Healthy Food on an Unhealthy Budget
Published on - June 1st, 2006 (Modified on - May 14th, 2009) (by J.D. Roth) An AskMetafilter user wonders:
What’s your favorite healthy food that can be bought on a college student budget? I’ve decided that I’m really going to crack down on my poor eating habits. As a college student, I’ve always bought the food that was the most affordable. Unfortunately, this is usually generic-brand pizza, toaster streudels, and whichever soda is on sale. In order to combat this, I’m looking for suggestions for healthy, easy-to-prepare foods that won’t break the bank.
There are some great answers here, such as:
- A cup of rice and a vegetarian stir-fry
- Replace soda with water
- Pasta primavera
- Fruitshakes/smoothies
- Cheese and crackers
- Nuts
- Beans (flavored with a little meat)
- Fruits and vegetables
Learning to eat (and prepare) more meals at home is an excellent way to reduce your food budget and eat healthfully. Find a source of recipes that you trust and learn to prepare them. (Here’s a good online recipe page that features many cheap and healthy meals.)
If you’re looking for healthy food on a small budget, then fruits and vegetables and other whole foods are the way to go. They’re the basic building blocks of a nutritious diet, and they’re much cheaper than processed foods.
Similar questions have been asked several times before at AskMetafilter:
- I want to eat more healthy foods. I have a very small food budget. Any ideas?
- What do you think is the cheapest, healthiest, tastiest, easiest meal to prepare?
- I need suggestions on high energy food that’s cheap, doesn’t need to be refrigerated, and tastes good (if such a thing exists).
- What’s the simplest, cheapest yet most complete diet available?
- I want to bring lunch to work because I am 1) trying to lose weight and 2) save money. Any ideas for what’s both healthy and easy?
- I am looking for unique ideas for making quick, easy, heathy, inexpensive dinners (in my case, for two) every night… or at least most nights. “Dinner Hacks” you might say.
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Great Post! This is definitely a subject I was wondering about myself.
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As well as finding individual meals that are cost effective try to find things you can spin out over a number of days. For example as a student I would buy a chicken and then;
Sunday: Roast the chicken with potatoes and red lentils and use lots of olive oil (this meal on it’s own is probably quite expensive).
Monday: Use the left overs to make either chicken sandwiches or chicken curry or similar.
Tuesday: Use the carcass of the chicken and any other left overs with a can of tomatoes water a few other vegetables to make a soup.
Wednesday: Use the leftover soup as the base for a pasta or chilli sauce.
When you work out the costs (plus time / effort for mon/tue/wed) it works out really cheap. With a bit of immagination and experimentation you could probably think other similar comibinations.
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No! No! Meat and oil are not healthy foods. Check out the produce section or a local farmers market for farm fresh goodness. These whole foods contain nutrients that will fill you up quickly and cheaply! Guaranteed!
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Meat IS healthy…as long as it’s free-range, organic, grass-fed, etc. If you feed an animal garbage, then the content of the meat is also garbage (wrong ratios of fats, lack of protein, etc.)
Olive oil is also healthy. Both meat and oil are Paleo.
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Why not just buy stuff thats on sale and the cheapest frozen package of vegetables that go with the aforementioned product.
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[...] Change the way you eat. If youâ??re looking for healthy food on a small budget, then fruits and vegetables and other whole foods are the way to go. Theyâ??re the basic building blocks of a nutritious diet, and theyâ??re much cheaper than processed foods.read more | digg story [...]
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Eating well on a budget requires some thought…. But planning out a whole month of meals, and shopping for that month (you only get two paychecks a month) is the real challenge.
Is there a web site with a month long meal plan of healthy meals, in a speadsheet shopping list, that can be used at most grocery stores? NO… at least I can not find any, yet.
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i think the easiest way to eat healthy and cheap is to buy in bulk and buy things you will eat and easy to freeze. you can make a weeks worth of meals in one day and heat to eat for later.
I for one make a cajun style chicken fettachini alfrado. yes its high in carbs but this is why you work a little more like walking. the meal is easy to make and lasts a single person several days. use one pound of chicken tenders and a package of pasta. and a jar of alfrado sauce with one can of doles or the like brand of tomattos. and some broccle when i cook the pasta i also cook the broccle. i grill the chicken using a blacken spice.
one other thing is to grill chicken. whole chicken is best to buy since its the cheapest. for the side i make a mixed vegis in a bag. should be good for 3 or 4 meals.
beans and rice are also cheap and easy to make as a base for a meal.
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[...] Healthy Food on an Unhealthy Budget [...]
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I have been very interested in this stuff, a while back there was this great site called HillBilly Housewife that has a whole list of the recipes. I’ll admit the prices may differ, but the site says you can feed 4 to 6 people for $45 dollars a week. All the meals and recipes are included. Check it out:
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/40dollarmenu.htm
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Or you could play lots of soccer.
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[...] In response to recent posts on eating cheaply (Healthy Food on an Unhealthy Budget and Learning to Eat More Meals at Home), several readers have pointed to a site called Hillbilly Housewife. The focus here is on low-cost, home-cooking from scratch. The recipes are all tested in a real kitchen with hungry children, stalking cats, begging puppies and a playful husband underfoot. The ingredients are affordable and readily available in most areas. [...]
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burn the ramen!!!!
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How to eat healthy on a low budget…
Change the way you eat.
If you are looking for healthy food on a small budget, then fruits and vegetables ……
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Ask the Readers: Eating healthy on a small budget…
The Get Rich Slowly blog highlights a few tips for eating healthy on a tight budget in response to a question over at Ask MetaFilter. The post offers several both tried-and-true and good-for-you snacks and meals and also suggests……
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There are a number of ways to do this. I’ve been successfully living a healty and inexpensive college diet for some time now and the key is indeed buying fresh foods, but not at the grocery store. Food Co-ops, farmers markets, and the like offer extremely low priced and fresh foods that are usually grown locally.
Also I’ve noticed many ethnic food stores have similar pricing structures. It sometimes takes a few visits before they recognize you, but these places are usually very thankful for your consistent business and offer price reductions at the register with a minimal amount of “Social Engineering”.
More on the health side of things, it also helps to regulate the amount of spices and cooking ingredients used in the foods you make. I’ve found that rather than using even light ranch or other creamy dressing on a salad, a little bit of salt, vinegar and and water thrown together (often known as brazilian dressing) really brings out the flavors of fresh vegetables without all the unnecessary calories you get by smothering it in processed chemicals and cheese.
Drinking 4-less “natty’s” a night will also do wonders.
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You could always eat less… actually, for the next 21 days I’m running a personal “experiment” where I only eat the recommended serving size of each item for each meal. This morning I had exactly 1 1/4 cups of cereal, and for lunch I had a breakfast burrito with one flour tortilla, 1 egg, 1/4 c cheese, 1 meatless sausage pattie, and 2 tbsp salsa, along with 5 dried apricot halves. I bet people generally eat portions that are too large… one could save money and be more healthy by eating “normal” portions (and getting 2+ meals out of 1).
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for a cheap/fast/easy lunch i hit a local grocery store that has a salad bar that cost $3.99/lb. They have a wide assortment of fresh veggies to choose from and I have never spent more than $3.00 on a salad that i have made. i am always left perfectly full. just remember that the fatty stuff weighs more…so leave it off…saves money and calories.
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Three key things to eat healthy:
(1) Soups: Soup isfilling and you can freeze it. Make brocolli soup using frozen broccoli that includes the stems (it’s cheaper than just flowerets!). Use lots of celery for the broth, it adds volume, its low in calories and cheap. Cooking greens such as chard, bok choy, kale, etc are usually very cheap, very filling, and very nutritious.
(2) Legumes (Beans): Whatever color, whatever kind. Use chickpeas to make your own hummus. Cook black beans with spices and tofu. You can also use dry soy beans to make your own soy nuts which are a delicious and healthy snack.
(3) Frozen fruit: I always have a good amount of frozen fruit in the fridge and eat it with nonfat yogurt. Fresh fruit like cherries can get expensive, so if you buy it frozen, you can eat it whenever and not worry about it going bad AND it’s cheaper!
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“Once a month cooking” is something I’ve been looking to try for a while… I have no “monthly” experience to share, but the idea seems great to me (but I would have to adapt it, I just LOVE to grab fresh vegetables and fruits a few times per week, especially in season / right now, I’m more at the weekly cooking level).
There are a few web sites and a book on it (good start is: http://www.realfood4realpeople.com/oamc.html)
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I’m not in university yet, but my cousins have all been telling me how much of a god-send that http://www.cookingbynumbers.com is. Although the recipes are basic, it definately helps when cooking on a budget using just the basic things that you have left over at home!
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Healthy, not necessarily meatless, has almost as much to do with preparation as it does with content. Pasta is dirt cheap, especially in bulk and with a little olive oil and a lot of herbs (or just margarine or butter).
Shopping for a family on a budget I always scour the weekly circulars and check ‘smartcoupons.com’ for manufacturers coupons on line. Walmart has its own brand of meatballs, cheese ravioli and cheese shells that are very tasty and far cheaper than you can make them. Michelini brand frozen dinners are often on special for less that a dollar each. On Saturday morning Winn-Dixie was over stocked on fresh shrimp so they marked it down to $1.99 a pound (normally $7-8 pound).
I will argue that you can do as well, and probably better from a budget perspective, by picking selected frozen foods, especially vegetables and especially in the larger bags, than you can with fresh vegetables or health food.
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Do you have access to an oven? It’s great to just put something in an oven and then not have to worry about tending it til it’s time to eat. Like other commenters here, I tend to avoid processed foods as much as possible, and find it’s cheaper to buy raw produce. (Starting a small herb garden can also save you shelling out $2 or $3 for a bunch of herbs every time you need them). I don’t use that much meat in my cooking – I find only a little bit of meat goes a long way in a dish, and I bulk it up with pasta and veges instead. One of the staples in my cupboard is bacon bits (small diced bits of bacon). They freeze well and you can use them straight from the freezer to add just a tiny bit of meat to whatever you are cooking. Some cheap, easy and tasty meals:
- Roast some sliced up vegetables like pumpkin, capsicum and eggplant and toss with pasta and olive oil.
- Brown some pork chops and throw it in a casserole dish with (raw and chopped) onions, potatoes, broccoli or your choice of vegetables. Mix in a tin of your favorite soup and bake for an hour in a medium oven.
- Throw some chicken wings (one of the cheapest cuts of meat there is) into a baking dish with some cloves of garlic, herbs and soy sauce to season. Top with onion slices and wedges of very ripe tomatoes and olive oil. Bake for 30 mins in medium oven then shuffle wings to top, and turn up the heat to let the wings crisp up. Mix in some baby spinach leaves after cooking to wilt. Mix with pasta or serve with crusty bread to mop up the juices.
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i really digg the chicken carcass soup idea
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[...] Just on a lark, I decided not to buy any dark chocolate for myself this week. Readers may remember that I regularly take a few ounces of dark chocolate early in the morning as a pick-me-up (along with Diet Coke, a kiwi and shredded wheat cereal). I told myself that I’d do it for a week to see if I NEED it. Mid-evening, I’m thinking about the prospect of waking up to no chocolates, no sweets, no anything. I’ve cut down significantly on sweets (no ice cream or donuts, and a cookie only at parties and during my once-a-week shopping), so a little splurge on chocolate won’t kill me. The problem is that it’s difficult to control the amount of chocolate I eat. Often I eat more than a reasonable portion of chocolate. Will Robert be able to survive with no chocolate? Stay tuned for our next episode! Speaking of diet, here’s Michael Blowhard on diet books and a meta post on healthy eating at the personal improvement blog, Get Rich Slowly. [...]
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@ Derek
My wife and I buy a $5 or $6 (depending on sales) rotisserie chicken from the supermarket once or twice a month. This provides an immediate meal of hot, juicy chicken. We pick the rest of the meat for a second cheap meal of chicken quesadillas. And we get a third meal out of it by steeping using the carcass to create chicken stock. This is very much like pgc in the second comment, except we’re paying the store to roast the chicken for us. It’s good stuff!
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There is a website called savingdinner.com. They have 8 menus to choice from. One being frugal and another is vegetarian if that is your choice. They have sample menus for you to try so you dont feel that you need to buy till your sure it works. Each menu has a shopping list to go with it so you just go with the flow. All but one of the menus are dinner only. The other menu with breakfast, lunch and snacks on top of dinner is called Body Clutter. I picked the Body Clutter menu beacuse I have trouble remembering or even being good at thinking up good breakfasts.
The owner of the site has an article in the Desert newspaper about a pantry that keeps you eating the right stuff. There are also articles in the archives on the website.
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[...] Get Rich Slowly » Healthy Food on an Unhealthy Budget They say that poor people are obese because they can’t afford heathy food. But that’s not true–take a look at this collection of healthy, cheap food. (tags: food health money cooking home recipes reference) [...]
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@Phillip – I’m sorry I don’t have much that is more helpful to add at this time, but Phillip’s suggestion about chicken alfredo just isn’t appropriate for “healthy” food.
Alfredo is always one of the unhealthiest (and, um, most delicious!) meals you can eat. It’s not the carbs, it’s the fattiness of the cheese… really really high cholesterol. Just going for a longer walk won’t help. It would be better to grill or poach the seasoned chicken and eat it on top of a bed of greens.
Likewise, Steve’s suggestion of dirt-cheap Michelini frozen dinners isn’t a good one. Processed foods like that should be avoided as much as possible from both health and budget standpoints.
If I have something to add I’ll definitely be back. At the moment, the only thing I can think to add, which someone else might already have said, is that it’s always cheaper to buy your own lettuce and wash/cut it than it is to buy lettuce in a bag. Stick to green lettuces like romaine, skip iceburg (it has almost no nutritional value and is mostly cellulose and water).
To the original Ask Mefi poster I would have said to buy or ask someone for a Brita pitcher (around $20 + $6/ish filters every few months) and start drinking tap water instead of soda.
I think Real Simple has, in the past, had “what to do with a rotisserie chicken for several days” articles, which might be available on their website.
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Learning how to eat seasonally helps my budget a lot. Rather than planning meals just around what sounds good (think red pepper and zucchini ratatouille in december. I try to think about what is in season, in my region at the time.
Sure, it can seem limiting at first, but it is also an opportunity to try new and interesting (and nutritious) vegetables. Roots and hardy greens were my best friends this past winter.
Things are WAY cheaper when they are in season (sometimes 1/4 of the off season price). You can even substitute seasonal veggies for your favorite dishes.
Your local farmer’s market is a great resource cuz if it’s not in season it’s simply not there. Natural foods stores often have plenty of info on seasonality of veggies and there are lots of great resources out there that tell you how to cook a rutabaga. Not to mention your frienly local farmer or produce worker…man do they know how to cook!
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[...] Get Rich Slowly » Healthy Food on an Unhealthy Budget Bonne nourriture pour les pauvres (tags: nourriture cheap food health budget) [...]
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Your website is to long but it’s o.k. to read if you have the time to do so.
love ya Jade Kitely
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I would find it easy if your home page wasn’t so long, and by the way it looks like it would take me for eva to read if i needed information about healthy Eating could you make the writing more clear to read, i struggled to read most of the writing.
Love Ya Jade Kitely
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Not sure if it is just a local thing, but we have Sav-A-Lots around where I live and they are awesome. Most of the stuff I have never heard of, but it all tastes pretty much like it’s name brand equivalent. My girlfriend and I especially like Dr. Pop, which is a rip off of Dr. Pepper if you couldn’t guess.
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You need to eat a good, full meal on test day morning. I’d always go to Dennys and study on a table. Probably not the time to count calories or concentrate on health merits.
For general meals, I practically lived out of my crockpot in college. You can throw anything in there, left overs, side of meat, bag of green peas and a little ham. Just add a little water and learn how to make a stock.
Don’t like what you made? Throw some more stuff in their, you can usually fix it by adding something else.
Even cheap grade meats can taste good, cooked in a crock pot.
A pot roast seems expensvive, but remember, you can practically live of of that ten dollar cut for a whole week.
The only catch is it can smell up your room or house. I left my on the balcony, but you could put it in under your stove and leave the fan running.
Healthy food is a matter of diversity and quantity. Soups a good, a slow meal to relax and enjoy. Requires little time and you can season anything on the planet and make soup out of it.
Get some barley or throw some left over cooked rice in.
Make sure you get some canned tomatoes to zest up your meats.
You can’t ruin a meal with the crockpot, unless you leave unattened w/o water. Still won’t burn down the house though.
Get a big one, the little ones are a joke.
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[...] I’ve also been reading a bunch of websites for tips on losing weight. [...]
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there are ways of making the alfrado not so rich and fat and taste just as good. just have to do a simple google for low fat alfredo sauce. if you eat the meal in proper proportions you would also not have to worry about it being as unhealthy. eating a nice portion of steamed vegis and a salad balances it all out.
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I’m on a budget but would like to go on a low cholesterol diet. And I would like to eat as many of the food groups a day as possible to stay healthily.
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soak green lentils for about an hour, with salt, pepper, and curry powder.
boil until soft, which will take 20 minutes full blast, then up to 1 hour on a lower temperature. Add water when needed, but no water should remain (this isn’t a soup).
dice in half an onion.
crush or finely dice in some garlic.
cut up two or three frankfurt sausages.
add two or three boiled and diced patatoes.
You’ve got the healthiest and most inexpensive food, which could keep you going for days for under £5.
Mahatma Gandhi said you can survive on lentils alone, which he did. It is historically known to be the healthiest and cheapest and most ancient food known to man.
The first couple of days it might alter your digestion and make you expel all the usual gunk we eat and retain.. but once your system is flushed you’re in for a treat if you’ve been wanting to get rid of that gutt or love handles.
have a look around for variations and more info, just to get you started:
http://www.recipes4us.co.uk/Specials%20and%20Holidays/Lentils%20Origin%20Uses%20Recipes.htm
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=52
Enjoy.
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[...] Get Rich Slowly » Healthy Food on an Unhealthy Budget Interesting blog with some good advice. (tags: food health) [...]
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[...] My wife and I love to eat. We also love to save money. Sometimes it’s difficult to reconcile these competing desires. I’ve written before about learning to eat more meals at home and how to find healthy food on an unhealthy budget. Recently, Bankrate posted an article called 10 Frugal Cooking Tips that Sizzle. Cooking can get expensive if you buy too many kitchen gadgets, make poor grocery choices or panic shop for each night’s supper. We spoke with chefs, caterers and cookbook authors for their insights on eating well without spending a lot. We share their onion pearls of wisdom with you. [...]
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The roast chicken is a favorite in my house, too. We started buying $7 rotisserie chickens and moved on to roasting our own. (Not actually cheaper, but we can mix up the spices.) The leftover chicken goes into sandwiches, tacos or enchiladas. In the winter we make soup with the carcass.
Ethnic grocery stores are great – I can buy 100 tortillas for $1.50 at the mexican market near my house, cheap avocados (2/$1 when everyone else is charging $1.50) and other produce, canned refried beans, etc.
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[...] Change the way you eat. If you â??re looking for healthy food on a small budget, then fruits and vegetables and other whole foods are the way to go. Theyâ??re the basic building blocks of a nutritious diet, and theyâ??re much cheaper than processed foods.read more | digg story [...]
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[...] Get Rich Slowly » Healthy Food on an Unhealthy Budget [...]
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You don’t have to be rich to eat healthy, but it is more expensive and takes more commitment. It is also a lot better if you plan on living longer!
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This post brings to mind my college days when our budgets allowed for spags(spaghetti) and pb&j.
I am also reminded of the tv show that ended in the 90′s, The Frugal Gormet. He always had some great recipes for little dinero. Especially loved an episode he did on Chili. I better stop, I am making myself hungry.
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Curry….
It’s easy to make, it tastes great, very flexible to the ingrediants on hand, and if you buy the spice itself in bulk, cheap.
http://pussfeller.googlepages.com/quickcurrydishes
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[...] Cook your own meals. This is a valuable skill, especially for young adults. If you can learn to eat well on a budget, you’ll be ahead of your peers. [...]
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[...] (For more on this topic read: Healthy food on an unhealthy budget and Learning to eat more meals at home.) [...]
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[...] Get Rich Slowly » Healthy Food on an Unhealthy Budget Tips for eating healthily on a tight budget. I must read this. (tagged: article blogs cooking food health howto interesting lifehack lifehacks money personal read productivity readme recipe reference tips tutorial nutrition @yettoread) [...]
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