Talk to your friends about adopting a plant based eating plan and one of the first things they will tell you is, “That’s too expensive”.
It’s funny how people that have never tried this wonderfully natural approach to better health and weight loss are full of advice regarding it!
There has been a huge misconception that eating plant based is expensive and unfortunately that has negatively impacted the whole food plant based movement.
It is sad when you think about it, because many times people who want to get healthy feel that the financial aspect of eating healthy outweighs the health benefits.
This simply is not true.
At one time, locating and purchasing healthy, unprocessed, whole, plant-based foods was difficult. But now, every major city, and even small ones, are providing plenty of access to the vegetables, fruits and grains which can help you reach your target weight and become healthier. If you don’t believe this is true, consider the following:
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is in charge of policing the American farming industry. In 2015 they released information regarding exactly how much it would cost for one week of eating a 100% plant-based, whole food diet. The average food cost for a adult female ranged between $47 and $57. Men spent between $67 and $77.
This means for somewhere between $7 and $11 per day, you can achieve weight loss, better overall health, and healthy weight management by eating nothing but plant-based, whole foods.
Most adults in first world, modernized nations spend way more than that each day, whether they eat at a drive-through or fast-casual restaurant, or eat food from their refrigerator, freezer or pantry.
How Do You Make this Happen in Your Life?
- Make $20 of your weekly food budget (per person) fresh produce. This guarantees you are getting as much nutrients out of your food as you possibly can. Purchase organic whenever it is available. This could mean fresh kale, a head of broccoli and a head of cauliflower, a bag of organic apples or bananas and 1 bunch of organic celery. You will probably even have room to add some onions, sweet potatoes and an avocado or 2. Change these items up each week as needed so boredom doesn’t sit in.
- Spend another $10 to $15 on bulk items. This means stocking up on inexpensive, bulk quantities of grains, beans, nuts and seeds. Don’t forget that you can opt to go for large canned quantities here instead of dry goods. Just be careful, and make sure you are reading ingredients labels. This could lead to a weekly purchase of whole grain oats, raw almonds, beans of your choice and brown rice or whole grain quinoa,
- Allocate $4 to $8 on dairy alternatives. Grab 1 or 2 containers of nondairy milks. Almond milk is a great dairy milk alternative, and you may opt for some nondairy yogurt as well. Remember, read your food labels.
- How much money do you have left? Whatever it is, stock up on frozen vegetables and fruits. A pound of frozen fruit or organic frozen spinach can cost you around $3 per bag, and is extremely versatile in the kitchen.
Learn to Buy Whatever’s on Sale
When fruits and vegetables first come out of the ground, they are plentiful. That produces a wonderful situation. The market is flooded with plant-based foods that are in season. They get from the ground to your market quickly, meaning they are as close to their natural state as possible – the perfect definition for whole foods.
This also means that they have more of nature’s healthy nutrients, vitamins, enzymes and minerals than if they sat on the shelf for a long time before you purchased them. Since there are plenty of these “in season” foods available, prices usually drop.
When you buy whatever fruits, vegetables or grains are on sale, you give yourself more buying power, no matter what type of budget you are on.
Buy Locally
The next time you are staring at what you believe to be an overpriced whole, plant based food, think about this. That banana, strawberry or apple may have traveled 2,000 miles or more to make it to your favorite grocer. This means added shipping costs.
It also means time, and time is money. The longer a piece of food has to travel to get to you, the more pesticides, preservatives and other “life extenders” that it is subjected to.
All of those things mean additional costs. Buy locally whenever you can. Aside from supporting your local plant-based farmers and marketers, you can usually reduce the amount of money you are spending as well.
Grow What You Can
Before you start complaining that you have no space, that’s not a good excuse. You can grow a tasty and nutritious herb garden in a very small space. There are window gardens available for apartment dwellers, and if you have any amount of yard available to you, you minimize the negative impact that factory farming has on planet earth.
This means consuming the freshest foods possible, since you know everything that goes into the whole foods you grow. You also drastically minimize cost.
Eat Out Less Often
This is a no-brainer. If you eat out more than once a week, you are likely spending more than $100, $200 or more per month on meals away from home. This wastes tons of money you could funnel back into your plant based whole food budget.
When you dine out less, you additionally keep from eating less-than-healthy foods at a restaurant or diner.
Hit the Discount Stores
BJ’s, Sam’s and CostCo are 3 of the more popular “big box” discount stores. They sell some products in extremely large sizes, and this frequently includes vegetables, fruits and other plant-based whole foods. In most case, this is an especially good destination for bulk-sized quantities of brown rice, barley and oatmeal.
As long as you are reading your ingredients labels correctly, this can drastically reduce your per-serving cost for many foods.
