With the increasing prices of literally everything, I’m having a lot of dietary issues. I’m having to cut back or cut out a lot of foods because I can’t just the cost.
My biggest problem is that my anemia has been kicking my ass since I can’t really afford to buy beef or peanut butter.
I know that some seaweeds are supposed to be high in iron, but I’m not sure what kind and most of it just tastes like bland paper to me.
I don’t have a lot of time or energy for cooking. Also, I can’t have honey or tea.
Does anyone have any recommendations? I’m fine with shakes or whatever, just as long as it’s not too expensive.
5 comments
Shakes are expensive. It’s a convenient source of high protein nutrition.
You need to cook to give you energy. Meal prep, cook for 3-4 days at a time. It’s not bad. I have the worst ADHD you can think of. It takes an hour to cook (I eat 450g of some meat everyday)for four days of food. I eat lunch and dinner.
10 minutes of dishwashing a day. Which is basically 25〜 minutes of chores when combined a day.
If you can cook even faster than that, perfect. If you don’t want to cook, you need to pay up. Simple as that.
I got an iron shot at the doctor once because my iron levels were super low. Don’t remember how much it cost, but doctors here usually aren’t more than a few thousand yen, even after medicine. After that, I’ve been taking the Dear Natura iron supplement pills (no flavor, unlike some really nasty ones I’ve had before) once every day, and usually choose milk, yogurt, etc. that advertise added iron. Usually the prune flavored stuff. In the year since, I my iron levels haven’t dropped.
As for protein, if you can’t afford much meat, i would recommend getting into tofu.
If you can, chicken is usually cheap (and more protein filled than beef), and if you get the thin slices, they can cook in 5 mins or less. Add pre-made veggie sides from your supermarket, and use the yoyaku function on your rice cooker to have rice done when you get home, and that’s dinner in 5 minutes. Or boil pasta, which means dinner might take 12 minutes instead of 5, but no extra effort. Shrimp, eggs, greek yogurt, beans, peas, nuts, leafy greens like spinach (also cooks in about 5 minutes), broccoli (buy frozen, open a corner of the bag, add oil amd seasoning. Holding the corner closed, shake until coated. Then 40 minutes in (my) oven microwave at 200 degrees, flipped halfway through. Takes time, but only about 2 minutes of effort.) are also a great source of protein.
For iron just grab some cheap iron tablets on Amazon. For the protein part, if you’re adamant about not cooking, soy protein isolate is the cheapest source of non-whole food protein. But in all honesty, just batch cook a bunch of frozen chicken thighs from gyomu (2kg for 1100) and grab some frozen mixed veggies you can throw in a Daiso microwave steamer. Pair that with some rice (which you can also just prep a bunch and throw in the freezer) and you have a nutritionally complete meal for like 2 – 300 yen.
Surely just eating more green vegetables will help. Kale and spinach
My super extreme lazy high protein foods are boiled chicken breast which I just add to anything like ramen or curry packages to increase protein by a lot, tofu blocks which I use the same way after maybe squeezing a little bit of the water out, canned tuna, any yogurt, and shakes are cheap if you buy protein powder in bulk then add to milk or soy milk