If you or someone in your household cannot consume gluten, you quickly come to realize that gluten free products often come with a larger price tag. All you have to do is compare a bag of regular white flour to a bag of gluten free flour at the grocery store. The gluten free flour comes in a smaller bag and yet it costs more.  It seems wrong when going gluten-free is required to keep you healthy.

Fortunately, some governments recognize this! Canada is one country that does.  It offers people with celiac disease the chance to claim the extra costs, associated with buying gluten-free products, as a medical expense.  In the United States, there is no specific reference on the IRS website about being able to claim the extra costs of having celiac disease as a medical expense. However, it does appear that if your medical and dental expenses are more than 7.5% of your adjusted gross income, that you can include these extra costs as a medical claim with a letter from your doctor. It’s best to speak to your accountant and/or local celiac group to find out more.

Luckily, there are ways to be gluten free and be frugal at the same time when doing your grocery shopping. In what follows, are tips for doing just that.

1.   Use foods that are already gluten free

Fruits and vegetables, meat, seeds and nuts in natural form are good examples of foods that are naturally gluten free.

Now you can even find gluten free Chex cereals in your local grocery store aisles!

General Mills Rice Chex Gluten Free 12 oz. 4 Pack

2.  Look for deals

Just because you are unable to consume gluten, doesn’t mean that you cannot continue to use coupons, or look for sales and discounts on foods that are naturally gluten free. Many grocery stores put their meat on sale at 30% discounts when the best-before date approaches. Even some grocery stores will put vegetables such as spinach or bags of coleslaw on sale.

Sign up online for all kinds of coupons from gluten free ones to household products, anything that can lower your overall grocery bills.

3.   Substitute snacks when possible

Gluten-free snack foods such as crackers and cookies can be expensive. However, there are many snack foods found at the local grocery store, such as everyday chocolate bars, that do not contain gluten and are priced better. When determining which snack foods to substitute with, you can call the various manufacturers and find out if their products contain gluten.

4.   Create things from scratch

Unfortunately, this requires more use of your time, but it can save you a lot of money. This is especially important if you like baked goods.  Therefore, it can be a good idea to buy gluten free grains in bulk, and then use them to make the flour for your baked goods. But be sure that you are not buying in bulk at the bulk bins, as the food in there could be cross contaminated.

A note of caution:  There is an exception to #4.  If you only bake occasionally, it may actually be less expensive to buy the occasional gluten free mix. This is because gluten free baking takes some practice, patience then trial & error. So you very well could end up making more costly mistakes when baking from scratch if you do not do it very often.