Posted by Lending Club :: April 6, 2009 @ 12:11 pm

I recently listened to an interesting radio show discussing ways to handle special diets when trying to stick to a budget. The show, hosted by Frugal Coast to Coast, featured guests who blog about diabetic and gluten-free cooking. I was particularly interested in the gluten-free discussion because my wife has gluten intolerance. Their insight and surprising conclusion was that special diets often end up costing less.

Anyone who has ever shopped at a health food store, and endured their high prices, probably finds this conclusion hard to believe. The reason it holds true is that a restrictive diet often forces you to move from prepackaged convenience foods to those that you make yourself. Though people with special dietary needs do this out of necessity, everyone could learn from this valuable lesson.

Consider trying the following tip, provided by the show: stick to the perimeter of your grocery store. Doing so will allow you to focus on raw and natural ingredients and stay away from the processed, prepared, and convenience foods that tend to be less healthy and cost more.

Convenience foods do exist for restrictive diets as well, but there tend to be fewer offerings and the prices are prohibitively high. Turning to homemade foods allows for a much wider selection and much more reasonable prices. For those interested in the sites of the guests on the show, they are Mrs. W’s Kitchen for diabetics and Ginger Lemon Girl for those on gluten-free diets.

Obviously someone who already practices frugal habits and makes much of their food from scratch could see their costs increase if they needed to start cooking with special ingredients for a medical condition. But the rest of us, who are spending more for the sake of convenience, can use the lessons learned from this discussion to start spending less on healthier food.

What are your experiences with the costs of a medically necessary diet?