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Eat Healthy on a Budget – Explained in 60 Seconds

By Jiri Kaloc

Eating healthy on a budget is a skill that saves money twice. You spend less on food and you also save money by not missing work and not having as many medical bills. We went over the essential tips and tricks in the previous articles. There’s one more important category left – avoiding food waste. Here are five advice for efficient food storage.

Wrap broccoli and celery in foil

Tightly wrapping veggies like celery or broccoli in a tin foil is the ideal way to keep it fresh. Tin foil keeps the veggies clean and fresh, but it’s porous enough to allow ethylene (a ripening hormone) to escape and prevent accelerated ripening. Veggies can last up to 4 weeks in the fridge this way.

Keep onions in old tights

Onions last the longest if they are kept in a dark place with as much air around them as possible. That’s why an old pair of tights hung in a dark cupboard is the best choice. To be the most effective you should also tie a knot in the tights between each onion. This method can make them last for up to 8 months! You can use the same method for mushrooms as they need similar conditions. Just don’t store onions with potatoes as that makes them ripen faster

Preserve avocados with lemon juice

The trick with avocados is to let them ripen outside of the fridge, and when they are just the right amount of soft, consume or refrigerate them. If you end up with a half avocado left over, keep the stone in and put some lemon juice on the flesh. This will stop it from going brown and spoiling fast.

Store cheese in baking paper

Cheese needs to breathe, that’s why you should store it in some sort of porous paper, rather than cling film.

Wrap up banana stalks

Bananas produce more ethylene than any other fruit, so it’s best to keep them separate, unless you have some hard avocados that need a ripening boost. To protect the bananas themselves, you should keep them as a bunch and wrap the conjoined stalks tightly in a cling film. Rewrap them every time you take away a banana to keep the stalks that produce the most ethylene covered. This technique will help make bananas last up to 5 days longer.

Next up in Eat Healthy on a Budget series