Save Money By Purchasing These 10 Healthy Foods At Costco

I admittedly am one of those grocery shopping enthusiasts who actually loves to browse every single aisle of the grocery store, including Costco. I know what grocery stores have the best price for the foods that my family eats and I’m strategic to get the best value for quality food.

There are many food staples that are always on my Costco grocery list.

I get that for many of us a Costco trip is more dreaded than celebrated. Here are the most common reasons that you may not enjoy Costco:

1. We often buy too much food and end up throwing a lot of it away.
2. It feels expensive when it seems to be impossible to exit the store without spending at least $100.
3. Costco moves things to a different part of the warehouse ALL THE TIME. (Sorry, I can’t help with this one, but I say it’s still worth it to shop at Costco 🙂 ).
   
   

I’m going to share with you the 10 healthy, Costco food items are always on my grocery list because they’re a great value. I’ll share why it’s worth it to add them to your shopping list as well and give you tips on how not to waste the food that you don’t use up before the expiration date.

Organic Power Greens

Costco sells a 1.5 pound bag of organic power greens for just $6.69! This is a mix of baby chard, baby spinach, and baby Kale.

These greens ranks high on the “superfood” list have so many health benefits, including being high in antioxidants, nutrients, and helping to reduce inflammation in our bodies.

Power greens are great to eat as a salad, add to salads, sauté with eggs, add to smoothies, and to sneak into sauces such as spaghetti sauce.

How to not waste unused power greens:

If you notice that your leaves are on their last day of being fresh, simply throw the bag in the freezer and the frozen leaves can be used for smoothies, sauces, and sauteing.

Grape Tomatoes

Costco sells a 2 pound carton of grape tomatoes for $6.99. I always have these on hand and it’s an easy way to get more real, fresh, food in your diet.

I like to add tomatoes to salads and veggie sautés. Tomatoes taste best when not refrigerated and my carton typically lasts about 2 weeks, left out on the counter in my fruit bowl.

Tomatoes are high in the antioxidant lycopene, which is linked to many health benefits, including reducing your risk of cancer.

How to not waste unused tomatoes:

If you don’t use your tomatoes up before they start to lose their freshness, put the remaining tomatoes on a parchment lined baking sheet and drizzle them with a little olive oil. Roast the tomatoes at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, or until they start to burst. Store them in a glass container in the refrigerator and add them to your tomato based sauces, homemade salsa, or to egg scrambles.

Bananas

Costco sells their organic bananas in 3 pound bunches for $2.29, which is the best deal around.

Sliced up bananas can make peanut butter toast extra special, or can be added to oatmeal or vanilla chia pudding. My favorite thing to do with bananas is to freeze them and make a healthy “ice cream” in the blender with frozen berries or cacao powder.

Bananas are a great source of potassium and fiber and have several vitamins and minerals.

How to not waste overly ripe bananas:

I just gave away how to not waste your bananas, but once they are really ripe, simply peal them, break each one into 2 or 3 pieces and freeze them on a cutting board covered with plastic wrap. Once frozen you can throw them in a gallon size Ziplock bag and pull them out as needed to make healthy ice cream or banana bread.

Organic Frozen Strawberries

Costco’s organic, frozen strawberries are one of the best deals in the store compared to other grocery stores, costing $10.69 for a 4 pound bag.

I love using frozen berries to make smoothies, or heating them up as a topping for pancakes, waffles, and Dutch Baby, or they can be blended with frozen bananas to make healthy “ice cream”.

Berries are delicious and also amongst the “super food” winners. They are high in antioxidants, fiber, nutrients and help protect against cancer.

How to not waste frozen berries:

This is an easy one. Because they are frozen, berries last a long time and I’ve never had any go to waste. If you are worried about the size of the bag, look for ways to include more berries in your diet.

Organic Fuji Apples

The majority of the time, Costco has the best price for apples. Although Honeycrisp apples are my all time favorite, Fuji apples are a little bit more affordable and like Honeycrisps, tend to stay crunchy better than other apple varieties. They sell a 4 pound box of organic Fuji apples for $7.99.

Apples are loaded with fiber and antioxidants and if you can tolerate it, eat the peel as that is where a lot of the nutrients are.

My favorite ways to eat apples are sliced and sprinkled with cinnamon and a side of peanut butter, or I love baking an apple with a little bit of butter and cinnamon. It’s almost like eating apple pie!

How not to waste apples:

If you store your apples in the refrigerator they will last at least a month, probably two. If they do become more mushy than you like, use them for baking.

Omega-3 Eggs

You can get a carton of 24, local, free range, omega-3 eggs at Costco for just $6.69. (That is .28 cents per egg)!

Eggs are a staple in our house and I love to break my fast with eggs (read more about intermittent fasting here, either by scrambling them with sautéed veggies such as spinach, mushrooms, and tomatoes, or to do poached eggs on an avocado English muffin (my mouth is watering just typing this). My kids are all at the age where they are able to scramble up a few eggs for themselves for a quick meal when everyone is busy and in a rush.

I love eggs because they are quick and easy to make a healthy, simple meal out of. They contain all 9 essential amino acids and are one of the best sources of choline (promotes brain and nervous system health) that you can get. I choose omega-3 eggs (which are from hens that are fed a diet high in omga-3’s) because it is an easy way to get more omega-3’s in our diet.

How to not waste eggs:

Eggs typically have a month or longer expiration date from when your purchase them. If you find yourself close to the expiration date bake a quiche or Dutch Baby!

Grass-Fed Butter

If you are buying margarine I want to encourage you right now to stop. Margarine is almost always made with seed oils (seed oils are highly processed and made from vegetables. Studies are finding them to be the most inflammatory types of fat that we are consuming). Despite what we heard in the 1980’s about margarine being better than butter, that simply is not true.

Now that I’ve addressed the margarine vs. butter confusion, if you have the option, the best type of butter is from grass-fed cows. The reason for this is that it is higher in vitamin K2 (vitamin K2 contributes to healthy skin, bones and brain function) and omega-3 fats (contribute to healthy cells including brain health).

Costco wins, hands-down for the best deal on grass-fed butter. They sell both Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter , $11.99, and their own Kirkland brand of grass-fed butter, $9.99. I buy whichever one of those is the best price on my shopping day (typically the Kirkland brand), as they do go on sale at times.

How to not waste butter:

Butter has a long time range before it reaches it’s “best by” date, but if for some reason you are worried about using your butter up, it can be frozen and taken out of the freezer as needed.

Raw Unfiltered Honey

Costco’s Kirkland, raw, unfiltered honey is from Washington state (or whatever state you are buying it in) and is an incredible price at $11.99 for 48 ounces.

Local honey is known for helping with seasonal allergies. It has antioxidants and micronutrients in it, has antibacterial and antifungal properties, and is good for soothing a sore throat. Replace sugar with honey whenever possible.

We use honey in smoothies, in tea, in pizza dough and bread recipes in place of sugar, in salad dressings, and as an substitute in any recipe calling for corn syrup.

How to not waste honey:

Forty-eight ounces is a lot of honey and there have been times that it has started to crystalize before we’ve gotten to the end of it. You can warm honey up when it starts to crystalize and it will liquify again. You want to be carful to not heat it too much, as you want to keep all of the healthy bacteria alive if possible. I also never heat food in plastic, so I try to get the honey into a wide mouth glass jar before it gets too solid and heat it in the glass.

Dave’s Killer Bread

I love Dave’s Killer Bread and I always buy it at Costco unless if I see that another grocery store has a killer sale on it (see what I did there? 😉 ). It comes in a 2 pack for $9.59.

Dave’s is organic, whole grain, and simply delicious. I also love that it is not made with any seed oils.

Whole grains are a staple in every “Blue Zone”, the five areas in the world with the longest-lived people groups, and replacing refined grains (think all-purpose flour) with whole grain is so much more nourishing for your body.

How to not waste bread:

Because Dave’s Killer Bread does not use any artificial or chemical preservatives it can start to mold more quickly than standard store-bought bread. I AWLAYS put my Dave’s Killer bread straight into the freezer when I get home from Costco and don’t pull it out until the day that my family is going to start using it. You also can store your bread in the refrigerator, but this will dry it out a little more.

Pistachios – In the shell

Pistachios are one of my favorite snack foods that I regularly buy for my family for a few reasons. First, because they are in the shell, it takes work to eat them and naturally you will not eat as many as if they were already shelled for you. Second, eating nuts of any kind is linked with longevity and is associated with a reduced risk of death from any cause. How crazy is that?! So nuts win big time over packaged, ultra-processed snacks, and they are just as delicious.

Costco sells their 3 pound Kirkland bag for $16.49.

How to not waste pistachios:

Once you start eating pistachios, I don’t think you’ll have any problem using them before they get stale, but if you are worried about that, they can be portioned off and stored in the freezer. In fact I store all of my nuts, other than pistachios, in the freezer because I don’t want to risk them getting rancid before I use them up.

Conclusion

There you have 10 of my favorite healthy foods that are always on my Costco shopping list. Buying these items at Costco brings great savings to your wallet compared to buying them at other stores, and they add a variety of healthy staples to include in your meals throughout the week.

I’d love to hear from you; what foods are always on your Costco list? Leave your favorite Costco food staples in the comment section below!