Okay, everyone, lift your hands up if you think eating healthy is expensive? Just look at those bio protein bars that cost an arm or a leg or take a cleansing smoothie that’s basically a farewell to your weekly rent. With takeaway meals priced as low as $1, no wonder we think of legumes and stuff as somewhat of a modern world’s luxury.
But one pro chef who goes by the Reddit handle u/Aichliss has done everyone a public service and listed all the ways to hack the grocery store. Point by point, the chef listed game-changing things we should all know before and while shopping in order to eat cheap, healthy and well. As you suspect, there's no ready-made frozen chicken curry in there.
So get your notebooks, everyone, we are about to do groceries, but the smart way. Like proper adults.
Image credits: aichliss
This post may include affiliate links.
Frozen fruit and veg is great, mostly. Maybe dodge the chopped carrots and corn a lot of us ate growing up or find in bad takeout Chinese food, but hey - grab that bag of frozen berries or peas and throw ‘em in anything that warrants it. Technology for frozen produce has improved dramatically in the last few decades, and we should capitalize on that.
Couldn't agree more with this. There's absolutely nothing wrong with frozen fruit and veg. In fact a lot of the time the frozen varieties in supermarkets have a much higher nutritional value than the fresh stuff (as the "fresh" stuff is usually anything but), last longer and are much cheaper.
I say this because in modern western culture eating meat every day is seen as normal. This is an oddity when we examine all of human history, and this notion should be abandoned if we’re trying to live more affordably. Meat is grossly overrepresented in most diets, and you should always ask if you could cut your portion of meat down in exchange for more vegetables and grains.
I've never understood some peoples obsession with having meat for every meal. I'm not a vegetarian but my diet is "meat light" in that I'll have it a few times a week. I think it's a throw back to past generations who had to make do without it so meat became sort of a luxury item (especially in the post war years) and that ingrained belief has been passed down through each generation.
Not because they’re bad for you - just because of their jacked prices. Not to mention oftentimes the industries surrounding them are ethical nightmares. Don’t get me started on avocado cartels and the impact of quinoa farming on low-income South American communities. In reality, most grains and cereals have a lot of nutrients and minerals, and they’re often overlooked. Learn the nutrition facts, and make decisions accordingly. Google and online databases are your friends, here.
There's no such thing as a "superfood." It's all a bunch of hype designed to get you to spend your money.
Buy these dried as often as possible. Keep a stock of beans, lentils, and dried chickpeas around if you can. They’re cheap, almost always available, and virtually imperishable. As such, assuming you don’t throw them out and keep them properly stored, buying these is a 100% return on your investment.
Legumes are one of the most versatile options in your kitchen. As long as you soak them and put them in the fridge before you go to bed they’ll be available the next day to cook quickly. These are the best thing to have if you’re looking to stretch a meal because of their nutrient density and the fact that they’re just damn delicious on their own.
Look into middle-eastern and African cuisine for creative ways to use these ingredients. Some really common examples are lentil curry, hummus, falafels, and putting chickpeas in a shakshuka. This isn’t a recipe post, so look up how to make them yourself - some grandma has a better (and probably even cheaper) recipe than I do.
I know it’s cheap. I KNOW you like how easy it is. I don’t give one flying f**k. It’s awful for you, it isn’t cheaper than a bowl of rice with soy sauce, a fried egg, and some frozen peas, and it’ll kill you slowly. Just don’t, and ignore anyone’s advice about how it got them through college. Hell, if anyone’s advice involves doing what they did in college, take it with a grain of salt. There’s good advice sometimes, and a LOT of bad.
Good fresh and better canned. Use fresh tomatoes raw for whatever you want and use canned tomatoes for sauces. Buy canned tomatoes with as little added salt and sugar as possible.
I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. There’s always a bin of some forgotten veggie no-one eats for some reason. In the west, at least, it seems to often be rutabagas/turnips. I’ve also seen apples in the fall, corn, and cabbages fall into this category. This is because of a good harvest, or because of a lack of consumer interest - any time this happens, capitalize on it. Everything is delicious if you cook it properly. Buy seasonally, and learn how to use the things you buy. You’ll eat like a king and pay like a pauper.
I discovered turnips last year and wondered why I never knew them before. Delicious!
BARLEY, also, is amazing, but for other reasons. It’s high in protein and iron, and can help dramatically improve your nutrient intake for very little cost. In soups, roasted in tea (thanks Korea), and used in tandem with rice, it can go a very, very long way in making your diet a more sustainable one in times of austerity and plenty, alike.
A chicken isn’t just 8 portions of meat - it’s also bones and carcass for a stock or soup, fat to be rendered out and used as a cooking oil (thanks, jewish folks!), and skin to be cooked down into delicious little chips. This same list can be used for pork, beef, and any other mammal you eat.
All of this information is fundamentally more useful if you know how to cook. Not knowing how to cook is a luxury afforded to those with the means to afford living in ignorance of this most basic human skill. You are living outside your means if you live in a well-off country, don’t make a least $60k a year, and can’t cook.
Buy them fresh and store them in dry, enclosed spaces, and buy tomatoes canned and without salt added. Use onions in almost everything, they’re delicious, cheap, and nutritious.
I know Starbucks is delicious. Guess what? You can find a recipe for every drink they make online, and then make it better. Some restaurants literally survive because they can sell coffee at a nearly 2000% markup. Truck stop diners and high-end coffee shops do this. I recommend making cold brew the night before, since you literally just have to strain it in the morning rather than brewing a pot.
If you want a drink, I recommend doing it less often and drinking the good stuff. If you like the cheap stuff that’s fine, “good stuff” is all relative anyway. Just drink less and focus on quality over quantity, whatever your preferences are.
Generally when you buy produce you should go, in order, to the discount rack, then the sales, and then everything else. Someone out there has a recipe for literally everything, and some of them are even good. A pepper with a blemish or tiny spot of mold is still fine, assuming you cut away the blemish or tiny spot of mold.
Unless you really hate the vegetable or fruit in question, in which case, don't force yourself to eat it b/c it's cheap. You won't like it any better. (Kohlrabi, looking at *you*.)
If you’re gonna buy it I recommend buying less of it less often, and buying the good stuff when you do. Kraft block cheese only costs as little as it does because it’s the by-product of the real money-maker: whey protein production. If you’re gonna buy cheese, please support a real cheesemaker. The cheese lover in you will be happier for it.
Cheese is a luxury? I am sorry, but you are what you eat, and at this stage I am pretty sure I am 40% cheese. And as a French person, I assure you it is real, good cheese.
Yes but cheese in France and cheese most people in the US eat are two very different things...
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I'm a Finnish person, living in Finland, and cheese is not a fricking luxury item for me, it's a big chunk of my diet. We have pretty good cheese selections in all grocery stores, and I will not limit the amount of cheese I consume. This is clearly some ignorant American dude being all snobby. For like 2 weeks my dinners were mostly cheeses, fruits and veggies, maybe a little bit of meats, because I impulsively bought A LOT of cheese, and I will do it again. And again. Aaaaand again. Cheese is love. Cheese is life. ALL HAIL CHEESE!
On his deathbed, my father told me "Buy the good cheese". He was referring to Parmigiano Reggiano. For a time he bought the imitation they make in Argentina and other places. On his deathbed he regretted it. I only buy Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano. Great for quick snacks as well and the crust is divine. Best advice he ever gave me.
Sorry, but I had to laugh. That is some deathbed scene. Very wholesome.
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Cheese is a preservation method for milk. It was invented to store dairy at a time fridges were inexistent. It is not a luxury, it is a very smart and cheap source of food you can keep for a long time ("Cheap" depend on your country, but you can find local farm for that everywhere)
Except if you live in The Netherlands, where cheese is a standard. You all have pancakes for breakfast, we have cheese sandwiches (no, not the disgusting orange plastic stuff that is called cheese in certain countries). You have burgers for lunch, we do cheese sandwiches. You have steak for dinner, we have stwes, pasta dishes etc with grated cheese added for dinner (oh and we eat pancakes for dinner, guess what a lot of people add to them... lol)
I LOVE Wensleydale, with walnuts or pecans :-)
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For me, Dutch, cheese is a necessity. But that is a complete other kind of cheese than what is eaten in the US....
For me cheese IS essential. I could imagine going vegetarian and never eat meat again (and I love meat) but I won't survive without cheese. And yes, I buy the expensive stuff. That cheap stuff can't be called cheese anyway.
I am a vegetarian. I do eat dairy. B/c I'm not vegan. And cheese is why. A pinch of good cheese a day keeps the grumpy mood away.
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only Americans eat that Kraft rubbish, a good Cheddar or Red Leicester is the only cheese i'll eat.
Tim Minchin wrote a 9 min rock opera dedicated to cheese, I feel the same way, I dont eat meat or fish so in my mind I'm 'allowed' more cheese. I real cheese shop is a delight.
"A byproduct of whey protein"? I'm gonna need some more explanation. Seriously, What else is whey protein used for besides protein for muscle heads?
It's a common ingredient in industrially processed foods.
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Hey, I'm always happy with cheese. Save leftover hard cheeses and grate them for mac and cheese.
Who has leftover hard cheese? .... Not in this house! :-)
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Cheese isn't a luxury. It shouldn't be. This is 2022, not the 1600 to 1900s. We've moved beyond this being a luxury. It, like most things, isn't hard to make but is marked up to utterly stomach churning prices because.. why not? FDA isn't gonna do anything about it. They let them feed us freaking wood chips.
This is clearly a post for the USA, where the cheap cheese and the mediocre cheese is made of anything but cheese. When you live in a cheese country like switzerland, netherlands etc then dont listen to this
"Cheese is a luxury" - having lived in two countries in East Asia, I can vouch for this. You pay out the nose for anything but processed crap. Worth it, though.
NOW, A serious question is HOW much it too much cheese? Since this writer had NO IDEA how much cheese his readers eat, it is stupid to say 'less'.
SOME cheeses are luxuries. Processed 'cheese' is cheese flavoured muck. But I see cheese as a necessity. Only the very expensive imported cheese are a 'luxury', not to mention many are really ho-hum!. But less expensive cheeses made in your own country can be every bit as wonderful!
And treating it like one also means letting it reach room temperature before eating it. As a Frenchwoman, this is bred in us from very young and every household has a cheese tray with a cloche to protect it.
like meat....use it sparingly...& YES...buy the good stuff....so much flavor in a small package...
No. Cheese is a necessity. If I don't have at least a half dozen types of cheese at all times, I start to panic. Cheese is its own food group, imo. Faves: really sharp Cheddar, smoked Gouda, nutty Gruyère, creamy Havarti. And I always have Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino Romano.
RICE is amazing, as most know already, but seriously - it’s one of the most important crops in the world. It’s kept civilizations alive on its back for all of recorded history, and it’ll keep you alive, too. There is no better “fill me up” food I can think of. Wait for those huge sacks of rice to go on sale (it happens pretty frequently), then buy 2. They last forever. Ideally grab long-grain rice if you’re just looking for a side-dish or fried rice base, but in a pinch short grain’ll do; it’s just less forgiving and the starches don’t retrograde as fully so when you cool it it doesn’t keep as nicely.
KEEP IN MIND that rice is pure carbs. It’s a good base, but you need other stuff to go with it or else you’ll be deficient in nutrients and feel awful all the time. Trust me from experience - college me went through a raw-egg-on-rice phase, and it wasn’t pretty.
One word - bugs. I have on more than one occasion bought a 1 or 2 pound bag of rice at a regular chain grocery (not a discount outlet or dollar store) and opened it when I got home to find small "worms" inside. Followed by a trip to return it to the store. If you do buy rice in bulk, keep it in an airtight container.
Like, as an industry. Not many people know their fish, and fish processing companies know that and capitalize on it. I always tell people who like fish to buy fresh and whole, and to learn how to pick good fish. Buying cheap processed fish products is akin to asking to be ripped off, to harm the environment, and to accumulate toxins in your body, all at the same time. To not get completely F-ed over by what is maybe the worst food industry in the world you need to know your fish, know the company you’re buying from, and know who’s doing the fishing. Good luck, and please try not to contribute to the death of our water ecosystems. (A good trick is that if you can afford fish when you’re poor and you don’t live beside a large body of water, you almost certainly DON’T WANT IT.)
IF YOU EAT MEAT, buy the least processed cuts you can. Whole chickens, meat on the bone, and ground meats are your best friends. Go to butcher shops, if you can. Freezing meat is fine, but try to avoid buying pre-made frozen protein options. Get raw product and do the work yourself to save a LOT of cash and get better food out of it.
Chips, sugar cereals, premade salad dressings, sweet juice/pop, and processed foods like KD or tv dinners are not the way to go if you’re looking to get the most out of your dollar at the grocery store. They’re bad for you, they’re expensive relative to the cost of production, and they put a burden on your body that you’ll pay for down the line. Exceptions to this are staple sauces like a good soy sauce and fish sauce, grains and legumes, and canned veggies.
FLOUR is an essential staple, unless you’re celiac or gluten free - a topic on which I won’t speak because I’m confident anyone who has to deal with those issues knows more than I do. I recommend grabbing all-purpose flour due to its gluten content being a middle ground between low-gluten pastry flour and high-gluten bread flour. You can still use it to make bread, and it has a myriad other uses as a binder or thickener for sauces.
Modern day commercial refined wheat flour is a nutritional nightmare actually. It's worth looking into whole grain flours, other grains than wheat and generally less refined flours if you can get your hands on those. They cost more but it's not expensive.
Go for it, these things are nutrient bombs and they’re delicious. Buy them seasonally for the best value and if you have a day to do so, preserve them if you ever see a huge sale. I’m still enjoying lacto-fermented blueberries from last year’s insane blueberry harvest where I could buy a pint for a dollar.
I generally have a personal aversion to all canned veggies and fruits except tomatoes, but that’s just my privilege speaking. If you want to buy them or if fresh produce is hard to come by, avoid getting anything with added salt or sugar. Cross-reference the nutrient info on the can with info from a fresh counterpart to avoid buying filler garbage, and try to find somewhere to live with better food accessibility. Alternatively, save up and make a killing by opening a fruit and vegetable market to remove the need to read this very ling post any further. (This is a joke and I recognize the struggle of those in impoverished communities with awful food accessibility.)
Treat these as a starch option similar to grains or cereals. Buy them unprocessed, in a sack. Store them in dry, enclosed spaces.
All the rules for proteins apply. Fish bones and crustacean shells for stock, fat deposits on the occasional salmonid for whatever you want, and fish skin, if it’s your cup of tea, for a lovely snack. Hell, fish organs and salt make up the base for a fermented fish sauce, if you really want to go the extra mile. Rome survived off of fish sauce and bread for longer than our society has been around. The one big difference between fish and meat is that frozen fish tends to suck relative to fresh in a much bigger way - both in terms of quality and retained nutrients. Put frozen fish in soups or curries, to avoid nutrient drain from the water that inevitably will leak out of your fish.
What? no. Fish comes frozen off the trawler, so you buy it frozen and defrost slowly. Same goes for fish sticks. They're mostly made on the damn boat. Freshest you can get. Unless you can get locally fished fish, frozen is fine.
Not bad tips, but the tone this person is handing out their tips with sounds so aggressive and upset that i simply don't want to read any of this, neither change my eating habits. It sounds like this person would just blame everyone for the way they eat just because they can.
I also found it a bit preachy but it’s also coming from an expert. The average home chef looking after a family doesn’t always have this level of time and energy to devote to shopping, prepping, cooking, and after-prep. I can tear down a chicken or chop and cook up a bunch of veggies for dinner but I don’t have 4 hours after dinner to make the bones and scraps into stock.
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Most of these lists forget one vital thing - the power bills. It's great telling people to cook more, but if you're watching the electricity on your meter go down by the minute, that's not a lot of help.
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This started okay and then by a third of the way through it was repetitive, judge mental and had lost its point.
Some really good tips here. My personal ones are; use your freezer - if you've got fruit or veg that needs using up but you have no use for it right now then freeze it. Also if you have any leftovers (especially stews, soups, etc) put them in a container and freeze them, instant home cooked meal at a later date. Also spend some time in the international aisle in the supermarket. In the UK you can find things like rice, lentils, sauces, tinned coconut milk, etc, much cheaper than the other, more common brands but it's exactly the same thing and you often get more of it.
My biggest money saver is soup lol. Use left over bone, narrow, bits of meat left on the bones, the root ends of onion, the core from cabbage, the leafy tops from celery ....etc... to make stock. Use that stock to cook pretty much any veggies you have in the fridge that you don't think you'll have time to eat before they turn. Add potatoes if you want to "bulk it up" so it's more filling. It freezes wonderfully so you can store it quite a while. Great way to reduce waste and save money. Big bonus is that homemade soup so better than canned from the store!
I love making soup. When I was younger I couldn't understand how my mum made it out of what she had without a recipe. Now I have a foundation soup recipe as a starting point for ratios of ingredients but am able to work more instinctively about what flavours go together etc.
Load More Replies... The parents of a friend of mine has 35 acres of property. They allow a woman to grow a massive variety of fruits and veges. It's winter now, so....but her first veges and fruit start in May. It's 10 minutes up the road. Fresh picked while you're standing there except for the potatoes. A little more expensive than the grocery store but it's completely fresh nutritional. I can hardly wait for getting it all from her now. His mom also does fresh eggs. Laid yesterday or the day before at the latest. Actually cheaper than the store. Also fresh honey. Again, a little more expensive, but right from there. I got some last of the year carrots pulled while I was standing there. Wow! That's what a carrot really tasts like? Who knew?
Note as you say... MORE EXPENSIVE.. oh it is just a bit - so when I am just a bit short on my rent the landlord will understand that I needed raw honey
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One of the advice which i think is great is go local and small. For example, in India, we prefer to buy flours like wheat, etc. from a local flour mill or local business. It will be healthier. Though flour mills are diminishing, we have them. Get your flours milled from them. Even grains like rice or legumes, etc, get the local grocer. He or she will have better ones. Plus all of this is cost effective. In India, we keeps legumes so that we can make them more than once a week. That saves the veggies too. Plus, if made on a larger scale, it lasts for a day or two..
About half of the tips are about the same things over and over again. Also, not every has time to do all these things. However, what I do like and agree with is buying frozen veggies, buying meat whole or on the bone, and basic portion control. Some of the comments made in the post may conflict with what a doctor has told a patient. Please so not take this person's advice 100% to heart. Oh, and I worked in the food industry for a decade so my advise is just as valid as this article.
So I actually downloaded this app to comment because this has pissed me off that much! When you work 100 hours a weeks on minimum wage, and your just f*****g exhausted, but still have house work to do, washing and ironing and kids that don't want to eat anything that week other than nuggets but mum needs to scrap off every trace of bread crumbs.... I'm the friend that will come round and look after the kids for an hour so mum can have power nap, I'm the friend that will sit for an hour painstakingly picking every bit of whatever it is tonight that their 3 year old is refusing to eat dinner for... what I'm not, is a judgmental arsehole that thinks they have a magic potion as to how everyone should live! Seriously people, stop being arseholes
He keeps on telling poor people what they should do and how they should cook, in order to save money, even though he is clearly very privileged. When you are poor you don't have the time to make broth from bones, cook beans from dried, go to the supermarket everyday to get the cheapest fruit and veg, or even to cook an entire well-balanced meal everyday. So stop shaming people for choosing easy dinner options like instant ramen, maybe that's all that they have time/energy to make
We love our meat in America but I think our real problem is our love of carbs, with sugar of course being a carb. Lots of the recommendations here really tout the nutrition of carbs which we need to cut down on. Less potatoes, less white rice, less lentils. Meat isn’t bad. Processed meat is. I will admit that this is written by a chef and not a nutritionist. I am also not a nutritionist so feel free to challenge me.
You know this is a scam, right? You will be loosing a lot of money soon. Don't cry you were not warned
Not bad tips, but the tone this person is handing out their tips with sounds so aggressive and upset that i simply don't want to read any of this, neither change my eating habits. It sounds like this person would just blame everyone for the way they eat just because they can.
I also found it a bit preachy but it’s also coming from an expert. The average home chef looking after a family doesn’t always have this level of time and energy to devote to shopping, prepping, cooking, and after-prep. I can tear down a chicken or chop and cook up a bunch of veggies for dinner but I don’t have 4 hours after dinner to make the bones and scraps into stock.
Load More Replies... Most of these lists forget one vital thing - the power bills. It's great telling people to cook more, but if you're watching the electricity on your meter go down by the minute, that's not a lot of help.
Load More Replies... This started okay and then by a third of the way through it was repetitive, judge mental and had lost its point.
Some really good tips here. My personal ones are; use your freezer - if you've got fruit or veg that needs using up but you have no use for it right now then freeze it. Also if you have any leftovers (especially stews, soups, etc) put them in a container and freeze them, instant home cooked meal at a later date. Also spend some time in the international aisle in the supermarket. In the UK you can find things like rice, lentils, sauces, tinned coconut milk, etc, much cheaper than the other, more common brands but it's exactly the same thing and you often get more of it.
My biggest money saver is soup lol. Use left over bone, narrow, bits of meat left on the bones, the root ends of onion, the core from cabbage, the leafy tops from celery ....etc... to make stock. Use that stock to cook pretty much any veggies you have in the fridge that you don't think you'll have time to eat before they turn. Add potatoes if you want to "bulk it up" so it's more filling. It freezes wonderfully so you can store it quite a while. Great way to reduce waste and save money. Big bonus is that homemade soup so better than canned from the store!
I love making soup. When I was younger I couldn't understand how my mum made it out of what she had without a recipe. Now I have a foundation soup recipe as a starting point for ratios of ingredients but am able to work more instinctively about what flavours go together etc.
Load More Replies... The parents of a friend of mine has 35 acres of property. They allow a woman to grow a massive variety of fruits and veges. It's winter now, so....but her first veges and fruit start in May. It's 10 minutes up the road. Fresh picked while you're standing there except for the potatoes. A little more expensive than the grocery store but it's completely fresh nutritional. I can hardly wait for getting it all from her now. His mom also does fresh eggs. Laid yesterday or the day before at the latest. Actually cheaper than the store. Also fresh honey. Again, a little more expensive, but right from there. I got some last of the year carrots pulled while I was standing there. Wow! That's what a carrot really tasts like? Who knew?
Note as you say... MORE EXPENSIVE.. oh it is just a bit - so when I am just a bit short on my rent the landlord will understand that I needed raw honey
Load More Replies... One of the advice which i think is great is go local and small. For example, in India, we prefer to buy flours like wheat, etc. from a local flour mill or local business. It will be healthier. Though flour mills are diminishing, we have them. Get your flours milled from them. Even grains like rice or legumes, etc, get the local grocer. He or she will have better ones. Plus all of this is cost effective. In India, we keeps legumes so that we can make them more than once a week. That saves the veggies too. Plus, if made on a larger scale, it lasts for a day or two..
About half of the tips are about the same things over and over again. Also, not every has time to do all these things. However, what I do like and agree with is buying frozen veggies, buying meat whole or on the bone, and basic portion control. Some of the comments made in the post may conflict with what a doctor has told a patient. Please so not take this person's advice 100% to heart. Oh, and I worked in the food industry for a decade so my advise is just as valid as this article.
So I actually downloaded this app to comment because this has pissed me off that much! When you work 100 hours a weeks on minimum wage, and your just f*****g exhausted, but still have house work to do, washing and ironing and kids that don't want to eat anything that week other than nuggets but mum needs to scrap off every trace of bread crumbs.... I'm the friend that will come round and look after the kids for an hour so mum can have power nap, I'm the friend that will sit for an hour painstakingly picking every bit of whatever it is tonight that their 3 year old is refusing to eat dinner for... what I'm not, is a judgmental arsehole that thinks they have a magic potion as to how everyone should live! Seriously people, stop being arseholes
He keeps on telling poor people what they should do and how they should cook, in order to save money, even though he is clearly very privileged. When you are poor you don't have the time to make broth from bones, cook beans from dried, go to the supermarket everyday to get the cheapest fruit and veg, or even to cook an entire well-balanced meal everyday. So stop shaming people for choosing easy dinner options like instant ramen, maybe that's all that they have time/energy to make
We love our meat in America but I think our real problem is our love of carbs, with sugar of course being a carb. Lots of the recommendations here really tout the nutrition of carbs which we need to cut down on. Less potatoes, less white rice, less lentils. Meat isn’t bad. Processed meat is. I will admit that this is written by a chef and not a nutritionist. I am also not a nutritionist so feel free to challenge me.
You know this is a scam, right? You will be loosing a lot of money soon. Don't cry you were not warned
