With food and grocery costs skyrocketit is becoming more and more difficult to buy healthy and nutritious food.
we chat with eat well for less to nutritionist Amanda Brien for some tips and advice on cheaper alternatives you can find at the grocery store to make sure your family can eat well without breaking the bank.
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Auckland nutritionist Amanda Brien suggests Kiwis buy beans and legumes, seasonal vegetables, microgreens and nuts and seeds to help keep the grocery bill down.
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Beans and legumes
steve brown
Red beans fit naturally into Mexican dishes. Beans are packed with protein and will help you stretch out your meals to allow you to feed more people for less.
Beans and legumes like kidney beans, chickpeas, soybeans, lentils, and cannellini beans are a powerhouse of fiber, protein, phytochemicals, vitamins, and minerals.
They can also be very useful for extending meat dishes, such as adding beans to a ground beef-based Mexican dish, allowing you to serve more people for less and provide other nutrients you wouldn’t get from meat.
Legumes are not usually a major part of the Kiwi’s diet (apart from baked beans), but the Heart Foundation Full o’ Beans Cookbook shows how to add them to foods. It puts a legume twist on old Kiwi favorites, but also draws inspiration from Mexican, Italian, Middle Eastern and Pacific dishes.
Homemade sauces and dressings
Todd Eyre/New Zealand House and Garden
Beet Salad With Pomegranate Dressing. You can make many different sauces and dressings with a few pantry staples. They will also be healthier and cheaper than store-bought options.
Store-bought sauces and salad dressings can be an added expense and have high amounts of added sodium (salt), sugar, and saturated fat that people often don’t realize.
You can save money and make a wide variety of sauces and dressings with pantry staples like canned tomatoes, soy sauce, dried herbs/spices, olive oil, garlic, onion, ginger, mustard, and vinegar. This way, you are in control of the amount of sodium, sugar, and fat added to the sauce, and it’s also much cheaper.
seasonal foods
CHRIS SKELTON/Things
Buying produce that is in season will help keep costs down and offer better nutritional value.
Avoid paying more for produce and opt for cheaper seasonal fruits and vegetables, which also have higher nutritional content.
Generally speaking, things like carrots and cabbage keep better throughout the year and can be very versatile. You can use them in salads or stir fry.
There are many online tools that guide you to what’s in season. check vegetables.co.nz, www.5aday.co.nzand food waste reduction site foodprint.app to get a snapshot of everything that’s in season for that month.
microgreens
ALDEN WILLIAMS/Things
Microgreens are easy to handle – just place them on the windowsill and let them do their thing.
Not everyone has outside space for a garden, but you can buy small trays of microgreen seedlings and put them by the window to grow.
Mung bean sprouts, alfalfa sprouts, kale, basil, arugula are great to keep on hand and add to salads. It’s also fun to have something you can grow yourself.
walnut seeds
Maksim Shutov/Unsplash
Nuts and seeds have great value. Peanuts and sunflower seeds are among the cheapest, but still pack a lot of nutritional value.
Peanuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and flax seeds are some of the cheapest options per 100g and have great nutritional value compared to other nuts and seeds.
Peanut butter is another inexpensive way to add nuts to your diet and has many uses beyond spreading it on toast.
