Purchasing healthy food with a limited budget can be challenging. We offer some tips to make your food purchasing more enjoyable and cost effective.
- Where possible purchase fresh items grown locally. Often times the cost will be less and the products will be much fresher. In today's markets often fruits and vegetables are shipped in from long distances. Nutritional values can often drop significantly during the transportation and storage.
- Purchasing organic limits the amount of pesticides, herbicides, and other toxins present in the food. Numerous studies also show that organic produce often has more nutrients than conventional foods. By definition, organic foods are also non-genetically modified.
- Sometimes one cannot find a product locally, and the internet is a good place to purchase. When purchasing food online be sure to factor in the shipping costs. Some products are priced to include shipping but more often they charge extra for shipping.
- To maximize nutrition and reduce your nutritional cost try to use only foods that are minimally processed. The more a food is processed the higher its real cost will be. A potato is nutritious and relatively inexpensive. Purchasing potato chips raises the cost a whole lot and the nutrition drops. “Whole food eaten whole” is a good motto.
- Just because something is vegan, vegetarian, or even organic does not mean it is healthy. For example vegan junk food is still junk food. It just does not contain animal products. We endeavor to only offer nutritious food in our courses or recipes.