Healthy Eating on a very tight budget

janey183

Sorry if this has been spoken about before. New to forums :wave:

Ive just been diagnosed with a few things (long list of ailments actually!)

Anyway the stuff I 'supposed' to be eating is soooooooo expensive:mad:
Example: wholewheat pasta (usually buy the 40p stuff, now £1.15)
Salmon (£5 per portion are you kidding me?)

Has anyone got hints and tips?
Im to stear clear: of red meat, added sugar/salt, fat, carbs overload, bread, white pasta, dairy
But try and include: oily fish, veg, some fruit, wholewheat stuff, brown stuff (e.g cardboard tasting food!!)

Thanks

Volupturaptor

Mackeral and herring are fairly cheap fresh oily fish. Tinned oily fish is just as good for you, sardines tending to be cheapest.
Fruit and veg, markets can be great, but if you don't have one nearby make a habit of being in the supermarket in the evenings and you'll often be able to pick up all sorts for a fraction of the usual price. Do you have to steer clear of bread completely? "Value" wholemeal bread is actually very nice, and only 47p a loaf. Our local Tesco has been selling wholemeal pasta very cheaply recently, maybe a change of packaging is coming or something, either way, we've bought lots of it! Do you have to completely avoid dairy, or just the high fat stuff? I ask as cheap cheese spread is much lower in fat than butter, and much nicer than low fat spreads...

Hope some of this helps.

valk_scot

Breadmaker for really nice wholemeat and seeded breads. Tinned fish like mackeral and sardines. Seasonal veg and fruit. Value brown pasta is ~22p for 500g in Tesco. They also sell a value type brown rice. Porridge is cheap, bran and wholewheat cereals are far cheaper than sugary ones. Ckicken thighs are cheaper than red meat by a very long way. Tesco and Iceland and lots of other places sell semi-skimmed milk for £1 for four pints, even cheaper for skimmed.

It does sound a very healthy diet and I'm sure you'll feel the benefits of following it. But yes, it will be more expensive than salty, fatty, stodgy poor quality food because they're the ingredients added to cheap foodstuffs to make rubbish taste nicer. It's a cheaper diet than fillet steak, salmon and asparagus out of season though!

janey183

great sugestions thank you!

117pauline

Hi

Perhaps you could look at "my supermarket. com" to see where the bargains are for the more expensive ingredients so that you could stock up.

Aldi and Lidl have great bargains if they are close to you

Have you been asked to record what makes you feel better or worse so you know that the healthy eating plan is working? Also it will keep you on track if you can see it working!

Other threads here such as the grocery challenge have lots of links to recipes which might help you too.

Do you enjoy cooking and planning or are your ailments making it more difficult? For me at the moment, I find some days I can plan and cook for those days when I can't do a lot.

Hope this helps - good luck
Pauline

midnight_express

Omega 3 is cheaper than fish. Eat smaller portions of carbs. Eat a lot of salad / veg.

patchwork_cat

Asda has frozen salmon fillets 400g 2 for £5 frozen. Also can use tinned salmon - pink is about £1.60 a large can. If you are female and intend to have a baby tehn don't eat more than 2 X 140g portions a week due to dioxins and pcb's. If not then I think it is 4 portions, but I can't find the link right at the moment.

rosie383

Look out for deals on whole salmon. Tesco had it a while back for £5 /kg. We got a whole one for £16. The guy on the fish counter cut it into fillets for us and we ended up with 18! Froze them all separately and have had a bagful to use as and when. Worth doing if you have a freezer.

recovering_spendaholic

Pulses are very good for you - lentil soup is really easy to make, you don't need to soak the lentils either. Tinned beans on wholemeal toast is also a good filler, three bean salad is lovely as is hummus (home made without the oil), in fact you can make loads of lovely home made soups with pulses and vegetables which are low or no fat and not too carb heavy.

As others have said tinned salmon is usually on offer somewhere and is good for you and cheaper than fresh. Tinned Tuna does not have the same omega 3 content but is nevertheless a good source of protein.

If you are watching carbs then it is harder to think of meals but some carbs are better than others - generally the ones which are slower release - things like wholewheat bread, pasta and rice and white basmati rice, oats, sweet potatoes and stuff like that. If you can get a book from the library about GI index or GI load then that will help you.

Eggs used to be a no-no if you had cholesterol problems but my OH had a heart attack two years ago and was told that eggs were fine now, as long as he didn't eat loads of them, but up to 8 a week was fine (he doesn't like eggs so it didn't matter!)

Sugar is the big enemy is you are trying to eat healthily (she said having just eaten 4 chocolates out of the grabbit tasting box from hotel chocolat!) - it is in so many things - even stuff which is savoury! Diet drinks are also not that good for you - just as bad as full sugar stuff some doctors say.

Did the doctor not refer you to a dietician? If not you could ask as there are lots of healthy eating referral programmes at the moment and you could tap into one of them. In some areas you can also get Slimming World or Weight Watchers on prescription too if you need to lose weight.

Good luck!

jpscloud

I have much the same orders dietwise, and buy value bananas, value pineapple in tins (it's in light syrup but I drain it) and "funsize" pears for fruit, plus any whoopsied or on offer kiwi fruit etc.

For veggies, Aldi is way the best for me with most things I like being half the price of other supermarkets most of the time. I make parsnip and carrot mash on an industrial scale and freeze it. I buy parsnips and carrots when whoopsied or on offer, they keep for weeks on end in the fridge till I'm ready to make it. For green veg, I buy savoy cabbage which also keeps for weeks and the odd bag of baby leaf spinach in winter (I grow my own in summer, dead easy).

For meat I use turkey mince instead of beef mince for all bolognaise type cooking, and things like value frozen chicken breasts or on-offer thighs, pieces or turkey steaks when available. I do use red meat but keep it to once a month levels.

Have a look around for pasta deals, I bought enough to feed an army when Aldi were selling pasta with added oat fibre - it keeps for a long time. The value wholeweat spaghetti packs are very cheap too.

ETA I add lentils to all casseroles in my slow cooker now, and grated carrot to bolognaise.

Lois_and_CK

Your new diet sounds similar to the one I'm supposed to follow for polycystic ovarian syndrome. I agree about the expense!

I make a lot of fish pies - cheap but healthy - and instead of mashed potato for the topping I mash a mix of potato, carrot and suede. I also buy a lot of fish from costco as it's great quality but an affordable price.

You can also add a lot of veg and pulses to things like curry, bolognaise, chilli, stews, etc. Bread is easily avoided for lunches: make big batches of the above in a slow cooker and freeze in single portions to heat up at work (or take in a flask if no access to a microwave).

Veg can be made more interesting: it is lovely stir-fried with seseme oil, garlic and ginger, then served with grilled chicken or a piece of salmon (from costco!), for example.

Your diet sounds like it's based on low-GI. In that case, treat yourself to a couple of squares of dark chocolate each day so you don't feel like you're going mad! And also, a little bit of what you fancy is good for the soul. I try and follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of the time I stick to my PCOS diet: 20% of the time I allow myself to cave into carb heaven and have a fat portion of chips! My PCOS is still controlled despite that, and it makes it a whole lot easier to stick to a difficult diet if you know you have that 20% allowance :-)