Replacing meat with grains, legumes and nuts can really cut down your grocery bill. Image from Flickr.

The average grocery bill for a family of four in the United States is anywhere from $586 to $1,159. For most American families, meats make up forty percent or more of that food budget. With food costs expected to rise quickly in the next five years, cutting your grocery budget is one step many families are investigating. Eating cheaper, however, should not mean eating less healthily.

The math behind a cheap diet

A healthy cheap diet does not necessarily mean a diet that takes more work. While a few $1 burgers at a fast food joint seem like a great option to eat cheaply, they are actually expensive. A family of four will eat about 360 meals every month. Even a very liberal food budget of $1,159 means each meal for each person needs to clock in at no more than $3.22. One easy way to cut down on how much you spend is simple: eat less meat.

The ‘weekday vegetarian’ idea

Going entirely vegetarian, while is cheaper in many ways, is simply not a move everyone wants to make. Cutting meat out of even part of your diet, though, can cut more than $200 a month out of your food budget. You can also try making meat a smaller portion of your meal – the USDA recommended serving size for meat is just three ounces, not the five to eight that most Americans eat. You don’t have to give up meat, just eat it a little bit less – your pocketbook will thank you.

So what should you eat?

If you’re not eating meat, that doesn’t mean vegetables should replace everything in your diet (though more vegetables never hurt anyone). A complete protein, though, is important in helping you feel satisfied after a meal. Replacing your meat, then, with some other protein is important. Try replacing your $2 – $3 per serving meat with:

• Rice and beans – about 20 cents per serving
• Hummus – about 30 cents per serving
• Lentils with a nut sauce – about 45 cents per serving
• Oatmeal with milk – about 25 cents per serving

The basic idea is to combine legumes, grains and nuts or seeds together at some point during the day. Alone, each of those three groups do not make a complete protein. Together, though, any of the two of them do.

Image from wikimedia.

How often do we look on packages at the grocery store and check out what the serving sizes are? It’s clear as day what are the recommended portions, yet we tend to eat much more than that.

Get in the habit of measuring every meal by its serving size, and you could save on your grocery bill and avoid using credit cards.

Buy In Bulk? What For?

Often we are told to buy in bulk for savings. It makes sense to do so with household items such as toilet paper, boxes of Kleenex, or paper towels.

However, food shouldn’t be treated in the same manner unless you expect a terrible storm or a massive famine. If the food is in the house, you are likely to eat it unnecessarily which can lead to weight gain. And once the shelves look empty, who’s to stop you from buying even more food?

Getting Fatter

It’s well known that obesity is a serious problem in America. With every fad diet out there telling you what to do, what to eat, how to eat, it’s no wonder that Americans are confused.

We have a plethora of information, but we’re still getting fatter, and we’re spending even more money to learn how to stop. Isn’t there a simpler way to go about this, such as portion control? Measuring your serving size?

Calories In and Calories Out

Experts still emphasize that calories expended must be more than calories taken in to lose weight. They also hammer portion control, sometimes making analogies to visual cues. For example, a serving of steak should be the size of your fist.

Those visual clues can be confusing, though, and don’t apply to many foods. It might be just easier to go with what the labels says. The nutrients are already divided up and measured for you.

If one cup of pancake mix produces four servings, and you’re the only one eating, you only want to eat one quarter of the amount. That equals one serving. Don’t go over that. By strictly following what’s on the labels, you can save on your wallet, waistline and future medical bills.

Get Some Exercise

Get some daily exercise. It doesn’t matter whether it’s walking, running or whatever. Get the blood flowing and the metabolism kicking into gear. You read about it all the time. Just do it.

If you’ve eaten according to serving size, you should know how many calories you’ve consumed and what you need to burn in order to maintain or lose weight. It’ll be easier to keep track of your budget, and you can rack up on savings each month. Plus, if you plan your meals each day, you can then determine how much food to buy for the entire week. No overspending. No shopping carts filled to the brim with unnecessary food. No spending hundreds of dollars in excess food bills.