I need some help.
Most healthy eating experts tell us that it is the least expensive option. Certainly if you compare making meals versus eating out for every meal. Cooking at home is cheaper. But is it the cheapest option? I’m not so sure.
I have a weekly grocery and household budget and considering I have 2 little girls who really don’t eat enough to count and I’m no longer buying diapers, it should be plenty of money. It works out to 20% of our monthly income. That’s a lot of money.
But I can’t make it work. I overspend.
That’s not entirely true. In the winter months when all my grocery shopping is done at 1 store, I manage. In the summer with the farmer’s market, I am all over the place. Sometimes I’m buying bulk quantities and freezing and canning, that reduces spending in the winter months. But mostly I’m buying a lot of produce. And we eat it and we have a garden full that we eat too.
Do we eat more fresh produce in the summer months than in the winter months? Maybe so and maybe we are suppose to.
My biggest increase in grocery spending recently is with meat and fish. I’ve starting buying meat and fish at Whole Foods. The notoriously over priced Whole Foods. I’ve searched 3 cities for cheaper alternatives but no one else has the same quality or selection that Whole Foods does. All the meat is locally sourced, hormone and antibiotic free and had a happy life with vegetarian feed. The fish is well marked and you can make sustainable choices. BUT, this is costing us a lot more money. I’m trying to compensate by eating less meat.
My conclusion is that if you are going for really healthy grown, 100 mile, organic, didn’t harm a fly or a blade of grass food. I think it costs more.
Obviously a more organized and fiscally responsible homemaker would have a chart and graph and coupons. Once Ken priced out the cost of our homemade chicken fingers compared to a box of President’s Choice chicken fingers and the homemade came out the slightly more costly. That’s the only real calculation we’ve done in this house.
So here’s my idea- What if everyone compares the cost of something they made homemade to the premade version. Is anyone keen for that? It could be homework. Am I allowed to give homework?
It doesn’t have to be a complicated thing. Could be burgers, pasta sauce, pizza, salad dressing. Something you make in your regular meal plan. Then compare it to what it would cost to buy it premade.
What do you think? Could we do it in a week? Send me an email (peaceloveandmuesli@gmail.com) with what you made, how much it cost and what it would of cost in the store. Next Friday I will post all the results and we’ll know for certain. This will be the very first international totally biased study of the cost of healthy eating. You don’t want to miss out. We might be published. Somewhere other than the interweb.
hmmm, but what will I make?
Everything I make is from scratch. Our grocery bills are through the roof. A blogger I really enjoy, Heather @queenofshakeshake, posted on the costs of eating healthy. My children are allergic to eggs, beef, peanut, nut, and dairy.
So, i’m really limited as to what is offered premade. and the organics that are free of these ingredients??? forget it. can’t afford it. I work to pay for food. Myhusband works to pay for everything else.
It’s like that…
I will try dear one. But that means I’ll actually have to make something in this, the time of the move. It’ll probably be good for us. Maybe I’ll make a salad….
I can definitely do it for a day or two and will send you the results but I am already sure of the answer, that store bought ready prepared is generally cheaper but is it as healthy, in most cases definitely not. Even eating out can work out far cheaper than cooking a meal from scratch at home – if we go to Sweet Tomato with a voucher in hand the three of us can have a healthy lunch for about $12 and there is no way I can reproduce that with salad, soups, breads, muffins, fruit and dessert at home.
I will do a couple of stir fries and compare to the cost of the best frozen ready made brand which is the new P.F. Chang ones which if you have not tried them are actually pretty good for frozen store bought.
Fresh fish is horrendously expensive and Whole Foods is the most expensive place I know to shop, so I rarely go there. I’m not sure exactly where you live but we have Central Market here, relatively new and not Whole Foods but a lot cheaper and still better than the standard grocery store. Their fresh fish is good. We also have Sprouts which is always cheap and yes, sometimes the produce is not so good but I shop there a lot and just buy what is good – their fish if fresh is cheap and good and their meats are far better than the grocery store, chicken, beef and good lamb. It pays to shop around too – we eat a lot of chicken and I was buying the organic chicken in Kroger which is about $10 a pound but then discovered Target sell farm raised non-messed around with chicken at half the price.
Darn! Craig is at the store now. I texted him to price check 2 things. I think our homemade pasta sauce is cheaper than buying it jarred.
I had an impromptu dinner party last week and paid $8.99/lb for 4 veggie kabobs at the organic fruit/veggie stand down the road from my house which I love for the convenience. I know I could have done that myself for a whole lot less but I was in a hurry.
I’m game. Now, what to compare. Hmm, maybe the pizza. I still would like to tackle the parmesan pizza crust.
This is intriguing! I just wanted to add that my family is vegetarian, and I’ve never eaten meat, so I didn’t know what it cost. Last summer, I threw a party when my folks were in town, including grilling burgers and dogs. Honestly, I was *shocked* at how expensive the meat was. Usually I go around thinking that my diet is expensive, because I buy things like soy milk and other organic veggie products, and try to eat as much organic produce as possible. But I think our diet has got to be cheaper than paying for meat. That’s just crazy! One other idea: are there CSA (Community Sustained Agriculture) farms where you live? We belong to our local organic farm, and split a share with another family. The cost to us is about $250. It dramatically reduces our grocery bill in the summer months, I come up with all kinds of new and creative ways to eat the veggies, even ones I’ve never had before, and I’m trying hard this summer to freeze as much as possible so we’ll have it in the winter. I might even try canning. Just an idea! Also, do you have a Trader Joe’s? I do most of my shopping there and it is substantially cheaper for most things than the supermarket and definitely cheaper than Whole Foods. Not great for produce generally, though. I applaud your efforts and look forward to seeing the results.
We just stocked up yesterday but I can do it next time.
I also wanted to let you know that while I was out I purchased Kale.
I’m pretty much convinced it costs more to shop at Whole Foods and cook at home than to eat out.
As a household with three kids, I spend a lot of time thinking about the budget of our food consumption.
The conclusion I’ve come to is that if I truly made everything from scratch, it would be cheaper. But, since I typically buy ingredients to make things once or twice, and half or better of those ingredients are perishable and I likely won’t consume all of them before having to throw them out, the price per serving doesn’t correspond to the cost per purchase because I do not make all the servings possible in the ingredients I buy. (Did that make sense?)
Over the years I’ve tried to be better about thinking through recipes that I can get better yield from so that there’s less waste, but it’s never perfect.
And I have also found that at times when I’ve tried to do better about organic purchases…that our costs go up. Mostly because chain grocery stores mark-up the organic food far more than the farming costs warrant. I do a little better when I can get to our farmers markets, but then I tend to go a little crazy ’cause everything looks so good…and then I may have more waste problems.
Such a catch 22.
[...] Friday I thought it would be fun to do a cost of healthy eating experiment. Price out some homemade options and compare to the premade equivalent. Several healthy eating [...]