Shopping healthily on a budget can have its challenges. The weekly food bill can take a big slice out of our finances. But with a few simple tweaks, you can eat well without breaking the bank.

Here are five tips, that will help you get high nutritional quality food, without emptying your bank account. That’ll leave you more to spend on more fun things this summer!

1. Always meal plan

We can honestly say that 90% of our clients who do not meal plan do not reach their goals. Big call hey? It’s the absolute truth! Planning weekly meals is crucial both when on a budget AND when wanting to make sure you are prepared with the tools you need - aka food. Meal planning helps limit eating take-out, it ensures you’re only purchasing ingredients needed for coming meals. It also encourages the use of leftover ingredients at home minimising unnecessary spending and food waste. That’s a win for your budget and the planet.

When meal planning, start with doing a kitchen inventory of your current stock, then plan out meals, making sure to utlise ingredients already have on hand. Finish by writing a grocery list and only buy what you need when you go shop, with some flexibility to accommodate sales.

Using a meal planner can help simplify this process for you and make sure you’ve covered all your bases. You can pick one up from our friend Danijela from Nourish and Tempt with a generous 15% discount using the code CHIPPUR15.

2. Keep it simple

Good healthy food is simple food. Start with the basics: fruits and veggies, eggs, fish, meats, grains and legumes. When we start to cut out extra items that aren’t necessary for our weekly meal plan, more space opens up in our budget. Otherwise, within the basics here are some tips to reduce costs further:

For meat go for cheaper cuts, like stewing beef, silverside, whole chickens and mince. Slow cooking can make the toughest of cuts very tender and juicy!

For produce, shop seasonal or go for tinned or frozen. Look for produce grown in NZ, head along to fruit and veggies markets at the end of the day for a great bargain, or consider yourself a green thumb and try growing your own!
For grains, look for generic brands. Staples such as rice, pasta, tinned foods, offer have cheaper brand alternatives that are just as great as more expensive branded items. If you have any concerns about nutritional quality, it's best to compare the ingredients panel of a product.

3. Waste not, want not

Eating healthily on a budget means becoming more savvy around food waste and getting the most out of your ingredients. If we end up with spinach wilting in the fridge or leftovers going uneaten, it costs us. Here are a few ways to get creatives with leftover ingredients:

Blend leftover spinach with water and freeze into nutritious ice cubes to add to green smoothies
Preserve or stew excess fruit
Bake leftover potato peeling into crispy potato skin chips!
Blitz stale bread into breadcrumbs
Mash spotty bananas for baking
Turn leftover chicken/fish/meat bones and veggie peelings into homemade stock
Add chopped fresh herbs with oil/water to ice cube trays and freeze. Add a cube to a pan at the start of cooking a meal as a herb-infused oil
Use day-old/leftover rice in fried rice
Add old food to the compost bin or worm farm!

4. Add a few more meat-free meals

Plant-based proteins such as lentils, chickpea and beans are not only nutritionally rich but are also significantly cheaper than animal protein. They’re excellent at bulking out dishes and work well as a strategy to stretch meals, particularly in dishes like taco mince or bolognese sauces. Try cutting the amount of meat in half, and subbing in a few tins of your favourite plant-based protein - for example, instead of 1kg of mincemeat, go for 500g with 1-2 tins of brown lentils.
#meatfreemondays

5. Keep a tidy kitchen

If our fridge or pantry is cluttered, it can be difficult to keep up with what's ready to be eaten and what's expired. By keeping an organised storage space, we can help minimise food spoiling, which is better for our health, our wallets and the environment.

Do a regular stocktake and clean of your fridge once a week, and pantry every few weeks. Dispose of expired food if needed.
Label and date food items to avoid wasting food and also buying multiples when unnecessary.
Add a “Use First” section to your pantry and fridge so you can easily see what needs to be prioritised.

Ready to get started?

If you’re ready to take your meal planning seriously, having the right tools will make all the difference.

Get organised in the kitchen with a Nourish & Tempt magnetic fridge meal planner! Save time, stress and eat healthier with the simple practice of meal planning. The Nourish & Tempt magnetic meal planner has been designed to help make meal planning easy breezy at home. Use the code: CHIPPUR15 to get 15% off!

Special Features

Made from a high quality, durable and flexible glossy magnetic material that easily sticks to the fridge or any other surface that attracts magnets.
7-day overview so you can plan week-to-week. The planner begins with Sunday, so you head into the new week with ease!
Long box layout with no mealtime annotation. Plan just dinners, or cover all meals across breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. There's enough room for either!
A 'running low on' section to jot down any ingredients or household items to include in your next shopping list.
A 'weekly reminders' section for important memos, cleaning schedules, inspirational quotes, or anything else to keep in mind.

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