Food Budgeting Tips

As seen on KMGH-TV 7

Nutrition recession: too many calories, too few nutrients
• Prices are way down on the stock market and way up at the grocery store.
• Just thinking about it could make you lose your appetite

Imagine high food prices could put the nation on a diet as people, strapped for cash, tighten their belts and eat less.
• Soaring food prices will have the opposite effect -- fatten up the nation.
• As price of one food goes up, people buy less of it, but buy other, cheaper food in its place, and cheaper foods tend to have more calories than those with a higher price tag
• Price of oranges goes up, don't buy as many oranges but may decide to buy cookies
• With money tight, finding the best deals on groceries may become more important to people than buying the groceries they like best, so they may start buying cheap foods they wouldn't otherwise buy.

It's no accident that high-calorie foods (chips, dips, cookies, candy) are generally cheaper than low-calorie foods (broccoli, asparagus, peaches, blueberries).
• Processed foods are cheaper to produce, ship and store
• Low-calorie foods are fresh -- fruits and vegetables, meat and fish -- that come pretty much as is from the orchard, farm, ranch or ocean. And they stay fresh for only a very short time
• Easily bruised and susceptible to rotting
• Quite simply fats and sweets cost less, whereas healthier diets cost more

Tips that won’t break the bank
• Shop the perimeter of the grocery store: outer aisles
• Balance nutrition budgets
• Americans generate roughly 30 million tons of food waste, about a quarter of the food we consume and prepare gets tossed into the garbage
• Supermarkets, restaurants and convenience stores alone throw out 27 million tons between them every year (representing $30 billion of wasted food).
• If 5% was recovered, it could provide the equivalent of a day's food for four million hungry people;

Produce-nutrient rich: way to give you more nutrients per bite
• Colorful, delicious
• Buy in season
• Use frozen, canned and dried produce
• Think the three “c’s” carrots, collards and cabbage
• Crunch, color and cost

Save on protein foods
• Fish and poultry are often flash-frozen to minimize freezer damage and retain freshness. With frozen foods, you can use only the amount you need, reseal the package, and return it to the freezer. If it's properly stored, there's no waste
• When you do buy meat, choose smaller portions of lean cuts.
• Inexpensive, vegetarian sources such as beans, eggs, tofu, and legumes
• Eggs are an excellent, inexpensive source of protein that can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
• You could also try using a smaller portion of meat, fish, or poultry and extending the dish with whole grains, beans, eggs, and/or vegetables

Beverages
• Shocking statistic, 84% of teens spend money and drink on a daily basis, sports drinks
• Milk with nine essential nutrients, is the best bargain at $0.25 per glass


Overwhelmed, overweight and undernourished