“49 million Americans make food decisions based on cost.” (USA Today) Like the cost of just about everything else, food prices seem to keep rising at a very steady rate.
Case in point: I paid $6.44 for 40 ounces of peanut butter last weekend. Yes, it was brand name peanut butter – it’s the same brand I’ve always purchased and I remember it being in the $4 range not too long ago. The peanut butter I buy is not the healthiest out there but it does contain lower amounts of sodium than most. (I’m improving!)
Now, let’s look at another food item – something that is a bit cleaner/healthier.
Navel oranges.
At my most recent trip to the grocery store, we purchased a bag of 8 for $4.00. This breaks down to $0.50 per orange. Now let’s compare that to fruit snacks. At my local Walmart Supercenter (where we do the bulk of our shopping), you can expect to pay $2.00 for a box of 10 brand name fruit snacks pouches. That breaks down to $0.20 per pouch.
From this example we can definitely see that one serving of fruit snacks is quite a bit cheaper than a single orange. We can also conclude that the orange would be the healthier option.
So is it actually more expensive to eat healthy?
I think this question is very relative and the answer can vary greatly depending on who you ask.
One big factor? Household income.
If you have two full-time incomes in the home and you’re feeding just two adults, you may not think that eating healthy is all that expensive because you can easily afford it. If you were to ask a single father of two children if eating healthy was expensive he may definitely think so.
After all, it is cheaper to feed your child a pouch of fruit snacks than it is to feed them an orange.
Do you live to eat or eat to live?
The way that you view the cost of food can also determine whether you feel that healthy food is too expensive or not. If you consume food and think of it as fuel for your body, then you’re probably okay with paying a little more for your food. Again, income plays a role here as well.
If you live to eat chances are that you aren’t eating healthy. You may be overeating, eating when you aren’t hungry or simply eating food that doesn’t nourish your body properly. Quite possibly all of the above. The way you view food pays a ginormous role in the way you consume it, how you consume it and what you actually consume and therefore how much you spend.
My thoughts on the pricing of healthy foods
Just to be clear, I will disclose right now that my household income consists of my husband’s full-time income and my own part-time income. We feed a family of six every other week. On opposite weeks, we feed four. We also have animals: 2 dogs, 2 guinea pigs, a cat and a few fish.
Our last two trips to grocery stores looked like this:
- $227.13 (1/29/12)
- $216.28 (2/3/12)
- Celery: $1.28
- Bananas: $2.21
- Avocados: $3.92 ($.98/each)
- Truvia: $5.98 (definitely more expensive than regular table sugar!)
- Eggs: $2.48
- Honeycrisp apples: $5.72 (my favorite!)
- Milled flaxseed: $2.32
- Tomatos: $1.74
- Ground chicken (2 lbs.): $8.52
- Chobani Greek yogurt tub: $5.68
- Great Value frozen blueberries: $11.50 (4 pound bag)
- Almond milk: $3.18
If we feed all six members of our family with fast food, it’s easily over $30. YIKES! This is just one reason we don’t eat away from home very often at all. If we were to eat at home instead, simply take $1.11 x 6 people = $6.66 for dinner. That’s a savings of over $23. And it’s healthier too.
The true cost of unhealthy foods
The true cost of unhealthy foods doesn’t lie in the actual food prices, but the aftermath of eating them. Consuming a diet high in fat, sugar and calories on a regular basis can result in a bucket of health problems. Some worth mentioning include diabetes, heart disease and stroke. The more health problems you have, the more doctor visits you have. Those doctor visits will likely result in co-pays and medication used to control or help lower things like cholesterol, blood pressure and/or diabetes. And those don’t generally come cheap – particularly if you don’t have health insurance. So you could easily end up spending $100+ per month just on medication. See how quickly it adds up?
==> I’m not saying you have to eat clean 100% of the time. I don’t. But I do try my best to eat pretty healthy MOST of the time. I don’t buy snack cakes, chips, pop (I’m from Minnesota!), juice boxes or candy on a regular basis and I’ll usually save those things for special occasions. I’ll be honest and say that if I do buy these things, I’ll eat them. The best way to NOT eat them is to simply not buy them at all. It works!
My husband and I like to look at nutritious food as an investment for our family. We are okay with cutting back on other things in order to make sure we can provide great food for ourselves and our kids.
Tips to Make Eating Healthy More Doable for You
- Transition into healthier eating. You don’t have to go all out right away. Since healthy foods typically cost more, start by switching out a couple of items at a time. Buy oranges (or grapes!) instead of fruit snacks.
- Use coupons on non-food items. It’s pretty difficult to find coupons for healthy foods though not entirely impossible. To increase your food budget, try to find coupons (or use cash back sites when shopping online) for the other things you buy such as household cleaners, clothing and electronics.
- Buy meat in bulk if you can.
- Buying in bulk isn’t always better. To see if you’re getting a great deal, always compare price per serving or price per ounce when deciding whether to go with the bigger package or not.
- Don’t be afraid to use coupons on the smaller, less expensive size. Let’s say you have a coupon for $1.00 off Tide. Your first thought might be to buy the larger bottle or box since you’re saving a dollar anyway. BUT, you actually might find that you’ll save more per ounce if you go with a smaller size using the coupon.
- Spend $$ on veggies. A great tip is to spend as much as you can on vegetables. Whether you buy frozen, canned or fresh – spend as much as your budget will allow, on vegetables.
- To be healthy, you don’t have to buy organic.
- Cut out one fast food meal per month. This can save you $20-30 that you could use on your next trip to the grocery store.
- Keep on eye on store specials. Some stores periodically mark things like meat down at incredible prices for a limited time. You can scoop up plenty of meat staples during sales like these and still stay within your budget.
- Buy what’s in season. Fruits and vegetables that are currently in season will be more affordable than items that are not.
- Visit farmer’s markets if you can. Localharvest.org is a great resource.
- Grow your own food! Things like fruits, vegetables and herbs are fairly easy to grow just about anywhere and you don’t need a lot of space.
Here’s a quick list of cheap foods that are great!
- tuna
- eggs
- oats
- brown rice
- beans
- canned or frozen veggies
- light string cheese
- bananas
- grapes
- celery
- oranges
- carrots
- tortillas (can use for wraps, homemade nachos, etc.)
Even though “almost 15% of households in America say they don’t have enough money to eat the way they want to eat” (WJLA), there are definitely some things we can all do as consumers to cut back on somethingin order to be able to spend a little more on the food that nourishes our bodies.
*** Check this out: Challenge: Buy Groceries at Whole Foods on a Poverty-Level Budget ***
Is it really a good idea to sacrifice your health by consuming certain foods just because they’re cheap and filled with sugar and chemicals? Do you feel that healthy food is expensive?
Do you have any tips to share that you use to save money on groceries? I’d love to hear ‘em!
I think the quote at the end provides points us in the right direction concerning the question asked at the beginning : “almost 15% of households in America say they don’t have enough money to eat the way they want to eat”.
What “they want to eat” is not necessarily “to eat healthy”. In my opinion, when your household size is 4 people or more, then cooking and preparing your own food from raw ingredients is way less expensive than buying ready-made meals. How much is a large bag of potatoes, how much four TV dinners, which will keep four people fed longer and, last but not least, which of these two choices is healthier?
In other words: I very much agree with the sentiment of your article. Eating healthy doesn’t have to be organic. A non-organic banana will be an indefinitely better snack than a candy bar.
Great points.
I’ve learned that a lot of healthy food items really aren’t THAT expensive – which is why I included a short list of ideas. Before I educated myself on what it means to actually eat healthy, I always thought it was super expensive (and probably gross). We are a family of six and it IS a big part of our budget to feed everybody, but I think proper nourishment is important – for so many reasons. So, we just use what our budget allows and buy the healthy foods that we CAN afford. Can I eat steak and salmon every other night? Heck no! In fact, not very often at all. So we buy chicken, lean beef and/or pork instead. We always spend the bulk of the grocery money on the good stuff though.
With that said, I’m just wondering if people aren’t eating better because they think it’s too expensive?
Well said Evil C, it is definitely better to eat a non organic banana rather then a candy bar. It is very expensive to always eat organic, sometimes we have to cut some corners, but I always look at it as this:
Abundance vs quality, most people prefer to just eat a lot of food, I think if we eat less food with better quality we will have an overall healthier nation.
In my opinion, the healthier you eat the long you seem to feel full. When my kids were little my wife and I would never give our kids candy bars, TV dinners, fruit snacks (witch to me is candy) they only got that stuff occasionally.
I worked nights and my wife days so that made it easier I suppose, making sure that they always eat good and never seemed hungry. Anyway if you eat healthy to tend to eat less there for I believe eating healthy in the long run is cheaper.
Great point about feeling fuller longer when you eat healthier. I forgot to include that and it’s definitely worth mentioning.
Your assessment is spot on. In my family, we’ve made a conscience effort to only eat out once a week, and prepare our meals at home. We’ve cut down on the processed, frozen meals also, and were are finding that we are spending close to the same amount of money when you factor in both the restaurant and processed meal costs.
And you are absolutely right, organic doesn’t necessarily mean healthier. In many cases, it’s just an excuse for agribusiness to charge more for the same product.
I find that since i’ve switched over to a healthy diet i spend less on groceries. A $2 bag of oats will last me a months worth of breakfast. A regular box of cereal will usually run you $4 and probably last you a few days however a box of red river cereal costs $4 and will last you a month. Basically you can eat healthy AND cheaply at the same time.
interesting! Thank you for sharing!!!
It is unfortunate, but I think that the more organic stuff you can get, the better off you are!! It is usually more expensive but if you can afford it it is so worth it. Just do a taste test with strawberries or tomatoes fresh out of the garden compared to the picked way under ripe ones that are normally present at the grocery store and you have to admit the difference. There is a huge problem with produce that is grown with petroleum based fertilizer in basically sterile soil and then covered in pesticides & fungicides that is the common practice these days. Don’t even get me started on chicken & beef!!!
Some non organic items are worse than others, A little bit of research can tell you what non-organic things you should REALLY avoid so that you can still save some money. Of course, if we could all have gardens, we would all be WAAAAY better off. Buy produce from farm stands and meat from organic farms if they are available. Free range chicken actually keeps 90% of its mass when it is barbecued as apposed to 1/2 with store-bought so, in that way it’s a better deal and it really tastes like chicken!!
I totally agree with all the other points
Love your blog!
I saw an article recently, not sure where, that compared the cost of a few meals out to preparing the same meals at home. Based on the article, the meals out were cheaper most of the time. Still, when dining out, you don’t have any control over the preparation of the food; oils, quality, etc. I always teach my clients to prepare food as often as they can at home, using nutritionally dense ingredients and always shooting for organic. We’ll balk at the high cost of a $5.00 bag of organic oranges, but then go down the corner to Starbucks and buy a $5.00 mocha frappa-latte without batting an eye. Priority check!
Bottom line, our bodies are worth the extra expense for healthy, organic foods.
Priority check is right! Great tips too.
All of our homemade meals are actually pretty cheap. We can easily feed all six family members for much cheaper at home versus going out to eat – fast food or traditional restaurant.
A good one is soup. It is really cheap to make your own soup instead of buying the canned sodium filled soup on the shelves. It ends up being cheaper making it in bulk and it freezes great too! Even making your own pasta sauce is a cheap and healthier alternative. Anything premade can be made from scratch and just about 100% of the time can be made healthier and cheaper. Another good reason to eat healthier the bigger your clothes the more expensive they get. Causing another added expense!
Making homemade soup is something that I’m really looking forward to start doing. I need to find some recipes!
I think this is great information. Sometimes when you look at the price of clean foods it can be a little
Daunting. Especially organic foods and proteins. This post shows how to save on the good stuff. Thank you