Posted on 01/18/2014 11:57:04 AM PST by nickcarraway
On a tight food budget? Here are seven inexpensive and nutritious items you should consider adding to your grocery list.
Trying to live on a food budget of about $4 per day can be quite a challenge. People quickly discover this when they take the Food Stamp Challenge and try to learn what it's like to be poor for a week.
The challenge mirrors what someone can get through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the federal program that helps low-income people buy groceries. One in seven Americans receive the benefits, which were significantly reduced by Congress in November.
To qualify, a family of four can have an annual net income of up to $23,556, which puts them at the federal poverty level. They would then receive up to $632 a month in SNAP benefits, which equates to about $5.25 a day per person for food. The average SNAP recipient receives $4 per day, according to the Food Research and Action Center.
While getting this extra money can mean the difference between eating and going hungry, the limited funds can make it difficult to choose which food to buy. Getting the most nutrition for your money can be hard when you don't have a lot of money for groceries, but it's not impossible.
According to dieticians and nutritionists, some foods are better than others when you're trying to stretch a dollar. Here are seven that you should consider when funds are tight:
Brown rice. The vitamins, minerals and antioxidants are some of the benefits, but one of the biggest pluses may be that the high amount of fiber in brown rice helps slow digestion and fill you up for a long time.
"Fiber is one of the best [nutritional components] that helps with satiety, or the feeling of fullness," says Rachel Begun, a food and nutrition consultant in Boulder, Colo."They also help to spread the food dollar because they're a component of meals that can help you make a fulfilling dish."
Beans. Like many items at the grocery store, buying in bulk can save a lot of money. Dry beans can cost about $1 per pound and expand to three times their volume when cooked, turning three to four cups of dry beans into nine cups when cooked, says Carol Wasserman, a certified holistic health practitioner in Manhattan.
And beans, like rice, can be flavored with spices and herbs to make the main portion of a meal.
"We have to kind of shift our thinking from having the meat be the center of the plate," and be more creative with other dishes, such as rice and beans, says Julieanna Hever, a plant-based dietician in Los Angeles and host of a healthy living talk show on Veria Living.
Beans are also a very healthy choice. They are high in fiber and protein, low in fat and sodium and have minerals such as iron, potassium, magnesium, copper and zinc, along with vitamins such as folic acid, thiamin, niacin and B6.
Potatoes. These versatile vegetables can be added to casseroles and used in a variety of ways, and they're every bit as nutritious as colored vegetables, Begun says. They contain 45 percent of the recommended daily nutritional intake of vitamin C, 18 percent of fiber and 18 percent of potassium, a mineral that regulates blood pressure, she says. They've been found to have the lowest cost source of dietary potassium.
The average potato is virtually fat free, with a high water and fiber content to make it ideal for weight-loss at 200 calories for an average baked potato, according to information from GoIreland.com. Be careful how you cook them. Frying a potato raises fat content from 0 to 8 grams.
Green vegetables. Any leafy greens, such as broccoli, spinach and kale, have lots of nutrients per calorie and help protect against inflammation and disease, Hever says. Some lettuces can be bitter, she says, but can be offset in a salad with carrots, beets and other sweet vegetables.
"People aren't really used to it," she says of bitter greens such as kale. "It's kind of a taste bud transition that some people have to get used to."
Instead of buying an expensive dressing for any of these foods, Wasserman suggests mixing a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil with juice from half of a lemon or lime.
Frozen vegetables. Buying fresh vegetables in season is an inexpensive way to get them, but frozen vegetables are a good option too, Begun says. They're picked at the peak of their flavor and aren't nutritionally inferior to fresh ones. The downside of fresh vegetables is they might be picked before their height of ripeness and often travel many miles to a grocery store, she says. Peanut butter. This is another economic source of protein, rich in healthy fats, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Peanuts contain resveratrol, an antioxidant found in red wine, says Sharon Palmer, a Duarte, Calif.-based food and nutrition writer who covers plant-powered diets.
Protein bars. You may not want to make them the only part of your diet, but they obviously have protein in them and cost about $2 each. Andrew Ross and his wife, who live in Baltimore, eat a Quest protein bar from GNC every three hours from when the time they wake up until when they go to bed. They started this habit in April and he's lost 78 pounds so far. They also eat Power Pak pudding once a day, which contains 30 grams of protein per can and less than 200 calories. The protein bars have 20 grams of protein and less than 200 calories. Ross estimates that they spend less than $400 per month on food and drinks, saving money by buying in bulk during sales.
The best answer to getting the most nutritional foods for your buck may be to simply buy fresh food that's in season and not to fall for the theory that fast food is cheaper than what you can purchase at the grocery store. "People don't think out of the box," Wasserman says. Fast food may be quicker than preparing a meal at home, but it won't beat buying fresh fruit and vegetables in taste or cost, she says.
Thanks for posting this. I’m bookmarking it.
Pretty soon we’ll be like north Korea and the TV and radio will run with PSAs on how to prepare grass and tree bark soup.
They are free...
Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.
Many cities have large farmers markets that sell local produce, bulk items like beans, rice, cheese and other fresh food...
Yea, you will buy in larger quantities, but the price can as much as a third verses the supermarket...
We saved two to three hundred dollars a month making that trip...that was 20 years ago...
Oh' they often open up at 4:00 am to 10:00 am...so the restaurants can buy as fresh as possible...
And with rice, beans and hotsauce, an excellent Cajun meal.
On second thought, forget it.
Perhaps you can host a celebrity hunt-&-cook event?
Ted Nugent likes squirrel. Huckabee knows how to utilized a hot-air popcorn maker for squirrel.
Early editions of the "Joy of Cooking" have skinning and cleaning instructions.
OTOH, squirrel populations are cyclical, based on food. Big populations will put a dent in the growth of vegetation, meaning less food, and fewer tree rats the next few years, until the trees and bushes recover.
If you're really lucky, mass migrations of squirrels are not unheard of. Lucky, that is, if you are the origination, and the the destination.
Ross estimates that they spend less than $400 per month on food and drinks, saving money by buying in bulk during sales.
For 2 people? They think that’s cheap? If they only ate salads, frozen vegetables, potatatos, rice and beans as the article suggests it would be a heckuva lot cheaper than that.
Aren’t the commies in the EPA desirous of regulating what people can grow, food-wise, in backyard gardens?
Fortunately she taught me how to cook many things from scratch. A whole chicken for example can be simmered with some carrots, celery and an onion to make fantastic chicken soup and taking the meat off the bone you can make chicken sandwiches or my favorite chicken pie by using a tube of biscuits.
When they had food stamps back in the ‘70’s I was a bag boy at Big Star. The people who paid with stamps often bought the best cuts of meat and the most expensive prepared foods. When I told a woman she couldn’t buy canned dog food she shoved the cans aside, huffed off and returned with several steaks an told me “Well f*ck all of you he be eatin’ steak.”
I was recently in a Wal-Mart and the foreign couple in front each paid with their own EBT card. Not only did they buy expensive stuff but they were wearing leather coats, plenty of jewelry and had iPhones.
NY DAILY NEWS writers pretend that people live off SNAP even though these people can have other income: “To qualify, a family of four can have an annual net income of up to $23,556”... yet this fact seems to not penetrate their skulls
I'd never heard of that "theory." It flies in the face of all logic.
chicken.. biscuits... chicken n dumplings...
Short grain brown rice in a pan of water topped with a vegetable steamer filled with green beans or broccoli. Cook covered gently for about 40 minutes or until water is absorbed. To finished add Italian dressing and Parmesan cheese.
I lived on this for years and never got tired of it. I was very active back then. I tried to eat it recently and gained weight.
“Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?”
“I have about 10,000 squirrels in my neighborhood...”
My boy would love it. A killer with his pellet gun.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.