You can't eat healthy on a tight budget? Myth!
Type "healthy food on a budget" into Google, and you get more than 10 pages of links. As the pandemic and job loss grind on, this topic is on many people's minds.
​
We reviewed dozens of links on those Google pages and started a list of the best sites we found.
​
Help make this list even better! We know we missed some wonderful pages. Send your nominations to trythiswv@gmail.com with "healthy affordable" in the subject line.
Is it possible? Yep, definitely. But it takes planning and strategy.
Tricks for Eating/Drinking Healthy on a Tight Budget:
Planning and strategy that saves you money
​
-
Budget Bytes (This site gets 5 stars: meal planning, strategy, recipes.)
-
Healthy Eating on a Budget (Choose My Plate) A wide variety of recipes.
-
WVU Extension Family Nutrition videos. Includes great recipes for fruit-infused drinks that let you cut down on expensive sodas and sugary drinks!
-
You Can Make a Million Healthy Pantry Meals with These 11 Cheap Staples (Well + Good)
-
44 Healthy Foods under $1. A good pantry list.
​
​
​
My name is Melissa Young. I have been with Try This WV for a little over two years. I am the mother of three children, ages 11,
14 and 17. They are always hungry. Feeding them is my largest expense. Like most parents I worry about my family having a balanced diet.
I save money by ordering my groceries online and then picking up at the store. It allows me to keep a close eye on how much I am spending. I can even walk around my kitchen while I am ordering to see what I need. It also keeps me from buying things on a whim. I plan all of my meals before I go shopping.
​
A real winner from Downshiftology.
Excellent rundown on ways to save money and eat healthy. If you don't look at anything else, look at this.
WVU Extension made quick videos on habits that save you money at the food store. Combined with the video to the left, this will equip you well.
Healthy, tasty, low-cost recipes
·
-
50 Cheap, Healthy Meals You'll Want to Make All the Time (Taste of Home)
-
Cheap and Healthy Recipes (BBC Good Food)
-
How to Make Cheap and Easy Stir Fry at Home (less than $5) (Change Your Finances)
-
Joyful Healthy Food (Joyful Healthy Food)
-
Budget Bytes: Bean and Grain (Budget Bytes)
-
10 Healthy Dinners for About $10 for a family of 4 (The Food Network)
-
Healthy Recipes (Spend with Pennies)
-
Healthy Fast Food: 15 Best Bets on the Value Menu (Web MD)
-
Healthy dinners in 40 minutes or less (The Food Network)
-
Recipes from Choose My Plate (Choose My Plate, USDA)
-
$50 Weekly Menus (Grocery Budget 101)
-
19 Recipes that Swap Lentils for Meat (Oh My Veggies)
Save Money! Stir Fry!
-
How to Make an Easy Stir Fry (AllRecipes)
-
These 25 Simple Stir-Fry Recipes Will Convince You to Cook More (The Food Network)
-
Simple Stir Fry: Dirt-Cheap Recipes (Budget 101.com)
Meals under $3 per person?
Stir-Fry!
.jpeg)
Molly Anderson (Wonder Woman) loves to help her mom cook. Her mom, Laura Anderson, is an AmeriCorps serving Try This WV. Wonder Woman helped make this stir-fry for their family of five.
​
"When you go into the refrigerator and cabinets and think, 'I have no clue what to make,'" Laura Anderson said, "this is a simple, inexpensive meal that you can make from practically anything." Sometimes she makes a sauce, sometimes not. Sometimes she makes soy sauce dressing or mixes peanut butter with oil, for a different flavor.
"You use odds and ends, and they don't get wasted," she said. So it cuts down on food waste too.
​
What does a stir-fry for five with meat cost? Kroger sells stir-fry steak for $6 - $7 a pound. So a two-pound steak stir-fry for a family of five with a veggie or two could cost about $20 ($4 per person).
Kroger sells stir-fry chicken for $1.50 - $3 per pound, so a chicken stir-fry could cost around $12.00 for five. Or $2.40 a person!
Leave out or reduce meat, and it costs less than $2 a person! Check out the recipes!
​
Plus, kids can help with stir-fry. too. It teaches them how to make a good meal out of what
you have.
Slow cookers help you do it!
-
Budget Bytes Slow cooker (Budget Bytes) recipes
-
·40 Delicious Crockpot Dinners (Smart Money Mommas)
-
27 Budget-Friendly Slow Cooker Recipes (Taste of Home)
-
·10 Crockpot Recipes Under $5 (Living on a Dime)
-
20 Budget-Friendly Slow Cooker Dinner Recipes (AllRecipes)
-
Slow Cooker Meals (ND State University)
I'm Laurie Ruberg from Wheeling. To save time and money, I always increase the recipe so my slow cooker is 2/3 full. I like to have extra servings for the freezer.
My slow cooker is a time saver. Dinner is cooking while I'm away. It saves money, because you can buy the cheapest and toughest cuts of meat and they become tender and juicy in the slow cooker. I label each freezer package with a description of the meal and date it was prepared. It’s wonderful to reach into the freezer for a ready-to-go meal that can be microwaved and served within 30 minutes.
These are great
Web pages, but we know we missed a bunch of other good ones. If you know other pages that should be here, let us know!
Put "healthy affordable" in the subject line
​I'm Lexi Carder. I'm an AmeriCorps serving Try This. I'm also a college student living on her own with a roommate. I will definitely use this page!​​ When I'm trying to come up with something to make for dinner, I hate to have to look through all of these recipe websites. It's great to have a lot of information from a number of sites all on one page!