Diet/healthy/low fat food is the most expensive

custardy

yup it is expensive eating healthy
im on the health kick just now and it is more expensive though i dont buy WW or anything like that.
tend do just cook fresh stuff as much as possible.
have musili type bars or dried fruit as sweet treats

it is hard since all the stuff in supermarkets seems to be unhealthy these days

milkydrink

lightisfading wrote: »

This site might come in handy - list of low point snacks
http://www1.freewebs.com/noreenblackett/lowpointsnacks.htm

Fab site:beer: :beer: :beer: :j :j :j

thriftlady_2

See, I don't think it is expensive to eat healthily the foods I listed in post #4 are all healthy and cheap. I agree that cabbage does get boring but there are far more seasonal cheap veg about than just cabbage -see this site for ideas of what's in season now http://www.eattheseasons.co.uk/. Don't forget that some frozen veg are good value too -I'd be lost without peas and sweetcorn. Home sprouted beansprouts are great for salads when the lettuce option gets expensive

Cheap and easy 5 a day

1 glass of value orange juice (juice can only count once)
An apple
Coleslaw made with red cabbage, carrots, onion and celery
2 tbsp frozen peas
A pear


In fact here's a day's meals which I reckon are both low in fat and cheap.

Breakfast - porridge made with half water and half milk mixed with a grated apple and a little sugar. Some wild blackberries would be good too.
Glass of OJ

Lunch - Baked potato with baked beans and coleslaw. Pear

Supper- Chicken casserole made with a jointed chicken or chicken thigh portions, the sauce made with tinned tomatoes and mushrooms. Carrots, peas and mash. Hm yogurt with fruit puree (damson from the freezer)

badkitti

The trick is to build up a bank of recipes that you actually like and look forward to eating. A lot of low fat stuff is a con as they just up the sugar content instead to keep the flavour. It isn't necessalrily much more expensive to eat heathily, we've all just been used to all year round food from the supermarket for most of our lives (personally speaking anyways).

Steve-o

As a Dietetic student at University, I have one little tip....don't buy WeightWatchers stuff!!


One of the side-affects of being on a Dietetics course is that you check every bloody label when you shop! The good thing is that you start to see what foods are very high in nasty stuff, and also start to see that many cheaper options are on a par with the expensive 'healthy' end of the processed food market.

I don't know about Tesco items, but the Asda "Good for you" range of prepared foods is almost as low in fat & sugar as WW and at half the price.


Frozen veg is also wonderful cos it's nutritious, cheap, conventient, and low in calories!

Raspberry_Swirl

Steve-o wrote: »

I don't know about Tesco items, but the Asda "Good for you" range of prepared foods is almost as low in fat & sugar as WW and at half the price.

tesco low fat range seems to be about the same as WW products and cost far less. they also tie in with the WW diet by providing the points value on all their low fat range so you don't need your points calculator with you!

supersaver1000

I'm not sure if this is the right place to leave this, but I've just discovered that tinned fruit is really cheap. Under 20p for a large can of fruit cocktail, peach slices and around 30p for mandarins and about 40p for grapefruit. Some of them are in syrup, which I try and drain out as much as possible, but some of them (Sainsburys I think) are in grape juice, which I still drain out but they are lower in calories.

I'm really pleased because I like to eat a bit of fruit but just hate paying 50p for a hard peach, tasteless plum or dry apple. I read somewhere that a lot of fresh oranges have hardly any vitamin c left in them by the time we actually eat them and I think canning is quite a good way of preserving food (and you can easily count the calories with them). I also had a trip down the memory of my childhood and bought some evaporated milk to go with it all - Asda do a very reasonable healthy version. Lovely, felt naughty but nice.

I loved using the cheap frozen fruit in the Summer to make fruit smoothies with the stick blender and now am happy as I've found my winter fruit supply too. Of course I'll still have my fresh veg quota and the occasional bit of fresh fruit. :rotfl:
Just found a thread called "tinned fruit" - a few recipes in there that I'm going to try too.

Lord_Lardington

For the sweet treats that we all need, how about going for Jaffa Cakes. The Tesco value ones are 42 cals each with just 1g of fat. 58p for 24 (less than 2.5p per cake).

The full blown McVitie stats are similar apart from the price (46cals, 1g fat, 1.59, approx 6.7p each)