Who Wants to Eat an Organic Diet on a Budget?
May 24, 2016
Susan, a 45 year old mother of 2 sat on the couch in my office. She was frowning. She hadn’t been able to make any of the dietary changes I’d recommended because she had been told by her husband and sister that eating organic foods was “too expensive” and they didn’t believe that eating cleanly would make that much of a difference. She wanted to reduce the prescription medications that she took for Rheumatoid Arthritis and Celiac Disease and wanted a more holistic approach. However making the changes she needed to make was hard for her to wrap her brain around without her family’s full support.
I explained to her some more that if it were simply a matter of finances, that she should also factor in the cost of all of her doctor appointments (including mine), supplements, prescription medications. She would find that with today’s high deductible health insurance plans (in the United States), the cost of staying well has a more far-reaching benefit than the cost of staying sick and living with the status quo.
Simply put, SHE HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO CHANGE HER DIET IF SHE TRULY WANTED TO GET WELL. Eating organic foods IS going to cost more. There really is no way around that, BUT once you adopt the clean lifestyle the benefits of feeling better will far outweigh spending every single penny you saved for your retirement on medications, doctor visits and hospital stays.
But I also let her in on some of my organic price hacks:
Avoid the Dirty Dozen
Certain fruits and veggies accumulate higher levels of pesticides, herbicides and other toxins than others. These foods are known as the dirty dozen and should absolutely only be eaten if grown organically. These include most leafy veggies, soft fruits, anything, basically without a peel. Fruits with a peel such as bananas and avocadoes and melons (where you are not going to be eating the outside of the fruit) can be fudged on and you can get away with eating the conventionally grown version without suffering too much damage and are known as the clean fifteen!
So here they are!
The Dirty Dozen – DON’T EAT UNLESS ORGANIC!!!!
- Strawberries
- Apples
- Nectarines
- Peaches
- Celery
- Grapes
- Cheriies
- Spinach
- Tomatoes
- Bell Peppers
- Cherry Tomatoes
- Cucumbers
The Clean Fifteen – GO AHEAD AND EAT THESE EVEN IF CONVENTIONALLY GROWN!!!
- Avocados
- Corn (though my patients with autoimmune diseases will not be eating corn on my protocols)
- Pineapple
- Cabbage
- Sweet Peas
- Onions
- Asparagus
- Mangoes
- Papayas
- Kiwi
- Eggplant
- Honeydew
- Grapefruit
- Canteloupe
- Cauliflour
Other Organic Price Hacks
Backyard Garden or Deck Garden If you have a yard and a little bit of time, growing your own organic veggies in a backyard garden is a great way to go. It requires a bit of sweat equity and time and where I live is only available seasonally. But once you have your garden bed in and tilled, the yearly costs are minimal – a few soil amendments (less if you make your own compost from untreated grass clippings and leaves), some water on your utility bill and the seeds (you can get into saving your seeds from the previous year to save on that cost too if you are super thrifty). During warm weather months your grocery costs end up being everything but the produce since you will be picking your own from your own garden.
Even if you live in a townhome or an apartment, if you have a small deck that gets sun you can grown some of your veggies in pots. Tomatoes and peppers do well this way and I have even grown greens this way.
If you live in an inner city urban area, Community Gardens and Community Rooftop Gardens are a great way to garden especially in areas that are basically food deserts. This takes some organization and community building but many cities are creating these because people are understanding more and more the importance of a healthy diet.
Join a CSA
If you don’t have the time or inclination to grow stuff yourself, you can still save money by joining a CSA or Community Supported Agriculture. You can even vet a few local organic farms because they will always disclose their agricultural practices. The advantage to this is that you pay an upfront cost, but you still end up saving money in the long run. If you are living alone you can join forces with a few friends or families to go in on a share of a CSA. You do need to be able to get to the pickup place which is either the farm itself or a pickup at some other location. Where I live pickup is often at the local Farmers Market.
Canning, Freezing, and Pickling
So you may be thinking, “Great! That works for summer but what about the rest of the year when I can’t grow anything and I don’t exactly have a greenhouse at my condo?” Well this is where some old fashioned preserving can come in handy. Pickling and Freezing are the easiest, but canning is not that hard to learn, you just need to get good at sterile technique and have the produce and some time and energy on your hands.
Eggs, Meats, Fishes – higher up on the food chain
Since animals tend to accumulate toxins you DEFINITELY need to eat organic chicken, grass fed red meat, wild caught salmon. That is, if you want to treat autoimmune conditions and decrease inflammation. This is where you will probably be spending the majority of your food dollars unless you happen to hunt and fish and can have a huge freezer filled with stuff you’ve caught. If not, some organic grass fed farms will allow you to purchase a ½ or ¼ of a cow, similar to a CSA, and that can cut costs. Backyard chickens take a fair amount of space and work, but then again, you get amazing eggs!
These are but a few of my organic diet price hacks that I have learned over the years. Let me know if you have found them useful. And please add your own in the comments section. Oh and the great news is that Susan, from the beginning of our story, eventually did make those diet changes and now her inflammation is down, her digestion is so much better and she lost 25 lbs in the process! And with the help of her rheumatologist she was able to cut back on her prescription medication! She will tell you it was worth it!
