I’m a Budget Conscious Grocery Shopper. Here Are 8 Things I’m Willing to Pay More For

If you followed my little “Budget Eats and Receipts” series I did in 2024, you likely already know that grocery shopping on a budget is something I genuinely enjoy. And while I would still absolutely call myself a budget conscious shopper, gone are the days of spending as little as possible for the sake of spending as little as possible.

A lot of this shift has been influenced by the work of Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, also known as Dr. B or The Gut Health MD. I first read his book Fiber Fueled during pregnancy, and more recently read his newest book, Plant Powered Plus.

If you're new to Dr. B's work, he is a plant-based board-certified gastroenterologist who studies how our diet and lifestyle directly impact our gut and in turn impact everything else — our immune system, our hormone health, our mental health, our energy levels.

I'm planning to revamp my “Budget Eats and Receipts” series in 2026, but before I do, I wanted to share with you how my grocery cart has changed in the last couple of years.

For starters, my grocery budget is much higher. Womp womp.

This is partially due to unavoidable inflation, but the bigger shift has been in how I think about what we’re consuming.

Some things are worth intentionally making room for in the budget now. And as a stay-at-home mom living on one income in a high-cost-of-living area, I don’t make that statement lightly. We’re not able to make these changes because we suddenly started making a lot of money. We didn’t.

We’re making these changes because we’ve actively chosen to prioritize our health — and we’re able to do that by living debt-free, driving 20-year-old cars, skipping most vacations, and living an overall simple life.

So with that in mind, here are the things I'm paying more for now.

1. Better Beans

Eating an overwhelmingly plant-based diet means beans are basically a food group in our household. We easily eat a few pounds of beans every week.

For the cost savings alone, I've always prioritized dry beans over canned varieties. But what I didn't know until reading Dr. B's work was that every canned food on the grocery store shelves is lined with a thin layer of plastic. It has to be — without it, the aluminum would react with the food.

The problem is that canned beans are cooked and sterilized inside the can during the sealing process. When plastic is heated at high temperatures, it releases microplastics and endocrine disrupting chemicals like BPA and BPS into the food.

Although I've always preferred cooking my own beans from scratch, it does require planning ahead and with a young baby at home, sometimes life has different plans.

For those days, I like to keep a few cans of beans on hand, too!

Instead of grabbing the cheapest cans at Walmart, I now look for these better (albeit much more pricy!) options:

1. Beans in glass – Jovial Foods is the brand I find most often
2. Beans in Tetra Paks – Tetra Paks, while not plastic-free, are generally lined with polyethylene plastic instead of epoxy-based plastics, lowering your exposures to BPA and BPS.
3. Eden Foods canned beans – Eden Foods is the better canned option because they are not only BPA-free, but also BPS and phthalate-free.

2. Acidic Foods and Ferments in Glass

A natural follow from the beans conversation. Similarly to beans, acidic foods like tomatoes, salsa, pasta sauce, and ferments like sauerkraut and kimchi are especially problematic in plastic or lined cans because acidity accelerates the leaching of chemicals and microplastics.

Basically, the more acidic the product, the more you want it stored in glass.

I now buy crushed and diced tomatoes in glass jars wherever I can find them. Same with salsa, pasta sauce, and any fermented product. Glass is inert and it doesn't react with food.

Now be warned. Glass packaged tomatoes are significantly more expensive than canned, but if there's one category worth prioritizing, it's swapping to glass for acidic foods!

If there's a skill I should be adding to my tool belt it's home canning — it would be SO much cheaper and more delicious!

3. Avoiding foods with “GRAS” status

Learning about this one in Dr. B's work genuinely surprised me and is probably the knowledge that has changed how I read ingredient labels the most.

GRAS stands for Generally Recognized as Safe. It sounds fine, but what it really means is that ingredients classified under this umbrella have been deemed safe based on existing knowledge at the time that it was approved, not because it was rigorously tested by modern standards or human health.

Common examples of ingredients classified as GRAS are “natural flavors” and emulsifiers. “Natural flavors” sounds harmless, but its a broad catch-all term that can include hundreds of different chemicals that have never been truly tested. The FDA does not require companies to disclose what's actually in them.

Similarly, emulsifiers are additives used in processed foods to improve texture and extend shelf life. You'll find them in things like plant based milks, salad dressings, ice cream, bread, and countless other packaged foods. Common ones include carrageenan, polysorbate 80, and lecithin.

Dr. B has spoken about research suggesting that a majority of emulsifiers disrupt the gut microbiome and contribute to inflammation — which is a big deal given how central gut health is to everything else.

4. Organic and Glyphosate Free Foods

I was on the fence about organic for years. When the price difference was small I'd choose organic without much thought, but when it was significantly more I'd go conventional and tell myself it probably didn't matter that much.

I'm convinced now that it does matter a whole lot. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. It is sprayed on conventional crops and residues regularly show up in our food supply. Research into its impact on the gut microbiome is still emerging but what's being found is concerning enough that it changed how I prioritize my spending at the grocery store. Dr. B recommends choosing organic wherever possible and I've taken that seriously.

The Environmental Working Group publishes a Dirty Dozen list every year showing which conventionally grown produce carries the highest pesticide residue. Strawberries, spinach, peppers, and apples are consistently at the top. For the Clean Fifteen, it's safer to buy conventional, but if you have the budget to buy all organic, I don't think you're wasting your money.

I also look for glyphosate free certification on oats, grains, and legumes specifically since these crops are often sprayed right before harvest. It shows up on packaging more frequently now which makes it easier to find.

5. Brands that Test for Heavy Metals

This one started with my morning matcha.

During pregnancy I developed an extreme aversion to coffee but still wanted something warm to start my mornings. That's when I switched to matcha and almost two years later, I still drink it every single day. But when I started researching brands I fell down a rabbit hole about heavy metal contamination in tea that I genuinely wasn't expecting.

Plants absorb whatever is in the soil they're grown in — including heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and cadmium. This is especially relevant for tea and matcha since the entire leaf is ground and consumed rather than just steeped. But it also applies to protein powders, supplements, baby food, rice, and certain spices.

I now look specifically for brands that third party test for heavy metals and publish their results transparently. The brand I landed on is Pique Life. They source their matcha from Japan, test every batch for heavy metals, pesticides, and toxins, and publish their certificates of analysis. The flavor is smooth, it doesn't give me the jitters that coffee did, and knowing exactly what's in it matters to me now in a way it didn't before.

6. Whole Foods Over Ultra Processed Foods

I ate a fully plant based diet for several years and during that time, ultra processed meat and dairy alternatives were a regular part of my grocery haul. Beyond Meat, Impossible Burger, plant based sausages, vegan cheeses… I bought them regularly and felt good about it because they were vegan. But pregnancy made me start reading ingredient labels more carefully and what I found gave me pause.

Most meat alternatives are heavily processed products with long ingredient lists full of the exact emulsifiers, natural flavors, and additives I mentioned earlier. The fact that something is plant based doesn't automatically make it a whole food. Dr. B is clear on this. Ultra processed foods, regardless of whether they're animal or plant based, are not good for the gut microbiome.

This is where the decision to add meat back into my diet made sense to me. The less processed something is, the easier it is to know exactly what you're getting.

Plant-based recipes still rule my kitchen because wow meat is so expensive — especially when prioritizing local, pasture raised, grass-fed and grass-finished livestock.

7. A Wide Variety of Plants

Dr. B's single biggest recommendation is eating 30 different plants per week. Not 30 servings of the same three vegetables — 30 genuinely different plants including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and herbs. Research shows that plant diversity is the single greatest predictor of a healthy gut microbiome.

This one changed how I think about meal planning. Before I wasn't intentionally buying the same things every week but I also wasn't thinking about variety at all. I bought what I knew I would use and what fit the recipes I had planned. Which probably meant I was eating a much narrower range of plants than I realized.

Now variety is something I actively think about. I try to rotate what I buy week to week, introduce something I haven't cooked in a while, or grab a fresh herb I wouldn't normally reach for. It sounds like a small shift but it adds up quickly.

I'll be honest — this has increased my grocery budget. Intentional variety costs more than routine. But this is an area where I've genuinely made peace with spending more because the evidence behind plant diversity is so compelling.

8. A Quality Gut Health Supplement

This is the most expensive item on this list and I want to be upfront about that.

38 Tera is Dr. B's own supplement company and their flagship product is a prebiotic supplement called DMN or Daily Microbiome Nutrition. It combines three classes of prebiotics derived from seven different plants and is designed to feed and diversify the gut microbiome. I started taking it after following Dr. B's work for over a year and feeling like I wanted to do something more targeted for my gut health beyond just food.

I won't pretend it's cheap. It definitely is NOT. But I've found it genuinely worth it for where I am right now, particularly postpartum when my body has been through a lot and my gut health feels like a real priority.

If you want to learn more about the science behind it, Dr. B explains it far better than I can. Check out his podcast appearances, as well as his Instagram @theguthealthmd and his books Fiber Fueled and Plant Powered Plus. He explains it all far better than I can and I genuinely think you’ll find his message as eye opening as I did.