Health-Conscious Pantry on a Budget

There are between 35,000 and 40,000 products in an average grocery store. That’s a whole lot of choices to choose between. It can get extremely overwhelming to try and find the best product that is HFCS-free, low-fat, low-calories, whole grain, blah-dee blah, so on and so forth. To make things worse it can get extremely expensive to eat well.

So what do us health-conscious (and wallet-conscious) people do? One way to save money is to buy a few types of vegetables and find innovative ways to use them in everything. Then the next week at the store buy a different set of vegetables and do the same. This way you can vary up your nutrients week-to-week.

Buying fresh is a good idea but when the fruit or vegetable is out of season (and therefore more expensive) sometimes the frozen version can be cheaper. To help save the world a little bit at a time only buy produce that is in season. The price of having produce out of season is that it may be flown in from around the world. That is an extremely heavy environmental tax.

A note on frozen: When an item is flash-frozen it retains all of the vitamins and minerals from that moment when it was frozen. The nutrients in fresh produce degrade from the minute it is picked to the moment you consume it. Frozen is not always the best choice but it sometimes can be.

I’ve had to throw away spinach because I buy a box that I can’t finish within its period of freshness. My fix for this is to buy a small portion of fresh and a large bag of frozen, chopped baby leaf spinach.

This brings me to canned beans. Canned is a good option when you need beans at a moments notice. However, the liquid that beans are kept in (called a brine) leaches vitamins, minerals and starch out of the bean. Most of the time you won’t cook with that liquid but if you don’t then you lose the nutrients. The best option is dried beans. They keep for a very long time and have superior texture, flavor and nutrient content.

I personally have a bone to pick with canned vegetables for the same reason that canned beans have problems. The nutrients leach into the brine and you toss out the brine. In this situation I will always turn to frozen, whether it’s corn, green beans, peas, etc.

Grains are some of the cheapest food in the grocery store. These will be your bulk pastas, rice, oats and other grains. These also have a long shelf-life and will keep you full. Be creative with them. When I was short on flour I learned how to supplement pancakes with oats. Always choose whole wheat grains when you can. Whole grain is better for you because it is in a more natural state. The grain takes longer to digest than refined flour and therefore gives you lasting energy instead of the blood sugar spike that refined products can give.

A long term investment to ensure a cheap, steady supply of fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs is of course to garden them yourself! This can be very expensive at the get-go because you have to acquire the supplies and know-how to get started. There are many great online sources to help with the know-how. You may have an open air garden, green house or a potted tomato plant or some herbs. It is your choice to decide how much you want to do.

One of my favorite granola-hipster resources is called Earth Easy. They have topics on just about anything you might want to know when going green. For how-to’s on how to get your garden started check out Instructables. They have user submitted how-to guides for anything you would want to learn how to do.

Don’t get too overwhelmed. Start small with a pot of your favorite herb. Learn everything about what that herb likes— sun, water, root space, pruning. I killed my first herbs because I didn’t learn about them first. Herbs work in apartments too, they like window sills and balconies.

When you grow your own fruits and vegetables you are putting the power of food back into your hands. You control your food supply and that takes power from the food corporations. By making this choice you get a boundless supply of fresh, organic food. You know everything about how that food was grown, produced and eventually cooked. Say goodbye to prepackaged and hello to possibilities.

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