Here are ways to keep that grocery bill lower:

Special "dietetic or diabetic" foods are costly and not necessary. Many times you are only paying for a special label with the word Dietetic on it

Boneless cuts of meat are often a better buy, since you're not paying for the weight of the bone. Cheaper meats only need to be cooked longer to make them soft.

There's no nutritional difference between white eggs and brown eggs, which are more expensive.

Not only do vegetables frozen in butter sauce cost twice as much as plain frozen vegetables, they have more calories.

Instead of buying small containers of yogurt, buy a quart and separate it into one-cup servings yourself. If you buy plain yogurt and put applesauce into it it's cheaper than the ones with fruit in it.

You can save a lot of money if you don't buy individually packaged snacks. Buy big bags and divide it into portion sizes in little zip lock bags.

When buying fruit, consider the cost per edible serving. If you're paying by the pound, you'll be paying for the weight of inedible seeds and rinds. You can eat all of an apple. but a pomegranate gives you little to eat. The same thing for some veggies. Artichokes are almost all inedible.

If fresh fruit is too expensive, buy frozen or canned fruit packed in water. If you buy fruit canned in syrup, rinse it before eating. Canned and frozen can be fresher than raw fruit that has been sitting in the store for days.

Use nonfat dry milk for drinking, cooking and baking. It's inexpensive and has a long shelf life.

You can make your own cooking spray by putting vegetable oil in a spray bottle. They sell spray pump bottles all over now.

Use regular or quick-cooking oats rather than instant oats, which are much more expensive.

When soaked and cooked, dry beans triple in volume. A one-pound bag will make six one-cup servings.

If you buy fresh greens by weight, give them a good shake before you put them in your grocery cart. An amazing amount of excess water (and weight) can be hidden between the leaves.

These are so true..........
I found the other day I was paying for leaf lettuce by the lb and it was for water. Now teh store has a flat price per head.

we buy chciken in bulk, debone and prepare into ziplock meal bags.
Teh same with beef.
we buy it on sale and I make a meatloaf, meatballs, hamburger patties, homemade beef sausage and set in in ziplocl or conatiners.

Hubby makes 2 gallons of chili and ziplocks meals.
I make blintzes and egg rolls and freeze em in portion control.
We started doing the chip thing and using a scale made our own portion control servings. You wouldn't think it works as well as it does!

Thsi works good for big bags of breakfast cereal, lunch meats (we buy as a treat) too.............


Also remember: Watch dtores for close to experation date sales.
According to our freinds at Walmart and Food lion, 5 days before last day of sale many meats go on sale to amek room for new stock. The food is prefectly good and is reduce between 10 and 30 percent, sometimes as high as 50 percent.
So lets say you wnated ribs and theyw ere too expensive at 1.80 per pound you can pick them up for 1.20 a pound if you just waiut for the Monday or Tuesday meat madeness.. when new shipments coming in and they make room!
Avoid chicken packages that are puffy or look like they hair air injected..

julie

Though it is expensive, make sure you have those terrible tasting glucose tablets to eat when your blood sugar goes low. I found that having sugared sucking candy, an energy bar, a single sealed cookie package, is just going to be eaten when you come across it in your bag. I doubt that anyone can eat those glucose tablets for the taste.

In the long run, you'll save lots of money and keep on your diet with the glucose tablets. UGH!