that are on sale. A window shopping will go a long way to help this out. This step is very important to avoid making plans for out-of-season food materials.
- Check your Storage
Check your refrigerator, and other storage medium for materials that need replacement. For the ones remaining, check their expiry date.
- Avoid Food That Needs Special Ingredients
Some recipe require certain ingredients that may not be available. These ingredients could be such that are gotten in little quantity. They may also be costly, with short shelf life. Such ingredients are better left out. This prevents getting ingredients that can only be used once before it spoils.
- Go For Dual Purpose Ingredients & Food.
Food such as grains( rice, barely, etc) can be used as variety. They are also inexpensive.
- Keep To Your Plan & Shopping List Strictly
The Grocery shops, shopping malls, and market places have a lot of distractions. It necessary to stick to the already made plan or list whenever shopping. This helps to avoid unplanned purchases.
Few Tips on Shopping
- Shop on the outer edges of the store first. This is because of the availability of whole foods on this area.
- While shopping in the middle of the store, look to the top or bottom of the shelves. Here contains led costly ingredients.
- Also utilize grocery list applications for shopping.
- Buy In Bulk
Buying food stuff in bulk seem to be costly, yet it saves cost in the long run. Regular purchase of a particular food stuff sums up to a lot of money when calculated. This is what buying in bulk helps to take away.
Therefore as much as you can afford, try to buy in bulk.
- Cook Regularly
Cooking at home is always cheaper than eating in canteens, and the likes. Money spent personally on one-off canteen meals can feed a person for a week. Therefore a habit of cooking at home should be maintained.
As a bachelor, cooking on weekends will suit your schedule perfectly. It does not only permit you time for weekly activities. It also gets you conversant with the meals that keep you healthy.
- Do not Dispose Leftovers.
Leftovers can be reused as some other meal. It can also save you time and stress of cooking fresh meal. Leftovers are the reason why some people may not eat outside. It serves as an alternative or last resort in certain times of need.
Leftovers should always be stored appropriately to avoid waste.
- Reduce The intake of Processed Food.
Processed foods are not healthier than natural food. Besides, they are costlier than. Natural food can be gotten in large quantity. It leaves us with the benefit of better nutrition, and preferred taste with lesser amount.
- Buy Frozen Fruits and Vegetables or Buy Fresh Ones and freeze
Fresh fruits and vegetables are not always available. Frozen ones are also as nutritious as fresh ones. It saves you from spending so much when fruits and vegetables are off season.
Therefore buying frozen ones or preferably buying fresh ones that will be frozen is a healthy option.
- Grow Some Food Produce
At some point, growing your own produce becomes necessary. Vegetable is an example of a produce to grow. Another option to growing them yourself is join or fund a community garden. This enables you to pay for farming services and receive food produce when it is harvesting time.
- Buy From Cheap Retailers both Online and Offline
There are online retailers who sell lesser than several grocery shops. They sell food stuff as nutritious and fresh as those in retail shops. Buying from these retailers can save you money, time, and stress of going to a physical location.
Sometimes you could stand the chance of getting other offers asides just shopping. Some of these other offers include; healthy nutrition tips, food preparation and storage tips of some special food.
Conclusion
Now what do we know? Maintaining a healthy diet at a minimal cost is possible. Eating a healthy diet does not really mean we should spend a lot. We also do not need to go beyond our budget. There are ways to go about these things. Some of those ways are listed above.
As much as you can afford, there are also low income diet for you. Make your health a priority and feed properly.