Eat well without overspending — five everyday foods that are nutritious, cheap and stocked in every aisle you already walk down.
Cheap Is Not the Same as Poor
The foods with the best nutrition per unit of money are almost never the ones marketed that way. They are dried, tinned, frozen or in season, and they sit on the shelves nobody photographs.
The Five
- Dried pulses. A kilo of kidney beans costs less than a single ready meal and cooks into six of them. Soak overnight, boil hard for ten minutes, then simmer.
- Eggs. Complete protein, five minutes from box to plate, and they keep for weeks pointed end down.
- Frozen vegetables. Picked and frozen within hours, which usually leaves more vitamin C in them than in the fresh equivalent after four days in a fridge.
- Oats. The cheapest breakfast per serving there is, and the one that keeps a morning quiet until lunch.
- Whole seasonal fruit. Whatever is stacked highest and priced lowest is the thing that is genuinely in season.
None of this requires a new recipe repertoire. It requires buying the base ingredient rather than the assembled version of it, and accepting ten extra minutes at the stove in exchange for a shopping bill that stops climbing.
