To really save money on clean eating, it's pretty much a requirement that you make as much food from scratch as possible. That means you need to prepare. You need to actually plan meals, make a real grocery list, shop, and possibly take some time to chop veggies, brown a batch of meat, or cook a pot of rice so that you save time during the week. Check out my post on 16 Cleaning Eating Foods You Can Freeze for help with that.
However sometimes you are just busy and don't have time to make everything from scratch. Creating snack foods are an especially time consuming activity. I spoke earlier about my appreciation for the Fooducate App. You use the App to scan the barcode of grocery items. If the rating comes up as a B+ or higher, it's clean eating approved. I didn't get to every aisle. However I did use it to scan some cereal and snack items I found in the organic food section. Yes the prices are slightly higher than other brands that are not nearly as healthy. However I don't mean for these foods to be something you plow through all the time. They are “splurge” foods and can be bought on occasion or when you find a great deal.
*Note: Beware of brand like Special K, Fiber One, and even Kashi. Those foods were not approved even though they advertise as being healthy.
Here are some that I found that look promising and DID get a B+ or higher rating:
- Bare Naked Granola 12 oz bag (variety of flavors): $3.50
- Cascadian Farms Granola bars 6 pk (Oats and Honey Crunch and Chocolate Chip Chewy: $4
- KIND Bars 5 pk (Dark Chocolate Mocha ONLY): $4
- nature's Path Organic Bars 5 pk (Macaroon Crunch or Apple Pie Crunch): $4
- Bare fruit Fuji Red Apple Crisps 2.2 oz (sounds small but it's actually a good sized bag): $2.50
- popcorn Indiana Fit Popcorn with Sea Salt: $3.50
*Note: For 21 Day Fix container equivalents, most of these would probably count as a treat which can replace a yellow container 3 times a week.
I also wanted to add that I spent $70 at my regular grocery store. All the food is clean eating and I didn't use any coupons except for one I found in the weekly ad and another that was on the package of one of the products I bought. I won't list everything like I did last week but I want to share a picture to show that it's really not more expensive. What is missing are items I already have: apples, onions, cereal, oatmeal, beans, brown rice, eggs, chicken, steak, peanut butter, and bread. If I did purchase those items today, my total would have come to around $100 instead of $70. I also bought the Nature's Path granola bars and Dannon's NEW Evolution greek yogurts. They are so good and even though they are so new that Fooducate doesn't recognize it, the ingredients point towards clean eating. I also stocked up on honey and maple syrup. I know I won't use it all this week, but it's good to have on hand. Anyhow, I wanted to share it:
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