Can you still eat healthy organic food on a budget? Rachel Richardson from Nutrilution gives a useful insight into how you can do it. She agrees that indeed organic foods tend to be more expensive than non-organic, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that those of us on a budget cannot eat organically.

Rachel suggests that if you choose the right quality foods, your body chemistry adjusts and therefore reduces the quantity of food your body needs, so your portion sizes can be slightly smaller. She recommends using whole foods, such as organic brown rice, lentils, beans and whole wheat pasta. These foods have much more fibre than processed equivalents such as white rice, white pasta etc, and therefore help to fill our stomachs more easily. Whole foods are much better for you anyway.

Additionally Rachel recommends choosing organic staples such as eggs, cheese, tomatoes, carrots and frozen fruit and vegetables are not hugely more expensive than non-organic equivalents.

Organic Money Saver — Look out for special offers and local suppliers, which often reduce the cost of these staples.

An important point to remember as Rachel suggests, is that it is those foods that have the highest exposure to pesticides that should be chosen as organic food. These include milk and dairy products, peppers, berries and soft fruits such as peaches.

Organic Tips — I would also add meat and fish to this list, unless it is sourced from the wild.

Other fruit such as cantaloupe melons which have a hard, thick skin giving more resistance to pesticide exposure, might be purchased instead of its organic equivalent. (It is worth checking out EWG’s Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 for more information on which fruit and vegetables have the highest pesticide residues, and which the least.

Organic Ideas — Organic meat is considerably more expensive than conventionally farmed meat. Given that I need to feed a family of five on a restricted food budget, I now buy less meat but make sure it is organic. This week I have chosen to buy one organic medium sized chicken which I will stretch to three meals, one pack of organic bacon and one pack of organic ham. The rest of our meals will rely on organic lentils, eggs and cheese for our protein sources.

Eating healthy organic food and following the organic lifestyle is certainly possible with a little planning, even if you are on a tight budget.

Filed under: Organic Kitchen

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