Cost of eating better – Trichologist tips - Absolique Hair Health Clinic

If you have been following my last few articles, you may have noticed the theme is food. Eating better for healthy hair, scalp, skin, nails will also improve general health. When teaching how to eat food for hair growth and thickness, hair transition with nutrition, nutrition for your hair and eating for scalp treatment, one of the common comments is the cost of eating better.

Healthy diet – cost of eating better

So here we are going to share the cost of eating better is not as expensive as you think. As Absolique Trichologist I practise nutrition, food for ferritin, the art of absorption and food combining. I enjoy cooking and preparing good food for my body, but also understand many don’t, so will keep things simple. Cost savers:

Choose the odd bunch fruit and vegetables
Only buy what is in season and on sale
Build your menus around what is in the fridge, don’t buy for the recipe
Bulk up meals with pulses and lentils, chickpeas are good, buy dried, soak and cook
Use cauliflower and broccoli stalks and stems, blend or finely chop, add to meals

Supermarkets have free magazines loaded with recipes, one is Woolworths fresh ideas with many recipes I can swap out ingredients but also a section with dinners under $5 per serve.

Use left over dinners for lunch and bulk up with leaves, and avocado while still in season and cheap. Pumpkin is also a good filler and is not a heavy carbohydrate like potato, look out for cheap whole pumpkin.

Healthy eating plan – food swaps

One of the best tools available today is online recipes. You can literally type in any dietary dish requirements and come up with alternatives. The key here is leaning how to swap out ingredients or leave certain ingredients out altogether.

Food swap examples:

Gluten – swap chickpea flour instead of normal flour, gluten free self-raising flour instead of normal self-raising flour
Dairy – dairy substitutes, almond, oat, coconut milks, cream and yoghurt, lactose free dairy (only use occasionally as it still contains casein)
Sugar – natural sugar such as stevia, monk fruit, raw sugar, natural honey, golden syrup instead of the very processed white sugar and artificial sugars

Gluten, dairy and sugar are the nutrient robbers, use healthy eating plan food swaps for better nutrient absorption that does not cost to eat better.

Food combining – healthy eating plate

Food combining is a way to eat to get the best nutrient absorption from your food and is based on pH test kit eating acid/alkaline food combinations. When eating animal protein (heme iron) avoid carbohydrates such as bread, rice, pasta and potato.

Food combining swaps when eating animal protein:

Swap bread and put food in a bowl or on a plate
Swap rice for cauliflower or broccoli rice, quinoa, or steamed veges
Pasta swap is vegetable noodles like zucchini, bed of sauteed mushroom or capsicum, shredded cooked cabbage, lettuce and rocket work well here too
Potato swaps, use pumpkin, carrot and other vegetables

Rice and pasta – the biggest problem I hear about is dropping to carbohydrate food fillers rice and pasta. When eating for food combing and absorption, they don’t work with animal protein such as chicken, lamb, beef, eggs, fish. Here I would bulk the meal up with cauliflower rice, broccoli rice, chickpeas or other pulses and beans. They come dried and are very cost effective, can be used whole or ground down to bulk dishes up to save cost on the hormone free animal protein.

Balanced meal – examples from Woolworth fresh ides free magazine August 2023

Thai style red curry chicken and noodle soup – swap out noodles for vegetable noodle alternative

Greek style chicken & risoni bake with fetta – swap risoni for stem broccoli and stem cauliflower blended to resemble rice. Swap fetta for coconut yogurt, vegan nutritional yeast flakes, coconut chips or leave out altogether.

Then you have things like healthier baked eggplant with tahini sauce – no substitutes here, a perfect recipe until the end, where they put it onto Lebanese bread. Here I would simply serve it on a plate or make sure you choose gluten free version.

Healthier chicken schnitzel – nutritional yeast instead of parmesan, drop the apple, change yoghurt to lactose free or coconut, swap corn for low carb veges of any type, stir-fry works here or extra serve of the coleslaw.