If you’re planning on doing the Whole30 diet, then you’re in luck. Pop to your local Aldi to find a wide range of incredible ingredients for your new diet.
You’ll be able to make a wide variety of delicious and nutritious meals all for a low price. Read on for our exhaustive list of all of the wonderful things that you can acquire in Aldi for a successful Whole30 diet.
First of all though, here’s a vital tidbit of information. Whole30 may seem complicated and too difficult, but this is a diet that can truly change your life as you know it.
With a little bit of planning and knowledge, you can be successful with Whole30 and feel totally rejuvenated.
Some people can get really bogged down with the finer details. Really though, this diet is what you make of it. You can make modifications to fit your lifestyle and your personal tastes, so long as the foundations are in place.
We’ve actually done a few Whole30 diets. We like to do a reset every now and then! We know from experience though the shopping for ingredients can feel like a real minefield.
Your shopping trip can be largely influenced by having a prior plan – you can make it easier for yourself if you know what you’re looking for.
We’ve done a couple of other shopping guides for other stores, but today we want to help you to know how to shop successfully in Aldi for a Whole30 diet.
But what exactly is Aldi, for those of you who don’t know? Aldi is like a gold mine for inexpensive deals on food. It’s a grocery chain that will solve all of your problems when you’re doing Whole30.
People will usually say that doing Whole30 is too expensive because the food is fresh, but this is barely an issue if you shop at Aldi.
Aldi has a lot of things, including a bunch of junk food. Now, you may think these foods would be okay to use on a Whole30 diet but they technically aren’t when you check the labels.
Of course, what they do have is a lot of other fantastic options. You will find organic and non organic food there that will work for this diet. You don’t have to take out a second mortgage to do it either!
The contents of your shopping bags will vary depending on the place that you live. After all, different versions of this chain can have different items.
As such, we’ve just covered a couple of the key items that are available in the stores that are local to us.
Your store may not carry these precise items – that’s okay! This list is simply here to give you a little bit of inspiration for the things that may be an option for you.
Seeds and Nuts
When you walk into Aldis, one thing you will notice very quickly is that they have a lot of selection when it comes to seeds and nuts. Specifically, there are two main sections of nuts.
You can look in the baking section and in the snacking section to find a selection. Now, it’s important to note that the snacking section options are not suitable for a Whole30 diet.
They usually roast the nuts in the section using peanut oil, canola or sunflower oil.
This means that they are not qualified for this diet – what a bummer!
With that being said, there are a couple of versions there that have merely been roasted using sea salt. These can be very useful to have if you want a midday snack.
If you venture to the baking aisle, you will likely find silvered and sliced almonds, in addition to pecan pieces.
These haven’t been roasted or anything since the assumption is made that they would be cooked into a dish, so they are completely plain.
It is possible to put them on top of a salad if you want, or you could roast them in the oven. If you want a snack then they are also suitable for that!
You won’t find as many seeds available, which isn’t ideal. What they do have is flax seeds and chia seeds though, which are full of nutritional goodness.
Snacks and Fruits – Dried
Dried fruit and snacks can be a real lifesaver when you are on a Whole30 diet and need a midday snack. These foods do contain a lot of sugar though, which isn’t entirely necessary or good for you.
With that being said, you can easily slot these treats into your bag and they generally don’t tend to go bad. They’re a great choice if you need a last minute snack.
One great choice could be to invest in some medjool dates. You can make a bunch of cool recipes out of these, including Nutty Espresso Bars and Energy Balls, all of which will give you energy and keep you from being hungry.
Sometimes we simply don’t have the time to make food – that’s okay! If you want a snack that you can eat when you are on the go, they have raisin boxes in Aldi that can make the perfect treat.
Toppings, Spices, Condiments and Oils
If there’s one thing that you need to go to Aldi for, it’s this section! The sauces and oils section of Aldi is truly unrivalled. You will find a wide variety of different options, and everything costs so little money, especially the coconut oil.
You would have a very difficult time trying to find coconut oil anywhere else that will cost this little.
They also offer a couple of different vinegars, including balsamic, apple cider and white. That’s not even an exhaustive list! You can buy spices for as little as 99 cents each!
You will also find little jars containing ingredients such as artichokes, olives and organic salsa. You can find diced tomatoes and tomato paste too, which are ideal for making a DIY organic pizza!
There’s organic tomato and pasta sauce without added sugar – a real rarity in pretty much any grocery store.
Of course, you can’t put it on pasta if you are doing Whole30, but it’s possible to put it on spaghetti squash or zoodles.
A Note About Olive Oil: We don’t usually buy our olive oil in a store! There are two main reasons for this. Primarily it’s because we’ve found the perfect olive oil elsewhere, so we’re ruined for other kinds now!
In addition to that, if you buy olive oil from a third party rather than from a direct source, it’s almost certainly not real olive oil. It’s possible to read about this online.
Your Protein Sources
As far as high quality meats are concerned, Aldi isn’t strictly the ideal choice. Of course, it’s a fantastic starting point if you don’t have a big budget to spend.
It’s important that you stay away from anything that has been pre-processed – for instance, things like marinated meats and sausages. They simply are not suitable for a Whole30 diet.
What you can use though is the normal cuts of meat, including beef, pork and chicken.
In our local store you can actually find whole organic chickens available for just $2.49/lb. You can get non-organic ones for $1.49.
These were mostly not available when we last went there, so it’s clear they’re a popular option. Still, the choice is available.
If you want to cook chicken but you are on a budget, the best thing to do is to get a whole chicken. It’s very cheap, more so than buying individual parts.
One thing that you can do to make the chicken particularly tasty is to cook it in a salt crust. There are recipes on the internet for this! We have our own methods too, but we definitely recommend the Instant Pot method.
Finally, you can get eggs for just 99 cents for a dozen! They likely won’t be from pampered hens, but if your money is limited then you truly can’t get much better value for money than this.
Fresh Items – Fruits, Vegetables and More
Let’s address the elephant in the room straight away. You should always double check your product before you buy it. Look at things like the expiration dates before you buy.
We’ve witnessed people before that have taken home bags of produce with items that have definitely gone past their expiry date.
If you aren’t getting the products right from the source then you are almost certainly going to find this issue in any store. It’s still important to mention.
With all of that out of the way, Aldi is rife with a bunch of fantastic produce. It’s hard to put lots of photographs here and to talk about it in depth because there are simply so many options.
You can get a bag of sweet potatoes for a mere $1.69 per 3 lbs bag.
You can get plenty of tasty and organic berries for a very reasonable cost. You can even get a salad mix for $3.49 for a huge box. This is significantly cheaper than what you would pay in many other stores.
The produce section is huge, and you can also get tasty avocados for just 59 cents. It’s almost suspicious how cheap they are, because they tend to be available for around $2 pretty much anywhere else.
Still – don’t look a gift horse in the mouth! We certainly aren’t complaining about cheap avocados, are you?
Drinks
We tend to guzzle down water like it’s gone out of fashion. In fact, most of the time, we don’t drink much else. Of course, when we want a change of pace we do like to try coconut water or seltzer water. It’s a type of water, we know!
You can get lots of different kinds of coconut water in aldi. There are a few that come with added sugars and additives, but there are some that don’t that are perfectly suited to a Whole30 diet.
You can get 12 packs of flavored Seltzer water for just $2.49, or if you want some more interesting flavors then you can pay $2.99.
Almond milk can be a rather divisive topic in the Whole30 community, but we should point this out. You can get a lot of different almond milk options in Aldi that will be good for Whole30. You do need to be careful with the flavored ones and the cashew milk though since these both contain sugar.
There are a lot of die hard Whole30 followers that will tell you that if you want nut milk then you should make it yourself. In reality though, that’s very time consuming for most people and isn’t wholly necessary.
You can add almond milk to a lot of different recipes, and you can indeed use almond milk that you have bought from the store if you so desire.
Notes
Remember to bring some key things with you when you are shopping at Aldi! First, remember to bring a quarter. You’re probably going to buy a lot of stuff, and it’ll be nearly impossible for you to carry it all with just your arms.
With a quarter, you can get a shopping cart to help you out. If you’re feeling particularly generous then you can leave the quarter in the shopping cart so that the next person can use it. It’ll be helpful if they forgot their quarter.
In addition to this, make sure that you bring some reusable bags or boxes with you that you can put the groceries in.
This will save you paying for new ones, and it’s more environmentally friendly too. Saving the planet while shopping? Yes please!
Finally, make sure that you keep up with the cashiers! They work pretty fast, so be prepared!
Conclusion
So that’s our guide to all of the great things that you can get in Aldi on a Whole30 diet! You can print off this list for a quick guide the next time you go shopping. You’ll then know where you should be looking so that your trip is a lot easier.
Aldi is a great place if you want to save some money on your Whole30 journey, so why not give it a try?
