How to Eat Gluten-Free on a Budget

Evaluate Financial and Physical Costs

Before you dive into the specifics of saving money on your gluten-free diet, take a minute to think about the financial and physical costs of buying for one member of your family who is gluten-free versus buying for the whole family—which is more expensive.

Some doctors and nutritionists recommend that you not take the whole family gluten-free when one member needs to follow the gluten-free diet, since the diet is so costly to follow.

It's absolutely true that you can save some money by continuing to feed some family members gluten-containing foods, while one eats gluten-free. However, this only works if everyone in the house is very careful; otherwise, your gluten-free family member might pay for it in continuing symptoms and worse health due to gluten cross-contamination, which is far more likely in a shared kitchen.

Not everyone can share a kitchen successfully. It's also a lot more work (and some added worry and stress about potential cross-contamination) to fix two different meals at once.

You may be better off using these tips to cut costs enough so that everyone can eat gluten-free, at least at home ... you may even find that some undiagnosed family members feel healthier, too!

Use Mainstream Food Products

This is the easiest step of all, and it won't really take any extra time: buy mainstream products that also happen to be gluten-free.

Gluten-free cereal is a great example of this: Multiple gluten-free cold cereals and gluten-free kids' cereals actually are products of mainstream brands and carry mainstream price tags. Your gluten-free options include several General Mills' Chex cereals, such as Post Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles.

Check out your potato chip and corn chip selections, too—plenty of brands, including some really mainstream ones like Frito-Lay, are offering gluten-free potato chips and gluten-free tortilla chips. I've also seen gluten-free crackers (usually rice crackers) in the "mainstream" section of the supermarket, for a reasonable price.

If you crave a sweet snack, there's plenty of mainstream gluten-free candy available, too.

Some yogurt brands have begun to sport gluten-free labels (make sure to check ingredients carefully, since not all yogurts are safe), and other foods, such as some prepared rice mixes, also are marked "gluten-free." Most of these will be less-expensive alternatives to specialty gluten-free food products, such as breads, cookies, and frozen foods.

By buying only "mainstream" brands and avoiding gluten-free specialty products as much as possible, you potentially can save as much as 30 percent to 50 percent every time you buy those types of products.

Sign Up for Coupons

The next step toward frugal gluten-free living is pretty easy, too: sign up to get coupons for specialty gluten-free products you can use on those (hopefully rare!) occasions when you buy them.

There are several sites that specialize in gluten-free coupons. For some, you need to sign up, while others allow you to print coupons directly off the site with no registration. In addition, many manufacturers offer mailing lists with special offers for subscribers. These can be great deals, so sign up for as many as you can.

If your computer privacy settings allow it, you'll also find that searching for anything that includes the words "gluten-free" will generate ads with offers for coupons.

Gluten-free support groups and food fairs also represent great sources of coupons... and better yet, the larger meetings frequently have manufacturer representatives present who will let you try samples of the foods before you buy.

Don't discount your doctor or nutritionist as a source of coupons or samples for gluten-free foods—some physicians and nutritionists who treat lots of celiac and gluten-sensitive patients distribute those types of freebies.

Shop the Store Perimeter

When you're eating gluten-free, you no longer have the option of using cheap spaghetti (or another inexpensive gluten-containing food product) to make dinner. Therefore, if you want to avoid breaking your budget completely, you'll need to focus your shopping on naturally gluten-free foods rather than processed grain products.

Shop the perimeter of the supermarket. In other words, buy fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, fish and poultry, plus dairy and eggs (if you can have them). These foods are all naturally gluten-free in their unprocessed forms.

Many of these foods are relative bargains. For example, a ten-pound sack of potatoes costs about $5 and provides as much starch as about 15 loaves of gluten-free bread for about 1/15th the price. Fruit may seem expensive, but if they're replacing costly gluten-free energy bars they suddenly seem like a deal.

Buy your meat in bulk if possible. You'll often find good deals on beef when you purchase in large quantities and cut it into smaller pieces. If you prefer grass-fed beef (or free-range chicken and pork), invest in a freezer and talk to farmers directly about buying in bulk—1/4 or 1/2 of a cow at a time.

Beans and rice should be naturally gluten-free—just watch out for "shared equipment," "may contain," and "shared facilities" warnings on the package, since gluten cross-contamination in packaging still can be an issue. Dairy section products, such as eggs, milk, and cheese, are almost always okay.

Shop Farmers' Markets and Farm Stands

Your wallet may cringe at the price of produce at the supermarket, especially in the middle of winter. But this is where some time spent planning ahead really pays off. You can shop farmers' markets and farm stands in season to buy naturally gluten-free produce in bulk. With careful planning, it will last through the winter until the next growing season.

Be careful of your storage methods when you buy farm stand produce. For example, regular potatoes will begin to sprout quickly, but you can keep boxes of them for several months if you keep them in a cool climate.

Also, farm stand squash isn't usually coated with wax to keep it fresh longer. So you may need to use it sooner. Pumpkins are a bargain if you buy them right after Halloween—you can dry the seeds for trail mix and use the flesh for all kinds of recipes.

Greens are incredibly cheap at the farmers' market, too—kale, mustard greens and collards are 75 cents a (generous) pound in season. Wash the greens and freeze them in large zip-lock baggies (no need to blanch them or otherwise process them), and pull them out when you need them.

It's certainly possible to find overpriced produce at farmers' markets—some of the particularly trendy organic farms place a pretty high premium on their goods. But you should be able to find vendors with very reasonably-priced fruits and vegetables if you look around.

Buy Gluten-Free Grains In Bulk

Have you checked out the price of gluten-free flours? You're looking at between $3 and $5 a pound—ouch! Mixes are even worse. There's no way to keep to a budget with those kinds of prices. So what can you do?

It's a lot of work, but you can consider purchasing gluten-free grains in bulk packages and making your own gluten-free flour blends. By doing this, you can reduce the price of your gluten-free flour to about $1 a pound—a 75 percent discount.

You can find large bags of rice at warehouse clubs or at Asian markets for less than 50 cents a pound (sometimes a lot less). Twin Valley Mills sells a 30-pound bucket of whole grain sorghum for $15 plus shipping. And you can purchase a 25-pound bag of Ancient Harvest quinoa for about $3 a pound, including shipping.

At bulk bins, people switch the scoops from bin to bin, and the stores don't always clean them thoroughly—you could wind up buying rice from a bin that previously held wheat.

Once you've got your bulk grains, you'll obviously need some way to grind them. If you're not grinding much grain at a time, you can use a coffee grinder—just be aware that these will burn out after a couple of months (or sometimes less) of regular grain-grinding.

You also can use a grain-grinding attachment on a high-end blender or mixer, or a stand-alone grain grinder. If you choose any of those options, your up-front investment will be at least $100 for the grinding attachment, or $300 and up for the appliance itself.

Combine your grains using a gluten-free flour blend recipe. You'll spend some money on the necessary gums for the flour blend (gluten-free guar gum is about $16 a pound), but those ingredients last a long time, and you only need a tiny bit for each pound of gluten-free flour.

Make Your Own Gluten-Free Ingredients

When you're doing a lot of cooking and baking, the cost of specialty ingredients—things like vanilla sugar or herb-infused oil—adds up quickly. In addition, it can be difficult to find gluten-free versions of every type of specialty ingredient you might need... especially if your grocery store options are limited.

It's nice to know how to make some of these ingredients for yourself—and you can save significant money doing so. Making mayonnaise, for example, is not as hard as it seems.

While it may seem daunting to try some of these, many of them are pretty easy to make, and they really do taste better than the store-bought versions.

Also, if you can't have some ingredients in store-bought products (if, for example, distilled vinegar is a problem for you), you can use these recipes with safe ingredients you source yourself to make versions of those store-bought products that you can enjoy without getting sick.

A Word from Verywell

Living gluten-free can be an expensive proposition if you eat mainly gluten-free prepared foods. But it is possible to reduce your food budget significantly.

Obviously, it's a bit of a leap to go from living off of prepared foods to making your own vanilla sugar. However, you can start out by actively shopping for bargains (and signing up for coupons), which shouldn't take you that much time. If you want to take your money-saving project further after that, you can consider some of the more advanced steps outlined above.