The Cheapest Healthy Meal Ever!

ubamother

I'm sure there is a great thread this can be added to - but to give you my own experience - as long as you are fairly strict with yourself, cooking from scratch is healthier and you can eat better quality food for the same money you are spending now - and less once you practised at it. The important thing is portion control - homemade food, like drinks poured at home, can easily get bigger and bigger - so think carefully about what and how much you are eating. What has helped me is rigid freezer use. Once a portion has been eaten - any leftovers are frozen so they can't be 'picked at' between the table and the washing up! A freezer is a godsend if you have one - you asked about about can't-be-bothered nights. That's when you eat the leftovers from the freezer!

ALIBOBSY

The thing is you have to compare like for like. Value products are alot of times cheap because they are full of cheap (usually not good for you) ingredients and tend to be be high in salt and sugar (both bad) and saturated fat (bad) or trans fats (deadly bad).
I have to say I reckon it is also easier to cook in bulk to make savings, so for us where there are 6 in the family your value meal would cost a fortune and I could make a much healthier tastier large pie with homemade oven wedges/chips or the kids favs mash for less than the processed stuff. I would buy an amount of stewing steak and pad it out with plenty of chopped up veg, with stock to make a gravy. I would just put homemade pastry-easy and made for pennies, on top of the pie. I reckon I could do this meal for under a £5 and it would make 6 generous meals (my lot like their food lol). If I say added some extra veg on the side and perhaps some bread I could stretch the pie to a second meal served with say chips & veg the next night as well so the pie could do up to 12 portions?

Things like spag bol, chilli stews etc can be made quite cheaply and healthily with lean mince/chicken/meat padded out with plenty of veg, and pulses. A big panful could be portioned up into freezer pots to make "ready meals" for you to pull out on those nights you can't be bothered cooking.

Have a look at weezels big thread about eating frugally and healthily it has some great ideas. It also helps growing your own as seeds cost pennies and so produce veggies at a fraction of the shop cost.

good luck

ali x

spike7451

Yes it can imho.
For example,yesterday I made a big mahoosive batch of Chili useing a jar of 'Casa Mexico' Chili sauce which is part of the Discount Brands you see advertised on the TV.

Which is a Tesco range,the chili one above was 69p.
I used part of a large pack of mince beef which was portioned into three & frozen,leaving me two portions in the freezer for making burgers or Spag Bol at a later date.
Now to the chili,I added mushrooms,courgettes,carrots,peppers,sweetcorn,onion,kidney beans,chili flakes,tomato puree & 1/4 pint of lager.
The addition of the last three ingredients made the chili go further.
Apart from tea last night,which I had with spaghetti,I filled three of the plastic tubs you get your Chinese take out in with the chili & bunged in the freezer.
I do the same for Curry & Spagbol.Going on the same basis above,I'd get around 12 meals,4 of each,for a total outlay of around £10.00.
All the veggies are fresh,to cook each one it took me around 20 min prep & initial cooking time & then another 10 for the dish gently simmering away on the hob.

jollymummy

I'd go for jacket spuds, pasta in tomato sauce, omlettes all pretty cheap to make and easy to prepare. We chuck all sorts in our omlettes, bacon, peppers, cheese, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, if it's in the fridge it will probably get thrown in I do pasta in tomato sauce, or throw in a tub of value cream cheese, sometimes add some ham or bacon and frozen peas.
Jackets spuds with tuna mayo or beans and cheese or rustle up a chilli and have it with your spud and freeze some for another night and have it with rice.
Like other lovely posters have said it's good to cook in bulk and freeze and then you just have to remember to get something out of the freezer in the morning for dinner. I too cook and freeze chilli, spag bol, cottage pie, fish pie, stews, casseroles. Hope that helps a bit.

Almo

There was a recent article in Australian Women's Health about eating 'clean' which, outside the fitness world, translates to eating unprocessed foods, as much as possible. Obviously most things have had some degree of processing - but buy block cheese, not pre-grated (and coated with potato starch etc), for example. The guinea pig lost 4kgs without trying.

The fillers and subsititutes in a lot of processed food are not understood by the body and thus nothing is triggered to signal that you are full, hence you eat more. The body relies on satiety signals from fats etc.

It's nothing you haven't heard before - eat seasonal fruit and veg, protein in its more basic forms (chicken breast, not bird's eye dippers) and grains. As your metabolism stabilises, you should find you start to lose weight. You still need to be aware of portion sizes and balancing the food, but it's a big step in the right direction.

You have to decide if you're willing to sacrifice your tesco value convenience - that's not meant to sound judgemental, I had a crisp sandwich on what my mum would call 'pappy' white bread earlier so please don't think I'm preaching.

Drea

Oh don't get me wrong, I do cook too. I was just using cheap examples, it's not that I don't want to make better food, I do and I don't mind cooking (as long as I have something for those days when I can't be bothered). Yesterday I made some chilli and had the leftovers for lunch today but that is an expensive meal to me. I had to buy mince, toms, kidney beans, sauce mix as opposed to buying one thing.

I know I have to compare like for like but the problem is I don't see how I can afford to eat healthily, I know it must be possible but I honestly can't find how to do it...

redlady_1

I was late in from work last night and so fished out a lasgane I had cooked previously. Before MSE I would have picked up a take away. Planning is the key.

spugzbunny

Hi Drea,

I eat for around £20 a week (bearing in mind some things I dont have to buy every week). I am also on a diet and I eat as 'clean' as possible as someone said above.

I have:

Breakfast - always porridge with cinnimon (spell?!)
Mid-Morning - Muller light & an apple usually
Lunch - chicken and cous cous with peppers & mushrooms or tuna sald with brown rice or an omlette.
Afternoon snack - Banana if exercising otherwise 10 almonds
Dinner - Salmon and veg, chicken stir fry (veg, no noodles or rice), veg chilli, tinned mackrel with veg.

I buy veg depending on what's on offer (an often by default what's in season!). The chilli is my most expensive meal but I use quorn and tinned tomatoes and veg, I use spices to add the flavour as this works out cheaper than pre-bought sauces and is a lot better for you!

Optimisticpair

Drea wrote: »

Hello :wave:

My trousers are getting tighter and tighter and I really want to start eating better food. But I'm on a really tight budget, I have a low wage and just myself to feed.

I know everyone says it is much cheaper and healthier to cook from scratch but I honestly don't see it. I guess it might be cheaper for certain things but buying Tesco Value steak pie costs me 50p and add some chips and that's a meal. Is there a way to really do it cheaply? I want to eat healthy food, I enjoy it more and hopefully it would make a difference to size of my bum but I just don't know how people do it without it costing them a fortune.

Also, what do people do when they just want something easy and can't be bothered cooking for ages once home from work? The days when normally I would order take away or stick a pizza in the oven.

I spend around £40-£50 a month on dinners. I buy my lunches at the start of each week usually making sandwiches or taking left over dinner into work which costs around £7 a week. During the weekend I don't eat lunch and I never eat breakfast. Is it possible to do this on a budget?

The problem with ready meals is they sometimes contain a high percentage of fat and sugar which are high in calories but very low in nutrients. You can put on weight with the fat and sugar in them but not be getting all the nutrients your body needs for optimum health.

There's no reason not to have a lovely cheap home made steak or steak and onion pie with vegetables in it. Adding lentils to a curry etc or vegetables to a sphag bol or a shepherds increases the nutrients and reduces the amount of fat in each portion.

You don't have to give up steak pie, takeaways and pizza but I'd say it would be better for you to pull together a number of recipes from these pages (many have legumes and vegetables in which are low in calories and high in nutrients) and try a new one every week. When you have found recipes you like cook a batch when you have time to cook, eat a portion and freeze the rest as single portion meals and, don't forget, many can be just reheated in a microwave which really is the ultimate in healthy ready meals. Many of the recipes are very easy too.

Drea

Optimisticpair wrote: »

The problem with ready meals is they sometimes contain a high percentage of fat and sugar which are high in calories but very low in nutrients. You can put on weight with the fat and sugar in them but not be getting all the nutrients your body needs for optimum health.

There's no reason not to have a lovely cheap home made steak or steak and onion pie with vegetables in it. Adding lentils to a curry etc or vegetables to a sphag bol or a shepherds increases the nutrients and reduces the amount of fat in each portion.

You don't have to give up steak pie, takeaways and pizza but I'd say it would be better for you to pull together a number of recipes from these pages (many have legumes and vegetables in which are low in calories and high in nutrients) and try a new one every week. When you have found recipes you like cook a batch when you have time to cook, eat a portion and freeze the rest as single portion meals and, don't forget, many can be just reheated in a microwave which really is the ultimate in healthy ready meals. Many of the recipes are very easy too.

That's a good idea, I could make something each week (probably at the weekend) and freeze some portions so at least a few times a week I'd be eating better than I am now. Then I could build that up as I learn what I like to make or what I find I can afford to make.