Sure, I've been there. I'm on my way home from work
with an empty belly and no clue what to make for dinner, so I decide
to go healthy and stop at Whole Foods. I find myself cooing over
pretty pictures of happy cows and friendly farmers, and adding extra
stuff to my basket: garlic-stuffed olives, quinoa (I just read some
hype about its benefits) and hey, there's some yummy raw-milk
cheddar samples, which reminds me I want cheese and crackers, and of
course vegan chocolate mousse. All of a sudden, I land in checkout
facing a $70 grocery bill, which is, oh, about $62 more than I
intended to spend on dinner.
Ugh, it's like a slap in the face of all my good intentions! I
guess some of us just can't afford healthy and organic food, right?
Wrong.
Last
month, I caught Laura Bruzas, editor/publisher of the
Healthy Dining Chicago
newsletter, speaking at the
FamilyFarmed.org EXPO on how
to make healthy food fit your budget.
An idealistic-yet-practical veg-head, Bruzas left a lucrative
management career to follow her passion for teaching everyone—not
just those with surplus cash and free time—to eat well for
themselves and the earth. She's so serious about it that she insists
on selling her booklet, Eat Well For Less, for a mere $7
despite repeated propositions to make a killing off it.
Bruzas is no preacher; she admits to having "no time for slow
foods" and choosing conventional over organic when the price gap and
her principles allow. She's just a no-nonsense thriftster: She peers
at labels, carries a calculator to compare prices and totes a
measuring cup to the bulk section. Her book offers tips on stocking
your kitchen, saving on cooking gear and innovative recipes.
This week, I took some of her suggestions for smart shopping to
the grocery store. The first and most important rule: Shop with a
list to nix impulse purchases. Other prep tips include taking
inventory of what's already in your cupboard and planning meals in
advance. Whew, who has the time? Turns out that my strategizing for
the week took a whopping 15 minutes. Seriously, I spend more time
picking out what to wear.
Instead of spacing out while shopping and leaving myself
wide-open to marketing tricks, I stayed alert and checked for deals.
I wanted to do a victory dance when I scored two pounds of organic
quinoa in the bulk section for less than $4 (five bucks cheaper than
the non-organic package I previously purchased). I then scoured the
high-up and low-down shelves for better-priced staples and saved a
few bucks on my canned tomatoes and chickpeas.
In the produce section, Bruzas recommends checking the
Environmental Working Group's (EWT)
lists of pesticide-ridden and pesticide-free fruits and vegetables.
If you can't foot the bill for all organic all the time, opt for
organic versions of EWT's "Dirty Dozen" such apples and peaches.
Also: Flash-frozen and canned foods often contain as many nutrients
as their fresh counterparts, especially if said "fresh" produce has
been sitting in a warehouse or a truck for days.
Other shopping tricks involve re-thinking your diet to get the
best nutrients for the least cost. Buy beans, which cost
next-to-nothing (especially dried), for antioxidants and protein and
sesame seeds and spinach for calcium. Save yourself five bucks a pop
and grow fresh herbs for better-tasting recipes. Ditch the
cash-draining salad dressings and drizzle your greens with vinegar
and olive oil or lemon juice and black pepper.
I was stoked to leave the supermarket without buyer's remorse.
And the best part: I have what I need to cook tomorrow, so I won't
have to spring for last-minute unhealthy carryout.
Soak up more of Laura Bruzas' wisdom on April 22 at the
Green
Festival.
After four greener-than-average college years as a co-op
dweller-turned-aspiring-permaculturist, Julia Steinberger finds it
hard not to feel guilty about her one-bedroom apartment, daily
commute and indulgence in the occasional dollar burger. She'd like
to dream that she could live in a tent/treehouse/rabbit hole, but
the truth is, she'd rather stay in the city while doing her best to
leave a lighter footprint on the earth. You can contact her
here.
