Does buying healthy food difficult on your budget ?

That is too bad. I guess you do not get that healthy food. We find at Superstore and Safeway, they seldom put veggies and salad stuff in the bags, most of it canned goods, macaroni and cheese, and stuff like that.

I would rather buy healthier food, and that reminds me, perhaps if our parents had been more concerned with our health instead of saving money, we all would have been better off. I mean I feel i have to make up for lost time, and there are things that eating healthy now will not reverse.

I thought I was eating healthy foodk, but it was not that good.

I wish I would have been taught to eat healthier too because now I am stuck on alot of junk food because it tastes so good and I rarely have any desire to eat healthy food because the taste isn't as good for my taste buds.

I thought they grew all thier own food! They do in Indiana and Tenn and other places they live

The trouble is my husband and I go shopping together. And he goes for the cheapest. I do buy vegetables when they are on sale. In fact, I have started to buy sweet potatoes, but I am the only one who eats it and my husband thinks that unless he eats it, go without. But I do not want to die in poor health like his mother did. She was in her eighties and it was not a healthy eighty like my maternal grandmother was, but then she was English and the women do the grocery shopping whereas my mother-in-law was Mennonite and the men do the grocery shopping and they are not that good choosers as to healthy foods.

The trouble is that my husband has most of the money so if I want to get some nuts or grains or even the healthy cereals, I have to go to the Bulk Store and buy it myself and when you consider that I have only $600 a month to work on and he has almost $3000 a month and that is not counting his stocks, it is a difficult situation. He will not let me plant a veggie garden, and our berry garden is too small. I use yogurt rather than regular milk because it does not give me phlegm. ?But I would rather buy the vegetables fresh or grow them than having to buy frozen. And I wish I was in charge of the grocery shopping not my husband.

I have started to buy dried beans and have reconstituted them and put them in small packages to use as soup or to make chili. I am planning to make some either this week or the next. I used to make whole wheat bread, but that means buying more butter and I ran out of whole wheat flour so I have to buy some later on. I do not have a garden except for growing berries. It is rather hard, because I want one but my husband does not want a vegetable garden.

My husband surprised me by putting a garden for me this year, and I'm so happy working in it. I've got tomatoes, squash, peppers and beans, lettuce and radishes. It's worth the extra work for some fresh produce. If your husband doesn't want to have a vegetable garden, you could maybe get him to try a container garden. There are many different kinds of things you could plant in big pots, and they are easy to take care of.

It all depends on how you were raised. The way I was raised, the husband DID not do the grocery shopping. He gave his wife a generous allowance or if he was unable to manage the money as in my dad's case, he gave his wife the wife the check book or his paycheck, she used envelopes and divided the money out. In my husband's case, the men were different, they were considered good financial managers even if they were not, they did the grocery shopping and the purchases while the wife stayed home, looked after the kids, it was the Mennonite way. Oh and girls who worked handed their paychecks to their parents. We consider the money ours, but my husband still is affected by his upbringing and I sometimes get flack if I purchase something that is healthier but more expensive.

I respect my wife, who stays at home. But you don't seem to be respecting the husband that goes to work. "The money my husband earns is OURS" sounds good, but there might be more than one way to think about it, too. "If I need something, I buy it without asking for permission or feeling guilty about spending the money he earned." This is similar to a husband who feels no shame in coming home and making a mess of the place if he wishes. When you keep the house clean, you do work for the house. If he comes home and feels no guilt about messing it up -- he shows disrespect for your effort. If you just spend what you want when you want, you are also showing disrespect for how he provides for the family. It sounds like the money he makes is YOURS. It doesn't sound like you consider it OURS. If the money were "OURS", then purchases would have to be something both people agree on. If you are a team and a partnership, then both of you have to respect how the other person contributes. In the case of money, both people have to care about the other person's point of view. A working husband with a stay at home wife shouldn't try to play financial tyrant. But a woman who is able to stay home and take care of the house and children should also consider that financially planning for the long term picture (retirement) is the husband's "job" and she might need to consider that when she thinks about if she really "needs" something or if something less expensive could serve. In your defense, it appears that you do not spend more than your husband is comfortable with. This is a distinctly different situation than the person posting the question.

I respect my husband Very much, and I appreciate that his willingness to work hard is the reason I am able to stay home and care for our son. You assume that I spend the money frivolously, but I don't. I buy, as I stated, what I Need. In other words, if I feel that whole grain bread is better for the health of my family, I buy it and my husband does not question that decision. At the same time, as you stated, financial decisions should be shared, and they are. I don't feel that buying a loaf of bread at $1.50 qualifies as a 'financial decision.' In the same way that while he is at work and wants to buy lunch, I don't consider that a decision that needs my consent. And, while his name is on the paycheck, I am the one who takes care of our budget. I am the one who makes sure the bills get paid. I let him know when cash flow is a little poor and he needs to tighten the reins, and I do the same. Therefore, planning for the future is my responsibility too. By the way, don't talk to me about whether I truly Need something or if something less expensive would do. In the past year I have bought exactly 2 things for myself, both from the clearance rack. And last week my husband threw away my 3-year-old, dirty, worn-out sneakers to Make me get the new ones that I said I didn't need. This is not because I don't want to spend His money, but because I am just a frugal person.

Thanks for best response! I hope your garden(s) will bear fruit for you. I know that will help keep the costs down too!

It must hurt when you want to buy healthy and therefore improve your son's life, but am unable to do so. I wish that junk food prices would go up and the price of healthy food would go less, but I guess many are more interested in making a profit than preserving health. We were in the Mall talking to one of our new in-laws who happens to be 83 of age and my husband was telling of his friends who were in the same age bracket as we, 60 to 65 who are dying or having strokes or heart attacks. all this because we were the ones who did not get that healthy food.

I guess when things grow all year round, instead of having a short growing season, then you can eat healthy. Here in Canada, the cheapest time to buy healthy food is in late August to the beginning of October or else we have to import fresh vegetables from Florida, California, or Chile. I mean my husband was annoyed that the whole grain bread cost $2.00, but I only need two slices a day, not four or five that I would need with white bread. We also bought some soup that was low sodium, low fat and tasted just like what my mother used to make.

Wholegrain bread here is also about $2 Canadian, and white bread is much cheaper. I guess one advantage we have over you is the wonderful range of fruits, and there's always some in season. Unfortunately, I'm not a great fruit eater.

That is what I feel. In order to buy healthy, we have to cut out other things. That makes it a difficult choice.

We have a lot of Filipinos, East Indians, and Chinese in Winnipeg and when we went shopping, I found that most of the large bags of brown and the healthy rice had gone. Only the cheap stuff was left. I use brown rice myself, and converted rice as a next resort, and I am almost out. I do eat bread, but I prefer the whole grain. I do not have a vegetable garden, but we eat lots of salad, and most of my vegetables are frozen. I have a berry garden but the berries have not come yet. I blame the global warmers who have made sure that the rice fields are converted to corn for ethanol. If things had kept as they were, there would be enough to feed everyone.

I often wondered why they did it. Certainly putting more salt and more transfat products is only going to make us less healthy and if there is an epidemic of one sort of another, instead of treating the victims, the hospitals will spend most of their time on those people who got heart attacks and diabetes from eating all that junk food. So they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces. It really is becoming a racket.

I like in Manitoba and the only time we get cheap local vegetables and fruits is the late Summer and early fall. The rest of the time we have to import, and with so many fields going into fuel rather than food production even the bread is getting more, unless you stick with that unhealthy white bread. We hardly go to McDonald, and find that too expensive.

It all depends on where you live. Certainly if you live where there is a longer growing season, you can get fruits and vegetables at low cost all year round rather than at certain times of the year. And you can see what diseases and conditions are more prelevent as you get farther from the equator, heart disease, diabetes, and strokes being what happens when you do not get enough fruit and vegetables in your diet. The trouble is with the price of oil, gas, and diesel going up and the substitutes requiring the taking out of production more food producing food, we will soon be in a position where the healthier people are in the sub tropical and tropical regions and the unhealthy people are in the temperate and colder regions. Buying bulk works if you have a family, but if it is just the two of you, how do you do it?

If I were in charge of the grocery shopping, I would be able to buy healthy food. I can go to our bulk store and get ten percent off since I am 65, but that is from my own money and I already spent what I budgeted for this month and so I have to wait until the end of the month when I get my pension checks. It is quite hard since the healthy food is more expensive than the regular type food.

My husband is in charge of the money. I find that if I have to buy anything healthier at the Bulk Food Store it has to come out of my money, but when we go to the Superstore, he decides what we buy. I was lucky this week that I was able to pick up a loaf of whole grain bread at half price, but usually that never happens. We do not get the organic meat or the produce. That is way too much for our budget. I do not understand why he is this way. I think it is how he grew up.

My husband does not want me to have a garden and I do not have enough money to make a container garden. The only reason that I have a raspberry and strawberry patch is because it was on the other side near the neighbor's fence and not near the lawn. If that was on the other side, I would not have that and besides he expects that I would not have time to write my novel or be on the computer, I would have to work at housework and gardening all day. I did buy a couple of blueberry plants, but that was all I could afford. I have a friend of a friend who will give me some vegetables from her garden but that will not be until fall.

We live in the city and my husband does not want us to have a garden, so that is out. He is also thinking of moving to a senior home - he thinks 60 is old but I do not. There are smaller houses, but our house is small enough and there are apartments or communities for over 55s, but that is all I will see all day, everyone over 55. I did buy some blueberry plants and a few years ago I bought some strawberry plants,and next year I hope to get a container for container garden.

I would suppose if the woman does the shopping, then choosing healthy food would be easier than if the man did the shopping, even if both the husband and wife shopped together. I had a hard time getting healthier food selections, and when the price of wheat went up, thanks to taking so many wheat field out and converting them to corn and to ethanol, I could no longer get the whole grain loaves at $1.29 a loaf. I had to go to the regular whole wheat loaf. I have to buy frozen vegetables, and although I did buy fresh asparagus, my husband would not eat it, nor would he eat the sweet potato and he is the kind that says, if he does not eat it, no body else in the whole universe will. I now am buying sweet potatoes as a substitute for white potatoes for myself, but he will not even try them. Wait until we go on our trip and he gets some at a fancy restaurant, will I let him have it then.

We buy our bread, and the only time we can buy fresh local vegetables is in the late summer and fall. Other wise they are imported, and even though I make stews, there is now just the two of us. When the boys were with us, I would make a beef stew and then put enough away to make a meat pie, or I would make shepherds pie. I do not buy prepared foods or packaged foods, except once in a while when there is a sale. I should have mentioned it in my post, but I thought it was assumed that I was talking about vegetables that are not organic against vegetables that were. And seasonable against non seasonable, not against buying packages of Stouffers against making the spaghetti and meatballs from scratch.