Have you ever asked yourself, “What if I can’t afford organic food?”? Do you believe that your family’s health and wellness will suffer if you can’t buy all organic? Do you feel that Real Food is “all or nothing”? You can let go of the fear and guilt and embrace Real Food anyway, even on a small budget!

Another way to save money and eat Real Food? Having a meal plan!
Download my FREE 7-Day Instant Pot Real Food Meal Plan with printable shopping list!

In 2008, through a fast and furious series of events, I was introduced for the first time to the concept of “health food”.

We were living in Dallas, Texas, while my husband was a college student. Our lives were full of change.

Not only had we uprooted our young family and moved over 350 miles away from our hometown, we also went from small-town living to life in a busy metropolis. Just learning to drive in our new surroundings was a huge challenge.

As it happens with most college students, our budget was also experiencing some, ahem, challenges. To give you an idea of the type of adjustment I’m talking about here: We moved to married family housing on campus in January 2007. Two weeks later, we filed our 2006 income taxes.

Our total income for 2006? Just shy of $45,000. Not too bad for a couple of kids in their mid-twenties — oh, and I was a stay-at-home-mama too. We were very blessed indeed.

One year later, in January 2008, it was time to file our 2007 income tax.

Our total income for 2007? $17,000. Not even joking.

So, with a very small income, we began our health journey. Not exactly the best timing, I guess. But, we were convinced that it was time to change just about everything about our lives. (You can read more about that here.)

Here we were, poor college kids with two kids ourselves, learning about the crappy food we’d been filling our bodies with and realizing that we had to change our lifestyle completely in order to start buying healthy food.

It was absolutely miraculous that we were able to make it through 2007 in a new (and way more expensive!) city, let alone pay for groceries. And — I’m proud to say — my husband graduated from school with ZERO debt.

I 100% believe that, when you put your mind to it and take those first small steps, the Universe comes alongside you with heaps of love and support!

Still, it wasn’t easy. We were (and continue to be) very conscientious of how expensive it is to afford Real Food.

My First Whole Paycheck Foods Experience

The only word in my healthy food vocabulary was organic; the only place I knew to look in the concrete jungle was Whole Foods.

I vividly remember the first time I stepped food in Whole Foods — the Mecca of the health world.

Just walking through the silent automatic doors made me feel healthier. It’s like they’re piping something through the vents in there! Browsing the pristine aisles, the pastoral-looking wooden crates full of the most beautiful produce, the largest cheese selection I’d ever seen… THIS was my first experience in Real Food shopping.

I would shop at this store, and my family would be healthy. That’s all there was to it.

I wanted alllllllll the things.

The visions of organic coconut-rolled dates that were dancing in my head were crushed in about 45 seconds.

You want what for organic apples?!

I bet I pushed my cart around for an hour, searching high and low, believing it was all somehow a mistake. Surely, I would stumble upon the affordable organic food at any moment.

I walked out of Whole Foods with just a handful of items in my cart, my head hanging low and my dreams of feeding my family organic foods squashed like a bug on a hot Dallas sidewalk.

Sorry, y’all, but Whole Foods (the store) and a tiny budget just don’t mesh well.

I was so discouraged. Sound familiar?

Here’s the truth: you can feed your family Real Food, even if you can’t afford organic food.

What if I can’t afford organic food?

For the family on a super limited budget, it probably isn’t possible to buy organic produce or grass-fed meat or eggs from chickens that have never seen the inside of a confinement operation.

It’s a common misconception that if you’re not buying organic, pasture-raised, farmer’s market food, then the only alternative is processed crap.

That’s just not true.

Just do the best you can.

So what if you can’t afford organic apples? That doesn’t mean you should whip your cart around and buy boxed mac-and-cheese instead just because it’s cheaper. It means that you should buy the best apples you can afford, even if they’re conventional and were grown in Chile.

Because here’s the deal: a conventionally grown Chilean apple still surpasses a box of cereal or mac-and-cheese when it comes to nutrient-density.

Is organic better? Maybe. Maybe not. 

An organic Chilean apple isn’t necessarily better for the environment than a sprayed Washington, USA apple because of the cost of the fuel to get it to your American grocery store and because of the environmental cost that fossil fuel has on the world. (We’re NOT going into that today! Whole other subject!)

The bottom line is this: DO THE BEST YOU CAN. If your best is buying non-organic produce instead of Hot Pockets and Pop Tarts, then I’m sure not going to tell you that your best isn’t good enough.

It doesn’t have to be local/beyond organic/environmentally sustainable/hippie or nothing.

Activist groups, the health food industry, and many health/food bloggers would like you to believe that, when it comes to what you’re feeding your family, it’s an “all or nothing” deal.

It’s time to let go of the guilt and embrace Real Food anyway!

Dear Momma, you’ve been scouring Pinterest and Instagram and mommy blogs for years, praying your heart out to be able to afford the foods you see on those sites and heaping guilt on your head because you can’t.

You are convinced that your kid’s ear infection or your husband’s indigestion have come about because you’ve been feeding them inferior, non-organic foods.

You presume that your family will never be as healthy as all those families on social media who can afford to shop at Whole Foods and who rave at how Real Food has transformed their lives.

Well, I give you permission to let the guilt go.

Have a good cry as you wave goodbye to it.

It’s time to stop looking through the lens of what you can’t do/buy/afford, and start looking with fresh vision at what you CAN do!

Here’s What You Can Do… Embracing Real Food (even if it’s not organic)

You can change the way you shop.

You can choose to spend your hard-earned money on carrots and sweet potatoes and fresh green beans and broccoli instead of juice boxes and pudding cups and saltine crackers and canned biscuits.

Eating veggies will always, always, ALWAYS be a better choice than Bagel Bites and Captain Crunch. There are ways to wash your produce to remove as much pesticide residue as possible. Though those conventionally grown veggies may not be completely pesticide-free, they’re guaranteed not to contain high fructose corn syrup, MSG, or artificial flavors and colors.

You can buy eggs — one of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet. They make a hell of a healthier breakfast than instant oatmeal or cold cereal. Are pastured eggs better than regular ol’ store eggs? I’m not gonna lie — they are. But is a Toaster Strudel better than a regular ol’ store egg? Nope.

You can swap your margarine for butter.

You can buy plain yogurt instead of sweetened and flavored. (Bonus! Plain yogurt’s cheaper! Even cheaper is making your own — here’s how!)

You can bake your own bread and make your own salad dressing.

You can cook a whole chicken in your Instant Pot or Crock Pot, use the meat, then make bone broth from the bones. That bone broth will always have less junk than a bouillon cube or a can of broth.

You can pack your kids’ lunches with fresh veggies and fruit, a soup made with homemade bone broth, and a homemade muffin instead of a Lunchable.

You can drink water and not soda or juice.

You can buy blocks of cheese to grate instead of buying pre-grated.

You can grow a few herbs on a windowsill or some zucchini in a container on your porch.

You can snack on apples and peanut butter instead of Wheat Thins and ranch dip. Heck, you can even make your own ranch dip!

You can swap ingredients to make your meals more nourishing, saving money in the process. Here are 16 ingredient swaps and 12 more ingredient swaps that will instantly add nutrition to your life!

Notice what I didn’t tell you to do…

I never told you to switch from conventional to organic or raw milk. (If you can, great. If that’s not in your budget right now, consider consuming less dairy in general. No one will die, I promise.)

I never said you had to ferment anything. (Although, fermenting is very inexpensive AND it’s super easy.)

I didn’t tell you to shop at a farmers market or join a CSA — though, more often than not, I actually save money by shopping at these venues.

You’re certainly welcome to do all that and more, when and if you can.

In the meantime, focus on making every purchase at the store count.

Focus on buying whole foods — meats, cheese, eggs, fruits and veggies, beans, rice.

Perhaps, in the not-so-distant future, you’ll be able to re-work your budget and be able to afford the organic and/or local versions of these foods.

Dear Momma, it’s time to get back in the kitchen with renewed energy. It’s time to browse Pinterest through eyes that see how to make beautiful, healthy food and snacks — even if every ingredient isn’t organic.

You deserve to feel a spring in your step when you leave the grocery store because you walked out without a single boxed, processed, or canned food and instead filled your cart with the myriad of whole foods that give you endless possibilities of making your own creations from scratch.

Stop believing the lie that your family will never be healthy until you can buy organic everything.

Pin it!

Some Budget-Friendly Real Food Recipes…

• Super Simple Instant Pot Salsa Verde Chicken (with Crock Pot directions, too)
• Keto Instant Pot Cauli-tatoes
• No-Cook Fruit & Chia Overnight Oats
• Instant Pot Quinoa Breakfast Porridge
• Crust-less Kale & Cheddar Quiche
• No-Fail Instant Pot Soft Boiled Eggs
• Instant Pot Cilantro Meatballs
• Easy, Nourishing, & Soaked Apple Breakfast Cake
• Instant Pot Beef Stroganoff (dairy-free)
• Instant Pot Sesame Orange Chicken (includes cooking chicken from frozen!)
• Quick Keto Ramen with Poached Eggs
• How to Make Any Blended Soup in the Instant Pot
• The BEST Kale Chips

Have you ever felt guilty because you aren’t able to shop organic? What tips would you give to families who want to eat Real Food on a budget?

Originally published September 28, 2015. Updated text and images October 13, 2019.