Whole, fresh foods can be less expensive than a standard "supermarket diet". Buy from farmers markets or vegetable stands or grow, catch or pick it yourself. Look for sources of real food in your area and learn to make prepared foods yourself.

Don't buy anything in cans, boxes or processed. Make your own everything from scratch. Don't eat takeaway, in restaurants or from salad bars.  Make your own canned soup substitute

Buy corn on the cob in bulk in season, cut off kernels and freeze, or make creamed corn: Slice off kernels and scrape cob with back of knife to release "milk" with the corn kernels. Place in cast iron pan with milk and butter and cook slowly on low heat until it thickens up. Add salt and pepper to taste. Can be frozen.
Buy  rice, whole-grain grains and beans in bulk. Make sure they are well soaked and drained before eating.

Have a garden, if possible. If you live in a small city apartment, grow something in containers near the windows. See Container Gardening.

12 foods you don't have to buy organic: broccoli, eggplant (aubergine), cabbage, bananas, kiwis, asparagus, frozen peas, mangoes, pineapples, frozen corn, avocadoes and onions. Because these fruits and vegetables do not need a lot of pesticides to grow, they are usually low in chemicals even if they are grown conventionally and sold in supermarkets. When buying from a supermarket, wash thoroughly and/or peel first. Foods grown conventionally but sold in small markets will have less chemicals than those sold through large supermarkets, which require their growers to add pesticides whether they are needed or not.

Learn to accept a more limited variety of foods that are good and that you can afford. Buy local produce in season, and eat the same thing every day until it is used up.

Make your own sauerkraut, brined or lacto-fermented vegetables, pickles or kimchi in large glass jars. Buy large quantities of onions and cabbage. Daikon radish (also called mooli) provides a lot of bulk for little cost. Apples can be added. Let it ferment for at least 4 weeks.
Buy garlic. Garlic is better for you than ten mothers, say the Chinese, so definitely try to buy garlic, organic or otherwise. Grow your own if possible. If any of your garlic cloves begin sprouting, just stick it in the ground. If you don't have land of your own, put it anywhere that looks suitable. Make a note of where you planted it and go back at harvest time. (This is called "guerrilla gardening")

Make sprouts. Eat seed sprouts raw, add grain sprouts to sourdough bread and eat bean sprouts lightly steamed. Make your sprouts in a net bag. Make your own net bag from old nylons or other material that allows water to flow through. Sprouts that can be eaten raw are seed sprouts such as: sesame, buckwheat, sunflower, pumpkin and quinoa. Sprouted grains such as wheat, barley or oats should be fermented or added to sourdough bread. Bean sprouts are eaten as a vegetable.
Grow your own potatoes if you can. Dig up your lawn. If you don't have land, make a potato garden out of large plastic boxes, buckets, old barrels or old, used tires. Otherwise, non-organic potatoes are not that good nutritionally because of chemicals used to grow them, but they are cheap and tasty and very tempting to someone on a low budget. At least if you are making kombucha you can know that the kombucha is helping to dissolve and disperse any toxins that come with the commercial potatoes.

If you have a yard or land, get some chickens, for the eggs. Own a goat, housecow or pigs, if you can.

Learn to recognize free, wild foods in your area. Boiled dandelion leaves can be eaten like spinach. Make tea by brewing leaves and twigs from oak, maple, birch or hawthorn trees. If you live near the shore, collect edible seaweed (kelp) and learn how to use it.

Buy lots of bananas.

Get a good, rubber spatula to scrape the last bite of food from a bowl it is prepared in.

Healthy sugar substitutes are all too expensive. The least expensive is unrefined sucanat. Use white sugar sparingly and drink live ale or kombucha with it to help digest the sugar and convert it into energy. If you can get raw honey that is not too expensive it is fine to use it, but still try to use it as sparingly as possible.

Make your own chocolate products with cocoa. There is no healthy, inexpensive way to eat chocolate. The healthiest way to eat cocoa is to grind expensive raw cocoa nibs and mix it with expensive raw honey. If you can't afford that, and you have to have chocolate (I understand) these recipes will let you make cocoa-based products as cheaply as possible, and without the chemicals added to manufactured chocolate, even though technically the healthy frugal alternative would be not to eat chocolate at all. Chocolate Pudding | Fudge

Eliminate vegetable oils if you can. If not, buy very small amounts of expeller-pressed or cold-pressed olive, sunflower and coconut oils and then use them as little as possible, if you feel you must have vegetable oils. If you can't afford these expensive oils, don't use any vegetable oils at all. It’s not that necessary and you can learn to cook without it. Roast or steam food rather than cooking in oil, or render your own lard. Use yogurt or kefir for salad dressing. Substitute applesauce for oil when baking.

Live without condiments such as ketchup and mayonnaise as much as possible. Make a substitute for mayonnaise by mixing cultured cream or kefir with a little kombucha or apple cider vinegar and Celtic sea salt.

Make your own raw apple cider vinegar rather than buying from the store. Grind some apples in the blender with water, add some sugar and a kombucha matrix. Cover with a cloth and set on the counter for a couple weeks and it will turn to apple cider vinegar. Or just use some over-mature kombucha.

Salt is the one thing you should buy expensive. The stuff they sell in the store is sodium chloride, not real salt. If you have any discretionary income for healthy food at all, put good Celtic sea salt or Himalayan crystal salt at the top of the list.
Eat less meat, and eat liver or heart or other organ meats. Grind cheap meat and fat from bones with an old-fashioned hand-operated meat grinder. Make liver pate.

Make bone broth from bones from leftovers. Put the bones in glass or ceramic slow cooker, and simmer overnight or for a day or constantly if you have a source of low heat. Drink a cup of broth at every meal, or use it as the base to make soup stock or congee.

Purchase the bag of frozen whitefish fillets that are somewhere in the bottom of the supermarket’s frozen food cabinet (you may have to hunt for it.) This will give you many fish dinners with fish that have been wild-caught.

Use all the gelatin that drips in the pan from roasts and poultry. Gelatin, that jello-like substance that collects at the bottom of the pan when roasting meats is very good for you. See that you don't throw a speck of it away. Add it to your bone broth or other soups.

Make your own beverages: ale, kombucha, soda pop, kvass. Never buy soft drinks.

"Re-raw" store-bought whole milk by adding a cultured dairy to it.  The cheapest milk you can buy is usually at convenience stores, or look around for sales. Raw milk is better, but much more expensive. If you can't afford or are unable to buy raw milk, buy pasteurized milk and culture it with kefir, yogurt, rennet, sour cream with live enzymes or cultures or creme fraiche. But do NOT get ultra-pasteurized milk. Do not use canned or powdered, skimmed milk. It is better to get non-homogenized milk if you must buy pasteurized, if you can find it.

Use organic flour to make hot cereals. Soak the flour in water for 24 hours, and then put it on a slow cooker for an hour to heat it. Serve with yogurt or kefir and add sliced bananas. Use sugar sparingly (sugar syrup, maple syrup or honey) (Don’t forget to drink a live fermented beverage when eating sugar.)

Culture heavy cream to use in place of butter. Butter is good for you. Don't buy margarine. If butter is too expensive for you, culture heavy, double or whipping cream with creme fraiche or any other yogurt type culture that can be used with cold milk and which you do not have to boil the milk or cream first. Let the culture stand at room temperature for at least a day, or until it thickens. Mix it with Celtic sea salt, Himalayan crystal salt or any other good, real salt (NOT table salt and not anything that has additives or says "free-flowing" Real salt does not flow freely). That will =sort of= take the place of real butter. You can make your own butter from cultured heavy cream, but it is expensive. Use lard liberally in your cooking so there is less need to butter it. Substitute lard for half the butter in any recipe.

Use eggs instead of meat for animal protein. Organic free-range eggs would be ideal, but they are much more expensive than regular eggs, and even the worst regular eggs are still very nutritious. Use lots of eggs. One egg a day per person will supply almost all protein and animal nutrients you need.

Make your own bread.

Eat less. I would be remiss if I did not point out that even if you are eating the healthiest diet possible, if you are consuming the amount of calories considered standard in Western societies, you could cut it in half and only be healthier for it. Obviously, that's not a solution to feeding a family of growing children, but I still thought I ought to mention it. If it's just you, you can always eat less to eat healthy.

Re-capture lost heat from cooking devices. When using a slow cooker, place a heat-proof plate on top instead of cover and add another bowl (or two) of other stuff to be slow cooked. Around the cooker put stuff that needs to be warm such as rising bread dough or yogurt. Cover everything with quilts to conserve heat.

Buy cheaper hamburg/minced beef with high fat content. (Save fat drippings).

Render your own lard. Substitute for at least half of butter in recipes.

Save fat from cooking. Refrigerate or freeze and use in cooking. Chicken, turkey, duck, beef and bacon fat can all be re-used.

Buy apples, potatoes, onions, carrots and cabbages in bulk and store them.To store, they should be hung up in a cool, dry place where nothing can get at them and they cannot freeze. Apples should be wrapped individually in newspaper. Tomatoes can be dried. Using Apples

Make your own cream cheese and use in place of cheese, butter and mayonaise. To make cream cheese, culture cream with creme fraiche and then strain it through a jelly bag (cotton flannel) or 4 layers of cheesecloth/muslin. Use the whey to culture sauerkraut or other vegetables or as a starter for bread or ale. Some heavy cream may culture as thick as cream cheese with no need to strain out whey.

Get to the farmer's market at the end of the day to see if there are any bargains. Check what is being thrown away. Many farm Traders will peel off the outer discolored leaves of cabbages and throw them away. These are still perfectly good for sauerkraut.

Ask around for local farmers. If there are any farmers near you, find out what they grow and sell. They may let you buy in bulk when they are preparing it for sale to big retailers.

Ask meat growers if they have any pasture-raised heart and liver they would sell to you. You can make a liver pate with a hand-operated meat grinder for pennies a serving.

Ask around during the hunting season if anyone has any extra game to barter. Learn how to home-brew ale and you may have plenty of hunters willing to trade with you. Learn how to butcher game animals. Many hunters will only be interested in keeping the muscle meat, so ask if any have any bones or feet and make stock out of them. Ask small butchers if they ever butcher meat for hunters during the hunting season and if they have any leftover parts that the hunter doesn't want, such as liver, heart, fat or bones.

Buy meat in bulk (1/4 cow, 1/2 pig) and freeze. Do you know anyone interested in buying a steer for meat together?

Buy inexpensive boiling fowls. To cook, cover in a crockpot with a little water and lard added. If you buy roasting chickens, eat every part. Eat the liver and other organs. Save the fat for cooking. Use the bones in bone broth or stock. Use the stock to cook beans or rice. Have the rice and beans for a meatless meal.

Raise your own backyard livestock, such as chickens, pig or rabbits. (Eat rabbit meat with fat. Recipe: brown pieces of rabbit meat in bacon grease, remove meat and add flour and water to make a gravy, return meat to pan and simmer, covered, until tender)

Join (or organize) a buying club in your area so that you can buy health products in bulk as a group.

Make porridge: put 1 part oat flour or soaked grains and 3 parts water in a ceramic, glass or enamel bowl in a crockpot.  Add some dried fruit to taste. Put over low heat, covered, for several hours or overnight (if a large amount like 2+ cups of grain or flour). When cooked, add raw or cultured cream and raw honey.

Make brown rice: put 2 cups of brown rice in 4 cups of bone broth or stock. Soak overnight and put low heat, covered, for 4-6 hours. Add sea salt or Himalayan crystal salt as desired.

Eat organ meats such as chicken heart: cook, covered, in sauce and serve over brown rice.


Use eggs instead of meat for supper. Recipe: scrambled eggs, put in frying pan with hot lard, add tomato sauce, oregano and salt. When hot, cover with grated cheese.

Make soup from leftovers, from bone broth and grains and beans bought in bulk.

Cookware: Look for cast iron, Pyrex, corningware and baked enamel pots and pans at tag sales and second hand sales.  Until you can replace your metal cookware, do the following to try to reduce as much as possible the negative interactions in cooking with metal:
Aluminum: pour vegetable oil in aluminum pans and heat until smoking. Repeat until pan is coated with a layer of black, baked-on grease. Avoid washing as much as possible, and renew layer of oil and re-heat if you have to scrub the pan.
Stainless steel: put some water into the bottom stainless pot and then place a pyrex glass or oven-proof ceramic dish or bowl inside of stainless steel.
Learn how to preserve food the traditional way In brine so that you can stock up on either your own homegrown or purchased farm vegetables when they are cheap just after the harvest and save them for use during the winter when they would be more expensive.


* Make your own laundry detergent and all-purpose cleaner with soap, borax and washing soda. Washing  soda (calcium carbonate) can be purchased from pool supply stores as pH-increaser or pH-up for less cost. See Cleaning Stuff.
* Hang up laundry, outdoors or inside. Never use a dryer.
* Shop at second-hand stores, garage or yard sales. Local charity shops will often sell items cheaper than large, national thrift stores.
* If you can't walk to the store and have to drive, don't go shopping more than once a week. Plan any other errands at this time. Carpool if possible.
* Join Freecycle
* Eliminate disposables: use cloth rags instead of paper towels, linen napkins instead of paper napkins; make cloth toilet wipes out of 4" square flannel and terry cloth sewn together to use instead of toilet paper or use hand-sized wash cloths; make cloth gift bags.
* Make sanitary or incontinence pads out of cotton terry cloth. Use either hand towels or cut a bath towel into hand towel sized pieces. Snug-fitting underwear or jeans/trousers will hold in place.
* If you're going to be away from home during mealtime, pack a lunch bag. Always bring at least a bottle of water around with you so you are never tempted to purchase a commercial beverage.
* Choose one room to live in during cold months. Insulate it by putting plastic sheeting over windows with duct tape. Make draft excluders for under the doors and thermal curtains for the windows.
* Don't pre-heat your oven. That is only done so that recipes can be standardized. Once you learn how your oven works, you can begin cooking as soon as you turn it on.
*Strain old vegetable oil and use for fuel in oil lamp candles.

Concise Guide to Self-Sufficiency by John Seymour.
The Forager's Harvest A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Sam Thayer. What's good about this book is that the author tells about things he has experienced, not just cut and pasting or rephrasing what other people have written.
The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating  by Fergus Henderson. A little bit too heavy with the sugar, but it helps explain the mysteries of some types of food preparation. Eliminate the sugar or substitute honey or sucanat.