Lazy Man and Money

5 Ways to Afford Organic Food

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The following is a guest post from Fanny, owner of Living Richly on a Budget which is a blog covering frugal living… and showing you how to score some awesome deals. She has written an ebook, Eating Organic on a Budget. If you like these tips, buy the book by midnight PST, Friday 8/17/12 with the coupon code LZM for only $2.50… scoring a 50% off deal for yourself. When she’s not writing, she’s running after her 1 year old daughter or watching the latest UFC fight. I hope she doesn’t ever combine the two.

Are you trying to eat healthier but feel like organic is out of your budget? Do you feel like organic and budget don’t belong in the same sentence?

I have spent the last 6 months eating exclusively organic, due to a health condition, and my grocery bill was obscenely high. Here are various strategies I developed to lower my grocery budget while still eating organic and healthy.

1. Shop Costco or your local warehouse store.

One of my favorite places to buy organic is Costco. They don’t carry everything organic but they do have a good selection of organic products and produce.

Costco carries in season organic meats produce in bulk, at unbeatable prices. For example, at the time of this writing, tomatoes are in season. At our local Costco, I found organic heirloom tomatoes at $2.89/lb. when they are normally $3.99 – $5.99/lb. at Whole Foods.

Their prices on organic almond butter, eggs, and boxed spinach, which are available year round, are the lowest I’ve seen.

[Editor’s tip: Don’t forget the organic quinoa, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste while you are there. The quinoa is the best deal I’ve found (not that I typically look for quinoa) anywhere.]

2. Look for bargains at farmers markets.

You can find great deals at farmers markets, but it depends on which ones you go to. Some are a bargain compared to others. So it pays to go to a few in your area and do a comparison.

From my experience, farmers markets in well traveled areas with high rent, like San Francisco downtown, have higher prices. And farmers markets off the beaten path, have more bargain prices.

At our local farmers market, I can find organic kale for $1.49/bunch compared to $1.99/bunch at Whole Foods.

[Editor’s tip: Show up towards the end of the farmer’s market and bargain with the vendors. Some will want to just clear inventory and often the product is still very good.]

3. Buy from bulk bins.

If you’re not familiar with this, bulk bins are the plastic bins available at natural food stores that house raw ingredients like flour, grains, nuts, cereal, pasta, and more. You scoop the amount you want into a plastic bag or your own container and pay for it by the weight.

Since there is minimal packaging, a plastic bag, the prices on these items are lower than the packaged ones.

You can find bulk bins are Whole Foods, your local natural food store, Safeway, and more.

4. Know what to buy nonorganic.

One strategy to lower your grocery bill is to only buy certain produce organic, the ones that have been found with a high amount of pesticide residue. The fruits and vegetables with less pesticide residue can be bought nonorganic in order to save money.

You have probably come across the Environmental Working Group’s list of the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen. In my book, I also have a tip on an iPhone app that goes beyond this list to detail the amount of pesticide residue on popular fruits and vegetables.

[Editor’s tip: If you don’t app or that list handy, here’s some common sense advice, “The thicker the peal the less the pesticides matter.” Bananas would be very safe, while apples… not so much. (I call Shenanigans on bananas not being in the Clean 15.)]

5. Buy less junk food.

If you truly want to eat healthier, buy less processed food, soda, drinks, and packaged snacks. You’d be surprised to find out how much these things add up, especially drinks, juices, and sodas.

If you are having a hard time losing weight, processed foods and sugar, even fruit sugar from juice, could be the cause. I lost all of my post baby weight immediately, by cutting these things out.

This will leave more money in your budget to buy the organic versions of food that really matter, like organic dairy, meat, and eggs. These foods don’t have hormones, antibiotics, or pesticides which can adversely affect your health.

[Editor’s tip: Most tomato sauces have high fructose corn syrup in them. Avoid that processed junk, by using the organic diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste that you bought at Costco in the first tip. Combine one can of each and season as desired (minced garlic, oregano, etc.) for cheap, excellent organic spaghetti sauce. It’s so easy a Lazy Man could do it.]

I hope you found these tips helpful so that you’re able to eat healthy and stay on budget.

Should You Put a Price on Your Health?

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Should You Put a Price on Health?
Should You Put a Price on Health?

A few readers responded to my recent post Is Eating Organic Food Worth the Money? by saying that you can’t put a price on your health. I’ve seen a similar argument come up time and time again in my MonaVie article (For those who don’t know, MonaVie is a juice that people have suggested may give great health benefits – at a price of $32-$40 a bottle – which they get a cut of). It sounds like a pretty straight-forward argument. Shouldn’t our most primary goal be self preservation – to keep breathing, keep healthy? I’m not so sure… and I have spent 18 months writing Lazy Man and Health. I think that as usual, the devil is in the details.

What is healthy?

That is a loaded question. You ask 20 people you’ll probably get 20 different answers. In general many of us know the “eat right and exercise” routine. It’s a good start, and I think if more Americans followed that along with “stop smoking”, we’d see our collective health get a whole lot better. It is my opinion (and perhaps your doctor’s) that unless you are doing things, it doesn’t really make sense to look into other things. You can still eat right without necessarily eating organic. You can still exercise even if you don’t belong to a gym. Oh and don’t forget to take care of your teeth, reducing plaque in your mouth can help your heart.

Money can buy you good health

If you have an extreme amount of money, you can buy yourself a good measure of health. My wife has admitted to looking at Gwen Stefani in the past and thought, “Wow is she in shape!” I’ve looked at Brad Pitt’s six pack and thought the same thing. However, I’m quick to point out that it’s part of their job to look that way. They can pay for a personal trainer, nutritionalist, personal chef, and Jamba Lights with Whey Protein Boosts at Jamba Juice. I think the average person has to really think if they can afford these things. It is my opinion that many can not (with the exception of the Jamba Juice, but that has it’s own Latte Factor).

In addition to the above there are a whole host of things that you could do with a big enough budget. One could buy an water ionizer. Some professional sports players have hyperbaric medicine chambers in their home. Perhaps that could help one’s health. There are probably about another 100 things mentioned in Ray Kurzweil’s Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. A successful inventor like Ray Kurzweil can afford the pile treatments and tests he mentions.

Is there a limit to how healthy I can be?

Perhaps they are even subject to the law of dimishining returns. For instance, as I’ve been working to do 100 pushups, I’ve found that I made great gains in the beginning, but gains have gotten harder to come by. I’d be exstatic if I could run a 6-minute mile. However, I would have no desire to put in the incredible amount of exra work to run a 5-minute mile (if it’s even possible for my body physically).

Medical Bills: The Leading Cause of Bankruptcy

It may surprise you, but medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy from this Harvard Study. I see two paths you can go with this. You can spend your money trying to prevent everything that might physically happen to you. Or you can take reasonable preventative measures and continue to grow your money for the day that you might need it. If you go with the 100% prevention plan, you better hope you’ve got all your bases 100% covered. If something heriditary slips in that you couldn’t prevent, you probably won’t have the funds to get by it. If you take the more balance approached, you might prevent all but a few maladies, but still have the money for treatment later down the line. I can’t say what’s right for you, but I will choose the balanced approach, that leaves money for treatment down the line.

Measuring Cost-Benefit

Like any purchase decision, I think you have to run a little cost-benefit analysis. If I’m already eating lots of good fruit, am I going to get value by spending $5,600 a year for a family of four to drink MonaVie? However, if a doctor says that a enteric-coated baby aspirin can prevent me from getting a heart-attack or a stroke, that’s something I’m going to pick up immediately.

I’ve put a price on my health and it’s very high. Part of that price is investing and amassing enough wealth for treatment tomorrow as it is for today.

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk

Is Eating Organic Food Worth the Money?

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Eating organic food may cost a little more

If you’ve decided to give organic food a try, the first thing you may notice is the high price tag. Even though it’s better for you, the fact is, eating organic can put a serious dent in your wallet. Is it worth the cost? Let’s take a logical look at organic food and see what it has to offer.

Why Organic Food Costs More

  • Organic Food Doesn’t Scale – The producer is usually not a nameless, faceless conglomerate with money to burn. The average organic farmer or rancher is a mom and pop organization and they just don’t have the buying power available or the ability to set low prices like their competitors. Lastly, since they don’t have the purchasing power of a big company, the food packaging costs is going to be more expensive.
  • Organic farming is Expensive – The fields used have to be certified organic and this land usually costs more. Most organic foods are not laden with cheap pesticides that endanger the population, and farmers have to spend more getting rid of pests and weeds with alternative solutions.

    • All of this adds up into higher costs for you, the consumer. While some organic food labels just charge more because they know people will pay for it, the average producer is simply trying to stay in business. But is all of this extra money really worth it? First and foremost, you are paying for food that may be safer to eat. Some say you can’t really put a price on avoiding ingesting harmful chemicals. However, what if the money saved allows you to get a specialist doctor or lifesaving surgery later in life?

    Many fertilizers and pesticides used in regular food have been found to cause cancer. If you look at the money you would spend treating cancer, suddenly, organic food that is treated with safer pesticides and herbicides doesn’t seem so expensive. Another example would be organic milk. I was watching 30 Days and the dairy farms they showed operated under conditions that turned my stomach. Cows stood in filth, the equipment can be dirty and often, packaging is not as sanitary as it could be.

    Compare this with a free range organic dairy where cows are not forced to stand in small pens in their own filth. You won’t be drinking that and you’ll likely be happier knowing that the milk was harvested in a more humane manner. This is also true of organic meats where conditions for the animals are usually much better.

    The bottom line is that organic food is generally healthier for you to eat. Can put a price on your health? Sure, you may be spending more right now, but you are also facing a lot less risk for developing chemical related illnesses down the road. When it comes to genetically modified foods that may not be entirely safe to eat, you can rest assured that your organic farmer is not using these potential harmful seeds or production methods. Organic food may not be perfect, but to the millions that buy it, it is well worth the cost.

    Make the Most of your Organic Food Budget

    I should mention that not all organic foods are the same. There are some fruits and vegetables that are more resistant to pesticides. One way to think about whether a fruit is susceptible, is to look at the skin. Fruits like apples have thin skin and people generally eat it. It doesn’t give you much protection from pesticides. However, avocados have a think shell-like skin that I don’t think people eat (maybe a few of you do). So you don’t have to guess, Foodnews.org has a list of susceptible foods. One might consider not using their money on organic avocados and instead putting the money on buying organic apples.

    Sound off in the comments. Do you think that organic food is worth the cost?