How to Eat Healthy on a Budget in 2025: Part 2

In part 1 of the “How to Eat Healthy on a Budget in 2025.” series, I gave you tips on how to pre-plan and what to do at the store. In this post, I’ll share with you what to do in your own home.

At Home

Meal Prepping

Meal prepping, or making leftovers on purpose, has gained a lot of popularity over the years. There’s a lot of reasons why.

Meal prepping is a great way to eat healthy. It’s very convenient if you have a chunk of time to spare one day during the week to semi prepare your meals. It saves time during the week while you’re really busy. It’s also great because it makes eating out less tempting,. We’ve all been there when we’re super tired and hungry and need something to eat healthy, but don’t have the energy to make food that we already have at home. If you’ve meal prepped, you can just pop your Tupperware in the microwave and viola. Also, if you planned your menu before you went to the grocery store, you can make meals ahead of time. There are two different types of meal planning that I am aware of.

• Traditional meal prepping involves preparing your meals, placing them in Tupperware containers and storing them in the fridge. This is a shorter term meal plan process. Keep in mind to eat these meals within seven days of preparation.
• Freezer meals are a longer term version of meal planning. Larger quantities of food are typically made. Instead of placing them in the refrigerator, they are placed in the freezer. There’s tons of YouTube videos on freezer meals. Depending on how much space you have in your freezer or deep freezer, you can go a few months without cooking. This is a great idea if you know you’ll be low on time in the future such as planning for the arrival of a newborn baby. Dishes such as soups, chilies and casseroles freeze really well. Be sure to consume these meals within three to four months if the food is cooked, then frozen.

Homesteading

Homesteading is an excellent money saving and healthy option if you are able bodied, have extra time, and love being hands on. Here are a few methods that you can try:

• Bones that have been deboned from meats can be used to make homemade broths and stocks. The left over vegetables from this process can be blended together to make a homemade thickener for stews gravies and soups.
• With fruit, especially very ripe fruit that is on the edge of becoming inedible, you can make jellies or jams. Ripened fruit tends to be sweeter, so they’d be perfect for this project. If you’re into baking, you can use these jams and jellies to make pies and cakes. If you’re not, you can use them for toast and bagels.

The last two points are more geared towards environmental sustainability. Before taking these suggestions, research your local state, county, city, and/or HOA rules and regulations.

• Composting fertilizes soil and presents an opportunity to gives the earth back what it has given to you. It also helps to reduce waste in landfills.
• Start a small garden if you have a green thumb. As mentioned in part 1, the longer a food is away from it’s parent plant, the more nutrients it looses. Having your own garden means that you automatically have more nutritious food than your local grocery store!

Pantry

Having pantry staples on hand can save you a lot of money. This includes salt, pepper, other spices you like, bread, rice, potatoes, beans, sugar, flour, baking powder and corn starch. You can use these to make meals and enhance your meals.

Pantry challenges encourages resourcefulness. Essentially, people challenge themselves to make a meal only from items on hand in their pantry. This can be a fun way for you to come up with some creative recopies and save money.

One thing that may not be so plentiful in the pantry is meat. I’m not trying to convince you to go full blown vegan or vegetarian. However, there has been research over the years revealing to us how eating less meat can be beneficial. One way to use meat less is to use meat as a topping instead of it being included as the main dish.

Canned foods are common pantry staples and they tend to get a bad rep. Similar to frozen foods, they may contain more nutrients than fresh foods depending on seasonality. A big and valid concern for a lot of people is the sodium content. To remove about 40% of the sodium, drain all of the water from the canned food and rinse the food off with water.

Final Thoughts

With so much information that was shared in this two part series, by no means is this an exhaustive resource to eat healthy on a budget. Comment down below if you have any suggestions and let me know which tips you are going to try!