Eating Well on a Budget

Though food is obviously a necessity for survival, it represents so much more than that in life. Food is integral in the way you manage your health, a medium to engage socially with the people around you, a way to proudly share your cultural heritage and a source of comfort for many people. Eating well has a significant impact on your overall quality of life; it is really one of life’s greatest joys! However, good food often comes with a significant price tag attached. According to the most recent data from Stats Canada, the average Canadian household spent $8,527 on food in 2017, and that number has steadily increased since then. The 10th annual edition of Canada’s Food Price Report forecasted an 2-4% increase in food prices in 2020, meaning the predicted annual cost of food for a Canadian household this year will be $12,667. While forecasting can be off target, this is a drastic increase over just a few years! People often try to cut down their food budget in an effort to save more of their disposable income, but this kind of decision can come with some very negative consequences. Eating poor quality food can have a staggering effect on your mental and physical health, as well as your ability to perform your job properly and your general level of happiness and satisfaction in life.

However, there’s still even more than price to be considered when trying to maximize the efficiency of your food budget. Food waste is a major problem in the developed countries of the world, and Canada is no exception. In a study by Second Harvest, it was reported that a staggering 58% of all food produced in Canada is lost or wasted each year. While the majority of this figure is lost during manufacturing or production stages, roughly 2.38 billion tonnes of food (at a value of roughly $10 billion) is lost at the consumer level each year; this translates to an avoidable loss of $1,766 per year per Canadian household. Think about that: your house may be throwing away almost $1,800 per year! Still worse, when food waste reaches landfills, it creates methane gas as it decomposes. These kinds of emissions are roughly 25 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide emissions and speed up the warming of our planet. With all that mind, you may be ready to reassess how you spend when it comes to food. Most of us know you can use coupons to reduce your food costs, but there are more ways you can make the most of your food budget. By following a few simple tips and working to change your habits, you can still afford to eat well while minimizing the amount of money you spend on food.

Plan Ahead
The most effective piece of advice one can take when looking to reduce their spending on food is to plan your meals ahead of time. If you’re currently figuring out what to eat on a meal-by-meal basis, you’re likely spending way more money than you need to on food. The logic here is simple: if you’re thinking about each meal as a separate entity, you’re not thinking about the larger picture (which is all of your meals over the course of a week or so). This means you’re likely buying a ton of ingredients that don’t go together, and thus can’t be used to their best advantage. This often in turn leads to having a pantry full of half-used items you’re not sure what to do with, or having produce, meat, dairy and other fresh products go bad before you can use them on a regular basis. Ultimately, this translates to a huge (and avoidable!) waste of money spent on food.

Instead, take a half hour or so each week and plan yourself 5-7 dinners for the upcoming days, depending on your schedule and how often you need to prepare your own meals. You don’t have to be so rigid as to assign each meal to a specific day, but you should have enough to cover your work week at minimum. Try to mix a few easier recipes in each week so that on days when you’re feeling more tired than usual, you can still make yourself dinner quickly and resist the urge to order in. By planning these meals out, you can make a grocery list in advance and see what ingredients you already have at home and what needs to be purchased. Once this list is compiled, you’ll be able to see clearly if there are any changes that should be made. For example, you may find a recipe for a curry that looks delicious, but if you don’t already have a full spice cabinet, you’d have to spend lots of money to buy all the individual spices you need for it. Or, you may be interested in trying a new recipe that requires a small amount of one specific ingredient (ex. spinach). If you don’t use spinach otherwise on a regular basis, the rest of the box is likely to go bad before you finish it, meaning it may not be the savviest purchase. Instead, you could find another recipe or two that’ll use up the rest of that box of spinach and add them to your list, or hold off and try the recipe at later date when you do. Ultimately, the idea is to make the most out of fresh ingredients and expensive dry goods, like spices, and plan meals that reduce the amount of food waste you create.

The logic behind planning dinners specifically is that most people are short for time when making and eating their breakfast and lunch; for most of the week, these two meals are governed by our work schedules. When you make dinner for yourself at home, you generally have a bit more time and freedom in terms of what kind of ingredients, utensils and cookware you can use, making it the ideal meal to plan ahead for. Also, when you make dinner, you can make a larger amount of food than you need and create lunch portions that can be taken for the next day or two. This will help save you a great deal of money if you regularly buy your lunch from Monday to Friday.

Don’t Skip Breakfast
This is an extension of planning ahead, and something you’ve likely heard since you were a child, but it’s of paramount importance that you don’t skip breakfast if you want to minimize your food budget! When you eat breakfast, you’re giving your brain and muscles the boost of energy they need to have a productive day (blood sugar is usually low in the morning, and breakfast replenishes that). If you skip breakfast, you’re inevitably going to hit a wall later in the day; your stomach may not register feeling hungry, but your brain will, and it’ll eventually start telling you to replace that lost fuel. That means you’ll be likely to overeat and seek out sugary snacks to keep you going through the afternoon. This is going to be particularly expensive if you don’t work from home, as you’ll have to buy all your coffee, snacks and meals to fill that gap.

If you do eat breakfast every day but you’re regularly feeling the “2-o-clock slump”, that might mean you need to reassess what you’re eating for breakfast. Eating a sugary breakfast like donuts or a bowl of sugary cereal is something, but will still have a similar effect as eating nothing. Your body will process through the sugar quickly, leaving you feeling sluggish and tired once the initial sugar shock passes. This means you’re still going to be likely to overindulge in the afternoon to try and get back up to speed. Instead, a breakfast that includes lots of healthy fats and protein, like an omelet or a bowl of oatmeal with your favourite toppings, will keep you full and give your brain and body the fuel they need to keep you energized throughout the day. Even if you have to spend a bit more money to have quality breakfast items on hand in your house, if you’ve been buying lots of afternoon coffee and snacks, you may be able to reduce these costs greatly by upping your spending on breakfast. If you’re looking for some inspiration, Buzzfeed recently asked a number of personal trainers what they eat for breakfast and the list will give you a great starting point. You can read it here. [please note: QUBER is not affiliated with Buzzfeed in any way.]

Follow Food Blogs
In order to successfully adopt the habit of planning your meals on a long-term basis, you’ll need to be making food that’s interesting enough to keep you from going back to buying pre-made meals and ordering in. Regardless of what kind of food that is to you, that means you’ll need some great resources to pull recipes from. Switching up what you eat and trying new things is a great way to get a variety of nutrients in your diet, keep things interesting for yourself and will help you get the most benefit you can out of your relationship with food.

Unfortunately, glossy cook books can be expensive to buy, and are often very focused in the kinds of recipes they feature (meaning you’d have to buy a ton of them to have a varied collection). This is where the Internet is your friend! There are more food blogs and recipe databases on the Internet than you’d ever care to count, and you can use them to your advantage to find a ton of inspiration. Seek out some food blogs that match your tastes and check on them occasionally for new recipes. If you’ve never been exposed to any before, some great places to start are Foodgawker and Tasty (though even if you don’t realize it, you’ve likely seen Tasty cooking videos before if you spend any time on social media). These types of sites have a ton of different recipes, ranging in difficulty level, cultural origin and overall cost to make, and will offer you a ton of budget-friendly recipes for free. Whereas Tasty has in-house staff creating their recipes, Foodgawker is a recipe aggregator. That means it collects recipes from hundreds of different sources and showcases them in one place; by using a site like this, you’ll be exposed to tons of smaller-scale food blogs run by individuals with different culinary focuses and skill levels. That’ll give you even more exposure to new recipe ideas and inspire you to try using new ingredients! You’ll also start to pick up a greater knowledge of what kinds of ingredients mix well together, what kind of ingredients are the cheapest each season and what can be used to substitute expensive ingredients from people who have already done the work in testing out different combos. [please note: QUBER is not affiliated with Foodgawker or Tasty in any way.]

Try Going Meat-Free
This is a suggestion that not all people welcome openly, but going vegetarian is one of the best ways you can save money on your food budget. Of all the grocery items you buy on a regular basis, meat, poultry and fish are probably the most consistently expensive items. According to Stats Canada, meat has been by far the most expensive type of grocery item across the country in 2020: various different cuts of beef have cost between roughly $11.50 and $37.10 throughout the year, while pork chops followed just behind beef, hovering around $12 a kilo.

With that in mind, cutting down on the amount of meat you eat can really help you cut down on the amount of money you spend on food. That doesn’t mean you have to give up meat completely if you don’t want to, but you can still really benefit from designating a few days a week to eating meat-free. Vegetarian food has historically gotten a bad reputation for being flavourless and boring, but that couldn’t be further from the truth! Vegetarianism has become increasingly popular over the last few decades, and with that increasing demand, vegetarian food has come a long way. A great example is the recent proliferation of meat-substitute burgers across grocery stores and fast food chains around the world (ex. Beyond Meat Burgers, The Impossible Burger). The demand for these products is clear, and their arrival has prompted many people who have been life-long meat eaters to opt for the plant-based version of their favourite burger instead! There a ton of different ingredients and styles of cooking that lend themselves to making excellent food without relying on the addition of meat and will still leave you feeling full and satisfied.

However, it does deserve a mention that vegetarianism isn’t just good for your wallet; it can be a great boost for your health. A two-decade long study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health showed that those who ate the most red meat were at the highest risk for developing cancer and cardiovascular disease, and were more likely to die younger than subjects who ate less. Ultimately, the study suggests that replacing red meat with an alternative protein source (such as legumes or nuts) can do wonders in regards to lengthening your life. However, it should be mentioned that if you naturally have low iron levels in your blood and are interested in becoming vegetarian, you’ll need to compensate for the loss of iron you would otherwise be ingesting from meat. You’ll also need to ensure that you’re getting enough protein, as most people don’t have to consider this if they eat meat on a regular basis. This is entirely possible to do while eating a vegetarian diet, but it does take a bit of meal planning and research into other kinds of ingredients that offer naturally high levels of these nutrients. If you’re concerned, check with your doctor for advice on how to stay healthy as you start reducing your meat intake.

Treat Yourself (Occasionally)
The reason that most people order in food so often is not because they find it affordable. It’s because it’s convenient and well, delicious! We all have our own favourites when it comes to take-out; you may love McDonalds and Wendy’s, or you may have a dish from a local hole-in-the-wall you never get sick of eating. Whatever it is, if you’re in the habit of ordering in all the time, it should be no surprise to you that you’re wasting a huge amount of money on food. However, you shouldn’t try to cut takeout out of your life completely. By trying to deprive yourself of a treat here and there, you’re setting yourself up for failure and you may end up going overboard when you do eventually cave. Instead, make room in your budget for an occasional night of takeout. You could allow yourself to order in after a night out, or with friends while watching the big game. Ultimately, if you know your take-out night is coming up soon, you’ll have an easier time resisting the urge to get it when you have an impulsive desire for it. You should especially follow this rule if you find yourself to be an emotional eater, as you’ll be more likely to place an order on a whim without stopping to think about it.

Cook With Friends
Finally, if you’re not in the habit of cooking on a regular basis, you may be reading through these tips and thinking that eating well on a budget isn’t in the cards for you. It can be a bit overwhelming to figure out where to begin if you’re an amateur chef, and you may not have the items you need (like pantry staples, proper utensils, frying pans and cookware) to make a wide variety of recipes. Cooking is the true key to cutting down on your food costs; if you’re serious about minimizing the amount of money you’re spending on food, you need to be making the vast amount of your meals on your own. So, if you’re looking to get started, one of the best ways to tackle this issue is to start cooking with friends who know what they’re doing. By reaching out to a few of your friends that know how to cook, you can take the pressure off yourself to ensure that every step of a tough recipe is done perfectly, you can learn practically by watching and helping someone who’s more experienced than you and you can enjoy doing something fun with a friend all at the same time. Even better, when cooking with friends, you can split the cost of ingredients for whatever dish you decide to make, meaning you can make a great meal together that’ll cost you less than it would to make it on your own. You can extend this tip and host potluck dinners with friends, where everyone makes one dish for the group and eats everything together. Different friends will have different specialties, and can teach you a variety of different cooking skills you’ll be able to integrate into your own meal prep routine.

Enjoying the food you eat on a daily basis can have an extremely positive impact on your overall level of health and happiness. Though food isn’t always cheap, it should be a priority for you to eat well and learn how to use your food budget to your best advantage. With that in mind, we hope these tips help you start a new chapter in your relationship with food and eat better than ever!

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