How to eat on a budget?

It's a perfect storm, rising costs, poor harvest and disrupted supply chain still from COVID-19 means that the cost of food is increasing rapidly.

With wages not keeping pace and a recession on the horizon, doing a grocery shop on a budget is becoming more difficult.

Eating healthily is a challenge at the best of times - in the current environment having a healthy, cheap diet has become much more difficult.

The temptation is buying cheap ready meals or ordering a cheap takeaway instead of cooking.

But eating healthily doesn't mean sacrificing taste or your enjoyment of food and cooking. 

You can get more for your food budgeting if you follow our 5 simple tips for eating healthily on a budget.

1. Meal Prep

One of the most common ways of healthy diets ending is that people find them time consuming and onerous. It doesn't have to be this way. 

Planning meals in advance or weekly meal preparation will make your life easier when it comes to eating. There are loads on online meal prep guides and recipes available for free to help with inspiration.

All you have to do is research plan and prep in advance. This will take the hassle out of cooking at the end of a long day and stop you reaching for deliveroo

2. Make a Shopping List

Making a shopping list before you do your grocery shop prevents impulse buys and waste. Supermarkets rely on these impulse purchases to make you spend more in store but, with a regimented shopping list, it prevents you spending more than your grocery budget.

Making a shopping list is easy. Use your meal plan preparation to plot out exactly what you want to buy for the week ahead, check your cupboards for ingredients and reconcile the ingredients that you require. 

Then keep disciplined. Don't shop whilst you are hungry. Shopping whilst hungry readily leads to impulse purchases and buying products that you don't want or need. 

3. Use your leftover ingredients

We've all got ingredients in cupboard that have been sat there forever. Well use them. Recipe generator apps allow you to input all your spare ingredients and it will generate step by step recipes for you to try. Supercook is one the most popular recipe generator apps and they also have a website with the same functionality.

This will help you reduce food waste at home and allow you to make the most of your food shop.

4. Shop for discounted food and food offers

There are always plenty of great food deals available but knowing where to find them is the key. Your local supermarket will have an almost regimented time for marking down food with the likes of Tesco reducing prices at 9pm most weeknights. There are also some great offers available online. Liquidation.store has online food deals dropping frequently and even cheap nespresso pods available. These sell out almost immediately. Making sure that you're subscribed to newsletters and follow on social media channels will ensure that you are the first to take advantage of the latest deals.

5. Grow your own

Growing your own fruit and veg at home isn't as difficult as it may seem. Some of the most exotic fruits that you find in the supermarket can be grown from home. Buying fruit and veg seeds is very cost effective. Planting in the Spring and harvest in late Summer/Autumn not only will provide you with an abundance of free fruit and vegetables but growing and tending to plants has been shown to be stress relieving.

In summary, eating on a budget isn't as difficult as it may seem. Yes, it takes some organisation and planning but, once this has been done, the rest is straight forward.

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