Getting The Bang For Your Buck At The Salad Bar
Trying to buy tasty, healthy and convenient foods on a budget can be tough. It's easy to sacrifice one quality in the pursuit of another - buying expensive, gourmet foods, for example. Or conversely, cheap, food that is lacking nutritionally. However, with some simple suggestions, there are ways to find good food for not much money.
One of the greatest tools in the pursuit of good, inexpensive food is the salad bar. With an assortment of fresh and cooked vegetables, fruits and nuts, the salad bar has a lot to offer in terms of nutrition. However, because it is often priced by the pound, some items can be relatively expensive. On the other hand, some of the foods found there are both delicious and a bargain. A few tips will keep you in the red, or the green.
Avoid dressings
Dressings are relatively cheap throughout the rest of the supermarket. Lay off it at the salad bar and dress it up at home. For its weight, dressing is not a very good buy at the bar.
Go nuts
Nuts, legumes and beans on the other hand can be wise buys. Not only are they healthy, they are often a more reasonable price at the salad bar. Olives, too, can be a good purchase. Per pound, olives are a lot pricier than other salad choices in the rest of the store, so you can go heavy on them here.
Hit the toppings
In the same vein, those specialty toppings in salad bars are a wise way to go. Blue cheese, croutons and sun-dried tomatoes are sometimes cheaper here than they are in other parts of the store.
Writing in a blog for The New York Times, statistician Nate Silver especially recommends loading up on bacon bits. THey might not be the healthiest options, but at more than $20 a pound on other aisles, if your supermarket offer them in the salad bar, pour them on!
