How Do I Feed My Kids as Healthy as Possible on a Tight Budget?

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How do I feed my kids as healthy as possible on a tight budget? This is JJ Virgin, four time New.

York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert.

And Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. M. Grabriela from Instagram asks, how do I feed my kids as healthy as possible on a tight budget? Ah, I have some great insight on this. I'll be right back. Gabriela with the answer Foreign.

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So it was very interesting early on when I was getting all of the recipes together for the Virgin Diet, and I kept hearing people say, oh my gosh, it's so much more expensive to eat healthy. And I thought, gosh, is it really? Or is this an urban legend? So what I decided to do was go to the store, buy everything that I would be buying in the Virgin Diet. Things like grass fed beef, wild salmon, legumes, nuts, avocados, fresh fruits and veggies. And then so I put those in one cart for, for a family of four. And then in the other cart, I kind of sniffed around, I meant I kind of grocery stocked some people to see what, what the average person who was trying to eat healthy was buying. And so I filled one cart with that and one cart with the Virgin Diet recommendations. And I went to the checkout stand totally hoping that the carts would cost about the same amount of money, thinking that maybe, just maybe, my cart, the Virgin dyke cart, would be a little more expensive. And I was shocked to discover that even when I included in my protein powder and bars that the Virgin Diet cart was actually $37 less expensive than the other cart. And here's why. Because I know how to shop on a budget. So I'm going to give you some of the key takeaways for doing that so that you can have the same type of success. And I love this question so much because the question isn't, you know, you could say, oh, I can't beat my kids health because I'm on tight budget. No, the question is, how do I feed my kids as healthy as possible on a tight budget? And there are a lot of great things you can do. First of all, if at all possible, free up some extra space at home. You know, I have a backup freezer that I got really inexpensively, but gosh, it saved me so much money to have that because I could buy things on sale, buy in bulk and freeze it. So that's one of the big things that I do is I look for sales and I buy in bulk and I buy on sale and then I freeze it. And the other thing that I do, they talk, you know, they. But what I've seen is that a lot of what happens when we grocery shop, a lot of our food gets wasted because we don't eat it in time. Well, that's a huge waste of money. So what I've done is I've got a vacuum sealer so that if I buy extra veggies and I'm not going to use them in time, I can vacuum. I also have gotten really good glass containers so that I can make extra food and freeze it. So I do all of that. So vacuum sealing and freezing stuff in the freezer. And then the other thing is, realize that one of the most expensive things that you can buy at the grocery store are prepared foods. So I don't have a lot of time. I'm imagining you don't either. But I prepare things in groups, so I might cut a whole bunch of vegetables and make a great marinara sauce with veggies in it and make enough for multiple servings and then freeze some. So it's gonna take the same amount of time to make 4 servings of something or 12 servings of something. The reality is, right, so just make extra and freeze it. And then you can also buy things in bulk and save money. So if you look at it, what are things that are super inexpensive? Well, beans, legumes, super inexpensive. I buy wild rice, so I buy that in bulk. I buy things like squash and sweet potato and veggies and fruit in season. And this is what's so important. If you buy local and in season and you can get to your farmer's markets, you're going to save a lot of money there too. So again, buy bulk, shop on sale, have a freezer, prepare things and make extra and freeze it. Have a vacuum sealer so that you don't have to throw foods away. And then go to your farmer's market and see what types of things that you can buy. Local, seasonal, organic, so that you can save money there too. And save time by prepping a lot of stuff at once. There you go. Hope that served. Gabriela, thank you for an awesome question.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert.

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