Paleo Essentials Grocery Shopping List for Beginners

My Paleo Essentials Grocery Shopping List for Beginners can help you stock up on real food and healthy supplements, without breaking your budget. Find out how to save money on groceries by shopping online.

Our family of three recently returned to the USA after traveling in Asia for seven months. During the final leg of our trip, we desperately missed cooking nutritious meals at home. We couldn't wait to get home and restock our kitchen from scratch. I compiled this Paleo grocery shopping list to help me remember to cover the essentials, plus some special treats.

Transitioning to the Paleo Diet

Before I dive into all the yummy goodness in our brimming shopping carts, let me take a moment to introduce the Paleo diet. When I first started the Natural Beauty Lifestyle website, I intended to feature only vegetarian or vegan recipes. At the time, we were considering switching from our low-fat, lean meat diet to a vegetarian diet. Our inclination towards a vegetarian lifestyle was due to environmental concerns and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy.

What is the Paleo Diet?

During our time of experimenting with vegetarian meals, my husband stumbled once again upon the concept of the "Caveman Diet" or "Paleo Diet". The first time that I had mentioned the Paleo Diet to my husband, he had brushed it off as ridiculous. This time, he read book after book on the subject.

The basic concept is for people to return to eating the foods that humans ate during the Paleolithic Period. Or more simply, eat the types of foods that humans are adapted to eat. This includes vegetables, meat, eggs, minimal fruit and raw nuts, and healthy oils like coconut and avocado. The Paleo Diet avoids cereal grains (especially ones containing gluten), dairy, legumes, white potatoes, refined vegetable oils, refined sugar, and artificially processed foods. Some people mistakenly think that the Caveman Diet means eating mostly meat. When we made the switch, I started eating the most vegetables I had eaten in my life. We decided not to adopt a strict Paleo diet, but more of a "Primal" way of eating, which includes white rice and grass-fed butter.

For us, the change was motivated by a desire to eat as nutritious a diet as possible, while raising our baby boy. Our eating habits swung about 180 degrees. For years, I ate whole grain toast without butter. Now I will gladly take the butter, but hold the toast. :) We thought we were eating healthy back in our days of lean white chicken meat and whole grain pasta. But the more we learned about returning to traditional foods, the more the Primal lifestyle made sense. From a physiological perspective, it is logical to eat foods that provide the basic building blocks of our bodies.

Looking back at my old eating habits of high-carbohydrate, low fat, and minimal vegetables, I realize that my diet was lacking in so many vital nutrients for fueling, healing, and optimizing my body and mind.

Our friends who have known us for years are shocked that we now happily eat steak. They listen with curiosity tinged with skepticism as we go on and on. We tell them how healthy we feel while on the Paleo Diet, how quickly my husband lost weight and how much my skin improved. But if you are searching for a Paleo shopping list, you are probably already aware of many of the benefits of a Paleo lifestyle!

Where to Buy Paleo Groceries

Purchasing nutritious "real food" can be quite expensive, so we are always looking for ways to save money on our grocery bills. Some items, such as fresh vegetables and organic grass-fed beef are best purchased locally. For other non-perishable foods and supplements, you can save money by purchasing online from Amazon, Thrive Market, and Vitacost. I like to compare the three, to see which has the best deal on certain items.

Buy Paleo Essentials Locally

The first place to shop for Paleo groceries is locally. Look for local butchers offering grass-fed meat and local farmers offering cage-free eggs, organic vegetables and fruits, and raw nuts and honey. Some of my friends have even started raising their own chickens in their yards, for the freshest possible eggs. Whole Foods Market carries many Paleo essentials. Costco is a good place to save money on fresh and frozen organic vegetables and grass-fed meat. The selection varies by region, and some branches of Costco offer more organic products than others. Don't fret if there are not many options in your neighborhood. Many Paleo staples can be purchased online.

Buy Paleo Essentials on Amazon

I have been a long-time fan of ordering from Amazon. You get FREE shipping when you become a Prime Member, even if you live in Hawaii! It just takes a bit longer for orders to reach Hawaii.

Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial

Buy Paleo Essentials on Vitacost

Vitacost is another option for ordering Paleo groceries online. They have competitive pricing on supplements, health foods, and natural beauty products. Vitacost offers FREE shipping on orders over $49 within the contiguous US.

You will receive $10 off your first order of $30 or more when you join the Vitacost Refer-a-friend program.

Buy Paleo Groceries from Thrive Market

I had heard about Thrive Market in an online Paleo parenting group, and decided it was the perfect time to find out exactly what Thrive Market has to offer. Thrive Market is a membership based online store that offers wholesome natural and organic products at 25%-50% below retail prices. You can shop based upon lifestyle, including Paleo, Gluten-Free, Raw, Vegan, GMO-Free, and Organic. Joining Thrive Market is a great way to save money on your Paleo essentials shopping list.

The membership fee is $60 per year.  It is well worth it, when you consider that you will receive an additional 25% off your first order. As part of their mission to make healthy living accessible, for every paid membership, Thrive Market gives a free membership to a low-income American family. You can try out Thrive Market with a free one month membership, before deciding whether to pay the annual membership fee.

Thrive Market offers FREE shipping on orders over $49. They only deliver to the continental US (a bummer for those of you living in Hawaii). Thrive Market uses recycled packaging, and their shipping, packaging, and warehousing is carbon neutral, through carbonfund.org.

It is the perfect time to join Thrive Market, with a FREE 1 month membership and 25% off your first order! 

My son and niece were happy to help me unpack our first order from Thrive Market.

I stocked up on Collagen for my tea, Gelatin for making gummies, dish washing supplies, soap, ingredients for making fat bombs, and a couple other bargains.