General tips
- avoid the health food aisle. In general, most of the products in the health food aisle have as good or better equivalents elsewhere without the elevated price tag. The prices in the health food aisle are jacked up because the food profiteers know that people will pay more when they are trying to improve their health. It is a very cynical and calculated abuse of people’s insecurities about health coupled with a lack of access to knowledge about good nutrition.
- learn how to read the labels to decide for yourself rather than relying on the product sales pitch. Also don’t rely on official health/star ratings which are a highly unreliable way of determining nutritional value. As a general rule of thumb in buying processed foods, the least processing the food has undergone, the more nutrition it will retain.
Cheap staple foods
Including cheap staple foods as part of your regular diet is a good way of lowering the costs involved in ensuring good nutrition. Some good examples of lower cost and high nutrition foods are:
- lentils, beans (see “preparing legumes/beans“)
- oats
- buckwheat
- rye flour
- sunflower seeds
- pearl barley
- sweet potato
- pumpkin
- carrots
- tinned sardines, tinned mackerel
- frozen peas