Make these 6 swaps to halve your food bill

It’s easy to feel like eating well is a privilege reserved for the wealthy. And it’s something many of us have had to navigate at one point or another. It’s undeniable that steak and organic produce can easily double your weekly bill. And as much as you may try to prioritise food spending above everything else, sometimes you just don’t have that money to spend in the first place.

If you’re tired of spending more and feeling less nourished, here are six intelligent swaps that lower the cost of eating well, and significantly raise the nutritional bar while you’re at it.

1. Swap muscle meat for organ meat

We’ve said it before and we’ll keep saying it… organ meats are unmatched in nutritional value and dramatically underpriced. Compare a £6 steak to a £2 pack of beef liver. One offers decent protein. The other offers retinol (true vitamin A), B12, folate, copper, zinc, iron, and more, all in a bioavailable form your body actually absorbs.

Muscle meats are relatively low in micronutrients compared to organs. And consistently prioritising muscle meats without balancing them with collagen-rich cuts or organs can lead to amino acid imbalances over time. That might not show up immediately, but it matters in the long run.

Butchers often have heart, tongue or liver sitting in the back fridge at a fraction of the price per kilo. Some even give them away for free. If you’re unsure what to ask for, or how to use the, we’ve written a full guide on the lesser-known, nutrient-dense cuts your butcher might be happy to hand over for next to nothing.

2. Make your own bone broth at home

You do not need to spend £30 a week on branded bone broth. Most bones are either very cheap or completely free.

Ask your butcher for:

• Marrow bones

• Knuckle bones

• Chicken feet, carcasses or necks

• Lamb spines or ribs

They often have an abundance of these, and they rarely make it to the retail shelf.

Simmer with filtered water, sea salt, apple cider vinegar and scraps (onion peels, herb stems, carrot tops). You’ll end up with several litres of mineral-rich, collagen-dense broth for less than the price of one retail jar. If it's your first time making bone broth, we've made you a recipe.

Branded broth usually costs around £7 to £8 per 500ml. Homemade broth costs about £1 to £2 per two litres. The price difference is enormous, and so is the nutritional payoff. Use it for cooking rice, sauces, soup bases, or sip it straight in the morning for gut support and warmth. We even love to add it to our smoothies: Bone Broth Berry Smoothie.

3. Swap probiotics for ferments

A bottle of probiotics can cost upwards of £35/month. A head of cabbage costs £1.50 and makes enough raw sauerkraut to last weeks.

Homemade ferments like sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, and raw yoghurt contain diverse, living strains of beneficial bacteria, alongside postbiotics, enzymes, and acids that support digestion and mineral absorption. Most probiotic capsules contain only a few isolated strains, and many don’t even survive the stomach acid barrier.

What to ferment at home:

• Cabbage (sauerkraut)

• Milk (kefir or yoghurt)

• Carrots + ginger (simple ferment)

• Cucumbers (brined pickles)

4. Swap imported ‘superfoods’ for seasonal produce

You don’t need to buy açai, goji berries or papaya flown in from thousands of miles away.

The term ‘superfood’ gets thrown around constantly, usually attached to something expensive and over-marketed. But here’s how we define a superfood… a food that is nutrient-dense, bioavailable, metabolically supportive in the season you’re in, and relevant to the environment you live in. That means not just what it contains, but when and where it was grown.

Seasonal food isn’t just fresher, it’s coded with light, temperature and microbial signals that help your body adapt to its environment. 

In spring, bitter greens like dandelion and nettle support liver detoxification. In summer, berries rich in polyphenols help protect your skin from sun damage. In autumn, root vegetables ground your energy and support carbohydrate storage. And in winter, fermented foods and animal fats feed your immune system and metabolic warmth. 

These foods evolve alongside us. They hold information from the landscape, encoded through light cycles, soil composition and temperature, and deliver that information back to our physiology in real time. That’s what makes a food truly “super”. Not the distance it travelled or the price per gram, but its ability to support your body in this season, in this place.

There’s a reason strawberries are so expensive in winter, they’re not supposed to be there. When fruit is grown out of season, it needs artificial light, heated greenhouses, long-haul transport, and cold storage, all of which drives up the cost while draining the flavour and nutrient content. 

That’s the logic of seasonal eating… better nutrition, better flavour, lower cost, if you follow nature’s clock.

5. Don’t underestimate sardines

There are certain foods that don’t market well. Sardines are one of them. Small, oily, unglamorous, and possibly the most underrated food in the modern diet.

Sardines are cold-water fish that sit low on the food chain, meaning they accumulate very little mercury. They’re wild-caught, fast-reproducing, and don’t require farming or antibiotics. They’re sold tinned, which makes them shelf-stable for years.

But most importantly, they’re nutritionally dense in exactly the ways most people today are deficient.

One tin of sardines contains high-quality protein, omega-3s, calcium, vitamin D, B12, selenium and more. They’re also one of the only whole foods that naturally contain creatine, a compound usually sold as a gym supplement, but essential for brain energy, physical strength, and fatigue resilience. Just one tin gives you around 150mg of creatine, plus the co-factors that help your body actually use it.

6. Shop from your local farmer

In past generations, food was intricately tied to community. You knew who grew your vegetables, who raised the animals, who made the bread. The butcher wasn’t a brand, he was someone your grandmother traded lard with.

Putting a face back to your food relationships means returning to a slower, more accountable food system, one where conversations replace packaging, and trust replaces labels. It also often means cheaper food.

When you buy direct from farmers, butchers, or producers, you’re not paying for middlemen, supermarket markups, or glossy branding. You’re paying for the food itself. You can ask about bulk discounts, buy imperfect produce, get bones and offcuts that never make it to the shelves, or trade for what’s abundant.

And when trust is built, prices often soften. Not through negotiation, but through mutual respect. A farmer might slip in extra eggs. A butcher might round down the weight. When someone knows you value their work, they often do what they can meet you wherever your family is financially at that time.