25 Tips for Healthy Grocery Shopping On a Tight Budget

Struggling to feed your family healthy food with the cost of groceries going up? You’re not alone, but I’ve got some help for you. These tips for healthy grocery shopping on a budget will help you lower your grocery bills while still eating healthy.  

In addition to these tips, I’ve also got a list of easy budget-friendly meals to add to your meal rotation and help you with your money-saving goals.

Shopping for healthy food in the grocery store is already hard when you’re navigating processed foods at every turn, but add to it the increasing food costs, and it’s easy to want to give up.

There are lots of ways to make a healthy diet work on a tight budget, however, and here’s how to make it work.

25 Tips for Healthy Grocery Shopping on a Budget

1. Shop the Perimeter

One of the best tips to save money on groceries is to shop the perimeter of the store.

Have you ever noticed that grocery “basics” are almost all on the outside aisles and the back of the grocery store?

By putting staples at the back of the store (milk, eggs, cheese, and meat) you need to walk through all of the candies, cookies in teeny-weeny packages, and chips in order to get to them.

Most of that stuff in the middle of the store is loaded with added sugar, artificial colors, and more, and it’s for sure not good for your budget. Just skip going there altogether and you’ll help your budget tremendously.

2. Make a Shopping List

When you make a grocery list you’ve taken a big step towards saving money on your food budget.

You know how it goes: you plan on buying

• Meats 
• Veggies
• Beans and
• Brown Rice

but somehow you end up with a cart full of

• Sugar-coated Cereal
• Gluten-Free Pretzels
• Chocolate Bars and more.

When you have a list written out ahead of time, you’re more likely to stick to it.

3. Shop Without Kids (Leave the Kids at Home)

Grocery store marketing folks are geniuses. They know how to make the packages of sugar-coated stuff and chips all super appealing to kiddos, and they put all the fun packaging right at the eye level of kids, whether they are walking beside you or riding in the grocery cart.

The easier solution is, whenever possible, to leave the kids at home. Or develop a will of steel when you go shopping with them because once you start giving in to your kids’ whims at the store, it will never end. 

4.  Eat Before You Shop

Just don’t go to the grocery store hungry. Everything will look good to you and you’ll be tempted to make impulse buys.

I recommend keeping some healthy snacks like Toasted Coconut Chips or Rosemary Nuts on hand if you’re running several errands so you don’t get caught hungry when shopping for food.  

Bonus tip: grocery shop after a meal to make the most out of this tip.

5. Check Online Stores

Online grocery shopping is another good way to keep your food budget under control. Check to see if the prices for some of the things you need are cheaper online. It’s also a good idea to check sales on a few sites to see what deals you can find. 

Here are some examples of online places to buy healthy food.

• Vitacost
• Amazon
• Iherb
• Azure Standard (my favorite!)

Azure is a great option. They have local drops where you can get your food (and connect with other healthy food enthusiasts) and you’re supporting a great cause as well.

6.  Shop Sales and Loss-leaders

Loss leaders are those items that a store advertises in order to get you into the store so you spend more on other things.

Basically the store is maybe taking a loss on those items, but they plan to make up for it on what you spend on the rest of your shopping trip.

Hubby and I were the Loss Leader King and Queen when we were first married. People in the stores would occasionally laugh at us with our cartful of 10-cent Yoplaits (no, we don’t eat those sugar-laden yogurts anymore) and oranges.

The last laugh was ours, however, when “we” finished his 2 masters and a PhD with no debt. 

7. Focus on Beans and Legumes

Beans are a healthy protein source and work with almost any kind of diet (did you know 1 cup of lentils has 18 grams of protein?) and are a real bargain. They’re a particularly amazingly good source of plant-based protein. I buy all of my beans dried in bulk and I love Azure Standard for their pricing and quality.

If you like beans, but don’t like how they (ahem) treat you, read How to De-Gas Beans.

Note that you can typically substitute 1 cup of dried beans for 1 pound of meat in any recipe.

Keep in mind that canned beans aren’t that great of a value, plus many can linings have BPA and if not, the BPA alternatives are considered by some to be even more toxic than BPA.

Healthy Bean Recipes

These bean recipes will expand your collection of bean recipes while keeping your grocery bill down.

– Pizza Hummus
– Savory Hummus 
– Fast and Yummy Bean Dip great with black beans, but any type of bean works great.
– Kid-Friendly Lentils (ready in as little as 9 minutes!)

8. Shop the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen Lists

Part of eating healthy includes buying organic foods. It’s known that organic foods have fewer pesticides than conventionally grown foods, and many of those pesticides are linked to health concerns.

However, organic food is typically quite a bit more expensive than non-organic and that’s where the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists come in handy.

You can use this list to prioritize your organic food dollars, choosing organic for those foods on the Dirty Dozen list and conventional for those on the Clean Fifteen.

We do this often, for example when we bought quite a lot of non-GMO sweet corn that was on sale for 25 cents an ear since it was on the Clean Fifteen list that year.

9. Skip Pre-made Drinks

Water is basically free. Well, not completely, and of course you should drink only filtered water, but still. Those bottled sodas and “healthy” drinks cost a literal fortune. You can make so many healthy drinks simply at home. 

Some great ideas are this Coffee Substitute, Sugar-free Strawberry Lemonade, and Sugar-free Lemonade. For extra nutrition, this Whole Lemon Lemonade is a great choice.

Oh, and skip the plastic water bottles too. You can typically easily bring your own filtered water with you anywhere in a stainless steel water bottle or one of these neat Owala bottles that I’m hoping to purchase soon.

Drinking water out of plastic isn’t a great idea due to microplastics ending up in the water. And besides, a lot of bottled is simply tap water. Shocking but true. Check your labels!

10. Buy Frozen Fruits and Vegetables

Yes, fresh produce is typically best when it comes to nutrition quality, but frozen is the next best. Frozen is almost always better when it comes to your budget.

Check out frozen versions of the fruits and vegetables that your family loves and stock up on them, especially when they’re on sale.

11. Check the Unit Price

Checking the unit price (per ounce or per pound, etcetera), helps you to compare the cost of one product to another so you can get the best value. 

Bulk foods are typically cheaper, per unit, but that’s not always the case, so be careful.

12.  Buy in Bulk

I’m kind of the Queen of Bulk. Really.

To buy food in bulk, you can shop at a local farmer’s market and ask for discounts when you buy in bulk from them, or try some of these other options as well:

• Warehouse stores like Sam’s Club and Costco
• Azure Standard has larger volumes available for many foods including beans, sweeteners, and even produce. We once got organic transitional pears from Azure for only 40 cents a pound!

Do make sure that you will be able to use the food you buy before it spoils, of course, or you’ll actually end up wasting money.

Another bulk buying tip is to split bulk purchases with someone else to save without the risk of spoiling. I’ve done this many times, most recently on the above-mentioned pears.

13. Shop Your Pantry and Freezer First

This is a great way to save money on your healthy grocery shopping, especially if you have been buying things in bulk and stocking up. In fact, you might find that you can go a long time without shopping if you just “shop” what you have. 

Make it a fun “Shop the Freezer” family challenge to see how long you can go without going to the grocery store!

14. Choose Less Expensive Substitutes

Whenever possible, try to substitute less expensive ingredient alternatives. You can also choose to omit expensive ingredients if they’re not crucial to the outcome.

Even if it is an ingredient that you think “makes the dish” you might find that omitting it results in a whole new recipe that you’ll love just as much

Here are a few easy substitutions that work well for most recipes.

• dark meat instead of white (we make this substitution often for these Baked Chicken Nuggets)
• regular heads of lettuce instead of baby greens
• dried spices instead of fresh

For example, for these Thai Curry Chicken Thighs, I mentioned using curry powder instead of the Thai Green Curry, which is a much less expensive option. 

15. Consider Buying One Special Treat

Having a treat on your list can make sticking to your budget more pleasurable, so you’re more likely to stick to it.

And it doesn’t have to be something extravagant. How about one of those large bags of organic corn chips at Costco? They’re a GREAT deal and so good.

Or the ingredients to make a special treat like this Chocolate Avocado Ice Cream or special toppings for this Healthy Chocolate Bark.

16. Avoid Processed Foods

It kind of goes without saying that processed foods cost way more than whole foods do. To save on costs, skip the box and either go without, find a whole food substitute, or make something similar yourself. You’ll save money and have more nutritious foods for your family as well.

Here are some things to skip with alternatives to try:

• Skip the Dang Coconut Chips and try these Toasted Coconut Chips instead.
• Ditch the Potato Chips or “Veggie Chips” and make these healthy Green Bean Chips.
• Instead of boxed cereal, make this delicious Buckwheat Granola.
• Leave the candy on the shelf and make this Healthy Snickers.
• Instead of boxed gelatin mixes, make this Homemade Jello instead.
• Skip the Pre-made Frosting and make this Sweet Potato Frosting instead.
• You can even make these Sugar-free Chocolate Chips, which cost so much less than store-bought options.

17. Avoid Pre-cut Foods

Skip having someone else cut your food and do the processing yourself! When shopping, avoid precut fruits in small plastic containers, precut broccoli florets, and shredded cheese.

Not only will you save a lot of money, but you’ll also avoid consuming a lot of toxins. Acidic fruit can leach toxins from the plastic containers that it’s packaged in, and shredded cheese often has anti-caking agents (like potato starch and powdered cellulose) as well as antifungals like natamycin added. 

18. Don’t Buy Things You Don’t Like

You’re not going to save money if you buy things that you and your family don’t like. They’ll likely spoil before they get eaten, so all of your money will be wasted.

I’m talking to myself here. Ask me about how I had to practically force-feed our family sauteed celery after making an unfortunate bulk purchase of the same.

19. Pay With Cash

When you actually have to hand over (many) dollar bills to pay for your groceries, you’re less likely to buy as much as you would when using a credit card. The buy now/pay later trend easily lends to spending more than they would otherwise. 

20. Use Curbside Pickup

Using curbside pickup may or may not help you spend less, but it’s worth trying. It can prevent you from making impulse purchases, might help you compare prices, and can save time.

I personally don’t like using this option due to the possibility of errors, and also when buying produce it’s really important for me to see the produce that I’m buying and avoid over-ripe or small items (when buying by the piece).

21. Limit Shopping Trips

Doing all of your shopping in one trip helps reduce impulse spending, time spent, and gas costs as well. 

When you shop only once, you only get tempted to buy more once!

22. Buy the Whole Animal

Instead of buying boneless skinless chicken breasts (which cost a literal fortune these days), buy a whole chicken instead.  I like buying organic pastured chicken when I can, supporting a local farmer, and then using the WHOLE chicken. 

You can even make an amazingly delicious chicken broth with the whole bird and have lovely tender chicken for many meals cooked at the same time.

23. Buy Generic

Instead of brand-name products, try the generic options of things like canned or dried beans, canned or frozen vegetables, sauces, condiments, and the like. 

24. Shop at Multiple Stores

Yes, I know I mentioned limiting shopping trips, but it can also help your budget to try shopping multiple places strategically. We tend to shop sales and buy certain staples at Costco, for example.

If you aren’t tempted to impulse buy and you can be efficient with your shopping, you can really save a lot by making a few well-planned stops.

25. Review Your Cart Before Checking Out

Give your cart a once over before heading into the checkout lane. You’ll often find a few things that you really don’t need or that you can put off until your next shopping trip.

Healthy Frugal Meals and Side Dishes

The following easy frugal meals and sides can really help you build a shopping list that fits your budget.

• Egg Roll in a Bowl
• Gluten-free Chili Mac
• Ground Beef Curry
• Lentil Curry 
• Gluten-free Hamburger Helper
• Gluten-free Chicken Nuggets – use thigh meat to save a bit more money
• Potato and Leek Soup
• Blender Tomato Soup
• Whole Grain Blender Waffles
• Gluten-free Dairy-free Quiche
• Dairy-free Frittata

I so hope these ideas are a help as you try to STRETCH your food budget. And if your budget is already under control that you got a tip or two to help you even more.

Do you have some other ways to save money while still eating healthy to share? Please drop your tips in the comments area below.