• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

The Cost of Low Carb

E

EggsEggsEggs

Active Member
Messages
33
Location
England
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Dislikes
Spinach
Hi there ! My first thread, so here goes..

After doing an online order to be delivered on Saturday, just as a top-up shop, I wondered whether other people find low carb expensive ? If you haven't gone low carb or ketogenic yourself, is the expense a factor ?

Taking off the charge for delivery and bags and the one carby packet of gluten-free cheese oatcakes for my husband, the cost was £41.99

Wild Pacific red salmon small can 2 @ 3.50 each
Sicilian Giarraffa olives with lemon £2
Smoky paprika and chilli Halkidiki olives 1.69
Polish sauerkraut 500g 85p
Polish apple vinegar 250ml £2
Organic Extra Virgin olive oil 500ml 2 @ 3.25 each
Growing herbs - basil, mint, parsley flat leaf parsley - 50p each
Organic avocados 2 @ £1 each
Organic cauliflower 1.80
Organic broccoli 300g £1
Organic bell pepper twin pack x2 @ 1.45
Organic carrots 500g (only eaten raw) 65p
Organic white mushrooms 250g 75p
Triple pack 3 x 70g tins organic tomato paste 2 packs @ £1 each
Organic tinned whole peeled plum tomatoes in organic tomato juice 65p (20p off)
Clotted cream 2.25
Greek yogurt 5% fat 500g 2.75
Prosciutto PDO 80g 2.50

No meat. poultry, game, fish, offal, sausages, bacon, as that's in the freezer along with Cheddar, butter and lard. Stocked up on cheese for fridge, last week. Also got eggs to last until next Monday.

With the bits and pieces in the fridge, there are five lunches and quite a few meal ingredients, as well as seven breakfasts.

Is this good, bad, indifferent ?

How do you keep the cost of low carb down ? Do you buy in bulk ? Grow your own ?
 
The organic label would be adding a bit of a premium to that basket. Depending on the shop you ordered from, I bet you could be a bit cheaper but I suppose the question more is if the quality os food and you feel it’s reasonable
 
I am a bit bemused - what you have there is just food, which happens to be low carb. Most of what I buy now is the same as I bought before, it’s what I don’t buy now that makes the difference!

So no ready meals, bread, cereals, rice, cake, chocolate, sweets etc. I suppose perhaps things like bread, potatoes and rice are cheap ways to provide bulk in meals, and I eat a little more of the more expensive veg now to make up for it. But overall I eat a lot less.

I do buy almond flour and erythritol/stevia so I can bake the odd low-carb treat and those items are much more expensive than their mainstream counterparts. I also eat more cheese, and I do buy more ‘posh’ cheese because I enjoy it as a main protein source in a meal rather than something like a pizza topping. But that is my choice, I could absolutely substitute block cheddar for the same nutritional effect if money was tight.

I eat meat in the same way as I did in the old days so not much change there.

I think, on balance, I find it pretty cost neutral to low-carb, unless compared to when I was existing on ready meals because those are cheap. But if I compare costs for home-prepared meals I think they are much the same. And of course I am not wasting money on sugar-filled rubbish any more.

And this year, yes, I am growing my own. But getting all set up for that has cost a ****** fortune, so no savings there, each runner bean might as well be gold-plated! Perhaps next year I will be more sensible about it ... I do enjoy it though.


Edited by moderator in line with the forum rules on language
 
EggsEggsEggs said:
How do you keep the cost of low carb down ? Do you buy in bulk ? Grow your own ?
Click to expand...

I definitely spend less on food overall now than before diagnosis. I eat mostly meat, fish, eggs, cheese, cream and virtually no veg, aside from a few onions here and there. My tactics are to buy when things are on offer and freeze; buy the cheaper cuts of meat and restrict processed/snack foods. I also tend to eat only twice a day, sometimes once.

Just did a quick tot up of the food elements of my last Morrison’s delivery and reckon it averages out at about £2 a meal ranging from a relatively expensive thick cut ribeye to very cheap eggs and bacon.
 
I’d have bought a similar basket for a lot less than that by buying own brands and non organic. And a lot of these whilst very nice are far from essential on low carb.
 
I buy carefully, and we spend less now - although we have now been eating this way for long enough that the details of old spending are lost in the mists of time

we shop around and buy economical amounts.
For instance, I buy 3 or 5 kilos of erythritol from Amazon. At a fraction of the cost it would be in a supermarket. Since I use (on average) 2 teasp a day, 5 kilos last a very long time.
Inexpensive cuts of meat are often fattier and more delicious. Long slow cooking rulz!
I used to do keto baking (and yes, the ingredients seem pricey) but that got old fast. Haven’t replaced most of them as they ran out.
And I do not consider organic a necessary choice for most items

Don’t we live in a strange world where buying processed stuff is percieved as being cheaper than real food?
 
Andydragon said:
The organic label would be adding a bit of a premium to that basket. Depending on the shop you ordered from, I bet you could be a bit cheaper but I suppose the question more is if the quality os food and you feel it’s reasonable
Click to expand...

Lidl doesn't deliver and ASDA is the next cheapest for organic veg.

Very impressed by your bulk buying Brunneria ! Sainsbury's charges more for unfiltered organic olive oil than it does for the filtered stuff.

HSSS the brands were the tomato paste and tomatoes (on offer), the salmon (wild and not all of them were), the Polish vinegar and sauerkraut, the Greek yogurt and the clotted cream. Everything else was own-brand. If it doesn't say organic, it isn't.

TeddyTottie, thank you for making me chuckle over the gold-plated beans. I thought I would grow runner beans on a trellis one year. My mother kept on telling me to water them every night and my honeysuckle, next to it, ended up with mildew

Goonergal, we haven't ever worked out how much each meal is. £2 sounds very good. In normal times, I have a weekly budget. At the beginning of the lockdown, Abel & Cole cancelled my milk and eggs, which I'd had from them since 2012. Ocado went into meltdown and despite an annual delivery pass, again since 2012. I got only one order. I ended up scrabbling around everywhere I could, for food. Morrisons, Iceland, farms in Somerset and Scotland and delis in London. Cost a fortune in overnight APC charges. But if you can't go out or get a delivery slot, you're pretty much stuffed.

I'm trying to get back on track re: budget. As long as I have lots in the freezer, it looks doable.
 
Last edited:

Organic seems very important to you. Is there a reason for that?
 
I do low carb and spend around £25 a week maximum on my food and drink. A whole chicken can go a long way. Cheese, eggs, whole milk and tins of tuna are my main proteins. Lots of veg a week, tea and coffee, and that's basically my whole diet. Plus some home made bread made from organic stoneground wholemeal flour.
 
I don't always eat low carb but I do most of the time. I usually choose the cheaper, in season stuff. At the moment cauliflower is expensive so I use a lot of celeriac to bulk up as it's cheap and versatile. Same with other foods.

I get the basics cheap and use the saved money for some luxury items like good cheeses. Not much different than before diabetes really. I think the cost of my food per weight has gone up a little, but I eat less so I guess I spend about the same on food as before.
 
My food bill has definitely gone up as I was vegetarian before my diagnosis. I buy a lot of meat and dairy now that I didn’t before. However, the results speak for themselves and definitely worth the extra cost. I do buy quality and from a source that I know the animals have been reared well. I also buy a lot of organic produce.
 
Hmm, I think I actually spend the same if not a little less because I do not eat takeaway as much these days... However meat is expensive, so I tend to pick that up only when on offer and store it for another day. One thing I am doing at the moment is saving the fat and bones from chicken/beef in order to make stock and cooking fat and trying to fast a bit more. But I would be interested in any other tips to save cash!
 
I am trying not to buy any special ingredients such as sweetners, coconut flour, almond flour etc.They all seem so expensive compared to normal versions
Having only been diagnosed a few months I am still finding it ok being on the real food without needing to bake or create alternative recipes yet.
I use ground almonds, often grinding my own, instead of almond flour
My one 'sin' is very dark chocolate but at just one square a day a £2.00 bar gives 10 portions, 20p much cheaper than cakes, sweets or fancy desserts I used to buy
I buy a pot of flavoured olives (such as chilli) but then mix it with a jar or2of cheap plain olives. A day later you can't tell which olive was original/more expensive and which was cheap.
Also only ever buy own brands
 
To be blunt you may have been reading too many articles with trendy recipe ingredients. A lot of your food is effectively 'brand name'. Why not go for generic versions of most of the items. Do you really need organic versions of everything? Why do you buy organic anyway? That cost has little to do with low-carb but more about your overall cost of shopping and life-style choice.
 
Frozen food usually seems to be the cheapest option, especially with meat and fish. It kind of makes sense, because there's less store waste of food that's gone past its use by date, which has to be factored into the cost of the food that actually sells.

Check out the frozen fish in Iceland / Food Warehouse. They often do 3 packs for £10. Lots of different things to choose from, and you get at least 4 decent sized fillets (or the entire fish, bar head, tail and guts, in the case of mackerel) in each bag. So it works out at less than £1 per serving if you just have the one piece, and still less than £2 if you have a couple. (Correction: I just opened a bag of the mackerel, and it's 4 fillets, with the skin still on, rather than 4 whole fish.)

Snacks and accompaniments seem to be a killer, though. 12 bags of low carb pork puffs for £10, when a 12 pack of Quavers would typically be £5 at most, and often on sale for £3. 200 grams of Konjac rice costs the same as a 2 kilo bag of Basmati.
 
Last edited:
I like what one of the low carb practising doctors advises namely if you need to eat at McDonalds do so, just skip the bun and fries!
You can make it expensive if you wish to have a more gourmet experience but I find I enjoy those kind of things as treats and am happy to go with lots of eggs, smoked fish or cheddar.
Because fish/meat has limited sell by dates you will often find those goods marked down at the end of a supermarket day. Offal is obviously really cheap but I can't face liver however it does pad out a casserole along with cheaper but tasty cuts of meat e.g. ox tongue, shin of beef. Chicken thighs are cheap and to my mind much tastier than breast fillets.
I bake my almonds to make almond butter. I do not feel the need to eat lots of fruit (just frozen berries) or vegetables.
I can't do cheap go to meals such as pasta with a sauce or beans on toast but then I am a lot less hungry and therefore skip meals or just eat some plain yogurt with a bit of almond butter or berries (from frozen).
I think you will settle into this and have a few cheaper options up your sleeve realising that it doesn't have to be a daily steak.
As for organic, I prefer this but that has nothing to do with low carb and if you are trying to avoid pesticides there are certain carby ones that are a lot worse than the kind of veg you will be buying now.
 
It seems I spend a small fortune if I include all the weightlifting supplements and whey protein. I eat a boatload of salmon which gets pricey. Everything is expensive here in Singapore, but hey, I don’t pay much tax lol
 
The surprising thing about this is how hungry you don't get. 2 rashers of bacon for breakfast, and that took me right through to lunch. 6 thin slices of sandwich chicken at lunch (without the sandwich) and that'll probably do me through until 6pm. I suspect I've spent years trying to fill a void with carbs, when what my body actually wanted was protein and fat.

I'll probably do a Food Warehouse shop tonight, and be buying very differently to how I've done in the past. I love their pakora chicken strips, but the coating is fairly carb heavy. I may still have them as a treat if and when I gradually start to reintroduce some carbs. I'd like to have lost a stone from my starting weight before I even go there, though.

The McDonalds tip is a brilliant one, while travelling. Nando's butterfly chicken is practically carb free if you're eating out, too. And thanks @bulkbiker for the scratchings tip. I'll be ordering some of those. I'll hold you responsible if I break any teeth, though
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn More.…