Lower Your Blood Sugar (And Grocery Bill!) With Tasty Foods for Under $1 a Serving
Bonus: These bargain picks may even help you lose weight too
Want to stretch your grocery budget and bring down blood sugar at the same time? We’ve got you covered! With help from top docs, we’ve pulled together a list of cheap foods that lower blood sugar quickly and naturally. Take it with you to the store, and for as little as 8¢ a serving you can start filling up on tasty options proven to prevent blood sugar spikes, improve insulin sensitivity, dramatically lower risk of diabetes and more.
Why budget-friendly foods are a smart choice
“You absolutely do not need to spend a lot to buy foods that help keep our blood sugar levels healthy,” insists Dawn Harris Sherling, MD, FACP, author of Eat Everything: How to Ditch Additives and Emulsifiers, Heal Your Body, and Reclaim the Joy of Food. Dr. Sherling says that beyond supermarket savings, every time you choose one of our bargain foods over processed junk, you set yourself up “to save a lot in the long run on doctors and medications.” So dig in—because the potential payoff is huge!
A quick note about costs: The prices listed below are based on store brands available at budget-friendly grocery stores, especially Walmart and Aldi. Prices may vary regionally, but all items are still blood-sugar-lowering bargains.
Woman's World Answers
8 cheap foods that lower your blood sugar
These inexpensive—and delicious!—foods help lower your blood with every bite. The best part? They all cost less than $1 (save for one honorable mention!).
Beans and lentils for 8¢
For the ultimate blood sugar-lowering bargain, stock up on dried options, which you can nab for about 8¢ per serving (that’s about ½ cup cooked). Not used to cooking with the dried beans? A slow cooker makes prep easy—alternately, canned beans are still a steal at about 27¢ a serving.
Numerous studies, including one in the journal Nutrients in 2022, show that as little as half a cup of beans and lentils lowers post-meal blood sugar by 20 percent. And a University of Toronto clinical trial found that simply adding a cup of beans to each meal (yes adding, not cutting calories!) improves insulin response by 14 percent while triggering biochemical changes that helped women lose as much weight as those who cut calories but ate no beans.
Ground chicken for 96¢
That’s a typical cost for a 4-oz. serving at Walmart, which is almost 50 percent cheaper than ground turkey or beef. Protein-rich diets in general help our bodies better regulate blood sugar levels, but chicken may give us an extra edge.
A 2020 study in Journal of Nutrition and Health found regular chicken consumption was linked to lower blood sugar, insulin levels and risk of insulin resistance. Turns out, chicken is full of bioactive compounds that scientists believe help improve the way our bodies handle blood sugar and insulin. What good cluck!
Ground flaxseed for 15¢
Just a dime and a nickel will get you three tablespoons of crunchy flax to swirl in creamy foods like smoothies and yogurt or sprinkle over salad. And the impact can be huge: A 2019 study in the journal Clinical Nutrition Research found that when type 2 diabetics ate yogurt mixed with ground flax daily, they lowered their A1C (a marker of long-term blood sugar control) twice as much as a no-flax group and shrank their waists three times more in eight weeks. And this was without changing their diet or activity level.
The explanation: Flaxseed is rich in soluble fiber, which slows down the absorption of blood sugar. The seeds also contain both ALA and omega-3s, two types of fatty acid linked to improved blood sugar and insulin sensitivity.
Yogurt for 55¢
That’s for a generous ¾ cup serving. If you skip the sugary varieties, there’s evidence that probiotics and other nutrients you get from daily yogurt consumption can work wonders for your blood sugar. A 2022 Advances in Nutrition analysis assessed 42 yogurt studies and found a mere ¼ cup a day was associated with a seven percent decrease in type 2 diabetes risk.
Apple cider vinegar for 30¢
Each day, aim to add two 15¢-tablespoons of ACV to salad dressing (or simply drink it diluted in water), and it can have a huge impact. During a Frontiers in Clinical Diabetes and Healthcare study on diabetics coached to eat a healthy diet, those asked to consume 2 Tbs. of apple cider vinegar a day lost eight times more weight, lowered fasting blood glucose ten times more and lowered A1C a whopping 28 times more than a no-vinegar group. Wow!
Cabbage for 37¢
The humble veggie is far less expensive than other cruciferous veggies, yet still offers the same amazing benefits. For example, research cited in Endocrinology Advisor found people who eat the most cabbage and other cruciferous veggies have a 25 to 26 percent lower diabetes risk compared to those who eat the least. Promising tests suggest a cruciferous compound called sulforaphane helps our bodies restore optimal blood sugar regulation.
Eggs for 23¢
They’re not as cheap as they used to be, but they’re still a great deal at about 46¢ for a two-egg serving. Eggs are a jackpot of protein, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, and the mix of nutrients in egg whites has proven especially good at triggering the release of GLP-1, a hormone that helps our bodies control blood sugar naturally.
A 14-year study published in Nutrition Research and Practice found that among adults who were overweight or who had prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, eating eggs often (two to four times per week) was linked to a 40 percent lower risk of diabetes than eating eggs once a week or less.
Honorable mention: Sardines for $1.15
They’re surprisingly mild and tuna-like. They also have far more omega-3s than tuna and far fewer toxins than salmon—and they fight diabetes. In an impressive 2021 study in the Clinical Nutrition, “older prediabetics who ate a sardine-rich diet for a full year saw their risk of developing full-blown diabetes plummet compared to people following a similar, yet sardine-free, diet,” says A-List Diet author Fred Pescatore, MD.
“At the start of the study, 37 percent of the subjects were at very high risk of developing type 2 diabetes,” he explains. “That number dropped to just eight percent—while the control group showed no significant change at all.”
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