Flavorful, Healthy Meals on a Budget - Ask A Nutritionist

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Transcript

Alyssa: Welcome to “Ask a Nutritionist”, our weekly mini episode of Dishing Up Nutrition. I'm Alyssa, Registered Dietitian with Nutritional Weight & Wellness. Today we're covering the question: how can you eat healthy and not spend a fortune? If you've walked through the grocery store lately, you might have felt like every week food prices have gone up just a little bit more.

Unfortunately, that can lead many people to believe that eating in a healthy way simply costs too much. The good news is it doesn't have to. Eating with health in mind isn't about buying expensive superfoods or filling your cart with tons of specialty products. It's about planning, choosing real nutrient-dense foods, and learning how to make simple ingredients stretch into several delicious meals.

Today, I will be sharing how you can stretch your budget at the grocery store, as well as giving examples for some dietitian-approved, cost-effective meals that you can put together at home. Eating in an affordable way with nutrition in mind is about structure and planning. Families and individuals who follow a framework for their food budget can consistently keep spending more in check without necessarily lowering the overall nutritional quality.

Define your food budget (& eat more meals at home when possible)

To start, define your food budget. Split your monthly food costs into three categories: groceries for meals made at home, snacks and convenience foods, and food eating out. Assess your food spending habits.

For many, overspending on food occurs in the dining out and the snack convenience food categories. To help your food budget stretch farther, shift most of your food spending towards planned groceries with meals and snacks that you assemble at home. It will significantly and immediately lower daily food costs per person.

Budget clarity reduces overspending. A simple formula to use is to take your monthly food budget divided by the total number of meals to get your target cost per meal. You can count snacks as mini meals. One or two snacks a day may be half to one meal for simplification purposes. Doing the math using your personal budget provides clarity and a measurable target for accountability.

Planning for the week

After you have defined your food budget and have clarity, we move on to the actual planning for the week. Before starting a list and going to the stores, look at what you already have in your refrigerator, your freezer, and your pantry. Build the week's meal plan around ingredients you already own before going out to necessarily buy more. This will help you save money on food by cutting back on overall food waste.

Planning even four or five meals for the week, along with maybe two or three snack options, will help you keep food waste down and prevent expensive last-minute takeout meals or extra shopping trips. For affordable and nutrient-dense planned meals, think about the main components on your plate: real food proteins, color carbohydrates like frozen vegetables and fruits, concentrated carbohydrate sources from things like potatoes and green peas, and fat for cooking such as olive oil.

You can have success with your nutrition and your food budget when you plan those meals. Write it out. A simple meal we enjoy at my house using this template is scrambled eggs, paired with a mixture of peas, rice, and carrots. You season as desired. I will often add diced frozen green onions, red pepper flakes, garlic, ginger, sesame, and a splash of liquid aminos or soy sauce.

After you plan and write out your meals and snack options for the week, you write your grocery list for that plan. Then the key, you stick to the list. As a business, grocery stores have a goal to add dollars to each cart. Impulse purchases can and do destroy food budgets fast, quickly adding $20, $30, even $50 to your grocery bill. These impulse purchases are usually not the most nutrient dense real food choices either.

Overspending on food often occurs in that dining out and the snack convenience food categories. When you're making more of your meals at home, it's a great strategy for that healthy eating on a budget. Even just starting with preparing two or three dinners for the week will instantly help lower overall food costs in your month. In the summer, on sports nights at my house, this often looks like me packing our dinner up to be enjoyed in the car or on the sidelines when we don't necessarily have that time for the traditional sit-down meal at home.

Budget friendly grocery staples

Now, let's talk about some budget-friendly grocery staples to use often in those planned meals. When you're trying to maximize nutrition for your dollar, there are several foods that consistently provide a lot of value. First off, eggs. These are one of my favorites. They're packed with high-quality protein, healthy fats, choline for brain health, and several important vitamins.

Beans, lentils, and green peas are also an inexpensive option for great carbohydrates on your plate. Whether canned or dried, they provide a solid source of fiber, some plant protein, along with important minerals like potassium and magnesium. Potatoes, any variety you like. Russet potatoes, sweet potatoes, golden potatoes, all are wonderful, nutrient-rich, budget-friendly options, along with real food grains such as oats and rice.

Dairy foods. If you tolerate dairy, foods such as plain Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, kefir, and milk provide excellent nutritional value for the cost. You get protein, calcium, and in yogurt or kefir, the added benefit of probiotics to support gut health. Including milk or plant-based milk with protein, such as soy milk or pea milk, provides a source of high quality affordable protein that can be included in a milk to increase total protein.

Cow milk actually provides 13 essential daily nutrients. This includes protein, calcium, vitamin D, potassium, B vitamins, iodine, selenium, and even zinc. For those who tolerate dairy but need lactose-free milk options, or maybe they just want a bit more protein, ultra-filtered milk provides double the protein per 8-fluid ounce cup with about half the amount of total carbohydrates.

Frozen vegetables and fruits. These should be a staple in every freezer. You can toss them into meals for quick, low-effort options that are generally less expensive than their fresh counterparts. They're picked at peak ripeness, so they contain just as many nutrients, if not being more fresh, depending on the time of year.

Lastly, don't forget about the canned fish. Consider tuna, salmon, or sardines. They can be an affordable source of protein and omega-3 fats. Now circling it back to talk about animal protein foods. These tend to be more expensive on your grocery bill. There are ways to keep costs down and still include and enjoy animal proteins.

One strategy is to buy larger family packs of meat when they're on sale and freeze individual-sized portions so they can be easily thawed and cooked. Another option is choosing less expensive cuts that are delicious when slow cooked, think chuck roast, pork shoulder, chicken thighs.

At my house we’ll often get a large pork loin and cut it up and then have several meals from that using the slow cooker. Ground chicken, ground turkey, ground beef, even whole chickens are all often more economical than individual cuts. You pay for the convenience of the pre-cut, pre-portioned meats.

If you're buying beef and you have the freezer space, maybe a deep freezer, consider purchasing directly from a local farm or buying in bulk. While the upfront cost is generally higher, the cost per pound is often much lower than the other beef choices you have at the grocery store and it'll last you for months.

Cook in bulk

And don't underestimate cooking in bulk and then using them for leftovers. For example, roast a full sheet pan of chicken one night. And use it for salads, wraps, soups, or stir-fry meals later in the week. Maybe you slow cooked some pork and then you use that throughout the week. Batch cook or meal component prep for leftovers is one big money-saving and time-saving habit.

Before I get into more meal ideas, I want to share that our resident chef, Marianne, hosted a cooking class on July 15th titled Easy Weekday Meals that is available to purchase and watch for the following week after the 15th of July. If today's topic resonates with you, this cooking class complements it perfectly and will provide you with easy make ahead recipes that you can use in your busy week.

Sign up for a cooking class

So if you're interested in viewing the recording of this cooking class, give our office a call at 651-699-3438.

Meal inspiration ideas

Now, on to some of my own go to meals for your inspiration. As an overview, a balanced meal generally includes around four to six ounces of animal protein, a tablespoon of healthy fats and a couple cups of colorful vegetables and a half a cup of starchy vegetable, beans, lentils, fruit, or rice.

Most of these meals you can find on our website, weightandwellness.com. First, check out egg roll a bowl. Use ground pork or ground chicken and cook with cabbage, carrots, onions, garlic, ginger. Pair with a side of fruit like sliced orange. It's inexpensive, quick, and makes for excellent leftovers the next day.

Second option: a quick stir fry can be taking any protein you have on hand, heating it up with some frozen veggies and a little rice mixed in with some frozen rice cauliflower for a veggie boost. Toss with a liquid aminos, coconut aminos, garlic, ginger, green onions, red pepper flakes for flavor.

Third, these are weekly occurring at my house: taco bowls. Use ground chicken or turkey and serve them over black beans and rice or diced sweet potatoes with veggies or salsa, shredded lettuce, onions, peppers, maybe a bit of avocado and or sour cream for fat.

Another go-to is sheet pan dinners. So simple chicken and vegetables, marinated chicken thighs or breasts roasted on a sheet pan with a sheet pan of potatoes and whatever veggies you have on hand. Often at my house, this is green beans or broccoli. You can drizzle on some olive oil and sprinkle with spices and herbs of your choosing.

One of the most popular recipes on our website for budget-friendly meals is the wild rice meatballs, which you can serve with a no-sugar-added marinara sauce and some frozen veggies like the broccoli and the green beans. Regular rice can be substituted for the wild rice for a more budget-friendly option. You can also purchase precooked nitrate-free chicken or turkey meatballs at the store if you need a more convenient, while slightly more expensive choice.

And some people, like me, enjoy breakfast for dinner: another weekly regular in our routine. Scrambled eggs or an omelette with roasted potatoes, sauteed vegetables, including mushrooms, peppers, maybe some spinach and tomatoes, and then have a site of fruit. Egg bakes can also make a great option where you can portion out and have several meals to spread throughout the week.

For easy lunches, many enjoy mayo-based salads that can be a great low effort choice. Try a salad made with rotisserie chicken, canned tuna or salmon, or hard boiled eggs. Serve over a bed of salad greens. For more fiber and a protein boost, I often add a half a cup of white beans or chickpeas with the chicken or tuna. Instead of mayo, you can also use a pesto or olive oil with lemon juice and your favorite spices and herbs.

For a simple, affordable breakfast or snack, try yogurt parfaits, plain Greek yogurt topped with frozen berries, which will defrost overnight in your fridge, nuts and/or seeds for fat, and maybe a sprinkle of cinnamon. The bigger containers of yogurt have a lower cost per serving than the individual containers.

I will often use a food scale when I make these to help portion out the yogurt so that I have the number of servings that I'm intending on getting out of that large container. We have many great budget-friendly recipes available on our website, weightandwellness.com, for you to explore.

Check out some of our recipes! 

These recipes are nutritionally balanced. And if they aren't all the way balanced, we note what foods you might add to create a balanced meal. So we're taking the guesswork out of it for you. Final reminder, healthy eating does not require specialty ingredients or a lot of time and cooking skills, planning, creativity. You can build flavor-satisfying meals while also staying within your budget.

Thanks so much for joining me today on this “Ask a Nutritionist” episode. I hope I've helped explain some healthy eating that doesn't have to be spending an exorbitant amount of money. Make smart choices with your budget in mind. Plan. Follow a nice structured system. Start with one or two of these ideas for this week. Plan your meals out before shopping. Maybe even just two meals. Plan them out.

Keep some frozen vegetables on hand. And double a recipe or do some meal component prep that you can use for leftovers. Small changes like these can make a big difference for your health and your food budget.

If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to share it with someone you know who's looking for healthy and affordable meal ideas. And to find out more about working with me, Alyssa Krejci, or another dietitian at Nutritional Weight & Wellness, visit our website, weightandwellness.com, or give us a call at 651-699-3438. Thanks and have a wonderful day. I'll talk to you next time.

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