I have written about eating well on less money many times. This post on affordable organic food is a popular one. Even though I think it is totally possible to eat well and not spend a fortune it can be a difficult and delicate process. I asked fans on my Facebook page how much they spend on food, assuming that they eat mostly organic, whole, nourishing foods. The answers varied but it seemed that families with only 2 or 3 managed to get away with spending only $200-400 per month. When the family size went up to 4-5 the amount rose to an average of $750-$800. I had an inkling that I had gotten a little lazy with my own family’s budget and thanks to Mint.com I was able to quickly see that we spent over $1000 on food in August. This month I put a little more effort into it and I think we will end up around $850. That still seems high to me but what we are paying in money, we are not paying in doctor bills. Food, in my mind, is like a supplemental insurance policy. We almost never have to go see doctors anymore. What once was a large annual expense we wrote off on our taxes is now only a couple hundred dollars a year and that is mostly from preventative stuff like teeth cleaning and state hoops we have to jump through (our two boys both have IEPs).
So once I reminded myself of how healthy we are and how we rarely get sick I stopped feeling guilty about that $850 and started patting myself on the back. I don’t feel a bit guilty about the $65 a month we spend on gym memberships or the gas money we use to get to and from almost every day of the week between the two of us. So why feel guilty about nourishing my body, and my family’s bodies, with the best food? I shouldn’t and I have to let that go. But even so, I like a challenge and the idea that I could whittle that down even further appealed to me. I also happened to run across the book Wildly Affordable Organic: Eat Fabulous Food, Get Healthy, and Save the Planet–All on $5 a Day or Less at the library and it was a great read.
The author, Linda Watson, was inspired to try an experiment in the summer of 2007 when food philosophy and food politics came to the forefront. It was inspired by the work of Michael Pollan and the Food Stamp Challenge whereby some were trying to live on the national food stamp allowance of a dollar a meal. When public figures attempted the challenge and bemoaned how impossible it was, she talked her husband into doing the challenge with her so they could see just how well you could eat on a dollar a day. She also took a full time job outside the home while this was going on so that her attempt would be realistic to the lives of the working class. She and her husband discovered a lot on that journey but perhaps the most important thing was that they could eat healthy food on so little money AND they felt better physically than they had in a long while.
The book has two sets of meal plans. The “green” plan, which is the $5 plan, involves cooking with organic, sustainable, and kindly raised ingredients. The “thrifty” plan picks ingredients with a focus on cost. All recipes are vegetarian because the author is and I think that is awesome because IMO our society is meat obsessed. Whether you decide to be a vegetarian or not I think it is vital to know how to turn out lots of meatless meals, especially if you are on a budget. The meals plans in this book are compatible with the food stamp budget per person allotted by the state where the author lives (North Carolina).
I thought the book was quite excellent. It walks you through a bunch of educational info and pricing information so that you can get a feel for how to save money while still buying the pricier, healthier options. The recipes also look quite tasty although many of them would be adapted in my house to use less grains. I have said it a million times but veggie based cookbooks and recipe plans are heavy on bread and grains. This one isn’t too bad but I would still make some changes here and there.. mostly using a different sweetener here or coconut flour in leu of whole wheat flour there, etc.
The author also gives recipes for making your own bread, yogurt, and pizza dough. I admit that I do not bake my own bread and that is mostly because we do not buy enough or eat enough to justify it. My 5 year old son is usually the only one who demands bread and buying a loaf every two weeks is not breaking the budget. Still I plan on making bread more often over the winter. My sourdough starter has just come out of hibernation (the frig) and I plan to see if I can get a second hand heating pad for helping dough to rise. We already make our own sourdough pizza though I am going to add some of the seasonal toppings recommened in this book. Kale pizza here we come!
I already make yogurt at home but I could do it more because we still buy some at the store as well. We are big yogurt eaters here. Another recipe I want to try is the homemade burger buns. We have some turkey burger enthusiasts in the house and my hubby is always lamenting the crappy ingredients in his burger buns. I think he might like these.
After reading I made a list of ways I think I can whittle down food costs even more without sacrificing the quality of our food and most of that is all about planning better.
How about you? Do you feel that eating well can happen on a food stamp budget?
HI Tiffany!
Your reviews are always a good read and this one is especially intriguing! This book sounds like such a useful experiment. Like you, we spend a little more on quality ingredients and health~giving foods but the investment in our health is worth every penny and most certainly a bargain in the long run! That being said, one of my vices is store bought kumbucha. Learning to make my own will be high on my list of new skills to learn to bring our grocery budget down. Thanks so much for the thought provoking posts and taking the time to share this review with us. I really appreciate what you’re doing.
Warmly,
Tracey
x0x
Thanks Tracey! Reminds me that I went looking for your book recently to re-read it and got distracted. Thanks for the reminder. :)
Hi Tracey,
I would love to learn to make kumbucha as we all have a (controlled) habit too. Right now it’s a ‘treat’ we all get to have once a month. Thanks for the inspiration!
Absolutely. I was just reading an article by Mark Bittman about this very thing. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/shared-meals-shared-knowledge/?ref=opinion
Once again, I agree! We manage to spend very little (in my opinion) to feed our family of 6 natural, mostly organic foods. We homeschool and hubby and I are both home full time, so that’s generally 3 meals a day for all 6 of us and we do it for a little over $100 a week (and we eat pretty fancy meals!).
Cooking vegetarian is one way we definitely save money, along with gardening, taking part in a CSA, shopping seasonally, relying on free organics (unsprayed foods that others let go to waste, such as the neighbor’s rhubarb patch, our friend’s crab apple tree, the acorns from the park…) and so on. I wrote up a list of ways we eat organic affordably here: http://www.examiner.com/green-culture-in-mankato/sixteen-ways-to-save-money-on-organic-foods
Cooking from scratch and learning how to preserve are huge ways we stretch our budget too. It all tastes better this way too!
The book sounds really cool. I’ll have to look for a copy. Thanks!
I’ll have to check out that book the next time I go to the library. Great post!
Most definitely. I do it. We eat vegetarian, organic food, with 3 children and myself on less than what almost everyone I know spends for food every month. In some cases for smaller families!
When I first needed to manage on this, I was struck by how much food most Americans actually eat. Far too much food is consumed by us here, and I agree, our diets are heavy on grains. Discovering that I had a gluten intolerance nixed the grains in my own diet and cut down on it in the kids’ as well. We use rice, almond, garbanzo bean, and gluten free flour varieties, and because I too have a 6 year old with a penchant for bread, and they are all pizza fanatics, I finally learned how to make my own.
Teaching my children to eat when they are hungry, and only providing them with healthy choices for snacks or meals, has left them with an understanding of how their bodies work, and what they need to eat to feel great every day. My oldest son who is 12, is already very savvy at recognizing when he has eaten something (at his dad’s or other family member’s homes) that disagrees with him and why he is having that reaction.
Most of the trouble in the boys’ diets comes from other households. Their dad still eats a TON of meat, and lets them have a soda when they go there; which is blessedly only 24 hours a week. And even they are now refusing the soda because it makes them feel ill afterwards. My Uncle and Grandmother live across the street from us, and she is an old country Italian woman who loves good old-country food. It was tough in the beginning convincing them not to give the boys the stuff that I’d grown up on, like cookies and snacks, but eventually, they did shift a lot to what I want them to have instead. So when my Uncle mentions that the boys won’t eat fruit at his house, I tell him “That’s because they know you have cookies.” lol… He said he’s going to work on that ;)
Thank you for the post. We also aim to eat whole organic foods and I am struck by the rising costs. That said, there are more things we could do at home to cut down our costs. We currently juice, make our own bread (sometimes) and ice-cream, but there are some things we just talk about, like making our own yogurt. This post has inspired me to take a second look at our current habits. Thanks!
Tiffany, thanks for the thoughtful review & kind words! Sounds like you are already eating like it matters. You make an excellent point about the choices many folks have. Good for you for choosing to feed your family healthy food.
I will be keeping an eye out for your post sense my husband and I are cleaning up our eating habits. Your insight will be helpful to me.
Have a Great One
Arnita