If you’re contemplating doing the GAPS diet, but are afraid of how it will impact your food budget, I’ve learned some great tips to help you save. From making your own coconut milk to making your own liver supplements to buying dried beans in bulk, there are lots of things you can do to cut costs.
Here are 10 ways to save money on the GAPS Diet.
Ten Ways to Save Money on the GAPS Diet
1. Make our own coconut milk and coconut flour from scratch.
I was amazed at how cheap it is to make your own coconut milk and coconut flour, compared to buying coconut milk and coconut flour at the store.
I bought a 1-pound bag of unsweetened coconut flakes from the health food store for $3 (I’m sure you could get it much cheaper by buying in bulk).
I was able to make about a quart of coconut milk and over 9 ounces of coconut flour.
Look for this recipe on my blog coming soon! Be sure to sign up for daily email updates so you don’t miss it:
2. Make your own laundry detergent and household cleaners.
You’re better off switching to “green cleaners” on the GAPS diet. We are trying to detoxify the body, so the last thing you need is to expose yourself to toxic chemicals. Not only is it better for you, it’s also cheap!
All-purpose cleaners cost anywhere from 15-30 cents per ounce. You can make your own for less than a penny an ounce. Here’s my recipe for homemade all-purpose cleaner.
Laundry detergent costs 15-20 cents per ounce. You can make your own for 2-3 cents per ounce. Here’s my recipe for homemade all-purpose cleaner.
Even better, you can buy a Green Wash Ball
I know, it sounds crazy, but it really does work. We’ve been using ours for over a year now and it’s amazing! Our clothes come out smelling fresh and clean with no stains. Note: If you have very dirty laundry thanks to young children who like to dump food on themselves and roll around in the grass, you might want to add a little Borax to your load.
3. Buy in bulk.
Find a local co-op that will sell you large quantities of foods at a discount. For meat, you should go to a local farmer and buy half or a quarter of a cow. You’ll be shocked at how much you can save on quality grass-fed meat by buying in bulk, directly from the farmer. Store the meat in a large chest freezer (you can find these very cheap on Craig’s List). Even with the investment of the freezer, you’ll still save a lot by buying in bulk.
Just be careful when buying some things in bulk — when you are first starting out on the GAPS diet, you may not want to buy a whole bunch of stuff in bulk (although very few people are allergic to meat so you should be able to get grass-fed meat in bulk right from the get go). You may find out you are allergic to nuts, for example — so don’t stock up on nuts until after you are sure you can eat them.
4. Buy dried lentils and navy beans.
You can buy vast quantities of dried beans and store them in your pantry. This is a lot cheaper than buying canned beans, and you can avoid Bisphenol-A (BPA).
These nutritious beans will keep your family’s bellies full at a fraction of the cost of meat and fish. And since bone broth is a “protein sparer,” if you serve your beans in a broth-based soup, you will be able to stretch those beans a lot further without having to add much meat.
5. Buy cheap cuts of meat.
Hello, organ meats! Organ meats are usually the cheapest cuts of meat you can find.
Liver and other organ meats are 10-100 times more nutritious than muscle meats such as chicken breasts or steaks.
You should also buy tougher cuts of meat like top round cuts that will break down with slow roasting and braising. (Great in a crock pot!)
6. Grow your own vegetables, and if you can, get some chickens.
Organic vegetables and herbs are very pricey — especially if you are juicing. You can go through them very fast. Even if you only have a patio or porch, you can grow some vegetables or herbs — even if it’s just parsley and celery and kale for juicing. These plants grow like weeds.
If you have a yard and can set up a chicken coop, you will be able to save a ton of money on eggs.
7. Make your own liver supplements.
If you hate the idea of eating liver, you can always take liver capsules. However, liver capsules are not cheap. Simply dry your pastured/organic beef or chicken livers in your dehydrator (or in your oven on the lowest setting,) pulverize them in a food processor, and then put them in capsules.
Just be prepared — your kitchen will smell like liver for a while (I liked the aroma — but then again, I love liver pate). You might want to move your dehydrator into the garage while you do this!
8. Eat kefir grains!
If you can’t afford probiotics, did you know you can actually eat kefir grains? They don’t taste like anything, really, and they have the consistency of gummy bears.
You’ll need to make a lot of kefir if you want to eat the kefir grains, in order to produce enough grains so you can keep eating them. But drinking plenty of kefir, in addition to eating the grains, will help your gut, too.
And you can use kefir for all kinds of things. You can make kefir smoothies, or buttermilk ranch dressing. You can also use the kefir to make kefir cream cheese and whey. You can eat the kefir cream cheese on sandwiches, and add it to soups or salads.
9. Plan your meals.
One of the very best ways to save money and reduce stress and time in the kitchen is to plan your meals.
To help you guys out with this, I’m launching a new subscription program of GAPS legal meal plans.
I’ll be announcing it next month with a giveaway and a special discount coupon code, so make sure you sign up for my daily email updates so you don’t miss out:
10. Learn to cook and save money.
If this list overwhelms you and you don’t know where to begin, sign up for my online cooking class, Reversing Food Allergies. In the class, I teach you how to:
Slow roast and braise inexpensive cuts of meat
Make delicious and frugal soups and stews
Cook and enjoy organ meats
Prepare fermented foods at home, including
Make a variety of inexpensive breakfast foods
Make delicious GAPS-legal desserts including strawberry ice cream and chocolate brownies
Get rid of toxic household cleaners and personal care products and replace them with safe and healthy ones
Priced at $199, you get 12 classes with over 50 video tutorials and over 200 recipes. That’s less than $17 per class.
To give you guys a special break for the holidays, I just created a special discount coupon code so you can save by signing up now.
Click here and use coupon code HOLIDAY11.
Pay only $159.20 — that’s a savings of almost $40. Only $13 per class!
Hurry — this special discount expires Dec 25th at midnight Eastern time.
Photo credit: Save Money by 401K, on Flickr
Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5
{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you so much for the tips. I am gathering information and preparing to do the GAPS diet in the next couple of months and these tips are helpful. I do have a couple of questions. Regarding the Reversing Food Allergies class, once we purchase the class, are the videos always accessible to us? Or is it a one-time viewing, so we better take good notes?
Also, I keep hearing mixed reviews about Borax. Some say it’s fine, others say it’s not. What do you know about it? This is a Material Safety Data Sheet from 20 Mule Team regarding their Borax. The possible side effects are a little scary. http://www2.prosarcorp.com/msds_frame.asp?site_id=196&msds_id=685&lang=en
Yes, you have lifetime access to the videos.
Borax is not non-toxic but it is less toxic than stain removers like Shout. If you use Borax, just be careful not to breathe in the powder when you add it to your wash.
I would like to know what you use to clean the toilet? We have horrible stains on the bottom and nothing seems to work at getting them out except the stinky chemical concoctions.
Peroxide helps, but I found that dumping some washing soda in the bowl, swirshing it around, and then adding some vinegar seems to loosen the buildup quite well.
You may have to do it several times at first. Allow it to set overnight if possible.
Good tip, Paula!
Have you noticed that it’s harder and harder to find washing soda at the store? I wonder if Borax would work as well.
By the way we typically use baking soda and vinegar in the toilet ball, as well as in the bathtub shower and tile
We only have one store up here that carries it. I usually buy enough for a year at a time, since its so cheap.
You can make your own with baking soda. Have not actually done it yet, but you can buy huge bags of baking soda, and you just bake it in the oven.
I’ll need to to find the directions for temp and length though.
You can also make washing soda. It’s just cooked baking soda with the water and carbon dioxide evaporated out!
http://www.ehow.com/how_5598724_make-washing-soda-baking-soda.html
Thanks for the link, Joel. I had no idea about baking soda being detergent much less how to boil it into such.
I’ve heard that Borax is hard on septic systems….
Regarding cleaning toilet of stubborn buildup. First–make arrangements to use another toilet (or do when you will be gone for a couple of hours or overnight).
In order to make the vinegar its strongest, flush toilet, then turn off water at valve when toilet is at the bottom of the flush. Then gently pour in a gallon of cheap white vinegar. Cover toilet with piece of cardboard or just put lid down to keep vinegar smell confined. You might have to repeat one more time to get everything, but it would be unusual. Most of the mineralized material will dissolve and/or be easily wiped/brushed away.. If you can’t turn off water at toilet valve, flush and wait till water stops running, then slowly and gently pour in gallon of vinegar and follow same directions as above. Vinegar also works for mineral deposits on shower door rails, tile, etc. Jjust spray paper toweling with white vinegar till saturated and clings to the surface. Wait for a couple of hours to easily wipe away.
Out of all of these, I think plan your meals is the most important. Plan out B, L, and D and snacks. I am not on GAPS and do this to keep my portions and budget in check, and it really works!!
Rauel -
I scrub gently with a pumice stone. It works very well for toilet stains.
Good luck!
Amy G.
Ok thanks, just realized I spelt my name wrong, lol, i forgot the q
Can you have water kefir on GAPS intro? Also I gave my 2 yr old kombucha, quite a bit and then that night she woke up with a croupy sounding cough. She is still sick with a cough and her daycare told me that lots of the kids are sick. Can I still give her kombucha while she is sick or should I wait till shes better? She asks for it everyday, lol.
You can eat fermented foods and drinks on GAPS Intro as long as you go slow with them. If you consume too much you may have die off.
Yes you can give her kombucha while sick.
Ann Marie, I have been meaning to ask you about the coconut flour you get from making coconut milk. It is not at all the same as coconut flour that you buy and does not behave the same in recipes. Overall it just seems too dry and fibrous. I try and use it by replacing just a very small amount of the flour in the recipe with the homemade coconut flour but frankly i don’t like it very much and am rather inclined to ditch it. Seems a waste though.
Have you had success with using it in your recipes?
It is not the same as storebought. However, I do have good success with it in recipes.
I’ve had better success with my own after using the coconut twice to make milk and grinding it in a coffee grinder. I think using it twice gets more of the fat out,
this is a really neat blog. My naturopath recommended your site to me today
I started the GAPS diet last Thursday. So I’m still quite a newbie…but I”m really excited about this healthy plan and how it is going to help make me feel better 
Love and hugs from the ocean shores of California, Heather 
Great tips, I follow most of them already.
Laughed at the irony at the end:
“How to save money on GAPS diet” ….. “Online class for $150″
I can’t teach you everything I know about saving money on the GAPS Diet in a blog post. That’s why I created a class.
Gosh, I had not Idea I could eat my kefir grains! Thanks for the tips, AnnMarie
You can do a lot of stuff with your kefir grains!
Without seeming inappropriate, if you have female yeasty issues (as many of us GAPS people do), you can insert kefir grains “down there” before going to bed at night to help populate the area with good bacteria. I know Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride suggests using Bio-Kult the same way if you need relief.
It’s probably good practice for women (especially pregnant women to help prepare for birth) to use their extra grains that way whenever they can.
AM- I planned on using the other tip for making liver pills. I cut (or I should say my husband cut) 10 zillion pill size pieces of liver and we froze them for 14 days. But now we don’t know how to store them! We tried a glass bowl with a plastic lid, but forgot that the lid wouldn’t do well in the freezer and it split in half. Then we moved the “pills” to plastic bags and they became one big lump. I had to use my metal pounder to break off a piece or two at a time. Even when it was in th glass bowl, they all wanted to become one chunk that I had to stab with an ice pick.
We also considered the age of our frig and wondered if maybe the liver was defrosting and refreezing a bit and that is why they are becoming a blob. So we broke them up and moved them to our newer freezer to no avail.
How do I get around the liver blob? How do we freeze these little suckers? Am I just destined to breaking pieces off the blob? Thanks!
Hi Susan, make sure that you freeze the pills laid out individually on a cookie sheet first. Then when frozen transfer to your container quickly without letting them defrost. That way they will keep seperate. HTH
I have never seen a cost breakdown that demonstrated having chickens as being less expensive then buying (high quality) eggs. More fun? YES! Probably better quality…? YES! Cheaper… I don’t think so. All the pastured chicken places around here are still working on an economy of scale and buying chicken feed in huge quantities makes buying their eggs still cheaper than raising my own.
Don’t get me wrong! I have ducks (for eggs) and they are awesome and wonderful but certainly not cheap!
It depends on where you are buying pastured eggs. Here in Nevada, pastured eggs are hard to find in the winter months. I end up buying pastured eggs at Whole Foods which cost over $5 per dozen!
They’re over $5 a dozen here too and it still works out cheaper to buy them. I guess it would depend on how much feed is. But I’m getting a pretty amazing price on organic grain (~$500/ton) and it still costs a bundle to feed them. Even though they are basically free range (free range when I’m home and a huge penned in garden while I’m away) they still get a lot of their calories from the grain.
Thank you for these wonderful tips! I am so excited to try those which I am not doing already. Thanks again for all of your very helpful information. I am getting my first kefir grain this week after my milk thaws out. Does anyone know when we’ll be able to get O.P. milk again? I looked at Sprouts and nothing yet.
I’m going back to making my own cleaning products and I use the very effective and wonderful smelling Essential Oils for that. I bought a cut of pastured beef heart on Sunday but I’m not sure how to make it?
The word is Organic Pastures will be back on shelves any day now.
Here’s my recipe for chili made with beef heart: http://www.cheeseslave.com/i-heart-texas-chili/
A thought on the laundry balls…after reading the negative reviews in more detail it looks like they don’t work. I forgot that I had one years ago and it didn’t work then either. It seemed to at first but I think it was that the leftover detergent in my clothes had finally been completely washed out. (Most of us use way too much detergent). After I read in the review that the clothes started to stink after a few weeks the uselessness of it returned to my memory…if you know something different I’m all ears.
I don’t know about reviews on Amazon. I bought one, have used it for over a year and it DOES work.
I’d really like to try the coconut milk and flour…were you able to buy unpreserved coconut? I’ve noticed they usually have sulfites or something but I haven’t looked in a while
me encanto…I love this very interesting
I am interested in your claim that you can replace the expensive, therapeutic strength probiotics recommended on the GAPS program by eating kefir grains. I just finished reading the book a few weeks ago and she strongly recommends taking the Bio-Kult or equivalent for the many strains of probiotic bacteria. She clearly states that simply eating probiotic foods will not be enough for most patients on the program. Can you explain your claim? Do you think forgoing the therapeutic strength pills and only eating the probiotic foods is enough for those going through the program whose symptoms are not as severe as autism or schizophrenia? I would greatly appreciate your comments on this as I am planning to go through the program with my wife next year and the cost of the probiotics are definitely a factor. Our reasons for doing GAPS would be to correct such symptoms as hay fever, eczema, and IBS.
How many poor people have the money to buy half a cow of meat? I make a few dollars above minimum wage and I certainly don’t have that kind of spare change.
I appreciate the gesture but a lot of these sound like ways to save money when you already have money to spend.
@Matthew
It is an investment. Just as it is an investment to buy a chest freezer.
Many times people will go in on a buy — like 4 people can split a half or quarter cow.
Any recommendations on grain mills that will grind tree nut and coconut flours? I would prefer a manual one, but am open to suggestions!
You can use a coffee grinder