Farmers Market Foods - Save Money While Eating Healthy

Your local farmers market is a wealth of health and savings that is often overlooked when it comes to nutrition and dietary options. More and more people are making improvements to their diets and trying to live healthier lifestyles for many different reasons. Some people desire to improve overall health or lose weight, while others are seeking to improve performance in sports. Our bodies are complex machines. Providing your body with the right fuel for the choice at hand is an important step on the road to healthy living. While it's true that good eating can be expensive, eating healthy doesn't have to break the bank and should never be a reason to continue bad habits. You can make the choice to support good health as well as your local farmers at the same time. Your local farmers market is a valuable, cost effective resource that provides a win-win situation for both you and your community!

I actually just got back from the farmers market today and I want to show you what I picked up. A lot of people tell me that it's too expensive to eat healthy. Well, that's potentially a valid reason not to eat healthy, depending on exactly what you're buying. But when you keep good nutrition very simple, it really isn't that expensive to eat healthy.

I'm going to show you what I bought from my local farmers market. This is all local produce which has been organically farmed so there's not a lot of pesticides and junk on it. There also wasn't a lot of transport costs and fuel involved with this produce since it was grown by local farmers. So, all this food is cheap, good tasting and helpful to the local economy.

You'll never guess how much this cost as well. A whopping $3.50 for all of this produce! I was able to buy two huge tomatoes, three green peppers and two good sized cucumbers. This is some serious produce here for just three dollars and fifty cents. Last time I checked, an extra value meal at your favorite fast food restaurant was about $5.99 and loaded with sugar, fat and salt. It just makes sense, both nutritionally and financially, to shop at your local farmers market for the freshest foods along with helping the local businesses and saving money.

I'm thinking about breaking out the hummus and having myself a little veggie party tonight. That's what we here in the nutrition community do for fun. We buy a whole bunch of produce from the farmers market, break out the high fiber dips and go to town. I'm going to cut up all this produce right now and put everything in some Tupperware and I'll be good to go for my healthy vegetable snacking for the rest of the week.

By Ryan Andrews