October 29, 2007 | Food & drink, Health
Lindsey over at Finding Contentment in the Suburbs has a great post up about food spending. The issue is, eating healthy, locally-grown, pesticide-free foods is really expensive! And grocery prices are inching up nationally, making the price gap between cheap, preservative-laden foods and healthy, fresh foods even more ridiculous.
There’s an obesity crisis in this country that stems from lots of factors - including a sedentary lifestyle, hours spent in front of the screen (whether it be TV, computer, IPOD, or Playstation, Wii, etc.), larger portion sizes, increased levels of things like HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) in foods, and the general fact that you can buy potato chips for half the price of fresh fruit.
A family of four can eat affordably on Hamburger Helper, Pasta Roni, and Kraft Mac N Cheese, but their nutritional quality will be next to nill and their midsection is likely to be on the increase. Unfortunately, part of the solution is to spend more time in the kitchen - cooking from scratch, and spend more money on groceries - the fresher the better. But those are two luxuries that not everyone can afford.
Unfortunately I don’t know a better solution. I’m hoping for a bread machine for Christmas. The way we go through bread - 3-4 loaves a week at $2.49 a loaf (when on sale), we should be able to save around $300 a year buy just purchasing the raw ingredients and making it myself. But again, not everyone has the time available to bake their own bread. Or grow their own vegetable garden. Or, frankly, cook meals from scratch (add to that: that the kids will eat).
Anyhow, I encourage you to read Lindsey’s post. Brainstorm with her (and with me too). What can be done to solve the food crisis?
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Becky says:
A friend buys her bread at Big Lots. She says that she can get good name brands that are very close to the sell-by date for $1 and then she freezes them until they are ready to use them. They might be nice to have on hand for days that you don’t manage to make bread in time.
October 29th, 2007 at 8:48 amkaffee.neko says:
-stock up on rice, beans, legumes, protein-rich grains like quinoia, nuts, and store all in recycled glass jars (from things like pasta-sauce, apple-sauce, etc.)
November 15th, 2007 at 1:44 pm-Costco - organic mac-cheese, peanut butter, coffee, etc.
-Target has low prices on all-natural meat, but don’t eat meat everyday.
-Join a CSA for local organic veggies. Will be cheaper than grocery store or farmer’s market. Blanch/freeze what you don’t cook so it doesn’t go bad.
-Take leftovers for lunch. Take coffee to work. Don’t spend money on food out.
-Sustitute tempeh for ground meat occassionally.
kaffee.neko says:
Also:
November 15th, 2007 at 1:49 pm-make your own bread, and breads from soft bananas or zucchinis.
-make your own yogurt. Big savings there.
-Limit buying meat and get some good old-fashioned 70’s vegetarian cookbooks and use a crockpot/cassarole dish as much as possible.
-Grow your own cilantro/basil etc. & make pestos.
-Lots of different beans out there: red, black, adzuki, split pea, etc. Lots of different kinds of rice.
-Add nuts, basil, onions, cheese, etc. etc. to breads.