It is a common misconception that eating healthy is expensive and it can be, if you’re constantly taking out fancy salads and eating out. However, with a bit of planning, you definitely can keep your diet and wallet nice and lean. We’re going to show you how to keep it around $10 per meal, and we’re using Redmart’s prices since it’s convenient and they deliver island-wide in Singapore.
Breakfast
This starts off your day and you don’t want to spend too much time preparing it. We highly suggest one of our breakfast smoothies which contains all the essential minerals, vitamins, fibre and protein to kick start your energy levels for the day. Let’s take our All Rounder as an example as it has the most ingredients.
| Ingredient | Per unit cost | No. of servings | Cost per day |
 |
S$3.50 | 1 punnet ~ 3 servings | S$1.16 |
 |
S$7 | 1 bag ~ 5 servings | S$1.40 |
 |
S$4.55 | 1 pack ~ 5 servings | $0.91 |
 |
Buy 2 at S$5.90 1 litre at S$2.95 |
1 litre ~ 5 servings | S$0.59 |
 |
3 for S$5.95 | 1 pack = 6 servings | S$0.99 |
 |
S$8.90 | 1 tub ~ 10 servings | $0.89 |
 |
1kg for S$2.10 | ~5 bananas | S$0.42 |
 |
1kg for S$29.80 | ~100 servings | S$0.30 |
 |
S$9.50 | 1 pack ~ 50 servings | S$0.19 |
 |
S$23 | 1 pack ~ 30 sachets | $0.77 |
 |
S$79 | 2.2kg ~ 30 servings | S$2.63 |
| Total daily cost | S$10.25 |
Lunch and dinner
It is not easy to always meal prep and bring it to the office, especially when eating is quite a social aspect. Nonetheless, if you’re the type who likes to head to the gym during your lunch break, prepping your meals is a great way to ensure that you save a bit of money by bringing lunch from home. Not only that, we’ll also show that you can use vegetables that you’ve bought for breakfast for lunch or even dinner. And going by the rules of our 60-day Metabolic Tune Up Programme, you can have your chicken thigh or pork chop if you want! It’s not all dry breast meat at every single meal.
| Ingredient | Per unit cost | No. of servings | Cost per day |
 |
S$3.00 | ~2-3 servings | S$1.50 |
 |
$9.25 | 2kg ~ 20 servings | S$0.46 |
| |
S$7 | 1 bag ~ 2 servings | S$3.50 |
| Total daily cost | S$5.46 |
Instead of kale, you can use spinach that you’ve bought for the breakfast smoothie too. Cooking style is really easy – stir fry the vegetables with a bit of minced garlic; pan-fry or steam the chicken with your favourite flavourings and serve all with your choice of complex carb. We chose brown rice here but you can substitute it with sweet potato.
We do suggest switching the protein sources up to make things more interesting for you, because eating the same type of meat every single day can definitely get boring. If you don’t really enjoy cooking a lot of food, you can also buy a rotisserie chicken and cut it up for at least 5 meals. That definitely will help you save both money and time.
In summary
On average, it costs about S$21 per day to eat this healthy but we’re sure that you can suss out better deals from the wet market or even at the wholesale markets. Do always keep an eye out for promotions which can also help you save money. Another tip is to get items that you can freeze in bulk so that you will have more economies of scale. Feel free to swap for cheaper ingredients or to opt out some of the items listed above to suit your personal budget.
Photo credits: Redmart Pte Ltd
Melissa Fann
