Eating Healthy on the Cheap

I'm in need of some suggestions on how to maintain healthy eating habits without ending up spending more on food. I know there are plenty of these guides online, but I wanted to get input from all you fine BF folk. The other problem I run into is that I'm lazy when it comes to buying and preparing food and pretty much live off of things I can keep in the freezer. Not shitty frozen dinners necessarily, but for instance I'll buy those pre-cooked bags of frozen chicken breasts and pay more just because I can stick them in the microwave. So I guess the real question is what should I look for that's not too expensive but also easy to prepare?

The next question is what healthy snacks do you enjoy? My snacking is done almost entirely in front of the PC like a good little nerd, so it needs to be something that doesn't make a mess.

For cheap and healthy, my best suggestion is rotisserie chicken. $5.99 for two, maybe three, days of lunches/dinners.

Buy freezable things in bulk offers. When you have time make up large batches of stews/chillis/sauces

Boneless, skinless chicken thighs are your friend. There are a zillion things you can do with them, they're high protein and not high fat, and they tend to be dirt cheap.

Also, here's a dirty secret of non-gourmet healthy eating: there is a ton of stuff you can cook in the microwave that's not pre-cooked. A frozen bag of raw chicken breasts will cost you less than a frozen bag of the pre-cooked ones, but you can heat them in the microwave the same way. It doesn't taste as good as a good oven roast (ask me some time about my recipe for honey-glazed chicken thighs!), but it's still better-tasting than cheap frozen foods. Wrap it up in a tortilla with a handful of lettuce and a smidge of low-fat sour cream, and you've got yourself a decent chicken wrap.

In general, lower your intake of cakes, cookies, dairy (milk, butter, cheese, ice cream) and fatty meats like beef, and increase your intake of fish, nuts, beans, fruits, whole grains, and vegetables. You don't have to cut out anything completely, but there are definitely things you'll want to eat in moderation.

Breakfast:

Eggs are great, but if you're watching your cholesterol you might consider removing the yolk and just eating the whites, which will eliminate the fat and dietary cholesterol while keeping a lot of the protein. Unfortunately, you also lose some vitamins that are in the yolk (mostly B vitamins I believe), but you can get those from other sources. If you're concerned about it, or you rarely use eggs as an ingredient, the egg beaters in the carton are basically the whites with the vitamins from the yolk added back in.

Oatmeal is great for you, and really cheap. Even instant oatmeal is good, but you can make your own without much hassle (you can even make a big batch in a slow cooker the night before).

Whole wheat toast instead of white.

Most dried cereal is reasonably healthy. Certainly moreso than a slab of bacon or sausage at any rate.

Beverages:

Use Silk or almond milk as an alternative to dairy. Low-sodium V8 juice is really good for you, as well. I generally drink a can every morning. It's ridiculously high in potassium and has a bunch of vitamin A and C. Besides that, it's typically water for me. If I drink soda I generally just go for caffeine free. I don't care too much about the sugar content since I rarely drink it, but if you drink it frequently and you want to lose weight: drink diet instead. The calories in non-diet soft drinks can add up really quickly and destroy any kind of weight loss plans you had.

Other:

Lentils are very cheap and are an excellent source of nutrition. They're very popular in Asia, and especially in India. You'll find them with the beans in the supermarket generally. They cook pretty much the same way as beans as well, except quicker, because they're smaller. It's often paired with brown rice, which is another cheap, healthy food.

Buy a 10 pound bag of russets and eat baked potatoes more often. They're cheap, and you can dress them up a bit with chives, a little sour cream, and vinegar. Just don't completely slather it with bacon and cheese, otherwise you kind of ruin the point of eating healthy.

As far as meat is concerned, lean pork and chicken are good, and fish is great. Tilapia is one of the cheaper fish, and it's pretty versatile. Feel free to buy some salmon or walleye every once in a while, though, if you want something that has a more pleasing taste and texture.

Fresh fruits and especially vegetables should be a mainstay.

I'm not a fan of lettuce, but I love baby spinach. It's more nutritious and less bitter than most lettuces, so use it for a base in your salad (along with tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, etc). Feel free to dress it up with croutons, dried fruit, and nuts, but take it easy on the bacon bits, cheese, and creamier dressings.

As far as snacks are concerned...

Chips: Look for chips without any trans fats and with as little saturated fat as possible and don't bring the whole fucking bag to your desk. Get a portion and put it in a bowl.
Pretzels: Better than chips.
Popcorn: Get an air popper and a big jar of kernels. It's absolutely cheap as dirt, and much healthier for you. You can flavor it (I just prefer salt typically), but to do that you need some kind of oil to make the seasoning stick to the popcorn. Use a vegetable oil of some kind or melt some Smart Balance instead of using butter which is high in saturated fat.
Nuts: Nuts are really good for you, but they're pretty high in calories, so if you're looking to lose weight make sure you keep an eye on how much you eat. I want to gain a few pounds myself so they're perfect for me. They can be a bit more expensive, but they pack a lot more nutrition than the alternatives listed above.
Others: I really like dried fruit (especially cherries) and sesame sticks.

I guess that's all I have for now. I don't know what your health goals are, exactly, but in general, if you want to lose weight: Eat fewer calories than you burn. If you want to gain weight: Eat more calories than you burn (especially protein). If you want to reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke: Lower intake of saturated fat and cholesterol, and increase your intake of poly and mono unsaturated fats. If you want to help lower your blood pressure: Lay off the salt, and increase your potassium intake.

But like I said, you don't have to cut out anything in your diet. Feel free to eat bacon or a doughnut or a Whopper every once in a while. Just do so sparingly.

edit - Oh, and frozen vegetables taste a fuckton better than canned vegetables.

With the exception of tomatoes, which are the only canned vegetables that we use. But yeah, most canned vegetables are pretty vile. They also tend to have a ton of added salt.

I'm asking!

heloder had lots of good tips. I'll add that cutting back on prepared/packaged foods in general--I'm talking stuff like frozen meals, microwavable snacks, boxes of cookies, that sort of thing, not stuff like the fresh rotisseire chicken suggested above--is both healthy and affordable. A lot of prepared food is pricey for what you get, and tends to be packed with salt and sugar. I've gotten into the habit of looking at the ingredients lists on things. If the list is too long and contains a bunch of stuff that I don't have in my own pantry, I pass.

Snacks probably comprise the majority of the packaged foods that I eat. But sometimes you really do need a quick snack. I like:

Pretzels. Get the kind that come in little snack packs to help you control portions. As chip/cracker type foods go, pretzels are pretty innocuous, and they don't make a mess at the computer.

I really like these Kind bars. They aren't really low calorie (about 200 per bar), but they are filling, so I consider them calories well-spent. They have nuts and dried fruits and honey and some grains. Some sugar, but not a lot. Tons of protein and fiber. Good stuff.

On the same note, nuts are a good snack. They have calories and fat, but it's the good kind of fat that lowers LDL, and they also have fiber and protein and are filling.

Fruit. I like apples, Clementines, berries--whatever is in season. For computer consumption, I section apples and oranges into slices, put them on a plate, and eat them with a fork. Laugh all you want, but it keeps my mouse and keyboard from getting sticky.

Eating healthy can really feel like one of those "pick two" cliches: tasty, easy, or cheap. If you're willing to put in the effort and time to cook, you can eat really great meals without TOO much money. Alternatively, there's tons of low calorie frozen meals that aren't exactly going to get your taste buds dancing - though I find judiciously applied condiments can help tremendously there. Hell, if you don't mind the sodium a bowl of ramen is a pretty low-calorie meal, and dressing it up with some onions or something makes you feel like less of a college student when you eat it. Sriracha, in particular, is your friend.

Cutting out soda and snacks is a HUGE step. It's ridiculous how many calories I used to take in with those. Portion control is another easy thing to do - eat exactly the same foods you used to, but eat half of what you usually would. Save the rest, eat it later. This is related to snacks - portion control is tough with snacks because everybody just slaps the bag down in front of them and eats until they're full. Just with those two habits I dropped like 15 pounds. Going further took harder diet choices and exercise, but still.

Portion control, as Hawkeye said, is a huge part of it, and is one of the major things that I keyed in on with my weight loss efforts.

Not all processed foods are bad, just be vigilant and read labels.

walTer is someone who probably has some great suggestions for snacks, as we had a talk about it for a while in the weightloss thread.

Oh! Air-popped popcorn is a great snack, as long as you don't put a ton of crap on it.

I tried some of those 100-calorie snack packs, and other than the Pop Secret kettle corn, they're all pretty crappy.

Yeah, soda can be a massive source of empty calories, even if you only have one or two a day. A can of Coke has ten teaspoons of sugar in it. It's not something you want to be drinking regularly if you are at all concerned about eating healthy. If you like fizzy drinks, get a Soda Stream and drink seltzer water. It's a lot cheaper than buying soda (or seltzer) in the store, and has zero calories.

Be careful with fruit juices as well, most of them have as much sugar as a soda. Eat a piece of fruit instead!

Just quit drinking soda and eating chips. It makes things like carrots and sweet potatoes taste like, as Louis CK says, paper.

You can make a baked potato in a microwave by hitting it for five minutes, flipping it, and doing a few more minutes. Use a larger potato. You can use sweet potatoes, too.

Don't put meat on top of cheese on top of meat.

Use block cheese instead of prebagged shredded, it's cheaper and it doesn't have sawdust on it, so you get more flavor with less.

A slow cooker can turn a cheap, large cut of meat into a delicious roast.

Your local grocery store has a time when they put steaks on sale. Find out when that is, and you can have a schedule based around the reward of an amazing, juicy steak. Instead of, you know, a nebulous weight goal where you constantly experience setbacks.

Carrots actually taste good. You can just eat them raw, without dip. If you stop drinking so much soda.

Onions are a dollar and last a long time.

Garlic is five dollars a pound or something but you only need thirty cents worth and it lasts.

Celery is like, 88 pennies for a great big bag. It's good plain, it's good with a little salt, it's good with peanut butter.

You can buy a box of mushrooms for about a dollar fifty. Set your oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit. Wash them, put some olive or canola oil in a bowl along with rosemary, chopped garlic, and onion. Put them on a cookie sheet with tinfoil underneath, caps down. Wait for about fifteen minutes. Bam. If you want more pizzaz, pull the stems off and replace them with a mix of mozzarella cheese and breadcrumbs and crushed red pepper.

The reason I said it was ok to add cheese and breadcrumbs is that if you eat away from home, everything has tons of extra calories added by chemists to make things taste better because of the cheap ingredients. If you make food at home, and it is not all bacon batter butter brownies, you will lose weight eating the same things. Qdoba burritos and Panera sandwiches have more calories per ounce than uranium.

If you want to eat healthy and conveniently for cheap, I am sorry to say, you can manage two of those things at a time. People in magazines have personal chefs, you're going to have to learn some easy recipes that you like.

Learn how to cook something like spaghetti bolognese, make a big batch, separate it into portions and then freeze. Not only is spaghetti bolognese really easy to make, the ingredients are cheap and it's a healthy meal. Chopped onion, clove of garlic (again, chopped), 75g of minced beef per person/portion, tin of tomatoes, dollop of tomato purée, couple of grated carrot, some sliced mushrooms and a bit of seasoning - that's your baseline recipe for a nice bolognese. From there you can experiment - add in a chopped stalk of celery to lend it a peppery taste, some classic herbs like basil or tarragon to give it a more textured flavour or maybe a pinch or two of powedered cayenne pepper to give it a bit of bite. Even swapping out the spaghetti for a different type of pasta can give the meal a different feel, if you want to mix it up a bit.

Oh, and I disagree with Athryn warning you away from fruit juice. You have to have something to live for, and I am guessing that you don't drink a lot of orange juice, so I will tell you. If you are like most Americans, you are probably so vitamin deficient that if you buy a carton of children's vitamin enriched orange juice and drink three glasses in one day, the next day you will feel like Moses.

Substituting ground chicken or turkey for beef also helps cut down calories. I changed over our tuesday tacos to a recipe using ground chicken, and they're still delicious!

Well, a 8 oz glass of Coca Cola has 27g of sugar. An 8 oz glass of orange juice: 24g of sugar. The problem with fruit juice (and every other sugary drink) is that there's no fiber to tell your brain that you're full, you can drink stuff all day and there's no satiety effect. That's why I say to eat an orange instead -- you get all the fiber, which your body needs just as much as the vitamins.

Remember, Coca Cola owns Minute Maid.

I know this can be seen as bordering on the "milk is evil" sort of nonsense, but it's something that has been growing in nutritionist circles as of late. Keep in mind that all things are fine in moderation, even soda and cookies.

I use ground turkey instead of ground beef for a lot of things. For manwiches, undetectable. For spaghetti sauce, turkey is better. For tacos, turkey is slightly less bold, so you are going to want it a little spicier. Taco kits are not a bad idea.

Also, with lettuce, if you buy some, get a head of lettuce. You will probably think, I will waste most of the head of lettuce, I only need a bit, and the shredded is less and it is convenient. Fuck that. Get the head of lettuce, slice a quarter of it out, chop it, then the next day, you can try a wedge salad. Don't pay someone three dollars to chop a small amount of lettuce for you. Don't pay four dollars in ransom to those bastards at Shred Express because you feel bad about wasting seventy cents worth of lettuce.

Tilapia is really good in tacos.

Our pediatrician specifically recommended that we not let our toddler drink fruit juice regularly, for exactly that reason: way too much sugar, not really much healthier than drinking cola. In addition to losing the fiber, fruit juice is also typically made from concentrate, and has more sugar per gram than fresh fruit. An orange is much better for you than an equal amount of orange juice.

I don't really drink fruit juices, with one exception: I freaking love apple cider (I hate apple juice, which is basically just apple cider with all the good parts strained out). It's only available for a short time in the fall, though, so it's more of a special treat than a regular thing.

dermot, we do the same thing with Bolognese sauce. Karen uses Alton Brown's recipe, and makes a huge batch every other Sunday or so. It takes all day to cook, but it makes a ton, and we just portion it out and freeze it. Viola! We then have dinner on the day we make it, plus 4-5 more easy dinners for weeknights.

Another snack item I forgot to mention: pickles. Pickles have so few calories, they are barely food. An entire big jar of dill pickles has, like, 25 calories. They have a lot of salt, so obviously they are not for anyone trying to limit sodium intake. You can make your own, too, pretty easily. We have a great recipe for refrigerator pickles with ginger and a bit of heat that I can post, if anyone wants it. Fair warning: they are super-addictive.

You could also get a juicer and make fresh juice instead of worrying how many grams of sugar someone added to the canned one.

This is all really excellent and a lot of it is stuff I had never thought of before. I figured healthy/easy/cheap was a pipe dream, but I'm sure I can find a good middle ground.

I've always been pretty good with portion control and it's probably the only reason I'm not obese, it's just that a lot of the portions I eat are of bad things. Even though I still buy too much damn candy, I at least make it last quite a while instead of gobbling it all up in one sitting. I just need to cut it out, or at least buy it far less frequently. The former is probably the best option, but the cold turkey method has never worked for me so it'll probably just be a reward type deal for now.

But my biggest issue is cutting out the sodas and energy drinks, which I've already been working on, but even after having cut down on them I'm still drinking far too much. However, for the longest time I had thought SmartWater was nothing but a gimmick designed to sell expensive water (and that probably is what it is), but damn if it isn't great. If I can drink only water and be satisfied, I think that's worth something. Either way it's still cheaper than the stupid Monsters and Rockstars and about 100% less poisonous.

Rice and beans are you best friend. Get a few different types of each, whip up a couple batches on the weekend, and have a solid base starch for any snack or meal you want that week.

Lately I've been crushing Jasmine rice with rooster sauce and a bit of sea salt. YE GODS

That sugar isn't added to juice, it's how sugary fruit juice is.

I have a feeling that the one thing I'm going to get out of this thread is an addiction to pickles.

Wait until you combine them with peanut butter!

IIRC, store-bought fruit juice does have more sugar than fresh-squeezed, because even when it says "no added sugar," it's still made from concentrate, which also has a greater concentration of sugar. Simply eating whole fruit is still healthier, though, since you get the pulp and skin and are probably just eating one fruit's worth of sugar, rather than the three or so that it takes to make even a small glass of juice.

SOMEONE ELSE UNDERSTANDS!

Uh, what?

Yes, food eaten outside of the home often can have higher calorie counts than food eaten at home. But the compounds "added by chemists" (because all those durn chemists messing with our natural foods in kitchens!) don't contribute significantly to the calorie count of the dish. MSG, disodium inosinate, and other chemical compounds (because all chemicals are awful, right?) don't need to be used in abundance and can be expensive to do so. Our body doesn't rely on them as our primary source of energy, either.

I'd be far more concerned about the amount of fat and sugar in your restaurant meals, all of which significantly improve both the taste of your food and your calorie intake. Not to mention portion sizes -- some restaurants serve meals large enough for two people to share, and most dishes don't meet nutritional guidelines to begin with.

Okay! You will need:

3 tablespoons of honey
3 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of olive oil
two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs

Pour together the first three ingredients in a small microwave-safe bowl. Heat it for about thirty seconds, then mix; the honey mixes more easily when it's hot. (Note that all three of those measures are approximate; you can easily adjust to taste, or available quantities.)

Put the chicken thighs in a casserole dish; Pyrex is great if you have it. Pry open each chicken thigh, pour a little spoonful of the sauce on the inside, then fold it back into its lump. Pour a spoonful over the top of each thigh. Then pour whatever's left of the sauce into the dish.

Cook uncovered for about 50-60 minutes at 315F; you can raise as far as 350 F to cook it faster, but I just use a meat thermometer either way. You can also swap out any other part of the chicken, but I like the boneless thighs; they've got that handy sort of internal pocket to get the sauce in, and they're damn cheap.

Serve over baby spinach or rice; use the leftover sauce as a sauce for whatever you're putting them on. High protein, not very high calorie, and damn tasty. I usually save a little container of the leftover sauce in the fridge, and then reheat it to pour over baby spinach and grape tomatoes for a quickie salad. You can also cut this whole recipe in half easily for use in one of those smaller casserole dishes, or even a pie tin a pinch. I find the chicken reheats pretty well for a few days, too.

...I would go on to give everyone my awesome super-easy meat pie recipe, but that's got a top and a bottom pie crust. Reasonably cheap, but definitely not low-calorie.

Gracias. I may give that a try tomorrow evening.

Speaking of healthy eating, I have been dubious about the whole Kale chips thing, but I'm going to buy a head of kale today and make some. (They're supposed to taste like potato chips.)

White chicken chili in a crock pot, this is the easiest thing ever.

Soak 1/2 bag of white beans over night.
Place one or two chickens breasts (2 if you want your chili chickenier or if they are small, or... I just take them out of the freezer and throw them into the pot whole and frozen)
Add one 28 oz? Can of tomatillos (Goya makes them)
About 1/2 to 1 tsp of cumin
About the same of oregano
Onion and a few cloves of chopped garlic (or the powdered stuff, it is going into the crock pot all day)
Chili peppers to your liking (I usually add cayanne, chipotle, smoked paprika - whatever I have around)
Black pepper to taste
Add soaked beans plus around 4 cups of water to th e pot, use enough water to just cover the beans.
Cook all day on low.
Before serving, shread the chicken with a fork and add salt to taste (I usually don't salt bean containing crockpot dishes until the end of cooking.)

So yummy. I usually put everything except the beans in the crockpot the night before, leave the crock in the fridge until morning and then add the soaked beans and water

I'll add that like many slow cooker meals, the white chili is even better reheated the next day. So it's good even if you are just cooking for one--just portion out the extra into containers and refrigerate, and you get a couple of extra easy meals out of the bargain.

If you do, let me know how it goes! It's my go-to meal for cheap-and-simple. (Also, one of the meals I can make where I can convince vegetable-suspicious sorts to eat something with some damn vitamins in it, when it goes over spinach.)

They taste like potato chips about as much as yogurt tastes like sour cream. But it's tasty in its own right.

Then you throw it in a pot and make stock.

Or just do your own chicken and then make stock.

http://ruhlman.com/2010/01/america-too-stupid-to-cook/
http://ruhlman.com/2011/04/easy-chicken-stock-recipe/

If you have the freezer space, Costco is a great place to buy chicken breasts and pork tenderloins - you get 2-4 times more per package at about 60% of the per-unit cost. Pork is my protein of choice because it's lower in fat than beef, but almost as impossible to mess up. Plus, any easy sauce you can throw together will taste awesome on it (my favorites are apple cider pan sauce and spicy blueberry sauce).

Onions are pretty much the staple of my diet. They go with everything, are cheaper than dirt, and have a shelf life of years if properly stored. When put on a low heat in a pan with a bit of oil they get soft and delicious and can either be eaten as they are or added to other dishes for flavour and/or texture.

Soup is is also your friend. I like to make tomato and onion soup with one l of stock, one can of tomatoes, one onion, and whatever I happen to have leftovers of.

Soup has also been shown (there was a study and then the TV told me about it) to be more filling than the equivalent volume of unblended food and water!

what great suggestions!

About candy: when I'm being good and limiting my sugary snacks, fruit tastes amazing. When I'm being naughty and snacking on sugary stuff, fruit tastes bland. Candy, sodas, etc. spoil my tastebuds for natural sweets, which (if not spoiled) are really good.

I do like dried apricots a LOT as a candy/snack substitute. They are very sweet/tangy, chewy, and satisfying if you eat them in little bites, 6 halves last a long time and give a lot of satisfaction for about 50 calories. I'm not sure they count as cheap, but with portion control they last a long time. Buy organics if sulfer is an issue for you; the ones with sulfer dioxide (sulfite) have a TON of it.