Eating healthy while spending less
By Aaron Broverman • Bankrate.com

In the three days before her experiment, Currie scoured her neighbourhood. She found some of the best deals at her local Latino market where she managed to find chicken legs for 89 cents each and a pound of beans for 99 cents, as well as deals on fruit. She also found some bargains at the SuperTarget, a popular superstore in the US that combines a department store with a supermarket. "Super stores have some great deals because their trying to draw you into the store," she says.

Currie also found success buying her dry goods in the bulk bins in the grocery aisles. "The best thing about those bins is you only pay for what you need and if you're not sure you're going to like something, you can only take a little bit."

Nutritionist Allen recommends buying fresh food instead of packaged or processed food, something Currie did almost exclusively. She resorted to packaged foods only when it came to cornmeal muffin mixes.

Pump up the volume
When eating for less, Currie exploited her creativity and resourcefulness. "I look at it less in terms of calories and more in terms of satisfaction and fullness because the volume of food that you eat is actually more important, in terms of how you feel, than the calories."

To increase volume, she cooked soups, stews, pilafs and stir-frys. In the end she used the same small amount of food she bought, but by adding ingredients such as Yakisoba noodles to a soup, she felt full more often (combining ingredients together increased the meal's density). It also helped that many of the whole grains she ate, such as steel cut oats, were high in fibre.

Vegetables give you higher volume for less money according to Allen, something she says Currie didn't get enough of. "There were quite a few days were she didn't have any vegetables at all," she notes. Part of this was due to Currie finding that salads were not filling and fresh produce was quite expensive. Instead, Currie found frozen vegetables were the way to go.

However, Currie did reduce her meat intake. When she ate meat, she made it part of a stir-fry, instead of the centerpiece of the meal and used every part of it, as Allen also recommends. "Buy a whole chicken to make a pot of chicken soup, and then use the cooked chicken to make chicken salad," she says.

The fine print
It should also be noted that a lot of what Currie did as part of the experiment was already part of her regular eating and shopping habits. She only ever eats two meals a day and drinks water instead of beverages, which are often high in refined sugars. She was also able to shop every day because she works from home.

Still, many readers of her blog still found the lessons useful. "I was never suggesting that anyone can do this, or that this is a lifestyle. What I was trying to demonstrate was there are healthy foods out there that don't cost a lot of money," says Currie. "These are the kinds of things you can get and these are the kinds of strategies you can focus on. With 66 percent of America overweight, people eating less than they do now is probably a good thing." 

Aaron Broverman is a freelance writer living in Toronto.