Although I am the first to say that reduced carbohydrate diets are above all healthy diets and that as such, we must favor as much as possible unprocessed foods, as fresh as possible and of good quality, I am also very aware that not everyone can afford the matured steak of the neighborhood butcher every day!
However, it is possible to keep a reduced carbohydrate diet with a small budget, sometimes making some compromises with quality but the best is the enemy of the good: even with some processed products, it is always better than eating pasta at every meal!
Here is an article on the practice of a low-cost keto diet, divided into 2 parts:
- tips to reduce the cost of your shopping cart each week with foods compatible with a ketogenic diet,
- Examples of keto meals for a week and an estimated budget for a student.
Reduced-carbohydrate foods at low prices
We often hear that “the keto diet is expensive”. And indeed if we compare the price of wheat flour with the price of almond flour and we buy MCT oil or “lowcarb” croissants sold at the price of caviar, we can have this impression…
Except that reducing carbohydrates in your diet is not buying new products at high prices, absolutely making keto desserts or eating avocados from the other side of the world every day. No, reducing carbohydrates is just reducing the consumption of products that are too carbohydrate.
In the end, once we go back to real, fresh and no-frills products, we often realize that by reducing carbohydrates, we have also reduced our food budget!
To make your shopping cart cheaper:
- Avoid processed products with a label “lowcarb thing” or “ketomachin”: these are marketing products, which are expensive and can serve your weight loss;
- favors large packaging: the price by weight is cheaper when buying meat in boxes or slices of ham by 8, for example;
- Learn to cook ‘wholesale’: cooked meat will keep longer and it takes as long to cook a steak or 4, or to simmer a burgundy whether it contains 200g or 2kg of meat! Ditto for the oven: even if you turn it on, you might as well cook several meats at once;
- ‘simple’ eats: avocados, old vegetables, exotic stuff, it’s nice, but zucchini, salad, leeks, spinach, broccoli, it’s easy to find and often much more accessible;
- Think of frozen foods: plain frozen vegetables make it easy to make individual portions, keep for a long time and are generally cheaper than their fresh counterparts.
You can buy, for example:
- eggs, the ‘superfood’ par excellence! Hard for your salads or a little snack, omelette – including sweet -, scrambled, you can eat it every day;
- sliced white ham, as ‘clean as possible’ (still avoid the first prize), which will decorate your omelettes, salads, lunch boxes for lunch;
- canned fish, sardines, mackerel, tuna, which will also find their place in your Bento;
- Ikea dumplings or Knacki sausages… Yes, I know, it’s super transformed but it’s still acceptable and it helps out well!
- zucchini, broccoli florets, flat beans, pepper brunoise, chopped onions and frozen button mushrooms, to prepare rapido and cheap pan-fried vegetables;
- chicken and pork in large packages, these are often the most accessible meats,
- minced meat in one-kilo boxes, which will allow you to prepare in advance my famous “bloubiboulga” to heat easily;
- Emmental cheese first price, which is enough to decorate a salad or to raper on vegetables.
Examples of keto meals and budget for a week
Here is a list of possible meals and the corresponding budget for a student. To be honest, I relied on the diet of my daughter, who practices a reduced carbohydrate diet and does not have much time for shopping and meal preparation with her studies.
It is therefore necessary to provide for:
- 5 easy “Bento” meals for school days,
- 5 quick evening meals to prepare,
- 4 more festive meals,
- 2 breakfast for the weekend,
- snacks in case of cravings.
For the 5 bentos for school:
- salad or green vegetable cooked in advance,
- 2 hard-boiled eggs cooked in advance,
- 50g Emmental
- and the remains of cooked meats for the evening!
For the 5 evening meals:
- a bloubiboulga prepared in advance with 500g of minced meat, frozen onions and peppers, grated cheese, which makes 2 meals minimum and can decorate a lunch bento,
- 6 chicken thighs cooked in one go in the oven, with zucchini and frozen onions at the bottom of the dish, which make at least 3 meals or can complement a midday Bento,
For the 4 more festive meals:
- pork ribs bought by 4 and cooked at once, which will enhance the bentos of the week,
- minced steaks with a horse egg,
- cherry tomatoes to peck at,
- Half a roast chicken bought in the supermarket’s catering department.
In approval for breakfast or snacks:
- eggs,
- white ham,
- slices of smoked brisket,
- canned sardines or mackerel.
Budget for the week (based on 1st price at the local Intermarché):
- An iceberg salad: €1.50
- 20 eggs: 3,35€
- 500g Emmental: 3,62€
- 600g minced meat: €6.09
- 6 chicken thighs (1kg): 5,39€
- 4 pork rib: 4,00€
- Two burgers: €2.99
- 1/2 roast chicken: 6€
- 6 slices of ham: 2,79€
- 1 can of tuna: 1,21€
- 1 smoked breast blister: 1,36€
- 1 tray cherry tomatoes: 1,99€
That’s about 40€ per week in fresh products.
To add, the cost of frozen vegetables, but the cost is to be spread over 2 months, being bags of one kilo:
- sliced zucchini: €0.99
- Flat beans: 1,71€
- Broccoli florets: €1.82
- Sliced onions: 1,65€
- Peppers in cubes: 1,99€
That is, reduced to the week: 1,02 €!
Of course, that’s without counting the meals at the grandparents’ house, delighted to receive their little girl that they do not let go without a huge Tupperware, and all the meat that I prepare and leave in the freezer at each of my visits, which allow my daughter to vary a little and to lower the price of her shopping cart every week!
