The Best Foods for Eating Well on a Budget

Find out which are the best, healthiest foods to buy when you're on a budget.

With so many factors to consider—health, environmental impact, cost, taste—choosing healthy foods can seem like a mission impossible. Enter the Good Food on a Tight Budget guide from the Environmental Working Group (EWG). This brand new guide, which helps you buy the most budget-friendly, super-healthy eats, comes from the same group that brought us the Dirty Dozen (a compendium of the fruits and vegetables with the most pesticides).

To compile this budget guide, which you can find at ewg.org, the EWG analyzed over 1,000 foods, first ranking them for how nutritious they are and then screening them for cost. Foods that scored high marks were then further screened for three more factors: pesticides, packaging chemicals and how much they were processed. The guide is a handy reminder that a healthy diet can be affordable when you focus on whole, unprocessed foods. Here are the “best buys” or the most affordable, nutritious options in each food group.

—Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D., Associate Nutrition Editor

Photo Credit: Environmental Working Group

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