As someone who has worked in the health and fitness industries for several years now, I am continually amazed by the number of people who argue that ‘eating healthy’ is too expensive. My counter for this is always, “It’s not expensive, you just don’t know how to shop”.

For anyone looking to save off their grocery bill, I strongly recommend you look around to see if there’s a farmer’s market near your city. The beauty of the farmers markets is that you never know what they are going to offer, but what you can be assured is that they will sell you fruits and vegetables that are in season, as well as offer amazing deals on hormone and antibiotic-free meat.

Just a couple of weeks ago, my girlfriend and I made our weekly trip out to the Trail’s End farmer’s market near London, Ontario. Since we’ve been going to this market for over a year now, we’ve determined that the best time to go is around 3:30 PM (the market starts packing up show around 4 PM). Why 3:30? Because that’s when vendors are dying to get rid of things, which always adds up to amazing savings!

On our most recent trip, we headed over to one of the butcher’s stations to pick up some steak. They had t-bones listed for $6.99/lbs – which is quite the savings over the $13.49/lbs you see them run for at the grocery store. At this price, I figured – why not ask for 4… only by now, the butcher knows I am a huge sucker for a deal.  With a gleam in his eye, he turns to me and says “if you buy the rest of the tray, I’ll give you a deal”.

Obviously, what man with a pulse would turn down a deal on top of the line steaks? Oh right… a man whose better half is standing there next to him. I laughed off his offer (since there appeared to be about 20 steaks sitting there), but was still wondering what kind of deal he was talking about. Just for fun the butcher pulls out the whole tray, tosses it on the scale and we see the number $150 pop up, which means there was 21 lbs of steak on the scale!!!

He looks at me and says, “Buddy, it’s yours for $100”. Obviously I’m thinking this is the deal of a century, but alas – my girlfriend is still standing next to me giving me the frowning of a lifetime. Damn it woman, why must you be here??? So I regretfully turn to him and tell him sorry, but we can’t blow our grocery budget on steaks alone, as we had also planned on picking up some lean ground beef and pork chops.

Does this dissuade our fine butcher friend? Not in the least! In fact, it seems to renew his zest for plying us full of meat. He counters with, “How about 10 lbs lean ground beef, 10 lbs of pork chops and all those steaks… for $130”. Girlfriend be damned – I’m not about to pass up that kind of deal. So $130 leaves my hand faster than you can say, “Deal” and before you know it, I’m trudging back to the car under a mountain of meat.

For all of you bean counters at home, this guy just sold me 40 lbs of meat for $130 that had I bought it in the grocery store, would have cost me over $350 (I priced it out later that day).  Now if we assume I can get 4 servings of protein out of a lbs of meat, that means my per serving cost runs about $0.81 [$130/(4*40)] – that’s cheaper than a can of tuna!

Oh, while I was taking the meat back to the car, my girlfriend was picking up (amongst other things) a basket of red, yellow and orange bell peppers for $5 ((about 25 peppers in total), 4 lbs apples at $0.69/lbs, 10 pints of Campari tomatoes for $3… you get the idea.

Every time we head out to the market we are able to purchase enough fresh produce to provide both of us at least 10 servings/day, all for about $25 a week.

So the next time you find yourself lamenting that ‘eating healthy’ is too expensive – maybe it’s time you started thinking about supporting your local farmers. Your waist line and your wallet will thank you.

Remember when it comes to your health – “good enough”, isn’t.