The Complete Guide To Creating Healthy Food (as much as you can ;) ) In College

“The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.” -Ann Wigmore. Consuming healthy food is important all the time, but is especially crucial throughout your college days. You are experiencing so many different life changes, so it is important that you take care of your mind and body. It can be extremely difficult to incorporate healthy eating into your busy college life, especially because healthy food items tend to be more expensive. It takes motivation, willpower, and the desire to stay healthy. If you are struggling, you are not the only one! We’ve all been there. Whether it’s a late night after the bar, and you have nothing to eat so you get fast food, or you are running low on money and opt to buy a cheeseburger, the struggle is real. That is why we have provided a step by step guide that will provide you with all the information that you need to budget, shop for, and create healthy food that tastes good.

Budgeting for Healthy Eating in College

Balancing money in general, especially in college, is one of the hardest life skills to learn. Life is filled with temptations, meaning there are going to be so many times you are going to want to spend your money. On the other hand though, there are many required payments that you have to make every month, such as your car payment, rent, insurance, utilities, and more. At the end of the day, you are going to be spending money. The key is to implement a plan to spend your money in a smart way. Budgeting is a great way to make sure that you have enough money for your required spendings, but it also allows you to leave money for extra spending. To start your budgeting journey, follow these steps!

Step One: Track Your Spending

Before you determine your personal budget, it is important that you do some research on your past spending records. Look through all your past receipts, your bank statement, and any digital transactions. Specifically, pay attention to how much you have spent on food. Keep track of any grocery trips, fast food, snacks, drinks, or eating out. Divide up your food spending in categories based on how you want to measure your money. For example, you could create a grocery category, an eating out category, and more. If you are just starting out, you should do this exercise for two different months, and then average those amounts. This will give you a good idea of where you should start out.

Step Two: Do Research

When just starting out, it can be very helpful to compare all your personal habits to national averages to pick a spending budget that will compliment your lifestyle. The USDA is a great place to look. They have done an immense amount of research to figure out what the average food cost is for people of all ages. They have weekly spending examples as well. The USDA research is updated monthly. This research will aid you in picking a budget, and show you the do’s and don'ts. The best way to learn is to dive into past research from professionals. After you look at this research, select a budget that makes the most sense to you. Don’t choose something realistic, just because someone else is doing it. Specifically, for food, make sure you separate all your spending into categories, and place a specific amount of money for each. For example, you could put $30 for groceries every week, and $15 to eat out.

Step 3: Pick a Specific Goal

Once you have selected your budgeting plan, you must set a specific goal for you to follow. If you don’t do this, it will be easier to just give up on your plan and go about your old ways. For food budgeting, a good goal to follow is eating out less, and making meals 5 nights of the week. Once you select your goal, you should continuously track your progress. There are many different ways you can do this. A good tracking system is to monitor your spending each week. You can see what you spent extra on, and what you need to buy less of. If you are not the best at tracking your spending, you can purchase your groceries with cash for a few months. This is an extremely visual way of budgeting, and it truly allows you to see where you are spending your money. You can divide your cash up between envelopes. You can do whatever you feel will benefit you personally, but make sure you have a solid budgeting plan, with a goal and a tracking method.

Step 4: Say Goodbye To Old Habits

When creating a budget, especially for healthy eating, it is important that you create new and healthy habits to accompany your new goal. For example, if you ate out every night of the week in the past, decrease that to one or two times a week. If you went on many random grocery trips throughout the week, mark an official grocery shopping trip on your calendar every few weeks. This will allow you to cut down on buying things that you don’t need. If you have any old subscriptions that you don’t use anymore, get rid of them. After you have created some new habits to aid your budgeting journey, you should decide if you want to stick to your budget each week or month, or if you want to challenge yourself and see if you get below it. Budgeting is all about sticking to a plan, but how you do that is personalized to you.

Step 5: Learning How to Save Money

Learning how to save money in simple ways is a skill that will benefit you greatly. Specifically for grocery shopping for healthy meals, there are multiple ways that you can save money. Want to know how? Keep reading!

• Choose your stores wisely! Do your research on all the grocery stores in your area. Different stores have dramatic price differences. Compare the prices, and start doing your shopping at the most discounted store.

• Start shopping sales! Utilize coupons and store deals when you shop. Many grocery stores offer a percentage off of a certain product, buy one get one free deals, and special deals if you are a member of a grocery store.

• Create a meal plan! Plan out your meals for the days ahead before you go grocery shopping. There are many free apps that you can purchase to help you do this, or it can be as simple as writing it down on a calendar or a whiteboard. A meal plan will allow you to stick to your grocery list, without buying extra items you don’t need.

• Consider online shopping! Many grocery stores have free pickup and delivery options. You can shop for your groceries online and eliminate the risk of wandering around a store and purchasing things you don’t need. This is a great tip!

• Buy Store Brand! Name brand products are much more expensive than store brand items, and they are the same quality. Don’t shop for the name.

• Buy Bulk! Items that are sold in bulk are cheaper than food sold in smaller amounts. If you use a certain item frequently, consider buying it in bulk. You will save costs in the long run.

• Pay attention to what you have! Always check your refrigerator and pantry before going shopping, and also make sure you consume all items before their expiration date. If you have to throw away something, because it has gone bad, you are throwing away money.

Budgeting will be a key factor in creating healthy meals during college. Once you start, it becomes a habit! Here are some resources that will help you in your journey.

https://www.usda.gov/

https://www.thespruceeats.com/best-meal-planning-apps-4766812

The Key to Smart Grocery Shopping

Grocery shopping can be a daunting task, especially for overworked and overbooked college students. It may be a chore, but it’s a necessary one. We often find ourselves overwhelmed at the store with no plan. This can cause frustration and the habit of overspending. With inflation already ripping through grocery prices, this can be hard on the wallet. Unfortunately, we must start to think more strategically when it comes to grocery shopping. Don’t worry, it isn’t as hard as it seems. Take a deep breath and relax! This section will help you break down grocery shopping and how to do it smartly.

Before we get into it, let's cover Smart Grocery Shopping. What is it?! Smart grocery shopping is a process that involves making informed decisions to create goals that better align with your financial and nutritional values.

Utilizing Technology

Today, technology has helped us achieve so much. It has made the most difficult tasks in our lives much more simple. Technology is no stranger to us, and especially not to grocery retailers. Many grocery stores have websites and mobile apps to help their customers shop fast and easy. On most of these apps, you can view items that the store offers, create a list, online shop, or buy items for a later pickup. So, why should we use them? Using these apps or websites are extremely helpful when it comes to planning and budgeting.

You can plan what you need to buy ahead of time and then order for a pick up. This reduces your time at the grocery store and eliminates the problem of buying what you do not need. By planning, you can also view the prices of each item and use your coupons accordingly. Oftentimes these coupons are digital, further reducing the need for paper ones.

Budgeting is also important. It can be difficult to walk around a giant grocery store without straying from your allotted spending amount. By using these apps, it can help us stay on track and easily choose the best budget friendly option. You can even go further by viewing websites that compare the cost of one item with multiple grocery stores. This can help us choose which store is best for us!

Planning Ahead

Planning your grocery trips ahead of time is one of the easiest ways to reach your goals. It can save you time and money. So what are the steps to take in order to successfully ‘plan ahead’? There are three main steps that are useful in planning. One, meal planning. Two, budgeting. And three, list making. When meal planning, you should gauge how many meals and snacks you are going to eat in a time period. Let’s go for six days. If you’re eating three meals a day with 1-2 servings of a snack, you should plan on 24 meals and roughly 12 snack servings. It’s important to set a budget BEFORE meal planning! To reduce cost, you should plan on meal prepping. Planning one to two types of dish for each meal is key to reducing cost. Sometimes it may be tiring to have the same thing everyday, so adding variety is important. For example, buying peanut butter and jelly ingredients, spaghetti ingredients, cereal, and taco ingredients give you enough variety. You can switch out either the dinner or lunch to mix it up.

Budgeting is important when you’re tight on money. You should always allocate money per week or per two weeks to the grocery. You can further read up on Smart Grocery Shopping here.

Stocking Your Pantry

When looking at foods to fill the pantry it may be hard as there are so many options, but most are not nutritious and do not offer what you need in terms of being healthy. Most foods that are cost efficient really aren’t good for you and have little to no nutritional value.

When buying food to stock your pantry it can be hard to find things that are cheap and also nutritious to fill the cabinets. With there being so many great options, we would just like to go over some of them to show you this is something that is obtainable and not too far out of reach. Things like coupons are a great option to mitigate price and give you a great price on products that would typically cost much more and in the end, you can end up spending much less money if done right. So, you may be asking why is it so hard to budget when buying food and our answer to this is there are just so many options out there that are readily available to you and sadly most of these options and are so convenient are not healthy at all such as Mcdonalds and Burger King and some of the healthier options like chipotle are just too expensive to get for a college student on a budget. With this being said it is just better for you to go to the store and find some hacks to fill your cabinets for cheap.

Foods that are budget friendly

So today we would like to go over some foods that are healthy but also cost-effective, which can be hard to do when shopping on a strict budget but that’s why we are here to help as there can be many options that could help you with this. One of the first things to consider in this is do you think it is worth it to buy the off-brand foods like great value as most of the time these are almost identical products that offer the same nutritional value at a reduced price which is exactly what we look for as broke college students. Another method that some people use is going to stores like Aldis which has most of their products at a lower price than stores like Walmart, but there may be a lower selection of products but overall, their practically every essential you will need their and from are findings is much cheaper than shopping one of the big-name stores. With there being so many efficient options to fill your cart we thought we would go over some of them to give you ideas for your journey into a healthier, more cost-efficient lifestyle.

Types of meals that will help your budget

Things like canned tuna are very cheap and a great source of protein. Rice is also extremely cheap and very filling and for most of the world it is a staple part of their diet which is just some of the reason it is such a great purchase at the store you can also mix things in like vegetables and soy sauce to add extra flavor and nutrients to your meal. Things like canned tomatoes and chili powder cheap and make it easy to make chili or stew on a cold day which is very tasty and filling which is perfect as you can also put it is tupperware when your done and you have meals for the next couple of days and depending on your preference you can make it however you want weather that be with noodles, beans, meat or spicy ( I normally put a couple of chopped jalapenos in mine) just to make it so it hits your taste buds just right. Things like spices and seasonings are also great to look at as they can offer you lots of flavor to bland foods you may be eating and this is something great to do with ramen noodles as they are already good but you can make them great when you add some of your own seasoning to make them go to the next level.

Places you buy your food

Other important things to look at are what places are offering deals. You can find that at some butcher shops you can get cheap meats that have been sitting for a little bit but are still good and even just cuts of meat that aren't aesthetically pleasing to other people who have the money to buy these expensive cuts. Things like a shoulder are typically cheap with lots of meat on them and do great in a stew or other meals that will last you a long time and give you plenty of leftovers. Buying in bulk is also a great option when getting things like meat as you can buy a half hog or half cow which will give you about 200 pounds of meat on a cow and 50-70 on a hog which can last you a very long time and in the long run save you a couple of hundreds of dollars which can be huge when on a tight budget. So, buying a deep freezer can be worth it as it helps you in buying meat at bulk prices and keeps it readily available when needed in your house.

Why it is important to eat healthy

Along your journey you may find it easier to just go get fast food but if you stick strongly to your plan, it is very possible to eat healthier and at a much cheaper price while being able to have food readily available at your house or apartment. There are also many factors that can play into this but for the most part obtaining a healthier lifestyle can be much easier than it seems to be. You just have to make some minor changes to eating habits that ultimately will make a huge difference in your life.

Cooking On a Budget

Cooking on a budget doesn’t mean you have to compromise on taste, nutrition, or variety. With some strategic planning and thoughtful choices, you can prepare delicious and satisfying meals without spending a lot of money. I will go over some tips and tricks with you so you can cook tasty healthy meals on a budget.

Budgeting

Budgeting is obviously the first thing you need to consider when wanting to cook on a budget. Set a clear food budget that aligns with your financial goals. Tracking your expenses and adjusting your budget as needed will help you stay on track and make informed choices when shopping. Don’t forget to compare prices from different stores in your area, and the different brands. You should also pay attention to unit prices when shopping. Sometimes buying larger quantities is cheaper but that isn’t always the case. Compare the unit price to ensure you are making informed decisions. You always should evaluate and adjust your budgeting. Continuously evaluate your budget and spending habits. Adjust your meal plans and cooking strategies as needed to stay within your budget constraints and achieve your financial goals. Choosing the cheaper option will obviously help you save money compared to buying name-brand products. Choose store-brand products, and be on the lookout for discounts, sales, and coupons. Store brands are often just as high in quality as name brands but are at a lower price. If you follow these tips and make smart choices in the kitchen, you can enjoy tasty, nutritious meals while keeping your food expenses in check. Cooking on a budget is not only a practical skill but also a rewarding one that can help you save money and make the most of your resources.

Planning

Meal planning is one of the most effective ways to save money on food. Creating a weekly or monthly meal plan will help you drastically. Considering what ingredients you already have and what’s on sale at your local grocery store, will help you avoid impulse purchases and ensure you use everything you buy. Planning for leftovers is also a good thing to put into your plan for the week. Plan meals that can yield leftovers, which you can enjoy for lunch or dinner the next day. You can repurpose leftovers creatively to minimize food waste and save on future meal expenses. Try your best to reduce food waste. Be mindful of food waste by storing food properly, using leftovers creatively, and composting scraps. Minimizing waste directly impacts your budget by maximizing the use of ingredients.

Cook at Home

Cooking at home will help you tremendously when trying to stay on a budget. Eating out or ordering takeout is usually more expensive than cooking at home. When you cook at home, you have control over portion sizes, ingredients, and cooking methods, which can significantly reduce costs. This one may be difficult but try your hardest to avoid prepackaged foods. Prepackaged and processed foods are often more expensive than making similar dishes from scratch. Cooking from scratch allows you to control ingredients and portion sizes, and it can be healthier too. While cooking at home you can investigate learning different cooking techniques. Learning basic cooking techniques like stir-frying, roasting, and slow cooking. These methods can make affordable ingredients into new delicious, flavorful dishes. Finding new recipes for DIY snacks could save you more money than you'd think. Try to make your own snacks like popcorn, granola bars, or yogurt parfaits instead of buying pre-packaged ones. Not only will you save money, but you can also customize the snacks to your taste. Buying in bulk will also help you when trying to stay on a budget. Purchase non-perishable items like rice, pasta, canned goods, and grains in bulk. Buying larger quantities often means a lower cost per unit, saving you money over time. With that, ensure you have adequate storage space to make the most of bulk purchases. Also, try to limit your intake of beverages other than water. Skip expensive beverages like soda or store-bought coffee and focus on drinking water, which is not only healthier but also cheaper. Brew your coffee or tea at home to save on daily caffeine expenses.

Take Advantage of the Seasons

Another helpful tip would be to be on the lookout for seasonal and sale items. Take advantage of seasonal produce and sales to lower your grocery bill. In-season fruits and vegetables tend to be fresher and more affordable, while sale items can help you stock up on staples. Even if you aren’t a vegan, exploring meat alternatives could help you save money. Looking into meat alternatives like beans, lentils, tofu, and eggs could be more budget-friendly than purchasing meat in a grocery store today. Using herbs and spices for your meals can really bring it to the next level for cheap. Invest in a basic collection of herbs and spices to add flavor to your dishes without relying on expensive sauces or condiments. Experimenting with different seasonings can make budget-friendly meals more exciting. Community resources may help you when trying to stay on a budget as well. Try to explore local resources such as food pantries, community gardens, or farmers markets. These options may provide affordable or even free access to fresh produce and ingredients. Try getting into gardening and growing your own ingredients. If you have space, try growing some of your own herbs, fruits, or vegetables. Homegrown produce can significantly reduce your grocery expenses.

Through careful meal planning, budgeting, and making informed choices at the grocery store, you can overcome the challenges of limited resources without compromising on flavor, nutrition, or variety. Becoming comfortable with these habits will help you in the future as well. Cooking on a budget doesn’t only benefit your wallet but also your well-being.

After taking in all this knowledge, we hope you can see that it truly is simpler than you think to gather the resources and prepare yourself to shop for and create healthy and delicious meals. The moment you start your journey, you won’t turn back.