im trying to eat healthier, although im finding it hard to give up the $7 massive pizza for a $15 serving of beans :/ . Im a college kid, so money is tight, does anyone have any foods or meals that are cheap to buy and dont take a lot of preperation and cooking.

my biggest problem is how much the "organic" things are at the supermarket, its like double the price because its organic.

im looking to eventually make a meal plan for myself so any tips/recipes would be appreciated!

edit: i have access to stove, microwave, oven, and foreman grill. any specific recipes? right now im thinking...

Breakfast: plain oatmeal/ cereal
Lunch: Salad (anyone know any types besides the plain old lettuce and vinegar?)
Snack: Nuts/ carrots
Dinner: ?? maybe turkey? fish? no idea how to cook these except just throw them on the foreman.

Do you have access to a stove, or strictly a microwave person?
Yogurts are cheap and healthy, wheat breads, Omega-3 peanut butter, wheat pasta, chicken, cottage cheese, salads, tuna fish, celery sticks, carrot sticks. I know I pretty much listed off just snack type foods, but it's a start. If you have a crock pot/slow cooker, there's countless recipes that you can use that are very healthy (cream of chicken and cream of mushroom - fat free & low sodium - with some rice, vegetables, and chicken breast makes a nice meal that you can eat over the span or 2 or 3 days). The possibilities are endless really... it all depends on how much effort you want to put in and the resources you have available.

There is plenty of online meal plans that you can get for relatively cheap. Sign up and they will even set it up with times and what to eat.

As someone who just graduated, I can agree it's an absolute pain to pass up on those cheap pizzas which can provide meals for an entire day.

Things don't need to be organic to eat healthier. There's no healthy alternative to going out and having food prepared for you, but if you have the time to make a meal, whole grain noodles (not much more expensive) with minimal amounts of sauce and a mix of fresh veggies (bell peppers were always a good choice) was a really simple and healthier meal than pizza and burgers.

Snack on things like carrots and fruits, good way to keep appetites down when it's 10pm and you feel like take-out (eating that late is never good for you either)

Beans, rice, vegetables like broccoli and carrots, fruits like apples and bananas, peanuts, raisins.

Coming from the land of organic hype (Oregon), please believe that just eating fruits and vegetables is the most important thing. Organic is nice, but like you said, it can be too expensive for a student. Brown rice is a great substitute for starches if you can get used to it. The rice grain takes the body a long time to digest and slows what normally spikes insulin levels in bread/pasta eaters. Sure there are whole grain breads and pastas, but they are usually only partially whole grain (and usually died brown to look healthy) so start reading your labels. High fructose corn syrup is something they say to avoid despite some evidence to the contrary, but one ingredient that experts agree is death is anything hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated (like margarine) fats/foods. You might as well paint fat solids on the inner walls of your aorta if you eat those.
The greatest thing you can do is just get educated. Start reading labels, watching your portion control and try to eat only whole foods.... Learning to cook vegetables is a good way to make the transition. There is a good veggie cook book called Perfect Vegetables from americas test kitchen. They tried cooking lots of different styles and had people vote on the best. They even go in to the science of why things taste better by explaining things like caramelization or marinating and breaking down the best cookware to buy.

Also I would recommend buying some nice (not cheap) tupperware. I have the top shelf ones with the black lids. They can be microwaved, boiled, washed in a DW, and the lid snaps tight and doesn't come off. Having really good containers makes it so much easier to just cook a large portion and save meals for later. The more trouble cooking is, the less likely you will stick with it.
Why are you trying to eat healthier exactly?

If you want organic, stick to things where you eat the flesh that's been exposed (if you can afford it). Oranges, for example, no real worries there. For cheap, healthy eating, stick to a lot of frozen vegetables. They're cheap and actually have more nutrients and vitamins because they've been retained at freezing so they're closer to fresh. For meat, always look to see if you grocery store has a bargain section where they dump stuff that's close to expiration. You can freeze it no problem, doesn't matter. Frozen chicken breasts are a good budget item and very healthy. Eggland's Best for eggs, unless you can afford the omega-3 free range (not that much more really).

You ever wonder why America is so fat? You can buy double bacon cheeseburgers at all the fast food joints on the $1 menu yet all those same places to get a grilled chicken breast sandwhich it will be $4.50 minimum. Hell at Jack in the Crack you can get the jumbo meal: 2 deep fried beef tacos, a double cheeseburger, curly fries, and a pop for $3.99. Yet a 4 piece order of grilled chicken strips if $4.79 buy themselves. UGH!

Pretty much anything made from scratch.

The best bang-for-the-buck while still being easy is going to be either:
(1) get a pressure cooker and start learning to love dried beans
(2) get a dutch over and start cooking whole chickens in white-wine/broth

The nice thing about (2) is that the meat stays juicy once it's refrigerated due to the fact that it's cooked in two cups of wine and two cups of broth, and since the flavor stays pretty neutral, you can convert it into call kinds of dishes throughout the week. It works out about $0.30/serving of meat, which is really hard to beat.

When I was in univ, I alternated between rice and ketchup and mac & cheese (sometimes with ketchup).. It wasn't particularly healthy but my food budget was lower than fast food.

Edit: forgot those instant noodles too! lol

My wife actually had a classmate that died of kidney failure due to a blockage created by his ridiculously high sodium diet of all ramen.  I'm sure he had other things that made him susceptible...but it's worth noting, all the same.

You don't eat the seasoning!  That shits poison

Ha, funny story when I was in college the paper had a Pizza Hut coupon for 2 large specialty pizzas and a 2-liter of pop for $15 delivered. I held onto that coupon like it was gold. Everytime they asked for it at the door I said I lost it. That pizza would last for days. I wish I didn't love bread so damn much though. I eat those Olive Garden bread sticks like water. In college I used to buy the 3 packs of foccacia bread from Costco and just put butter and garlic on them and eat a loaf at a sitting. Of course I also had about 5 hours of swim practice and gym each day too though.

Don't buy organic, it's just lies, take it from a biologist. At least a good part of those product are bogus: people that claim not to use pesticides and fertilizers, use water from a river already contaminated with these things. That, or they plant their organic parcels side by side with the non-organic ones.

One of the best investments I made when I was younger was one of those Ronco food dehydrators.

Pound for pound, you get better deals when buying meats in large quantities, say those packages in which you get eight nice ribeyes or a good, four-pound bottom round. Normally, half of it would spoil or suffer freezer burn before it was used, but with the dehydrator I got a lot of nutritious bang out of those jumbo packs. I'd cut the meat into chunks or strips, let them marinate overnight, then set them up in the dehydrator while I worked or attended class. A few days later, I'd have really awesome jerky. The drying process reduces a good portion of the fat, and if you do it yourself, you avoid all the extra sodium and preservatives that go into store jerky. It keeps extremely well and made for fantastic snacks on the go. Worked nicely on turkey, lamb and duck too. That's right, I made teriyaki duck jerky and it was delicious. I even dried some gizzards and they made really good workout fuel.

For the price of a $15 package of skirt steaks, I could get the weight equivalent of $50 of jerky. I'd say that's worth the time and effort, no? I eventually began drying all sorts of other stuff too, like fruits and jams so I'd have homemade fruit-roll-ups. I'd make banana chips and dried cherries from stuff I got super cheap at the farmer's market. Seedless watermelon came out amazing. I even did a lot of vegetables and spices so I could make good, cheap soups and stews. Dried shiitake mushrooms tend to cost around $6/lb. but if you dry them yourself, it comes out to about $1/lb.

They still make these devices and I swear they're worth every penny. Incidentally, you don't have to use it for just food. If you get your cellphone wet, you can set the dehydrator on low, leave the phone in there in a shallow cup of dry rice, set it for about six hours, and it almost always dries the phone out without damaging it. Mine fell in a buddy's pool and my dehydrator completely saved it.

i would suggest you buy some TVP (textured vegetable protein). This stuff looks gross in the package, but is a cheap and delicious meat substitute that packs a lot of protein and takes on the flavor of what it is cooked with. You can use it like any ground meat. Very easy to use and a little goes a long way. You can even use it with ground meat to save on meat costs. Like use half ground beef/turkey/sausage and half TVP. I use it in spaghetti and noodle dishes and all sorts of things. You can find alot of recipes and it is usually pretty cheap in the health food section. Alot of natural food stores have it where you can buy it loose by the ounce or pound. One of my favorite cheapo dinners is this:
Get some chicken flavored Ramen going in some water and while it is boiling good, add a big handful of TVP to the boiling water (it will soak up the hot water and swell and soften). As the mixture gets thicker, add butter and salt and pepper and curry powder and the chicken seasoning if you like it and stir it up. when the TVP is all soft and before all the water is soaked up, add one egg and stir the crap out of it. Here you have a cheap, tasty, and semi-nutritious meal. It is even healthier if you leave the MSG-laden chicken packet out. Add whatever spices and sauces you like (sweet and sour or soy are great) to flavor it if you leave the chicken stuff out. You can even add some diced tomatoes and peppers to it if you like. I have alot of cheap, nutritious recipes with alot of shortcuts. If you are interested, PM me. I am usually able to feed a family of three voracious eaters and alot of our friends on less than $300 a month and we eat pretty healthy.

well im really hitting the gym hard. 5 times a week at least a hour, and plus i do hockey and kick boxing which adds another 6 hours of fitness each week. i feel like my diet is really counter productive to what im doing at the gym, so its really the next step (and the hardest) for me to take to having that healthy lifestyle. ive phased out soda for the most part, and im trying to eat lighter lunches (like a salad). i now think im ready to full on get rid of the crap food and just eat well. the best way i figured is to standardize what i eat, schedule what i eat each meal per day, and just repeat it each week. i wont like it at first, but like going to the gym, it will get easier and easier and it will become habit. the only problem is when i go home... my mom makes feasts!





Amen!

Yep thats why I always laugh at all these so called health experts. You pretty much eat what you can afford.  Back in the 70s before becoming a health food, you could buy 20 chicken drumsticks for 49 cents.  Beef was the pricey item.  Now chicken is like gold

but as per topic  best cheap and easy meal is a can of tuna. pop the lid and dig in.

I am so glad I'm not the only person who does this!  Although it's more of a snack for my fat ass

Raw Tuna,  popcorn and hot tea has basically been my diet for the last month and i've lost 25 pounds on this man muffin of a body

hah thats exactly what i do, my roommates all think its gross. problem is i dont want to have that too often with the mercury content and all (not even sure if thats true, but dont want to risk it)

I think incorporating more fruits, vegetables and whole-grain into your diet is much more important than buying organic. While I try to eat organically as much as possible, it just doesn't work on a restricted budget. Plus I imagine the majority of nutrients found in conventionally-grown produce is equal to those found in organic foods. The only main difference would be the amount of residual pesticides from cultivation but I'm sure the health benefits from the added vitamins and minerals would greatly outweigh that.

I would agree with above statements. I eat a shit ton of chicken and vegetables (mostly frozen that I steam), leave off seasoning like salt and what not. Measure out portions, and theres a lot of good online food tracking sites out there that really open your eyes to what you are eating. I prefer myfitnesspal.com, you enter what you ate, what exercise you did for the day, and it gives you a 5 week outlook to where your weight should be if you continue on the path you are on. Im not overweight, but my BMI is on the border of being high, hence the diet im on. Also, soda is no good (though hard as hell to give up). Considering a typical 44 ounce pepsi is around 500 calories, you can see that right there is a huge portion of your daily allowance. I used to drink 2 or 3 of those a damn day!

I dont know about mercury content, but I eat several cans a day in the summer, when im biking, hiking, and out doors in general. 

Th can of tuna is a great suggestion. Also pick up sardines as well.

Other cheap and healthy stuff would be: imitation crab meat, uncle ben's boil a bag rice, brown eggs, cottage cheese, preztels, bananas, celery, baby carrots.