How to Buy Organic Food Cheaply

Do you wish you could eat organic food more often, but feel like you can't afford it? Learn how to eat organic on a budget.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Paper and Pen
• Time

1. 

   Write a grocery list. Make a list of all the foods you eat most often, or that you plan on buying next time you go shopping. Mark the ones you would like to buy organic.

2. 

   Now, make a separate list for processed items. Processed items should be anything that is not in its simplest state. TV dinners, bread, crackers, and candy are all examples of processed foods. Cheese, milk, oils, fresh fruits and vegetables (and frozen, if they have no other ingredients), whole grains (steel cut oatmeal, quinoa, brown rice) are all examples of foods that are in a fairly natural state.

3. 

   Cut foods out from your processed list. Cut out foods that you can either live without, or that you can make from scratch. For instance, instead of buying prepackaged side dishes, think about if you could make your own from scratch.

4. 

   Rewrite your shopping list without the processed foods you cut out. Your money for organic food is going to come from the money you are going to save by cutting out the processed foods!

5. 

   Plan your meals for the week, or for two weeks, however often you go shopping.
   Plan meals that include a lot of basic ingredients. Some examples are: for breakfast, an omelet with organic veggies and cheese, alternated with days of steel cut oats and organic milk with organic berries. For lunch, you might make yourself beans and rice. A $30 rice cooker will cook up brown rice (less than $2.00 for a huge bag!) very quickly, and organic pinto beans (also cheap) with homemade (organic!) pico de gallo and cheddar cheese round out the meal.
   
   For dinner, you might make a salad with some chicken breast, walnuts, dried cranberries, gorgonzola cheese, and honey dijon dressing. All of these options are very filling and very healthy. You can eat fruit for a snack and make up bags of trail mix for on the go snacking. Whfoods.com (World's Healthiest Foods) is an amazing website full of great recipes that push you to try out new food combinations (in the resources at the bottom of this page).

6. 

   Take a trip to the grocery store. Buy whatever ingredients you plan to use for your menus. Do not bring home any extra junk that you might eat in place of all your organic fruits and veggies. Eating healthy and organic is not that expensive. It just looks expensive when a lot of the food goes to waste, or when you try to buy all organic food while still buying pricey frozen dinners and pre-packaged side dishes.

Tips & Warnings

• Beans, Rice, Oats, etc. are good cheap buys.
• Go out of your way to try new food combinations. If you like Mexican food, it is not a big leap to eat beans, rice, pico de gallo and cheese together for a meal. If you like Italian food, bake some chicken with your organic mushrooms, onions, garlic, tomatoes and oregano. You don't need the processed stuff.
• Don't Eat out!!!! Now that you have all this wonderful food at home, save your money and eat in. If you eat in, your food won't go to waste and you will save money that can go toward buying more organic food next shopping trip.

Resources

• The World's Healthiest Foods - Amazon.com AMAZING BOOK!!!

[sunnyglitter]

on 10/21/2009 These are great tips! Hopefully more people follow them and stop eating junk. 5*

[texasparky]

on 8/26/2009 Can you tell I liked it?.........5 stars

[texasparky]

on 8/26/2009 fantastic article. How to Buy Organic Food Cheaply spells out in clear terms that YES YOU CAN afford to eat well! Stop buying junk food, stop eating out, hit up your farmer's market or GROW IT YOURSELF. It's a pay-me-now vs. pay-me-later system anyway, and I choose to pay for good food now as opposed to expensive health care later!

[mrny]

on 8/6/2009 Very useful information on buying organic foods for cheap. Thanks!

[frozenmocha]

on 8/1/2009 Great ideas! 5*