BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Low Carb CHEAP Healthy Food ideas

One of the biggest challenges for many people, when try to eat a more healthy diet, is the issue of cost. It's cheap to buy junk food. It costs a little more to buy fresh vegetables and healthy proteins.

Let's all brainstorm! What are some ideas for healthy foods which are relatively low in cost?

I get steamer bags of brussels sprouts and green beans and so on. They steam VERY easily, they taste great, and they last much longer than fresh ones do.

I'm also a fan of tuna fish. Healthy omega oils, numerous ways you can mix it up.

I've got an entire article on the topic -

Frugal Low Carb - Dieting on a Budget

@ Lisa- Thanks for the article. I didn't know the latest fact about the egg.

If you raise your own chickens, you can get eggs even more cheaply

Maybe so, but you have a greater chance of having salmonella than shop bought eggs. I think the safety aspect outweighs the cost.

MTW - that's an interesting comment! Why would eggs coming out of happy free-range chickens in your back yard be worse than eggs coming out of massive thousands-in-crates chicken boxes?

There is no relationship between illness from local eggs or from mass agri-business eggs. This isn't like needing to pasteurize milk. :-)

In fact, if you buy eggs at your store, some of them are from local eggs and you will never know it. Most people who own chickens will get more eggs than they can ever eat, and sell them to grocers and restaurants.

Fresh eggs I've had from my neighbors here are outstanding in flavor. You grab the egg from under the chicken and put it your fridge. Same thing they do at large industrial chicken farms.

Every egg that is sold in a large supermarket is tested for salmonella. Who has the facilities to do this in their back yard. I'm all for organic but not for going backwards. These are superbugs.....

Actually, the eggs sold in supermarkets are not tested for salmonella. They have passed stricter rules about commercial egg handling that makes them less likely to have salmonella than before, but they don't test them and there's still no way to guarantee the eggs don't have salmonella. In fact, most of them do, but if handled properly (kept cold, fully cooked), the salmonella doesn't pass to humans.

The salmonella strain they are trying to eradicate is one that is not caused by dirty eggs (as used to always be the case), but is passed into the egg by the mother--they are trying to get rid of the flocks that have this particular condition.

And, those flocks are commercial flocks. There are very few incidents of salmonella from non-commercial hens and those are almost always related to eating raw eggs or eggs which have been contaminated with feces on the shell. This is the old-school salmonella, not the new strain.

Plus, several incidents of salmonella have been from products containing eggs--a frozen souffle or something which requires cooking thoroughly and is well, not.

And, not to downplay the risk, but only about 0.1% of the commercial egg supply is tainted. So, if you handle & cook eggs thoroughly, you should be fine unless your immune system is weak (elderly & infants) or compromised (someone who is sick already).

That was my understanding too - that salmonella is something that's always been around, and always will be, and you cook your eggs to make them safe. Just like you cook your meat. You can get sick from eating raw meat too, which is why most of us don't do that.

In the grand scheme of things, with 43,000 people dying from car crashes every year, I'm not too worried about far lesser threats like the flu or food poisoning. Until we drive around with helmets and thick leather jackets on, we aren't taking the actual threats in our lives very seriously That's just my take on things.

*All* food illnesses, across every type of food, only kills 5,000 people a year.