I've heard it said that the amounts of money Americans spend on food and health care have essentially reversed over the last century. We spend next to nothing on groceries compared to other expenses these days, but exorbitant amounts on health insurance and other health care costs. 100 years ago, most of an American family's budget went towards their food, but their hospital/doctor's bills were few and far between compared to ours. I do not believe this to be a coincidence. I prefer to put my money towards letting my food be my medicine, as Hippocrates put it, rather than eating cheaply and paying the piper down the road in the form of medications and hospitalization.
That being said, I'm married to a college student. I'll soon be quitting my job to stay home full-time with a brand new baby. We do not exactly have extra money pouring out of our every orifice (um... sorry for the unpleasant mental picture there). That's where prioritizing comes in. First, we make groceries a priority in our overall budget (at the expense of things like entertainment and new clothing), and then we set priorities within our grocery budget. That's what I'm sharing about today, and hopefully, it will inspire you to accomplish things with your grocery budget you never thought possible :).
The Rules:
There are two main rules I follow when it comes to giving my "standard American diet" grocery budget a facelift. The first is that if the cost for a quality product is very comparable to the conventional product, or if I buy it so infrequently that it will not have long term effects on my wallet, then I buy the better item. A recent example that comes to mind is 79 cents/lb for conventionally grown (ie, pesticide covered) carrots at the grocery store, compared to $1.09/lb for organic. I was only buying one pound, so the extra thirty cents was definitely worth it for me. Conversely, when I ran out of baking powder earlier this week, I had a choice between paying a little over $1 for commercial baking powder versus paying $4.39 for aluminum free, organic (non genetically modified though it does contain some cornstarch!) baking powder. That's a huge price difference for just one small item on my grocery list. But, I only go through one to two containers of baking powder per year. Did I have an extra $3 this week to stock my pantry with one more quality ingredient for the year? Absolutely. So that's the basic principle of how my first rule works.
The second rule is where the following priorities list comes in. Simply put, I decide what foods I will not compromise on, put them in order of importance, and allocate my grocery money accordingly. You may not agree with the order of my personal list, but I urge you to get in the habit of knowing your priorities in this area of life. For us, this is how it goes:
1. Animal products. If you consume animal products in any form, they need to be high up on your list of foods to buy from good sources. You see, we are what we eat. And if we eat animal products, then we are most definitely what what we eat, eats. Read that again to make sure you've got it. If your hamburger roamed freely across green pastures in its past life, eating as much lovely grass as it desired, you are getting all the benefits of his healthy and happy lifestyle. If, however, your hamburger formerly lived in a tiny, confined stall with hundreds of other cows (whose stomachs are not actually built to digest grain at all!), being force fed genetically modified, pesticide covered, manure contaminated, antibiotic jam-packed corn and grain feed mixtures, then your stomach is not going to be any happier about it than his was. I believe the reason so many people fare better on a dairy-free or meat-free diet initially is because of the overwhelmingly poor quality of animal products in this country.
So how does this affect our budget? Mainly, we eat less meat. We learn to stretch a piece of meat across a couple meals, to supplement with beans and lentils and other protein sources, and to just make do with what we have. Specifically, we pay $8/gallon for local milk from happy, grass-fed cows, and limit ourselves to one gallon a week. We pay $6/lb for ground beef from the same farmers, and will occasionally splurge on some of their ground sausage for the same price. Unless they're having a sale, we buy 1 lb of meat a week from them. We also buy bones and other animal parts from their lovely pastured animals at a dirt cheap rate ($5 for a huge bag, usually) to make vats and vats of homemade stock, which makes meat free soups and stews a lot healthier and heartier. We also raise rabbits for meat, which we eat ourselves and also supply to friends from church, who in turn will surprise with a pastured chicken now and again. We will sometimes indulge in a 12 oz package of nitrate and antibiotic free bacon from Trader Joe's for $3.99 (about once a month or so, and it gets spread out across two meals).
2. Oils/healthy fats. This is an extremely close second on the list. You will not see a bottle of canola or vegetable oil in my cabinets. When we started the switch to real foods, this was the first thing I threw out. Once or twice a year, I make a bulk order of organic, extra virgin, cold pressed olive oil and coconut oil. Yes, it costs more upfront. We budget for it, cringe at the total, try to keep hubby from hyperventilating, vow to use it sparingly, and then move on. After reading up on the smoke points of various oils, I tend to use coconut oil or butter for baking or frying, and save the olive oil for drizzling on top of any and everything we eat. We do buy Kerrygold grass-fed butter from Trader Joe's, which is $2.99 for an 8 oz package. I included that under animal products, but it does double duty as a healthy (yes, I said healthy) fat. Also, as my husband pronounces in plaintive tones, "it just makes everything taste so good." Smart guy, that husband of mine.
3. Supplements (homemade and otherwise). To be honest, I think that 99% of the time, supplements are overrated. We should be getting most of our nutrition from what we eat. There is one glaring exception for most of us real foodies on a budget. If you had a good old fashioned grandmother recommending home remedies for illness as a child, I'm sure you can guess what I'm going to say. Cod liver oil, my friends. Yum. Specifically, we invest a good amount of money in buying fermented cod liver oil. In the end, it's just cheaper and more realistic than consuming extreme amounts of wild caught seafood. And even if you can afford to get wild caught salmon shipped to you every day of the week (in which case, we should totally be friends, by the way), I still think you should take your cod liver oil.
4. Sweeteners. The first and always most important step here is just to use less. I mean it. Sugar is poison, and I don't think I'm exaggerating in the slightest to say that. Do I eat sugar sometimes? Yes. Do I love chewy brownies or vanilla ice cream over top hot apple pie as much as the next person? YES. Do I respond gratefully when someone blesses me with food they've cooked, even if it contains my entire week's worth of added sugar? Absolutely. But on average, I consume about 10g of added sugar a day. Pause to check the label on something in your fridge or pantry. That's not a lot. In fact, if I ate nearly any kind of processed food regularly, I could not stick to that number. The average American consumes 88 grams of added sugar per DAY, adding up to 150 lbs a year. Yikes! So, knock that number down however you can to start with. Then, let's talk more natural options. Honey, molasses (or sorghum syrup), maple syrup, coconut, palm, or date sugars, sucanat (or rapadura), and stevia are all valid options.
5. Organic Produce
6. Grains
7. Other
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