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.
Donna D’Arabia has a show on Food TV “$10 dinners” (or something like that). Her schtick is feeding 4 people for 10 bucks (so that’s 2.50 each well within this budget for a day).
I watched a bunch of these while I was babysitting for a week. 3 days in a row she used black beans - which I thought was a little much, but she had a good hint with them.
She buys the dried beans and cooks up a whole huge batch, then she freezes them in cooking portions. When she needs the she just pulls the out of the freezer.
One point to be made is cooking from scratch does take time.
A second point to be made is I’m not eating squirrel!
I often have simmering rage when someone with a fancy new hair do, painted nails and an iPhone is paying with EBT, with more red meat and convenience food than I buy, trying to stay in our budget.
I’ve made more than one comment when someone spends more on EBT than I pay, then whips out cash for cigarettes or beer.
If you can’t afford to buy food, it should be illegal for you to buy cigarettes. Nicotine testing to enforce it. But they won’t even tolerate drug testing of welfare recipients, much less nicotine testing.
$5.25 per person for a family of 4. so $21 per day to eat. I could feed myself and 3 friends wonderfully on that ‘free’ money. I buy all these foods myself anyway and live cheap but have great meals when I have the time to prepare.
20lb sack of spuds, 20lb bag of rice, 20lb bag of flour, 20lb bag of sugar, a bunch of bulk spices from the discount food store, fresh vegetables, a gallon of vinegar, a gallon of oil. I have a $5 thrift store breadmaker I use almost daily. I eat lots of fish that is either free or bought from the boats (when in hawaii) or sold from coolers (in idaho).
I suggest the people that will complain about how little SNAP and food stamps are go visit a Mexican family for dinner. OH MY GOODNESS. Fantastic food with innexpensive ingredients. One word for cheap food of the gods, “TAMALE.”
Lysie, I grew up in a particular section of the inner city of Chicago, called Little Italy.. We lived in tenement houses, three stories tall, three apartments deep, called cold water flats..
Needless to say we didn’t have any AC or Hot water for that matter, but we did have ventilation slats in our doors, to get some kind of circulation in the summer.. But I digress..
Well, every night if you walked the halls, you could smell what every apartment was cooking, and baking, which could drive you to distraction.. These were all authentic Italians, mostly immigrants from all corners of Italy, each having there own particular specialties..
It was a cornucopia of scents and aromas that made you hungry, again, even if you had just eaten.. Lastly, we kids, hundreds of us greasers, all went to the show Saturday afternoon, and all of us brought our own homemade sandwiches, stuffed with imported pepperoni, salamis, and meatballs, and sausages, loaded with garlic and spices..
After the 1st movie, the first of 3, we would all open our lunch bags and the smell would explode, and permeate the theater, and waif out into the lobby, and out to the street.. People would snicker as they passed.. LOL
ROFL!!!! That's what we had for dinner tonight.
I always make a huge amount of them when I make them because they are time consuming, but they take the same amount of time to cook whether I'm making a dozen for us for one dinner or 8 dozen for 8 dozen for a dozen meals.
I also make my own sauces for them - which are really cheap because I grow my own peppers, tomatoes and tomatillos. But even buying dried peppers is dirt cheap, just a few go a very long way.
Something that is rarely talked about, and hardly ever promoted at all about SNAP funds, is they can be used to purchase fruit, vegetable, and herb seeds and plants. I know this because over the course of a couple of months I spent an entire month's worth of SNAP funds purchasing them back when we were getting SNAP.
“I wanted to check for tomato seeds my last trip past there, but they were already closed for the day.”
Have you looked at the tomato seeds on Ebay? You can get any kind of tomato you want. Many list their germination rate. You can check the feedback to ensure the seller has a consistently excellent reputation. The seeds are not expensive at all, providing you shop around. It would probably take all day to see ALL the tomato seeds offered. There are quite a few.
You complain about the cigarettes and beer, but only want it to be illegal to purchase cigarettes and want testing for tobacco - have a particular reason for that?
You are obviously not familiar with the “marker” for tobacco use. It is cotinin. Someone with a diet high in products from the night shade family will also test positive for cotinin. Common foods of the nightshade family include tomato, pepper, eggplant, and potato.......
Also, tobacco seeds are cheap and it is easily grown just about anywhere in the US.
As for alcohol, I make wine, nothing fancy, but it is fun and tasty - all the ingredients can be purchased with an EBT card and all are used in everyday cooking and eating.
Recently, I was in line behind a food stamp recipient. She had cigarettes in her pocket. So I guess she can afford cigarettes, but not food. Go figure.
Yes. I recently started making these myself. Cheap, easy, tasty and versatile.
About meats and people on food stamps ... I read one of those stories about people trying to survive on food stamps. For one meal, this mom prepared two pounds of ground beef for herself and three kids.
I was shocked. When we butcher we get ground beef in one pound packages and that’s how much I prepare for one meal for five people including my one son who is about 6 feet tall and still growing. The beef goes in sauces or casseroles and no one knows what’s in there ;-)
I’ve been pretty pleased at how filling Mexican foods are and how far tacos or something will stretch a pound of meat.
I get the most mileage from tamales. A pound of beef and some other odds and ends in tamales will fill everybody up. Problem is, you get every dish in the kitchen messy and have to steam them for over an hour. A very long hour or so with hungry kids!
Yeah, I don’t see eating these sorts of foods as deprivation at all. Inexpensive staple foods are flat out great eating when prepared well.
You get enough but you are not living high on the hog.
My family of 6 has been eating on less then $5 a day per person for years. Not really that hard to do, we eat well, and I could cut the grocery budget if I needed to.
Look at Budget101 dot com. She has a site showing how to make almost anything from scratch. She also gives away an e-book telling how she feeds her family of 4 very well for $200 to $250 a month. They eat meat, too.
We eat on less than that a month, being down to 2 people and a dog. I make her food from scratch for cheap, but it is well balanced and mainly good organic meat. Having a butcher/rancher nearby is helpful for getting good meats.
We do smoke, most is homegrown or in bulk additive-free. We shred and roll it ourselves. That adds $20 to our monthly budget.
Our garden, my shopping and cooking skills have worked well. We are very healthy, in good shape and all that good stuff. The only Dr visit was when my husband broke a rib a few years ago after falling off the roof. Even then, he was healed up in short order.
We are bombarded by ads that keep telling us that cooking takes too much time. Baloney. I can whip up a lovely, meaty stew in the crock pot, go about my day’s work and end the day with a great meal supplemented with a small salad and homemade bread, for days.
Debbi
How do you make Potato Egg Hash? Sounds good.
Really simple.
Just take old baked potatoes from the fridge that have been sitting in the foil in which you cooked them and cut into 1/8” slices. Fry them up in a good pan using any oil (I like peanut).
When browned on both sides, turn down heat and throw in 1 scrambled egg per large potato and just slosh all around untill egg is firm and dump onto plate. That’s it.
If you’re feeling extra daring throw in some cooked bacon bits when adding scrambled egg.
Yummy smell.
Well, at least it’s wholesome, decent food, unlike what’s allowed on EBT.
Enjoyed your post, Debbi. I’m fascinated how people feed themselves - especially when it’s from scratch. God Bless the crock pot! I made a soup yesterday with a Cornish hen and it turned into a thick stew once I threw in some pastina. We’ll have it today with - maybe- some homemade biscuits.
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