Healthy Eating on a Budget

Healthy eating and fitness doesn’t have to be costing you an arm and a leg, yes, healthy food in general is more expensive than your super noodles and soups. However, we are going to help you with that by:

Get your healthy big shop for cheap
Have plenty of food so that you’ll never be left hungry after a meal
Have plenty of feel-good recipes that are cheap and easy to cook.

Let’s start with first things first – How can I do a big shop for under £30?

Well, our first port of call is the supermarkets themselves. If you’re looking to save money then shopping at Waitrose isn’t smart. What you want is a nice supermarket called ALDI (or failing that LIDL).

Here, let’s compare prices for a sec…

Let’s make a basic Pasta dish:

Waitrose, you’re up first pal…

500g Penne £0.75

500g sauce £1.50

600g chicken breast £4.50

500g Quorn mince £2.60

Total: £4.85-6.75 this works out to roughly £1.60-2.25 per meal.

Okay ALDI…

500g Penne £0.29

500g sauce £0.55

650g chicken breast £3.35

500g Quorn mince £2.59

Total: £3.43-4.19 which is roughly £1.15-1.40 per meal.

Savings with ALDI: 45-85p PER MEAL, this might not sound like much, but let’s put it another way – How would you like to throw a 50p coin in the bin EVERY TIME you ate a meal?

“But wait!” I hear you ask.

What about the QUALITY of the food I’m eating?

Overall, ALDI is very good when it comes to everything apart from chicken in my opinion – If you’re on a really tight budget and can’t afford chicken from other providers such as the local butchers, then ALDI is fine, it won’t kill you…if ALDI meat was bad we’d know about it already.

So, what’s wrong with the chicken? (again, in my opinion) I’ve found that quite a few of my chicken purchases there (especially whole chicken breast fillets) have something called “woody breast” – this is when the muscle in the chicken can get an abnormally crunchy texture, it is thought to happen when a chicken grows too fast. This is in no way harmful to consume, however I really can’t stomach the texture.

I’ve found a decent compromise that works for me, I sacrifice chicken and only cook it when I get it from a butcher or more upmarket shop.

The compromise is…Quorn!

As you can see from the above price comparison 500g of Quorn mince is roughly 50p cheaper when you factor in the extra 150g of chicken you get.

Let’s compare nutritional values considering this is ~kinda~ a fitness site.

So, Per 100g of Chicken breast (woody or not):

Calories: 165

Carbs: 0g

Fats: 3.6g (1.0g saturated)

Protein: 31g

Sodium: 74mg

Per 100g of Quorn mince:

Calories: 92

Carbs: 2.3g (0.1g sugar)

Fats: 1.7g (0.5 saturated)

Protein: 13g

Sodium: 140mg

You like the taste of Quorn, you don’t mind having chicken as a luxury, you don’t mind having Quorn often…the fitness elephant in the room – PROTEIN!!

Yes, Chicken works out at £1.66 per 100g of pure protein and Quorn works out at a whopping £3.98 per 100g of pure protein.

There’s 2, maybe 3 solutions to this problem:

Just get chicken from ALDI – it’s fine
Pay more for better chicken to avoid the woody breast
Brooklea protein yoghurts
Get over it.

Brooklea protein yoghurts?

What I like to do is to buy these from ALDI with the savings I get from getting Quorn instead of chicken.

These yoghurts are 75p per 200g pot and contain 25g of protein.

It adds variety to my day and they’re an easy source of protein.

What’s my beef with chicken?

It goes off quite quickly, freezing it is a bit of a faff.
Salmonella
Slime
Have to wash everything it touches
Harder to cook than Quorn – longer, more ingredients, easier to under/overcook.

I don’t mind chicken as a protein source at all (I love KFC) but, for someone with not much time and/or money it’s not the most efficient “meat” you can cook with.

If you’re making a Quorn Bolognese, you can use 1 pan and within 15 mins you’ve got a tasty, healthy, cheap, quick meal with 1 pan to clean.

So, where are these wonderful recipes?

Nosh for students is a Classic book on the one-pot recipe, check it out

What about that really trendy meal prep stuff?

There are 2 ways to do the meal prep method:

The cheaper and more time consuming way
The more expensive and time saving way.

as usual, convenience is expensive. but what price do you put on your time.

“Lost time is never found again” – Benjamin franklin

Although I am not rolling in money, I highly value spare time and if I can afford to pay for convenience to save time and energy then I will.

Method 1) – The cheaper method is to do batch cooking yourself. For recipes and practical cooking tips then I would recommend the “Nosh for Students” book series, they also have an app you can download.

Method 2) – The time saving/spoon saving way. At the moment i am using a food delivery service called “Prepped Pots” it is by a company called “MuscleFood”, they do a good variety of high protein meals. They also offer a student discount of around 10% off, without the student discount it costs me about £51.78 per week including delivery for 14 meal tubs, 1 pizza and 12 protein bars. This leaves only breakfast and snacks to buy from the supermarket.

on a budget, you could probably get away with this for £60 per week, I probably spend closer to £75.

I should add, you don’t have to buy 14 pots per week a pizza and protein bars. If you just got your dinner sorted with 7 pots per week, I believe it is around £23 per week including delivery!

At the time of writing their un-discounted prices are:

7 pots – £22.93

10 pots – £29.90

14 pots – £35.86

20 pots – £49.80

If you need more than 20 per week, I’m sure they would offer you a plan to accommodate (no, I am not sponsored).

Method 1 can cost you as little as £25 per week. if you can afford Method 2 you save:

Time – Commuting to shop, Shopping, Making meal plans, Prep time, Cooking time, Wash-up time.
Effort – Prepping food, Cooking food, Washing up, Using ingredients before they spoil,
Waste – I find that it has reduced my food waste significantly, as there is no spare unused ingredients. One caveat is that it HAS increased my plastic use, but the pots are recyclable and are (I believe) Polypropylene, which is one of the plastics which is least likely to leach into food under exposure to heat. Plastics stamped with a 5 inside a triangle with PP underneath are what to look for.
Finances (oddly) – Doing Method 2 has actually saved me money long-term because I am more likely to adhere to the plan and not crave takeaway food as much.