Grocery Shopping With Your Middle Finger
The Grocery Store is the only retail establishment that I visit more than once a month. But even then, we have a bit of a love/hate relationship.
I Love the grocery store, because it is the source of almost all of my food. Under its roof lies a world of unlimited possibilities. It can help me cook up almost any recipe on Earth, and by selecting the right foods and avoiding the wrong ones, I can ensure a fantastic level of health for myself and my family.
But I also Hate the grocery store occasionally, because about 90% of the products in there are pure crap. Colorful boxes and disposable plastic packages containing mostly ridiculous chemicals, colors, and artificial flavors, all mixed over a base of high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oil, and refined white flour. These things are big contributors to our country’s startling waistline, and while I believe we should still be free to make, sell, and eat these products at our own discretion, it saddens me to see such incredible effort and environmental resources going into creating things that logically should not even exist.
The grocery store also earns my rage with its ever-tricky pricing scheme. Besides the mental filtering required to seek out that Healthy 10% of items not covered by the previous paragraph, there is also a wildly fluctuating game of price-gouging going on at my store (which happens to be Safeway). Lucerne Organic eggs are sometimes $2.99 for a dozen when they are “on sale”, otherwise they are $4.59 and a competing brand becomes $2.99 instead, or some amount in between. Apples can usually be found for a buck or so per pound, except when you grow complacent and they jack them up to $2.49, resulting in you buying yourself a $15 bag of apples if you aren’t paying attention. Today I needed tomatoes and they had temporarily risen from 99 cents to $3.99 per pound, so my little handful cost me $5.69! Later I learned there is not a nationwide Tomato Embargo as I had assumed – they are still 99 cents at the other grocery store, but Safeway just decided to give ol’ Mr. Money Mustache the shaft in the name of profit. (But now they’re paying for it in the form of bad PR, aren’t they? Take that, you $3.99-a-pound-chargin’ bitches!)
At least you can take comfort that some prices are always stable. Specialty items like little packages of Basil leaves and gluten-free bread mix and the comedically priced fitness supplements depicted in the headline picture of this article follow a year-round ridiculous shaftola pricing scheme.
So what’s a Mustachian to do in a situation like this? I like to call it Grocery Shopping With Your Middle Finger, and here are the main ingredients:
Know the Right Price: I’ve been the family’s main grocery shopper for years, so I know exactly how much all of my main staples should cost. Interestingly enough, I’ve hit grocery stores all across the US on road trips, and I find the prices are surprisingly consistent across the land. That makes it easy to shop efficiently, even while on vacation. If prices are ever significantly above the “right” range, I discreetly stick up both of my middle fingers, swear under my breath, and move on to a substitute good if possible. Conversely, if prices are below the normal range, I’ll stock up like crazy. For items with a long shelf life, this can lead to some interesting results, like the time I bought 30 jars of Classico pasta sauce because it had dropped from $3.50 to $1.50 per jar, or 20 boxes of Quaker Oat Squares cereal because it had temporarily been marked down from $4.50 to $1.00 per box. The cashiers raised an eyebrow each time, but each of these purchases saved me about $50 over the regular price for these products… and gave me a nice inventory at home to help reduce future trips to the store.
I like to think of it as a little algorithm:
- if a food is overpriced, buy zero or the minimum possible amount you can live with
- if a food is regular price, buy an amount to last until your next grocery trip (minimum 1 week supply)
- if a food is underpriced, buy at least enough to last until the next expected sale at this level (4 weeks?)
- if a food is drastically underpriced, buy a near-infinite amount, limited only by shelf life of food and available stock on shelves. If Bananas go to 1 cent per pound, you can’t really benefit. But if rolled oats dropped to an all-time low, I’d probably buy at least a year’s supply (100 pounds).
Use Healthiness and Cost Per Calorie to decide what to eat: I love blueberries and raspberries, and they are good for you. But for most of the year, they are ridiculously expensive – as much as $5.99 for a tiny handful in a 4-oz container. Those 64 calories are costing you 9.35 cents per calorie. To live solely off blueberries at 2000 calories per day, you’d spend $187 per day ($68,255 per year).
On the other hand, I also love old-fashioned rolled oats*. These can be had for about 70 cents per pound in 9lb boxes at Costco. A pound of rolled oats contains 1714 calories – and fantastic ones too, rich in fiber, protein, and iron. This cost per calorie is 0.041 cents. In other words, Blueberries are about 229 times more expensive than Rolled Oats!! If I lived solely on rolled oats at 2000 calories per day, it would cost me 81.6 cents per day to eat, or $298 per year.
You can use this cost per calorie strategy to optimize your eating – not compromising on health, of course, but just shuffling around healthy foods so that cheaper ones get eaten more. As a few more examples, I personally eat loads of
- raw almonds at $3.99/pound (2720 calories per pound, yielding 0.14 cents per calorie)
- natural (peanuts-only) peanut butter ($2.50/pound, 3000 cals = 0.08 cents/cal)
- 1% milk ($4/gallon ,1760 cals = 0.22 cents/cal)
- bananas (0.69/pound, 500 cals per pound = 0.138 cents/cal).
- basmati rice (0.60/pound, 1600 cals = 0.0375 cents/cal)
Meat is more expensive, for example steak or chicken breast at $5.00/lb for 560 calories yields 0.89 cents per calorie – about 11 times more than the natural peanut butter, which is just as good for you in many ways. Protein, of which I’m a big fan, can easily be supplemented with beans and rice, cheese and eggs, and 6 lb bags of whey protein powder that you can mix into shakes (also from Costco).
Avoid Cutesy little Containers of things that cost $8.00
Nowadays, organic and healthy food has caught on in a big way, especially among the affluent 20-to-40something crowd. When you combine a desire to do the right thing, with the typical free spending middle income earner, you get a highly profitable Sukka Consumer. And Whole Foods and Natural Grocers are right there to make the most of it, with tiny little jars of Mrs. McFancyPants’s Natural Ostrich Feather Butter for $18.99 and Jack McGillicuddy’s Organic Maple Elven Unicorn Syrup Crisp cereal for $77.59 for a 2-serving bag. When I visit the homes of middle-income people these days, I find the pantry absolutely loaded with these big-ticket small-quantity items, and then I understand why their grocery bills are $1000 per month.
Buying luxury health foods from small companies is a great thing to do if you can actually afford it – you’re stickin’ it to the unhealthy factory food system and Monsanto, while supporting the growth of healthier small companies. But if you’re not yet retired, you can’t afford it yet, so why not compromise by buying any reasonably priced organic food you can find at a regular grocery store, build up your ‘stash for now, and then switch to the boutique stuff after your first million?
I also eat fruits and vegetables at every meal, despite their higher cost per calorie, just for the sake of deliciousness and having a healthy balance. I just lean towards things like cucumbers, carrots, apples and bananas, rather than out-of-season blueberries and raspberries from New Zealand, except for special occasions.
To put it all into perspective with an example, let’s review the typical MMM family grocery list for one week. In the earlier “Exposed!” article, I found that we spend an average of $74 per week. Here’s the breakdown. Most foods listed are organic when available at reasonable prices.
Milk: 2 gallons at average $3 (since I only buy organic part of the time): $6
Eggs: 2 dozen at $3.50 each: $7
Bananas: 6 lbs at $0.70: $4.20
Apples: 3 lbs at $1.50 each: $4.50
Misc. fruits and vegetables: 4 pounds at $2 each: $8
Spaghetti (rice noodles gluten free): 1 lb at $3.50
Spaghetti sauce: 1 jar at $3
Chicken, Beef, or Fish: 2 pounds at $6: $12
Cereal, including oats: 2 pounds at $1: $2
Cheese: 1 pound at $3
Coffee: 1/2 pound at $7: $3.50
Various kinds of Beans, rice, whole wheat flour: 3 pounds at 0.60: $1.80 (I make my own bread, yum)
Apple Sauce: $2
olive oil: 4 oz at 0.25: $1
Miscellaneous stuff like dark chocolate, protein powder, spices, recipe ingredients, occasional ice cream, whatever: $10.
This is just a typical list, and it’s an estimate based on buying some things weekly, and other things on the quarterly gigantic $300 stock-up at Costco. The main things I might find noteworthy is that it adds up to the mid $70s weekly for a family of three, it’s mostly organic food and meat, and there is pretty much zero processed prepackaged stuff or desserts in there. It could be cut in half if we switched to non-organic food and dropped the luxury meats and coffee, but hey, as I always say, the MMM family leads a luxurious and decadent life despite the below-average overall costs :-) )
* Mr. Money Mustache’s Amazing Save $100 on Cereal Per Year Trick. Not everyone loves cereal, but some of us are addicts and could eat it all day. You know who you are. I have at least a couple bowls daily myself. Four years ago, I invented a trick where I substitute 50-75% of the cereal for plain rolled oats (uncooked, straight out of the container), then pour regular sugary cereal (like honey bunches of oats or raisin bran) on top of that. Mix it up, add some bananas, and you have a super-nice bowl of the good stuff! I actually prefer the texture and taste of this over regular boxed cereal. For every pound of oats you use up doing this, you save about $2.00, since cereal in boxes costs around $2.70/pound and oats are only $0.70. I kept track for a year, and found I had used 50 lbs of oats. I’ve saved $400 so far with just this trick, and it helped me sharpen up the abdomen as well due to the reduced sugar and higher fiber!
A Credit Card with a $400 Signing Bonus… WTF?!
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After years of stocking up low and avoid high at the grocery I found that 1 simple thing is saving me over $200 per month. I shop at Aldi. Not only am I saving money but time as well (small store and fewer choices). It takes some getting used to and I can’t get 100% of the things I need but it is the single best thing I have done for my grocery budget (and it’s more enjoyable to boot).
Thanks for the tip. I had to look up ALDI since I had never heard of it. Looks like it is only in the Eastern US so far, reaching only to Kansas. But they are doing well and expanding.. Perhaps Colorado is next!
Even better than Aldi is Trader Joe’s (the organic version of Aldi’s that is run by the same guy). One of my favorite retail establishments when I was in Chicago, but sadly, they are not in Florida yet.
Oh Aldi is wonderful! Mmmmmmm… $2 dollar frozen pizzas!! 10 cent ramen…. oh college life :)
They’re also in Germany!
Or Originate in Germany… German company…
Aldi is short for Albrecht Discount and belongs/belonged to two brothers from my hometown. They split up the company between them and defined spheres of influence: Aldi North and Aldi South.
The business model is extreme frugality: eliminate all unnecessary vier, buy in bulk. No luxuries. Example: Somewhen in the 1990s, Germany changed postal codes (e.G. 4500 Essen 1 became 45130 Essen). Until late in the 2000s, for business mail Aldi would use envelopes with the adress with old postal code stamped onto, the postal code then crossed out and the “new” one added by hand. Envelopes were from recycled paper, of course.
With this mixture of frugality and “thinking big” they transformed their parent’s little grocery store into two big corporations and became the richest germans.
Sorry for the typographic error, I’m using my phone and auto correction is playing tricks on me…
The sentence concerning business model should have been: “eliminate all unnecessary cost, buy in bulk.”
Thanks, MMM, you just reminded me how much I love, but forget about apple sauce!
I’d love to see your bread recipe. Mr O and I don’t eat bread often, but I like to buy some of the good whole wheat, seedy stuff from the bakery for weekend toast indulgence. It’d be even more fun and badass to make our own.
The majority of the bread I eat is this: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html. It’s great, it’s cheap, it’s hand-made, you can modify the basic recipe to make anything you want, and it might even be easier than buying bread at a store :)
Three cheers to avoiding the silly food while shopping. Luckily the grocery store arranges things so that there are entire aisles that I never even have to go into. Snacks, and drinks, for instance.
After considering the cost, we have decided that frozen blueberries are a worthwhile luxury. We eat them in happily ridiculous quantities. “We are rich!”, I say to myself. “Look at all these blueberries!”. The cost is high, and this is how we have chosen to spend some of our wealth. I believe that we are getting a good ratio of happiness per dollar.
Good point, Heather. We have secretly started eating more blueberries recently as well, because hey, it’s just as fun as buying a motorboat but much better for the Earth.
Oddly enough, my big “I’m so rich” moments of that sort come when I fill up a glass or bottle of tap water. I mean look at all this safe, tasty drinking water that I can get simply by turning a knob for a few seconds. Not only that, it comes in a wide range of temperatures. No hunting down creeks, digging wells, or storing rain for this spoiled mammal!
(That said, a good deal of this may have come from biking across Canada when I was 28, and from living on a boat for 8 years; both situations where having safe water to drink involves a lot more work, tasty just isn’t practical much of the time, and choosing the temperature is right out of the question.)
A few months ago I built a Money Saving Shelf in the basement for just this purpose. It has a wide array of goods purchased on sale: rice, crackers, pasta, canned/jarred pasta sauce, canned vegetables and fruit, 40L of cranberry juice (we’ll let you know if that keeps) etc. etc.
Not only is the Shelf good for saving money, we’re also a little further along the way to being proofed against various Apocalypses (economic, zombie, etc.)
MMM, why do you shop a Safeway? I find the prices to be a little bit better at King Soopers. For some staples I even hit up the super target.
Another excellent point! I agree, King Soopers is better than Safeway in many ways. I have started shopping there more recently. Safeway was the default choice since it is only 1.5 miles from my house (vs. 2.5 miles for KS), and I do all shopping by bike with trailer. Better organic food selection too. After yesterday’s Tomato incident, I’m just about ready to give Safeway the Permanent Middle Finger.
King Soopers? What a strange name.
I agree, but not as strange as the Kum ‘n’ Go gas station chain or In’n'Out Burgers :-)
Or Piggly Wiggly in Georgia
I’ve heard the “Kum n’ Go” referred to as the “Ejaculate and Evacuate”!
Now THAT is impressive customer service! You realize I’m going to expect all of my suggestions to be turned into blog entries within the hour.
I’m very interested in what you stock up on at Costco. I’ve ever been and wonder if it would be worth a trip to the suburbs once a month? I tend to be frugal about some food items and splurge on others. We rarely eat out and I make most of our snacks from scratch, but I pay $6.50/gallon for organic, non-homogenized, local milk. We have breakfast-for-dinner nights, make-do with what’s in the fridge nights, and receive some free, local produce from volunteering at our community garden. Still, I pay $150/week for food. We did take the kids blueberry picking this summer and bought about 10 pounds of pesticide-free blueberries for $1.65/pound. Of course, the kids ate them faster than we could pick them, so we labored hard for those berries. Thank you for the cereal tip. We spend a ridiculous amount of money on cereal, and it’s not very healthy and it goes SO quickly.
We do the same thing with Classico sauce. It is the only sauce we really like, and really stock up on sale days :)
Interesting trick with the oats. I will try that.
Funny you mentioned almonds – I saw a pricing error at the store yesterday – the regular shelf had the Blue Diamond brand 2 cans for $6, but the cardboard display at the end of the aisle had them 2/$3. I stocked up and was ready when the checker rang them up for $3 each. Told her exactly where the sign was and she complimented me on my good deal (while instructing the stock boy to take down the sign).
Apologies in advance for the food rant that is about to occur. I am passionate about my eating.
#1: I am shocked that you, MMM, didn’t mention that you do some of your own gardening and/or participate in a shared agricultural resource like a CSA or a farmer’s market. This can dramatically increase the quality of your food (amazingly fresh, local, organic) while simultaneously decreasing its cost. My wife and I participate in a CSA. We regularly bring home freshly-harvested local and organic fruit and vegetables in excessive quantities, at a fraction of the cost. Our per-week expenditure is $27, and we take home a quantity of food which would easily cost $60-75 if bought in the organic section of the local supermarket (not even considering what it would cost at Whole Foods). This is the best way to give the grocery store the middle finger: don’t buy food there if you don’t have to!
#2: Protein. The meat industry has done a fantastic job of convincing people that they need to consume large quantities of meat or risk wasting away from some sort of scary, mysterious protein deficiency syndrome. “Protein” is not synonymous with “meat”. Beans and rice are protein. Soy is protein. Nuts, corn, potatoes, cheese, and milk are protein. Many vegetables have non-trivial amounts of protein. It is extremely difficult to fail to eat enough protein in a modern industrialized nation.
#3: Cost per calorie. Your body needs macronutrients (carbs, fat, protein) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, etc) in order to function at its best. If you shop only for calories, you’re getting a good deal on carbs, fat, and protien, but possibly missing out on nutrition. You did touch on this somewhat by mentioning you eat fruits and vegetables for every meal.
Looks like the MMM family does buy a lot of whole foods, though, rather than processed items (cereal and pasta sauce excepted), which is definitely a good thing. And consider that when you buy organic you are trading off higher food prices in the short term for better overall health (and hopefully lower health-related costs) in the long run. Garbage in, garbage out.
Nice Rant Executioner!
I am shocked too – we didn’t grow a garden this year because we are always away for most of the summer, and Colorado is too hot and dry to leave a garden on auto-pilot for that long – one small error in the irrigation system with nobody around to adjust, and your plants are just crispy brown skeletons within days. But I will look into this CSA idea (?) . Our local farmer’s market sucks, far more expensive than the grocery store, so that option doesn’t help. Next year I have a plan: contribute early-season labor to the garden of a local friend who has a huge plot. Then reap the rewards when I return after annual vacation.
I agree with your protein ideas. Even when I’m in a phase of mega exercise and heavy weightlifting (as I am this week), the diet seems to do the trick, adding muscle as needed with no shortage of energy.
CSA = Community Supported Agriculture. There are several models, but the most typical has you buying a future “share” of a farm’s produce at the start of the growing season, and receiving a proportional amount of the harvest on a regular basis (for example weekly) as long as the land is producing.
A quick search of your area turned up one candidate:
http://www.pachamamafarm.com/csa.htm
MMM, you can search for CSA’s near you at http://www.localharvest.org/
I endorse your grocery manifesto since it generally matches my own habits, in a preaching-to-the-choir kind of way. Since there are only two people in my household, Costco’s usually too overwhelming. A 25 pound bag of oatmeal takes too long to consume. I buy smaller amounts from the bulk aisle. Try Molly Wizenberg’s recipe for granola, it was in her Bon Appetit column ages ago,and her blog Orangette is inspiring. That granola is my go-to cereal these days. Fast to put together, not overly sweet, a good basic recipe easily adapted to items on hand. Try it once and it’s hard to go back to cereal from a box…
HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) is just like any other sugar, right? As long as you’re not gaining weight and you have a decent BMI and body fat percentage, and you’re getting enough fruits and vegetables, it’s OK to have sugar mixed in with other foods, no?
Reason I ask – I’ve been debating whether paying for the organic natural peanut butter (about $2.70/pound) is really worth the approx 80% premium over the regular, HFCS laden stuff ($1.40/pound) [both prices from Costco].
Similarly, 18 slice 16 ounce loaves of 100% whole wheat bread at our local bakery thrift store (on way to Costco) is just a buck a loaf, but of course this has HFCS too; still, is much cheaper than homemade bread (to say nothing of convenience).
I also like beans quite a bit – 16 ounce cans of Rosarito’s refried beans (pinto beans with plenty of sodium and oil) are about 88 cents; only a 20 cent premium over an equivalent per pound weight of uncooked dry pinto beans in Costco sizes – well worth it for the no-hassle factor. Admittedly the salt and the oil aren’t ideal but again if my blood pressure is under 120/80 (so salt is not really an issue) and my weight is A-OK with enough fruits/vegetables (so the oil is alright), why not go with the canned?
Last question MMM – have you considered Trader Joe’s? Large jar of spaghetti sauce for $1.80. You don’t have the 10 lb bag of red delicious apples at Costco for $10 (sometimes $8) instead of your $1.5/lb metric? You can totally also get cheese for under $2/lb by buying the Mexican blend 5.5lb bag at Costco and freezing a large portion until needed, and note that frozen vegetables are usually more healthy than fresh, so you could cut your vegetable cost by 50% by switching to frozen broccoli and peas etc [Target usually has these at $1 per one pound bag, and you can take another 5% off that if you have the Target RedCard].
I’m not a nutrition expert, although I have read a couple of Marion Nestle books. According to her, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is not yet proven to be any worse than other kinds of sugar. Some studies have suggested a mild increased obesity link, but not too many major well-done studies have been completed. So you have a good point. The real key is almost ANY added sugar is bad – nutrition experts say we should eat less than 20 grams of refined sugar per day, yet a single can of soda has about 40 grams and the average US resident consumes more like 120 grams. Sugar basically messes up your body’s apetite control and makes you eat more than you’re really hungry for.
Also good points about Costco – I could cut my grocery costs much more if I could get there more often. Unfortunately, the nearest one to me is in a neighboring town almost 21 miles away.. so I only visit when I have another excuse to go to that area. Or in the worst case, I might make a dedicated trip if I’ll be buying $300+ of groceries (which saves over $100 since Costco seems to have certain things at about half of Safeway prices).
Trader Joe’s – I WISH! .. they have not yet come to Colorado. I almost want to move elsewhere, just for this shortcoming :-(
High Fructose Corn Syrup has been linked to a higher than normal occurrence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. A quick search turned up at least five studies on PubMed at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=HFCS%20fatty%20liver%20disease&itool=QuerySuggestion. And of course any number of health websites and blogs have picked up on this. That’s why some soda brands now have taken to bragging that their products are now made with “real sugar” as if that makes sugar sweetened sodas into real health food!
If you do any quick search you can find a study to support anything. Soda brands market to us to sell us crap not because they care about our health; in fact if a food company advertises to me that something’s healthy then I assume they’re probably spinning something beyond it’s original intent (since a food company doesn’t generally care about health, obviously). I know the health blogs are up in arms over how HFCS is bad but I think this is a “fake” health initiative because when you really dig into it, sugar is sugar. Similar to how most health blogs tout the superiority to local fresh vegetables when in fact frozen vegetables are often much more healthy, and when vegetables from distant farmland (through modern efficient logistics) can often be better for the environment than “local” food (which often means land that wasn’t best suited for growing was used; small trucks with inefficient distribution and fuel burning were involved; etc).
Um…the link I gave was for the studies on PubMed at the NIH. As in the The National Institutes of Health. As in peer-reviewed and all that. I know better than to simply cite blather from health blogs, though in this case they seem to have found the studies as well. So perhaps they do know what they’re talking about sometimes.
Are you saying the NIH’s official stance is that HFCS is worse than sugar? Sorry but I don’t buy it.
Ooh! The Costco Organic Peanut Butter is so good! It’s more expensive than non-organic, but it’s the best price for organic that I’ve ever seen. It’s a must-have on my frugal shopping list.
Hmmm maybe organic is worth it. “Peanut Butter
Chemicals tend to concentrate in oils—one reason residues from up to 28 different pest-killers have been found in p.b.”
http://www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/abs-health/is-organic-worth-it
I too am surprised you didn’t mention gardening, farmers’ markets or CSA’s. I just went out to the garden and picked a huge bowl of yellow and purple (turn green when cooked) string and Italian beans, and filled an 8 quart basket (that local peaches came in, I froze 27 pints) with homegrown heirloom slicing and paste tomatoes. I won’t be able to eat them all, and even after giving some away, some tomatoes will become sauce in the freezer. I already have two gallons of frozen beans in there and the latest haul will be added to it. I have four buttercup squash plants that have climbed to the top of a 15′ evergreen, each with several bright green squashes dangling among the branches like giant Christmas ornaments. I also bought 2 bakers’ dozen (26 ears) of fresh, local sweet corn last week, for freezing. That works out to 38 cents an ear that will be far superior to the expensive “fresh” Florida sweet corn that will appear in the supermarkets in February or so. Fresh, local blueberries are 4.50 a quart, as were local strawberries back in June. I endeavor to not shop in the supermarket any more than necessary. All meat is obtained locally as well, pastured beef, pork and chicken. Pastured, organic chicken eggs are $3.50 – $4/dozen. I’m done with the CAFO crap meat in the stores. The only way to beat that obscenely cruel system into oblivion is to boycott it. In another week or two, I’ll get to work planting the cold frame that will provide greens at least through Christmas and once the daylight exceeds 10 hours in February, I’ll be eating fresh spinach in March.
Supermarkets: phooey! LOL!
Fantastic! I now realize I am a food beginner and will be learning some of your tricks this year.
While Costco perhaps reduces the need for this, I stock up on nonperishables by buying cases or in bulk (for steel cut oats and legumes). Many stores offer a discount for cases or bulk amounts.
I’d also recommend looking into food or purchasing co-ops in your area. Some are not necessarily set up with store fronts but are groups of people who use bulk purchasing power to get things at or near cost. Some require you to buy in, which may or may not be worth it; some waive fees in return for volunteering to sort/deliver items.
The right neighbors and coworkers can be wonderful sources of free or cheap vegetables. I have some who tend to share garden abundances, some handing them out and others selling vegetables on their front lawns for very little money.
Anyone ever tried making your own pasta sauce? The #10 can of tomato sauce at Costco works out to $0.35/lb – super cheap. Just need to add some olive oil and basil, oregano, etc, right? And then could freeze portions – would last 3 to 6 months and save a ton?
I eat a Paleo diet which basically is low-carb, grass-fed meat, vegetables, some fruit, and no grains and legumes. Also, no processed foods. As a result, I’ve lost over 30lbs and feel great. However, from a food bill standpoint, I’m f*cked!
Very awesome blog post. Our eating habits are pretty similar to yours. I’ve gone pretty close to vegetarian in the past, but now have added a bit of meat once/week. Which means, I may cook up a pound or two, and we eat it as a garnish in our meals (chicken on our salad, in our pasta, etc.) I’ve done that because I’ve noticed more of a sensitivity to carbohydrates as I get older. I buy organic milk and yogurt and local and/or organic eggs and meats.
I used to have a price book – first on paper, then in Excel, and now in my head. I found that for grains, Trader Joe’s wins (sorry you don’t have one! We have three.) And Whole Foods is surprisingly reasonable, if you don’t go hungry. If you go hungry, you’ll end up buying lots of stuff you don’t need. But otherwise, the bulk bins have the best price on rolled oats and some other things I buy regularly (nuts and seeds that I can’t always get elsewhere, dried beans).
I find Costco to be a good deal on some frozen veg, canned tomatoes, and dairy. Plus yeast and bread flour. I haven’t bought apples there because I’m an apple snob. Red delicious? Um, no. It’s pink lady for me.
And the gardening/CSA thing. We’ve done a bit of gardening here and there, but aren’t particularly good at it. We may get a few tomatoes and a couple of carrots, but don’t spend enough time/effort to get more than that. But we’ve been members of a local CSA for 11 years, and that is definitely a good deal. We get 10-15 lbs of produce a week for about 20 bucks (organic). Often they have family “pick your own strawberries” days. This year was the first “pick as many early girl tomatoes as you want” day (free with membership). My husband came home with 30 lbs. So now I know how to can salsa and spaghetti sauce. Last year we canned a lot of tangerine marmalade (we have a tangerine tree). Last week I made applesauce from many pounds of apples that my boss brought in from his tree.
We do have snacks in our house, but probably a lot less than most. My husband likes his raisin bran, my son likes the occasional yogurt tube or applesauce. We have tortilla chips and sometimes we have crackers.
“- natural (peanuts-only) peanut butter ($2.50/pound, 3000 cals = 0.08 cents/cal)
- 1% milk ($4/gallon ,1760 cals = 0.22 cents/cal)”
Mr. Mustache, what brand of natural peanut butter do you buy? Does it say “natural” or something like that on the jar? Why do you buy 1% milk instead of fat-free milk? Taste or some other reason?
I hear you, the red delicious can be a bit bitter. Costco has a 14 pack of pink ladies for $7.50 usually… and you cannot beat the 5 lb bag of tortilla chips for $4 at Costco. Only 4 grams fat per serving, and you can freeze them / refrigerate them to extend the shelf life.
My husband makes all our spaghetti sauce and we freeze it in meal-sized portions. i don’t know if it saves us money, but it’s a million times better than jar sauce – even Classico (which isn’t too bad for the jar stuff). Guess you all must not be italian!
Worthless comment without a recipe
Use Google, noob
I think Dan was trying to make one of those “pretend-grumpy-but-actually-friendly” comments, in effect honoring rosarugosa’s idea by asking for the recipe.
But his Internet manners are still in need of a little polishing. Note to Dan – situations like this are precisely why the Smiley face was invented. ;-)
Further Assignment for Dan: practice writing friendlier-sounding responses in all MMM comment forums, since we’re all friends here!
My badass trick for getting cheap meats is to know a butcher that slaughters his own beasts.
How this works is I spend a day with the butcher(family friend) and 3 or 4 members of my wife’s family to help with the butchering/bagging
end result is I get a 50/60 kilos of meat for $3, 5/6 hours of my labour and time spent with family and friends.
In a family of carnivores that is enough meat to last 6 months then we do it again. Even the dog loves it as the bones don’t go to waste.
One of the great blessings of living in WNY is the abundant amount of produce during harvest time. For me, gardening is actually a waste of time (unless you get personal enjoyment out of it) simply because at this time of the year there is almost every kind of fresh produce you can name readily available in bulk grown by everyone from the Amish to boomerhippies. It is actually cost-inefficient for me to grow my own garden, but I do keep two tomato plants, cucumbers and peppers just because. A bushel of tomatoes – about 6 bucks. Sweet corn $3.50/dozen. Green beans, squash, broccoli, etc. Good time of year.
There are also people in the area doing grass-fed beef, buffalo, pork and poultry. Buying a quarter of a grass-fed cow keeps me in beef for a year. We already have our Thanksgiving turkey picked out.
I tend to prefer oat bran over rolled oats for my breakfast cereal. A handful of some crunchy granola added in, a little honey, voila. Locally roasted coffee tops that off (I am a coffee addict).
Trying to eat right as well as eat well in this culture is a challenge. You really have to spend the time to read labels, do a reasonable amount of research, and stay alert. But I will offer perhaps a tad bit of heresy – despite all its evils and ills, there is still something to be said about a food supply that can provide a reasonable diet to so many people in this country. We have a lot less starvation here than in most countries around the world, and the fact that we enjoy in this country a relatively long life span is in part due to our ability to produce the amounts and types of food we do. It’s not perfect, and it has its evils, but I do not think that Americans would want to return to the state of the food supply in the 1920s or before. To be sure, what we have is not sustainable, but at the same time it should be given its due for what it has accomplished.
I’m enjoying the blog MMM. It’s helped motivate me to make some financial decisions that are really making a difference in my household. One of those is our food purchases.
One of the best and easiest things we are doing is planning meals a week or two in advance. We write them in a little notebook that we take to the store. It makes shopping easier, faster and cheaper as we aren’t impulse buying. We also shop on a weekend afternoon, when we aren’t hungry or in a rush.
Because there are just two of us in the house we often have trouble finishing food items before they spoil (beans, pasta sauce, dairy, veggies, etc.). By planning our meals in advance we eat two or three similar meals during the week that will use any remaining ingredients before they spoil. For example we have tacos one night and use the leftover ingredients to make enchiladas, which can be eaten soon or easily frozen for another day.
It’s been fun to start cooking together again, we are eating less than we would at a restaurant and spending less at the same time. Win x 3!
I’d suggest some traditional preparation methods such as soaking and fermenting to minimize the amounts of antinutrients in oats.
You can start here
http://paleohacks.com/questions/25556/baked-oatmeal-recipe-oats-soaked-in-whey-buckwheat-pics-incl#axzz1Ub7nae2x
I have been a proud cereal junkie for 25 years. I love the tip about the rolled oats.
Great post, we also buy almost only whole foods and no processed stuff and I think that is the biggest save.
When we lived in the US we were very close to a farmers market we were usually the only people there who were not latin american or asian…well I was since my wife is half Mexican:-)..the food was great and prices low, the tomatoes did not look as shiny as in the local ACME store but they had much more taste..the same was true for most of the produce. I think some are afraid to go to such places because they are not what they are used to.
Another note on alternative stores like ALDI, we do not have ALDI were we live (in Sweden) but we do have a similar (also German owned) store called LIDL. This store has a less options but they have everything you need. Very fast shoping and very good prices normally. They even joke in their adverticing about how there are so many options for tomato ketchup in other stores (with botles ataching a woman shoping) But with LIDL there is no stress you can choose ther own brand and the most popular brand (Heinz)…..the questions you ask yourself after that comercial is why in the world would anyone ever need more choices?????
Our food budget is simiar to yours, maybe a littla higher but then we also have higher food prices than the US. We manage to keep it low also because we buy some meet (lamb, chicken) from local farmers once a year and stock up, good price and great quality.
Love your blog, MMM. Keep up the good work!
We eat vegetarian at home. My husband is a vegetarian and occasionally my toddler and I will have some fish at my parents’ home. We also try to avoid processed as much as possible, but we do like our veggie Italian sausage on occasion! We live walking distance from a Ralph’s, but only go there for a handful of items, such as milk, flour and butter. In general, I find the produce at large chains to be overpriced, especially for organic items. Mostly we shop at Trader Joe’s, go to the Farmer’s market, shop at the various ethnic markets Los Angeles has to offer, and benefit from my parents’ awesome veggie garden. But I know that I am extremely fortunate to have frugal old world village parents who not only provide us with homegrown veggies and scout out all the best ethnic markets (because this can be intimidating), but will mock me if I pay too much for green beans!
I understand that the widespread perception is that “organic” food is healthier/better for you. I assume that is why MMM is advocating it, but I have not been able to find any scientific evidence that it truly *is* healthier. Since many studies have indicated that there is very little if any benefit to organic produce, I can’t see paying a premium for it. If anyone can point me to a scientific study that *proves* organics are better, I am happy to change my opinion.
http://thisorthat.com/blog/5-myths-about-organic-foods-why-the-organic-movement-is-a-load-of-bush
Good point.. I haven’t done much research about the health aspects. I mainly buy organic for the environmental benefits, since I do know a little bit about farming and the environmental effects of chemical vs. Organic growing.
On this point i agree with MMM that the main point of organic is the environmental effects, if it is also more healthy that is a nice extra. I don’t know if it is because a lack of interest in the environment but i find that advertising for organic food in the US focus on positive health effects often that it is better for your children but in Europe and other parts of the world the focus is on environment and then secondly maybe on positive health effects.
I also think there is a question of content here, many types of fruit and vegetables that are grown using chemicals grow really fast and as such contain mainly water.
oh yah, they can completely give away aisle 1 as long as aigle 2 through 10 are regular priced. as long as you are buying all your stuff there, they can totally give away things and raise the others to normal or high price.
it is just a game.
Unlike several other commenters, I’m actually glad you didn’t mention growing your own food or a CSA share in this article. It was nice to read a grocery shopping article that focused on what you can do at a regular grocery store. I live in an apartment building with no outdoor space at all and can’t grow my own food and I live alone, so a CSA share would be really impractical (too much food for one person and too expensive for my budget as well). While I wholeheartedly agree that gardening and other options are great for the environment and great for saving money, I think a lot of people don’t remember or don’t realize that they aren’t viable options for everyone. A good chunk of the urban population only has access to grocery stores (and not even always large, suburban grocery stores- my nearest store is tiny and overpriced because they can be. I am lucky to have a car and can get to a large suburban supermarket, but this isn’t true for everyone in my area). It can be disheartening sometimes to read an article that focuses on food costs and realize that the main tips are not ones I can use because of limits of geography or living spaces.
Well i stumbled upon your site while on LH .. and i am one that is always looking at ways to pinch penny’s … being the guy in my family of 3 it has always brought odd looks when i am at the grocery store. but i am the best at shopping … (thanks to my mom and her being a single mom when i was raised) …
for my wife and 18 year old boy our monthly grocery cost is around 250$ give or take a little bit each month for the occasional splurge … and i do not think i can trim it down much more then that till our boy is out of the house …
no matter what grocery store i go to .. there are about 70% of the isles that i do not bother going down … it is almost to where i just stick to the outter rim of the store and avoid most center isles … i do though wish we had a store like Costco around here .. closest thing is a Sams Club but after going there on and off for a year i did not renew my membership as the prices were in most cases not any cheaper then where i already shopped .. just larger quantities .. plus the extra 9+ miles to get there…
we live in a small to middle sized town .. and sadly my job is in another town over 30 miles away … one day i hope to be able to move to an area where we can do away with our cars .. or at least just have one and it only rarely be used… as that is the second largest expense per month for us.
now time to catch up on the rest of your site.
You can save a lot of money by buying generic when you can. They’re usually of similar quality, and sometimes even the same product put into two different packages. Give it a try. Buy one of each, get some friends, and have a taste test, blinded for sure, and double blinded if possible. You’ll be surprised at how little difference, if any, there is. If you can’t tell which is which, save your money and buy generic.
Also, “organic foods” are almost always considerably more expensive than the alternative. Everyone has their own reasons for buying organic, but if it’s for nutrition, save your money. Organics aren’t any more nutritious than normal food. (And if it’s to ‘stick it to the man,’ be sure exactly what company you’re dealing with and its relationship to other big name companies; a lot of organic companies are just subsidiaries of the same corporations you’re trying to avoid.)
Your algorithm would make a good app!
I shop like you do, avoiding the middle aisles, amazed at the junk people pay good money for. We also supplement our diet with our garden, preserving things for winter when we have time.
I wanted to share this – if everyone spent 10% of their food budget (about one dollar a day) on locally grown food, they could bring a lot of money into their local economy and create jobs. In NC that adds up to $3.5 billion (http://www.cefs.ncsu.edu/whatwedo/foodsystems/10percent.html). No man is an island after all.
Jen, that’s nonsensical. You don’t create a job just by moving your spending from one place to another, you just move the job. If we all spent more locally the net effect would be zero. Further, why do you think it is OK to care more about someone who by chance happens to be within a given geographical proximity to you? If the person is 5,000+ miles away you think they’re less valuable?
Hey, nothing wrong with promoting your own community. You are right that the net effect on job creation is the same either way. But it’s natural that we humans will prioritize our immediate environment more than that of strangers. Otherwise the US government would not spend any of its money on domestic programs at all – because the need is much greater in Africa!
Plus, promoting smaller and more local economies will tend to reduce the amount of shipping that goes on, and get people more invested in their own communities – forming more relationships, being drawn into more cooperative ventures, depending less on TV for their leisure time.. overall a healthy thing for overall human happiness, which is really the only goal I am shooting for myself.
Agreed MMM, I was trying to be friendly, but a “friendly challenge” way (i.e. I was not agreeing) – much as you often use “friendly aggressive language” to encourage us to view something in a different light.
I think it’s wrong of human beings to value those in close proximity to those at long distance. Taking a job from a tomato farmer in California to give one in New Jersey is just geographically racist (for lack of a better term). It may have no net effect, but it certainly shouldn’t make you feel better about yourself. We have a duty to see things how they are, not how they appear to be.
Further, MMM, you can’t just consider shipping costs. You have to consider all of the energy and other opportunity costs involved in shifting your purchases from distance production to local production. As Stephen Landsburg thoughtfully points out (which disembowels the whole ‘buy local produce’ nonsense):
“For example, as Budiansky puts it, “it is sinful in New York City to buy a tomato grown in California because of the energy spent to truck it across the country”…. you should care about all those costs. And here are some other things you should care about: How many grapes were sacrificed by growing that California tomato in a place where there might have been a vineyard? How many morning commutes are increased, and by how much, because that New York greenhouse displaces a conveniently located housing development? What useful tasks could those California workers perform if they weren’t busy growing tomatoes? What about the New York workers? What alternative uses were there for the fertilizers and the farming equipment — or better yet, the resources that went into producing those fertilizers and farming equipment — in each location?
Budiansky ignores all that to focus strictly on energy consumpion. But the quality of our lives depends on a lot more than energy consumption, so Budiansky’s narrow-minded computations are strictly loco.”
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2010/08/23/loco-vores/
Yup, all excellent points. It is indeed a bit pretentious for me to assume that “shipping” is the only thing to try to avoid in my purchasing habits, since I could easily be missing many other hidden local energy wastes – even if my goal is solely to reduce energy use.
Your thebigquestions.com article suggests that price is a good approximation of the true social cost of things. That is a good point, except I think our current pricing scheme drastically undervalues the ecosystem, which we’re eating away at a difficult-to-measure pace (although I have read in the past that the US level of consumption runs at 4x the sustainable rate on a per-capita basis). It also undervalues core human happiness – we all overwork and overconsume while acquiring a level of happiness that is shittier than many countries with much lower GDP per capita. It boils down to one reason: most people don’t understand what actually produces happiness a standard human mind (and it turns out there is a simple formula for it!), so they try to create it with consumption instead.
So I’m out there breaking the market system, saying, “Fuck the price-only model, and let’s figure out how to make ourselves happy while pushing our entire society closer to that model as well”. It’s an ambitious goal for a little tiny blog, eh?
Ambitious goal indeed, but one that makes your blog posts so fun and compelling.
Agreed price doesn’t capture everything and undervalues lots of things. Gas is way too cheap, for just one of a zillion examples. But just looking at whether something is local or not is an even worse way to measure something’s “true cost”. Price is the best we’ve got.
If we really want to push humanity towards less consumption and more happiness, perhaps we should focus on pulling the least globally fortunate out of true poverty first. I’d argue this takes precedence even to spending on fancy solar panels, buying local produce, etc. Take the pledge, anyone? http://www.thelifeyoucansave.com/why
As MMM says, it may be true that “it’s natural that we humans will prioritize our immediate environment more than that of strangers.” However I think this is one of humanity’s biggest moral failings – that we let ourselves be lulled into a sense that if I can’t see things wrong around me (because everyone seems happily taken care of in my community), then things are super-hunky-dory. To the extent we want to make a difference to our planet and future generations (of any race or nationality), we must embrace the impacts of our choices to the whole planet. Reduction in consumerism can and should take place side by side with global free trade and a disassociation with “community first” ideals. It may sound radical but I think we should do a better job of “world first” or “humanity first” before “community first”.
Man, you’re sounding less standard-issue-conservative than I thought :-). You are more like The Economist magazine now, which I read religiously.
I also think that humanity first is a good goal. In fact, promoting a nationwide reduction in consumption right here in the US, as well as setting a model of this activity for the rest of the world, is an awfully good thing for humanity!
Call me a libertarian conservative I guess. I think we should encourage, but not require, morality that focuses on less consumption and more care for overall humanity. We should not use government as a tool to propagate our world view; we should do it by building consensus and awareness. Lasting solutions start at the source of people’s priorities themselves, not by adding ever more regulation and state social engineering. Blogs are a great start! Excellent work.
PS let’s tax the sh*t out of spending (with more sales taxes). Punish buying, not working or saving. Seems like a perfect alignment of anticonsumption and the need for at least some government.
Even organic peanut butter is not supposed to be that good for you because of the mold factor on peanuts-organic or not-toxic cancer causing. Heard this from a world renowed nutritionist and my local naturalpathic doctor.
Oh-oh! You had me worried there, so I had to look it up. Peanuts and many other grains contain aflatoxin, which is a cancer causing factor in large enough doses over extended time. But the dosage in peanut butter is far below the scientific safe standard of 15-20 parts per billion. And when it comes down to it, everything causes cancer, except staying in great shape for your whole life, which far outweighs all other factors in preventing trouble. So me and PB can stay togetha.
Hey MMM –
I’m living in Longmont too, pretty cool to find someone else who is. Subscribed today just to see how you make do with things in the local area. Cheers!
I’m sure you shop at Simply Bulk on Main Street, but if not, you need to! And say Hi to Phil for me!
I wish I could shop there! .. I admire the style and location of the store and it is a great thing to have on Main Street. But when I checked out the prices on everything, they were deep into Middle Finger territory! I mean, 2-8x more than I would expect to spend. The owner should price-check at the local grocery stores and at least match them. Or even better, buy at Costco where applicable, mark it up 10-50% and you’re still undercutting the local grocery.
Not to be promoting other sites or anything, but what do you think of coupon websites like savings.com or cheapsally.com where they are basically coupon aggregators and they have a bunch of printable coupons for the grocery store. I don’t use them that much but some of the extreme couponers really do. Would be interesting to hear your favorites.
Yeah, I’m a complete non-couponer but I’ve read enough about the extremists to see that they do achieve meaningful cash savings on an hourly basis in some cases. As long as they are having fun with it and not using up time that could be better used for other things that are even more fun or valuable, then hey, why not?
The thing is, the accounts I have read involve people saving money on Pilsbury dough, hungry man TV dinners, and Glad garbage bags. I don’t buy things like this. If you give me a big stack of $1-or-greater coupons for apples, cucumbers, and organic chicken breast and fish (coupons which I’m sure do exist, I just never see them), then I might become a couponer too.
Love your blog. I am currently revamping all of my consumer habits, and I began this journey last year with couponing. I am in accord that dough and trash bags are not helpful, but you can indeed save on annoying products like shaving, shampoo, household, etc.. and apply those savings to better produce. I was able to save enough to buy my coveted mixer with a dough hook I wanted for two years. Now I need bread making directions!
Valerie in Houston…a shiny consumptive oil town
This is how I shop too. Well, I shop the staples and without my middle fingers but the underlying principle is the same. I spend $300 a month for my family of 5 and we’re not roughing it by any means. We always have great coffee, fresh fruits and veggies, whole grains and homemade treats in the house. Most meals are meat based(hubby’s preference). I grow veggies in my garden in the summer. We could go down to $200 a month if the need arose.
BTW, if you see a $.01 lb sale on bananas you should definitely stock up! Peal and freeze them for smoothies, shakes, banana breads & muffins and a great ice cream substitute.
Harris Teeter is a fairly expensive grocery store but they have great sales if you can stick to a shopping list. Yesterday they had Kona Coffee (I forget the brand name) on sale buy one get one free and since it’s a staple with a long shelf life, I bought them out. I’ve got enough coffee to last through winter at 50% off. Also picked up Nilla wafers buy one/get one free.
Another great option for staples is Trader Joe’s. I can purchase natural almond or peanut butter and the like for a reasonable price.
If you are near a Dollar Tree/Store/General they often have items in stock such as milk, sandwich meat, spices, pasta, etc. not to mention toiletries. I can buy a 16 oz far of salsa or a nice oatmeal soap for $1. This is often cheaper than buy one/get one free deals at the local supermarket/pharmacy.
Lastly, I plan to take up MMM’s Costco recommendation and thankfully my cousin can add me to her plan for free so no $50 annual charge – my concerns of not making that $50 back in savings are now moot. W00t! I did notice their big pail o’ lentils are actually far more expensive (40 lbs for $59.99) than buying lentils from Shopper’s Food Warehouse at $1.02 for a one pound bag.
We love making “green smoothies” the kids drink them up like crazy and they are a great and inexpensive way to add some extra veggies/fruits in your diet. Not to expensive if you use what fruits are on sale. A smoothie and some nuts is a great healthy and cost effective meal or snack anytime!
Angela, I will put my comment with yours since it is a similar topic!
We make 2 quarts of green smoothie a day for breakfast to split between me and my husband and whichever of our 4 children are willing to try it that day. Costco is the go to place for most ingredients since we can go through an entire cart of fruit and vegetables a week. Their frozen fruit prices are the best and we eat at least 1-2 bags a week. One green smoothie a day and you have already had more micronutrients and phytochemicals than most of the entire country probably gets in a week without taking a single vitamin. At night I will make a frutier smoothie just for the kids with hidden cabbage, beet greens, or a couple brussel sprouts and some chia seeds in it. Win!
Bananas- or what triggered my comment beeper in the first place. If you are using bananas as a smoothie ingredient, for muffins or to add to oatmeal you can peel and freeze them. They actually taste better for a smoothie if they have been frozen. I found red-tape organic bananas for 34 cents a pound one night at a Fred Meyer and bought all 20 lbs and just put them in the freeezer whole and peeled. I have a high powered blender so I don’t chop them up first. Any discount on bananas is great since we eat 6 or so a day. I also take all the left over fruit from the kids and rinse it and freeze it to throw back in their smoothies.
PS for price checkers -I realise Costco may have cheaper bananas but for some reason I just don’t like their bananas!
When you mentioned “sticking it to Monsanto..” I knew that you an awesome person. I’m new to this blog but I can see there are a lot of high quality articles here. Keep it up and I hope you can blog more about job interviews, transitioning into the professional world from college, and more articles about money management.