budget

Recently a friend and I were discussing the rising cost of food. Particularly healthy foods. We both agreed you could spend a king’s ransom to eat healthy for yourself and your family each week compared to buying cheap fast food or pre-packaged junk food.

My friend’s option: People don’t eat well because they just can’t afford it.

Of course, my friend is neither plant-based nor vegan and her shopping list included items like coffee, chicken, eggs, juice, and deli meat. All items that are set to continue going up in price due to a variety of reasons. So for her, a fellow savvy saver, eating well is always a question of economy.

So, why you may ask, are meat and dairy products skyrocketing in cost? For a myriad of reasons including global supply problems, global warming issues including droughts in Brazil and California, diseases on U.S. pig farms, and concerns internationally about workers rights and fair trade efficacy.

While many of us have been hit harder than ever lately with increased grocery store sticker shock, those of you who are still meat-eaters will be the hardest hit.

So what’s a savvy-saver to do? Go plant-based.

Naturally, I used our conversation (with permission) to post a series of prompts and posts on my various social media channels. Including Vegan ideas for saving money at the grocery store.

And of course, I was met with replies like- “I don’t want to give up the flavor,” “My husband would never do it,” “I already buy ethical meats,” or “I need protein daily.” Comments I have grown very used to as a plant-based savings blogger.

To that end, I felt my overall point was being lost in translation. I was posting information not as a social criticism but as a means of commiserating with rising food costs and an alternative view to grocery budget savings at home.

Because according to the USDA, the average American will eat 222.2 pounds (100.8 kilos) of red meat and poultry this year. Couple this with the average price per pound for beef being upwards of $4.00 per pound in the states, this will set back the average American nearly $900.00 in meat costs per person, per year.

With higher costs and lesser quality meats and dairies typically offered in food desserts alone.

A large sum of money considering the number one reason most people say they cannot buy healthy foods is that they cannot afford to do so. When cutting back on high ticket food items, such as the before mentioned, could more than make up the funds needed to eat healthier than the Standard American Diet each day.

In fact, when my family and I first started our debt-free journey eight years ago. Meatless Mondays were a set staple in our weekly meal plans. They helped us save over $700.00 our first savings year alone. So I speak from my own personal experience.

Keep in mind, I’m also a total foodie. Particularly food history. Specifically, American culinary traditions. I love nothing more than a gastronomic-rich view of meals of yesteryear. But I’m also a student of finance.

I know that foods, like electronics, will always burst your budget if you opt to only buy the latest and trendiest items. Including newer versions of foods like bacon, steak, milk, cheese, and eggs. Foods that have always had a history of being expensive. Always have and always will.

After all, it wasn’t until after World War II that most of the western world ate meat and dairy on a regular basis.

With sayings like Sunday Chicken Dinners, Easter Ham, and Christmas Roast, set as public reminders as to the precarious relationship between food costs and budgetary needs. Because those foods were pricey, they were purchased sporadically. Meats, in particular, were holiday investments in our familial cultural food heritage and not everyday food staples.

It wasn’t until the television advertising era of the 1950s that meat and dairy products became seen as common. Food everyone must have on weeknight dinner tables if they were to keep up with the Joneses.

In 1953 the invention of oven-heated tv dinner trays by C.A. Swanson & Sons, lead consumers to change their food consumption beliefs. With weeknight turkey dinners replacing Sunday meals.

During this era that weeknight dinners stopped being held around tables. Americans were trained to believe in the necessitation of daily consumption of meats and dairy consumption at home.

Farm-fresh meats, dairy, and produce staples were replaced with quick, processed, knock-offs of American culinary classics. Food that became served to us via trays consumed in front of the tube or shoved into our cars via bags and boxes at our favorite fast-food establishments.

Meals stopped being comprised of everyday moments and memories. No longer did we thank farmers for our nourishment and veterans for peaceable meals spent at home.

And whenever I hear people ask what happened to the nuclear family in America, I always say: Check your dinner plate.

It was also during this time, that meat production costs skyrocketed and continue to this day. Expenses that total upwards of 1/3 of the average consumer’s food budget in North America. Coupled with the price point of organic meat and dairy products costing upwards of $8.00 per pound. Costs that many families simply cannot afford.

Which is why I vehemently believe that for most people, going without meat and dairy products for 1-2 meals for a month can save you considerable dollars each month on your total grocery bill.

Not because of animal efficacy or because of your health, but because of your budget. You will be surprised at how much money you will save.

In an effort to help you along, here are my favorite tips for saving money by going plant-based at home:

Buy in bulk:

Getting familiar with the bulk food section at your grocery store can save you tons of money each season. There you will find staples and pantry items like rice, beans, oatmeal, lentils, and nutritional yeast at significant savings. What makes this so much better? You’re not paying for the packaging, you’re getting better quality food, you can see exactly what your buying, and doing a solid for the Earth too!

Bulk items, like beans and rice, can help you transform everyday meals like red beans and rice to new levels by substituting meats and oil for better quality beans, rice, and exotic spices. Consider making these meals ahead of time to save time too. Because what pot meal doesn’t taste better the second time around!

Then with the money, you’ll save on meats and dairy, reinvest some of those funds back into a good set of countertop canister or a vintage set of mason jars. Then, in-store, fill these bad boys up. And if your favorite store doesn’t have a bulk section? Try Wal-Mart. While Walley-World may not have a bulk section but they do have insanely cheap 5 lbs bags of everyday staples like rice, quinoa, lentils, and beans.

Competitive shopping:

Remember, when it comes to plant-based eating, not every meal has to be organic or gourmet. Not every item needs to be purchased from Whole Foods. You can find many ingredients to making easy, healthy meals at local grocery chains and larger chains such as Wal-Mart. All for a fraction of the price of fancy organic markets.

Including items such as frozen veggies, canned tomatoes, beans, bags of rice, and spices. Not to mention the produce section where you can find organic potatoes, onions, garlic, and a variety of fresh fruit at much lower price points.

Speaking of produce, remember this phrase: Poorganics. That’s right. Buy produce based on your current budget. If you can only afford healthily, bagged apples and not organic singles. Buy those. Maintain your budget. You’re aiming to buy real food that’s you know, not processed! As plant-based shopping helps you buy better, cheaper produce and create cheaper, healthier meals!

Simplify your meals: 

Maybe it’s me, but many of my meals now are all cooked in a single pot. Boil some pasta, add a bag of frozen veggies, and throw in some sauce. Dinner is served. And if I’m using my Instapot, it’s even quicker. For me, plant-based dinner helps me eat better in a fraction of the time.

The best part? Nearly any family favorite can easily be adapted to be served over rice or noodles and the meat substituted for mushrooms, zucchini, butternut squash, lentils, or tofu. The possibilities are endless.

Seriously, you need Instapot dinners. They will change your life!

Grow your green thumb: 

I don’t know about your neck of the woods – but here in the deep south plants grow pretty easily. And growing your own food is one of the best ways to save money on food cost in the warmer parts of the year.

Considering that a packet of seeds is inexpensive, topsoil and compost are both affordable, and raised beds can be created from heat-treated palettes. The costs of produce production will always be cheaper compared to how much commonly consumed produce is priced in-stores. Including lettuce, peas, and tomatoes.

Root veggies such as potatoes and sweet potatoes can even be grown from the sprouts of produce you may already have on hand. A little wire mesh turned into a cage with shredded fall leaves and dirt, and voila, you have a tower of taters!

Growing your own produce will also help you commune with the Earth. It’s a great way to save money and grow your green thumb too! Cultivate your inner farmer!

Learn to love cooking again:

Cooking, the 4 letter word no one wants to hear. But if you really want to save money you are going to have to learn to cook. And love doing so.

Maybe you slept through home economics or no one taught you. It doesn’t matter. Just start.

Pinterest is your friend. As are your neighbors, co-workers, and online friends. Everyone loves to share family recipes and cooking tips. Just ask!

Those are my 5 tips for why and how plant-based eating can help you save money at home. While I recognize that this dietary choice may not be for everyone, I do hope you would give it a try for a few weeks and see if it could help you save at home too.

Now, do you have your own tips or saving at the store on healthy foods? I would love to hear them. Be sure and comment below and let’s show those non-believers that we can eat healthily inexpensively too in 2018!

My feelings of weariness towards animal products have occurred my whole life. Ever since I was little, I remember struggling with this internal conflict.

I remember attending the winter birthday party of a young schoolmate wearing the rabbit fur coat I received for Christmas a few months before. Only to witness the unveiling of my friend’s birthday gift, a new pet rabbit. Within moments of touching the rabbit, who would come to be known as Hops, I felt a pang of anxiety that I had never known before.

The moment I realized I was wearing my very own little Hops too! It was a pain that haunts me to this day.

But like most children, we quickly learn coping strategies to help us get by. Especially those who live in a non-plant-based home.

Because in our home, meat was king. Family dinners and gatherings always included meat. The meat was the main staple. The reason others came for the meal. From Sunday roasts to Chicken potluck meals, meat-centered meals brought people together. The meat was the lynchpin of every gathering. It was cultural. Which explains why over time I cultivated a belief that dinner had to include meat in order to feel satisfied.

I also didn’t grow up knowing any vegetarians. My grandmother loved meats of all kinds. Particularly meat in tube form. She was nothing short of a connoisseur of expensive sausages and cold cuts. The woman knew her way around the butcher shop. From finding just the right cut of brisket to knowing exactly how thin her corned beef and capicola should be cut, she treated the purchasing of meat like the sculpting of fine marble. With love and precision.

And her brother, my uncle, drank cow’s milk with dinner every night. Because milk had calcium. Because it was what you are supposed to drink in order to grow big and strong, right?

My parents believed what most parents are led to believe. Although cow’s milk is intended for baby cows, its great for kids and infants too. Weird to say, but the concept just makes sense.

The word vegan was also never a term I heard growing up. In fact, this term wasn’t part of my regular vernacular until I took an ecology elective’s class my sophomore year in college, Animal Ethics. I chose this class not realizing the sadness it would entail, and the emotions it would stir up. For which, I am grateful. Because this obscure night class that started my mental ball rolling on not just animal rights but issues delving into non-consumerism and ecological advocacy too.

But despite all this newfound college knowledge, I consumed meats. Tons of them. I somehow allowed myself to believe that being a consumer of meats and animal products while being a fuzzy parent, was okay. It was just part of the hypocritical compartmentalization I allowed myself to believe.

Afterall, I was an adult. A married adult. A woman whose husband and family also loved meat too. A woman who owned a cat, who consumed meats. So if my family wants it at dinner and my pets need it in their diet, it was okay, right?

Then came the night a few months ago when it all clicked for me. After a nasty bought of food poisoning caused by eating hotdogs at a local bulk shopping chain, the ideas came crashing together. Meat consumption was killing me.

For a long time, I knew I needed to lose weight. To be healthier. Like 100 pounds healthier. But for a long, long time I loved my processed pizza bites more. But in that moment of having my head hanging over a toilet seat in the twilight hours of the morning, after falling asleep in my bathroom, while throwing up for hours on end, I knew my road with meat was coming to a crashing end.

Then came the sobbing. Thinking about what our world has come to. Feeling disgusted with society. Disgusted with myself as well, that I had been so ignorant and oblivious to what was happening behind slaughterhouse walls and behind big corporations. That the big name meat and dairy brands are powerful, full of lies, are guided and funded by deep-pocket lobbyists and super packs. Each seeking to convey to the masses that consuming beings that had once flourished with a life of its own was more than okay.

The worst part? The marketing and labeling. That I allowed myself to believe that there are happy cows and even happier chickens roaming the world ready to self-sacrifice for my Sunday best meal.

When in reality, there are no happy cows or free-range chickens. That cage-free doesn’t mean what we think it means. That we don’t know any better because we are swarmed daily with happy dairy ads, commercials, and marketing schemes. That factory farming is very much existent, including backyard homesteaders and farmers too!

Not to mention all the hormones and antibiotics pumped into the animals to keep them from getting sick, to speed up the growth process, and to advance the bottom line of every dollar generated by processing centers throughout this nation. Food that has become so processed and nutrient-lacking, we are becoming sicker by the bite. Labels such as “got milk?”, are more properly posed as “got cancer, heart disease, and stroke?”

But this mess isn’t all our fault. Or completely of our own making. It’s just what we have been told to believe. The reality of the situation is that we don’t need animal products to thrive. Animal protein consumption is causing disease left and right due and plant-based eating can resolve numerous ailments in millions of people. Including me. From my acid-reflux to PCOS to my MTHFR gene mutation, the eliminating of meats and dairy products from my life can help elevate and irradicate these symptoms.

Because there are no healthy meats. Because there are no ethical animal farming methods. Because we can all sustain our bodies without the exploitation, mutilation, and degradation of other living, breathing creatures. There is a great deal of hope in that message!

So how has my journey of living a plant-based life been? I’m happy to say, four months into my plant-based journey, these results are true. While I’m not cured, my blood pressure is lowered, I’ve lost an additional 16 pounds, my acid reflux is all but non-existent, and my energy levels are higher than ever before!

Because of all this, all that I’ve mentioned, my life will never be the same.

Since that night of sitting on my toilet for six-plus hours in agonizing pain, I have not eaten any animal products whatsoever. I made the connection that a plant-based lifestyle is what my body needs in order to thrive. This realization was pretty empowering.

Then there was the issue of my husband. The poor guy who had no idea what emotional blindside he was coming home to the next day.

He walked in the door to a ready-to-galvanize-the-world wife. He asked for a cold Dr. Pepper before my rant commenced. For which, he kindly nodded and obliged my newfound views. He figured it was just a phase. He was wrong. Because I’m happy to report, he has come around and is also now eating a plant-based diet as well.

Though he is a vegetarian, and not a vegan, its a start. An awesome start. Of which, I am beyond proudly and hold have a great deal of respect. For his willingness to listen. To find his own journey to change. He also helps us advocate these changes to the rest of our family as well. He and I both know now that this was no phase, this was a major life change. Plant-based whole foods are the only way out family’s diet will ever truly thrive! And we’re ready to take this journey as far as it can go!

We no longer purchase meat products. I no longer consume dairy products and my family member’s who do drink milk have switched to organic varieties. Our family also has limited our processed food consumption greatly too. The three of us have done amazing as a result!

Our pets have made the change as well. My dogs, though natural carnivores have adapted well to a plant-based kibble and organic grain-free pet treats. Our beta eats a plant-based flake brand of fish food, and our cats, who still consume meat-based foods because its what is ideal for their health and nutrition, now eat a better quality organic food. By eating a better quality food actually eat less food overall. Which means that fewer meat products are consumed in our homes, even by natural carnivores.

This was also just the beginning of my vegan advocacy journey too! This past season, I’ve watched numerous other documentaries, read books, articles and immersed myself in learning everything about plant-based nutrition. I’ve become a nutrition junkie, wellness addict, health guru, and plant-based advocate.

I’m also realistic. I recognize that for many, living a vegan lifestyle is a major turnoff. That the plant-based lifestyle can come off as having an heir of expensive, exclusivity, and entitlement associated with it and the people who ascribe to the lifestyle. I hope to help dispell that myth. There are tons of vegans and plant-based folks of all backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, socio-economic levels, religious, and cultural backgrounds. My perspective is just one of the millions!

Which is why I have committed myself to changing how I blog on this platform.  New meal plans, printables, and food hauls will reflect my plant-based lifestyle. I want to use The Lady Prefers 2 Save as a place of positivity and to shed light on this heated yet growing topic. To spread awareness and inspiration. To create deliciously vibrant recipes. And most importantly, offer encouragement to others.

Going vegan doesn’t have to be scary or difficult. It’s actually the most budget-friendly food plan I’ve ever been on. It’s simple. It’s delicious. It’s real. It’s not processed. It’s whole foods from nature. It’s what we are meant to be enjoying on the daily! It’s also helped me to lower my grocery bills and add in more organic produce too!

Now I know what some of you are thinking. You don’t want to picture the process of how your food gets to your plate – I get it.

Most people would just want to enjoy their cheeseburgers and milkshakes. Humans stick to what they know and don’t want to go through the extra trouble. But as we all know, true growth starts when we step outside our comfort zones each and every day.

Veganism may seem new and unfamiliar, that’s all – but it’s just like anything else. It’s not about deprivation, dieting or counting calories. It’s about adding in foods your body will love and will recognize as actual food that it can use. Real, whole foods found in nature. No more, no less.

This lifestyle has impacted my life in so many ways! After feeling so healthy and alive, I could never go back to animal products. The biggest benefit for me was the feeling that my clothes fit better than ever as well as clear, glowing skin with a healthy tone that I’ve never had before. My skin is no longer dull. I don’t have to wear as much makeup as I used to. Energy has been another major plus. I feel stronger. So for me, strong is the new sexy!

I want everyone to experience these positive changes. My mindset is more positive. I believe that’s because I am no longer consuming foods that are filled with anxiety, fear, and pain. Following my intuition is my driving force, and my intuition is crystal clear. For the most part, I feel well and energized every single day. Except Monday’s. But, yeah. Even veganism can’t fix that dichotomy.

Whether you want to take baby steps and incorporate more vegetables into your daily life or go full throttle as I did, that is up to you. There is no right way to transition. There’s also no judgment from me in your life choices. Ever.

Though I do think you would live a healthier life is you started incorporating non-dairy milk, more fresh vegetables, fresh fruit and grains like oats and quinoa into your diet, while slowly eliminating the animal products. But still, no judgment. Remember, it’s a journey and a learning process. So if you would like more reasons to take the plant-based plunge, here are 5 tips to help get you started.

1) Try new recipes: Look online for new vegan recipes! Check out Meatless Monday options too! Check out vegan cookbooks from your local library or free ebooks online. Remember to stick with real, whole foods and stay away from processed meat substitutes and frozen dinners. Just because it’s vegan doesn’t automatically mean it’s good for you. With the exception of Oreo’s. Which are vegan. And needed. Remember, Mondays are coming!

2) Consider your proteins: As a vegan, you can get more than enough plant protein from foods like quinoa, tempeh, organic tofu, lentils, black beans, chickpeas, hemp seeds, almonds, pumpkin seeds, kale, spinach, broccoli, peas, oats, potatoes, sunflower seeds, and edamame to name a few. I use the Cronometer app to measure all my nutrient levels to make sure I get enough essential vitamins, minerals, proteins each day. I also take B12, vitex, and kelp supplements each day.

3) Start slowly: Every fruit and vegetable offers different vitamins and nutrients for your body. Try them all at least once. Replace dairy milk with almond milk, soy milk, coconut milk, hemp milk, cashew milk, or hazelnut milk. That’s an easy, delish swap. Make just one healthy choice a day. The changes in your life will be immense!

4) Educate yourself: Read books, articles, and documentaries. A few of my favorite documentaries are Rotten, Forks Over Knives, Earthlings, Vegucated and Food Inc. – all on Netflix. Find out why you personally want to incorporate more plant foods. You are likely to stick with this healthier lifestyle if you have a driving force.

5) Allow your body the time it needs to detox:  The detox process can take several weeks, months, even years. So be kind, patient, and nurturing to your body. Eventually, you will benefit from this lifestyle. You may feel kinda crappy sometimes, too! That is your body trying to flush out years of built-up toxins and chemicals from animal products. It’s truly a good thing! Self-care is key!

Small changes in your life can make a difference. I promise. Stepping out of your comfort zone is liberating. It opens new doors. It adds life to your years.I can’t tell you how much positivity this lifestyle has brought me. I wake up eager to work on this blog every day and connect with all of you. Becoming vegan has taken my health to the next level and was hands down the best decision I have ever made.

As mentioned above, I will be including new plant-based menu options and recipes on this blog and printables as well. And if you have any questions please leave me a comment, or send me an email at nicole@theladyprefers2save.com. I would love to hear your thoughts and personal stories. Your health is all you have at the end of the day. Take control of it. Today!