15 Top Items to Buy at Costco for Clean Eating

I love Costco. They have great prices on bulk items, and they also have a lot of all-natural and organic items, too. I’ve been shopping there for a little over a year, and here is my list of items to stock up on to fill a clean eating pantry.

1. Organic baby spinach- prewashed and ready to go. Spinach is on the “Dirty Dozen” list of crops with the highest pesticide residue and one item I always try to get organic.

2. Organic carrots- $5.99 for 10 lbs. Yep, organic carrots are cheaper than conventional and may have more nutrition!

3. Mini-peppers- no picture because we ate them all. These are great, refreshing snacks on hot days. Costco is one of the few stores that consistently has these in stock.

4. Maple Syrup- Costco always beats the grocery store price. Currently it’s going for $12.99/32 oz, or .40/oz. LOVE maple syrup. I bake my famouse Maple Bacon Pecan Pie with it and for fall, we make Maple Dijon Pork. Why is maple syrup better than some other liquid sweeteners? I explain in my Great Big HFCS Post. Oh, and store maple syrup in the fridge so it doesn’t go bad.

5. Hemp Hearts- OK, I’ve never actually bought them but Costco carries Hemp Hearts for $10/lb.

6. Almonds- whole, sliced, smoked, salted. Costco has great prices on nuts. Hubs buys pistachios here and they have deals on pecans sometimes too.

7. Organic Quinoa- so much cheaper than the bulk bins or Whole Foods. This month (Aug. 2012) I paid $2/lb. Quinoa is high in protein and makes good cold grain salads. You can use it like rice or barley, or combine it with other whole grains.

8. Organic ground beef- $4.44 a pound in packages that are easy to freeze. Comes in a 3 pack of 21 oz.pound packages for $17.99. Need a recipe? Try Sloppy Joes (crazy cheap to make yourself) or Creamy Beef and Mushroom Pasta.

9. Organic spices- you will not find these prices on organic spices anywhere else. Ever. They also sell sea salt, coarse salt, and pink salt.

10. Jarred spaghetti sauce – it contains no sugar or soybean oil. Marinara sauce is one of my favorite real food convenience food items, and I use it to make fresh, great tasting tomato soup in 5 minutes flat.

11. Organic chicken broth- current price is $1.83/qt. I don’t always have the time or energy to make enough chicken broth to keep up with our needs and this is a good alternative. Chicken broth is a real food staple, use it in place of water when cooking rice or grains, to make your own cream of chicken soup for casseroles, to make a quick soup for sick children, or to make a quick sauce or gravy with all-day flavor.

12. Peanut butter- they have great prices on organic, but I buy the bulk all-natural peanut butter. Ingredients: roasted peanuts and salt, but it’s much more blended than Central Market’s natural peanut butter. No messy stirring! Also Costco carries organic strawberry jelly- and strawberries are another of those Dirty Dozen crops!

13. Amy’s Organics frozen burritos, for quick lunches and snacks. Current price at my Costco is $9.99 for an 8 pack. I’ve never found them cheaper.

14. Frozen fruit- these organic blueberries will be great for syrups, smoothies, muffins, or pancakes and they cost $3.45/lb.

15. Frozen vegetables- organic broccoli, corn, mixed veggies, and whole trimmed green beans. Current price is about 8 cents/oz, which is the same cost as the $1 bags of regular veggies at Kroger or Walmart, but Costco’s organic veggies are much higher quality and taste better. Also you can be sure that your sweet corn is GMO free if it is organic.

Costco also carries organic butter, organic eggs, organic juice pouches for kids, ZipFizz natural energy drink mix, Medjool dates, Kerrygold butter, olive oil, natural wild-caught fish sticks, organic chicken, wild caught salmon and tuna, clean eating canned sardines (WAPF recommended brand) and a wide variety of natural cheeses.

This month, Costco is running a deal on glass Snapware. A 20 piece set (10 dishes, 10 lids) is only$23.99- what a steal! You can also find glass storage containers at Amazon.

What did I miss? What great real food do you get at Costco?

Linking up! Traditional Tuesdays, Tammy’s Kitchen Tip Tuesdays, Real Food Forager Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday, Home is Where the Heart is, Healthy 2Day Wednesday, Monday Mania, Make the Scene Monday, Mommy Club Resource Wednesday, Encourage One Another, Frugal Food Thursday, Thrifty Thursday, Keep it Real Thursdays, Simply Made Home

Barb @ A Life in Balance September 6, 2012 9:41 am edit
We’re big fans of Costco, too! I think we have a similar selection of food, though we’re not liking the current supplier of their peanut butter. I went back to the Jiff All Natural until I can find something else.

Karen September 7, 2012 3:00 pm edit
Okay, you have me rethinking Costco. I had a membership years and years ago. We were not eating a lot of processed food, even then, and it seemed like that, and non-food items were the primary offerings so I was kind of disappointed. It may have just been a case of customer demand not being a good fit with my values. However, now that I am in the homemade mayonnaise (awesome!) stage, and looking to organics to avoid GMO, what you have presented here makes Costco much more attractive. Now I have to find out if my sister still has her membership so I can check it out as a guest! Thanks!

- Milehimama September 7, 2012 3:26 pm edit
  Definitely check it out as a guest and do the math. For us, it’s not really worth it to buy the fruit but the organic frozen veggies are CHEAPER than the conventional frozen veggies at other stores. Lettuce is cheaper, too- but you have to buy a lot of it at once. Our family is big so we eat that much salad, but if your family is smaller it might spoil. Also their milk prices are cheaper, but their organic milk prices are more expensive than Whole Foods.
  
Tara September 9, 2012 8:50 pm edit
Thank you for linking up at Simply Made Home. I have been paying too much for carrots and blueberries! Not anymore thanks to your post! I hope that you will link up again soon!

TARA

Beth September 19, 2012 7:06 pm edit
There are studies that show/prove TRUE ornigacs have more vitamins, and trace minerals for you. Sorry, I recieve a lot of agricultural type periodicals, since I’m a small farmer .you will not have access to them, and most would be hard for you to track down.The ornigacs that are mass produced for the big box store market are really not that different from the conventional stuff. Just a bit fewer chemicals on them. True ornigacs, grown by small farmers, and gardners are a world of difference, when done correctly. We live on a permaculture farm. Everything is returned back to the soil. Our soil is not being robbed of minerals, and nutrients. We have a THRIVING microsopic bacterial life on our farm .same as in nature. Even animals that die on our farm are composted, and returned to the soil. You can look at the soil of a conventional modern farm. The soil is greyish, and if you take up a handful, you will be hardpressed to find life in it. Our soil is black, and smells rich and moiste. You will have many critters you can see, and many you cannot see wiggling about in your hand.You can take anything we grow, and compair it to ANY grocery store, or mass produced organic .even a laymen will be able to see, SMELL, and taste the difference. If you hold a grocery store tomato (organic or not) right up to your nose, you MIGHT smell the tomato. On our farm, you can walk out the door on a warm day, and be hit immediately with the strong scents of the vegtables. You can open our regrigerator, and be hit with a blast of delicious smells of all the fresh (but chilled) vegtables inside.TRUE ornigacs are completely different from anything most people ever eat. The yokes on our chicken eggs are orange (beta carotenes). The fats in our eggs are actually GOOD for you, unlike the fats of the mass raised, grain fed chickens.I’m sorry I cannot dirrect you toward actual scientific articles .I can only tell you that REAL ornigacs really are better for you.~GarnetHomesteading/Farming over 20 years

Pepe September 20, 2012 8:42 pm edit
I love buying the Edamames beans with sea salt. Very nutritious and high in protein. Great snack to have around

Amanda September 27, 2012 8:07 am edit
Ack you are making me miss my Costco membership! I do have one thing to point out, however. I used to buy the organic broccoli and mushrooms… until I looked at the package and saw that they come from China of all places. This bummed me out and I quit buying these two items there. Still LOVE Costco though and I wish we had one closer to us at our new place.

Larry Bailey October 9, 2012 9:01 am edit
Au contraire — The problem with Costco organic ground beef is this. These beef cattle are still fattened in a confined animal feeding facility even though they are fattened on grain. Cattle are ruminants and should be eating grass and forage.

“A recent analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that grass-fed steak has about twice as many omega-3s as a typical grain-fed steak. Another study published in March in Nutrition Journal backed up those numbers.” http://www.npr.org/2010/04/08/125722082/the-truth-about-grass-fed-beef Grass fed = very low bad-for-you Omega 6′s and much higher good-for-you Omega 3s

Also there is more than 5 times the saturated fat (= more calories and worse for you) in Costco organic ground beef (6 grams/oz.) than in grass fed ground beef (1.5 grams/oz.). Grass fed beef has lots more CLA than its grainfed Costo counterpart. http://eatwild.com/basics.html

I ask all you readers this: because we can feed ruminants (engineered to eat grass and forbs) grain to fatten them up faster (18 mos feedlot vs 24 mos on grass) does this mean we should?

- Milehimama October 9, 2012 9:05 am edit
  It’s true that Costco ground beef is not a perfect product, however it IS antibiotic/hormone free and better than conventional ground beef. Someday I hope to be in a place where all my meat can truly be called pastured/grass fed but right now, this is where we’re at in our journey to eat better food.
  
sara March 20, 2013 9:22 pm edit
hi there!… I’m truly craving your recipe for the spaghetti sauce tomato soup!!! I’ve tried the links, and never find a recipe… I even tried googling spaghetti sauce tomato soup, but just got lots of recipes for using canned tomato soup as a base for spaghetti sauce… YUCK!!! Thanks….

Yvonne April 5, 2013 12:03 pm edit
I find we are shopping for less convenience foods and cooking more from scratch since in shopping at Costco. You know its making a difference in eating habits when a bag of chips goes STALE in house of teenagers!

Laurie April 19, 2013 9:04 pm edit
We get their croissants, and bagels, so good. The roasted chicken are usually huge, delicious, and much cheaper.

Mary Ellen April 27, 2013 11:08 am edit
I’ve posted on Costco as well on my website. Though I do have reservations on Costco’s Organic Broccoli since it originates in China.

I love Costco, too!

Laura May 15, 2013 2:21 pm edit
I went to Costco today and purchased the ground beef because of this suggestion! The rice is also reasonably priced, thanks!

15 Top Items to Buy at Costco for Clean Eating

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