When you spend a high percentage of your food dollars on packaged, processed and prepared foods, you pay greatly in many ways.  The quality of these aforementioned foods is far lower than anything you might prepare at home from fresh ingredients.  Even the take-out food you pick up on the way home from work will generally consist of the lowest quality ingredients in order to provide a profit margin for the purveyor.  Cooking fresh, unprocessed foods at home will always yield the best value for your food dollar.  You pay less for packaging, for marketing and advertisement, and depending on where you procure your ingredients (farmers markets and co-ops verses supermarkets), perhaps even less for the expense of bringing all the food to market.  At the same time, you have a better idea of what quality food is going into your preparation, giving you far more control over its nutrient value.

Buying food in bulk is not always cheaper.   More often than not, we don’t use all the food we buy resulting in a high percentage of waste.  One way to know you’re making better use of your food dollars is to notice the amount of garbage you discard each week – between packaging and food waste, garbage cans can fill rather quickly.  Switching to home-cooked meals from fresh foods will lead to less waste.  Buy only what you will use over the course of a few days.  Beyond that, fresh food loses nutrients and taste!  Procuring fresh food for each day’s preparation is optimal but not always doable for busy families.  When commuting home from New York City, I will often stop at the market in Grand Central Terminal to pick up ingredients for our evening meal.  Look for your own opportunities to buy fresh food daily.

Pastured, organic meat and chicken, wild salmon, and other high cost ingredients don’t have to make up the lion’s share of your food choices.  Offering these foods less frequently and filling in with more vegetables, legumes and grains will help cut the weekly food bill.  Meat and fish can also be used in many inventive ways so that they constitute a far lower percentage of your total food intake.  These are the tricks our grandmothers used to stretch food in large families during hard times.  This past weekend we entertained a group of special friends with loin lamb chops on the menu.  This is an expensive food item, for sure, but we don’t do this kind of entertaining very often!  All of the leftover lamb is now in a pot with onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, peas, and green beans simmering into a savory stew.  Nothing was wasted.  And all of the stew ingredients are fresh and organic.  If I want to stretch this meal even further, I can serve the stew over noodles.  Using the best ingredients and planning ahead so that there is little to no waste will yield amazing results.

Cooking at home does not have to be a horrible chore.  Keep it simple.  You don’t have to cook a gourmet meal 20 times each week.  Leave the fancy preparations for restaurants and treat yourself occasionally to a meal out that you would never attempt to make at home.  With a little planning, you can prepare some things on a weekend or other less hectic time to freeze ahead or use within the week, you can prepare a meal once in enough quantity to use a second time, and you can turn simple ingredients into a delicious meal on a moment’s notice.

Stop wasting money on snack foods and desserts.  Encourage your family to eat fruit, nuts, cheese, whole grain breads, raw vegetables, nut butters and leftovers when a snack attack hits. Fruit, nuts, cheese, an/or a cup of tea are alternative ideas for dessert.  Buy a nice dessert from a good bakery or prepare a dessert at home once or twice each week for a special treat but don’t think that a sweet dessert is necessary on a daily basis.  When you do buy or prepare a sweet dessert, buy or make only enough for one sitting and don’t keep sweets hanging around the house.

Another way to cut your food budget is with beverages.  Invest once in a good water filter and use filtered water as your primary beverage.  Bottled sodas and beverages, including water, are expensive.  Make your own beverages with plain water or seltzer and a splash of fruit juice, a squeeze of lemon or lime, a wedge of fresh orange, even crushed fresh fruit – raspberries are great!  Or make an infinite variety of iced teas by steeping 8 tea bags of your choice in two quarts of water.

Food prices have gone wild in the last few months.  Make healthy foods your priority and skimp on the things that add little in the way of nutrition.  Prepare hearty soups and stews as we head into the colder seasons – both are great ways to stretch your food dollar and provide satisfying, healthy meals.