Back to ‘cheap' fast food.
So, say you have a family of three (our current size). A meal at McDonalds for a family of three would cost….what?…about $10? $15? $12.50?
I'm guessing here, so just run with me.
So, say a family of three ate at McDonalds for ‘cheap' once a day. For dinner, let's say. And it doesn't have to be McDonalds – it could be Jack In The Box, Dairy Queen, Wendys, whatever your little heart desires.
So, 30 days a month….$12.50 a meal…..$375 a month.
Let's say they order off the dollar menu for a total of $8 a meal, we're still looking at $240 a month.
Mind you, they still need to eat breakfast, lunch, and snacks. So maybe, a couple hundred more for their other groceries? We're somewhere in the range of $400-$600 now.
And remember – this is for the cheap food. If they eat out at a nicer restaurant, well, you can do the math.
So the very, very least they could get away with is about $8 a meal, or $240 a month, for one meal. And truthfully, I think it's more towards the $375 end (as fries and sodas are must!). PLUS they still need their other two meals from somewhere.
Here's the kicker.
We spent $400 a month on groceries total. Full disclaimer: We do eat at my parents each Friday for one meal. Thanks Mom and Dad!
We drink raw milk, eat organic meats and cheeses, and have tons of fresh produce each day. $400 a month for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. For three of us. And yes, Georgia eats her share.
So for not much more than eating at McDonalds only one meal per day, it is possible to eat 3 meals of a balanced, vitamin rich, organic diet.
I'm talking about nutrient dense food people. I'm talking about food that nourishes andstrengthensyour body. I'm talking about food that can aid in boosting your immune system and keeping your healthy. I'm talking about food that benefits you.
How is that possible?
I'll be honest, it's not nearly as easy as running through the drive through. Cooking quality food from scratch takes time and dedication. However, I assure you it can be done. Even when I was working full time, I was still able to swing whole-food based cooking. It just takes some creativity and prep work.
Here's a very rough breakdown of our food budget and costs:
– Grass-fed, local beef, $3.30/lb. This usually lasts us for 10-ish months, or about $45 per month.
– Organic, whole chickens, $3.25/lb. I make these stretch for a least three meals, leftovers, and stock. We eat one chicken every other week. $30 per month. I can hardly wait to raise our own chickens this year! We will be raising 25 total, which will provide us with about 2 per month.
– Wild-caught fish, $4.50/lb. I only get it when the price is good (rarely). $4.50 per month.
– Raw, organic cheddar cheese. I order a 5 lb. block from Azure Standard for around $30. We can usually make this stretch for almost two months. $15 a month.
– Goat cheese and Feta cheese, $8 a month.
– Bulk grains, wheat berries, beans, rice, coconut, lentils, oats, apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, sour cream, almonds, dates, cocoa powder, honey, rapadura, baking soda, baking powder, arrowroot flour, etc. ordered from Azure Standard. On average, about$50 a month.
– Fresh produce (this varies greatly). During the summer, we eat primarily from our garden and local orchards. We also put up a ton of frozen goodies to eat on through the winter. However, I still make weekly trips to the store to buy produce, such as: bananas, citrus fruit, carrots, celery, lettuce, avocados, potatoes and onions. These are my inexpensive staples – sure, I love pineapple. But that ain't in the budget, baby. $75 a month. Kale, green beans, corn, tomatoes, and herbs are frozen from the garden each year – so I don't count those. We also eat a lot of produce that has been preserved from the summer, such as canned, frozen, and dehydrated fruits. Purchasing items like blueberries in season from a local farm is (usually) much cheaper than buying them from the grocery store. Hit up that farmer's market, baby.
– Raw milk, $10 a gallon. Ya, it's expensive. But it's worth it. Instead of downing 64 ounces of milk, we enjoy small glasses. We also water Georgia's down slightly, since it's super rich. $30 a month.
– Pastured organic eggs, $3/dozen. We get these from our milk lady (Hey Jennifer!) or my parents. They're so good! $21 a month.
– Olive Oil, ordered from Chaffin Family Ranch in California. My Mom and I split the order and each end up with a gallon of olive oil for about $45. This lasts us for 2-3 months. $15 a month.
– Coconut oil, ordered from Mountain Rose Herbs. This is hard to figure out, since I use it for hair conditioner, deodorant, face lotion, and diaper cream! But a $60 gallon tub usually lasts us about 6 months, including all the cosmetic uses. I'll deduct a bit for this. $8 a month.
– Coffee. What? A girl has weaknesses. We buy whole bean in bulk from a local roaster and grind it ourselves. $25 a month. That may sound like a lot, but really, that's only like 6 drinks from Starbucks!
– Grocery store extras, including: toilet paper, feminine products, light bulbs, dog food, etc. $75 a month.
Some months are a little bit more, such as when we need to restock on a bunch of grains, and some months are less (such as in the summer when we get to eat our wonderful garden bounty!). It's a give and take.
I would say $400 is just about spot on though. And just think of all the wonderful food we're putting into our systems.
That being said, this budget does involve some work.
– I soak all my beans and buy them dried, instead of canned.
– I stock up on inexpensive, seasonal produce when I can, which includes dehydrating, canning, and freezing.
– I bake our weekly bread and grind our flours.
– Oatmeal is made from scratch, not packets.
– I make our own fish, chicken, beef, and vegetable stocks.
– I make our own snack bars.
– I brew our kombucha.
– I ferment our kefir and yogurt (both made with our raw milk).
– I make all our salad dressings (which takes 5 seconds).
– Berries (for kefir smoothies) are frozen in the summer and usually gleaned, as are apricots, grapes, peaches, plums, and apples. I make applesauce, grape juice, and jellies from them.
All of these tasks cost you time. And save you money.
I think the most important thing about food budgeting is finding a balance in what works for you. You might be in a busy season of your life where baking bread is out of the question. That's okay! Figuring out what works for your family is the most important.
That being said, don't bedeterredby a little bit of extra time spent in the kitchen. The more you do things like bake bread, the easier it gets. Soon, it becomes a quick and painless process. I literally don't spend more than 15 minutes each week baking our bread.
All that to say…
It is totally possible to eat a high-quality, whole-food, organic based diet for less than it costs to eat fast food.
Take that McDonalds.
Booya.
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Comments:
Lady, I need to sit down with you sometime after June 24 and talk. About this stuff. Seriously.
You rock, btw!
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I just shared this on my facebook page (hope you don’t mind). It seemed like my friends needed a good dose of reality. Thanks!
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Great post and I agree with the cost analysis. I have a family of 4 which includes two growing boys and we are able to stay in the $400/month budget. This is primarily because like you I make everything but my biggest hurdle is stocking up on the summer harvest to perserve food without blowing my budget. How are you able to stock up on the summer harvest (ie berries)without ruining your monthly budget? Since you grow your own food do you find that you spend less so you use the extra $ to go towards the berries or do you save $/month to buy bulk items (I’m not sure you listed this in your post)?
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LOVED this! Hubby and I just had a little unexpected experiment. We haven’t eaten fast food for over a month and were stuck eating it (due to poor time management and planning!)for lunch last Sunday. For 2 days afterward our digestive system was really messed up! The only thing that changed in our diet was that 1 fast food meal and we paid the price for 2 days!! It is really scary to think what is in that food that causes that kind of reaction…
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Great post! I get so frustrated hearing people say that they can’t afford “real food”, but think nothing of dropping $5 a day for a coffee drink! We stock up on grains/beans, etc. about every 3 months and do a Costco run somewhere in-between. During the summer months we visit one of our local (ish) farms and pick blueberries (and whatever else is in season!) to stock the freezer with. There’s a little more cost up front, but it saves us during the winter months of having to purchase those foods from unknown sources at ridiculous prices!
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Great post. I love how you broke it down with the cost analysis. I think sometimes it is hard because you have to shell out more money up front (bulk meat, CSA, etc.) but when you look at the cost over several months it’s not such a sticker shock.
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Shall now we crown you with the Crown of Awesome? I love it. Just eat it up, I do! (ba-dum-ching!) No, really, seriously, I love this! It’s so great that you can open up and show us all how the dollar signs fall into place. I read Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle years ago, and while I loved it, the one thing that I disagreed with was her take on eating local on the cheap. I am still of the mind that in most of America, it isn’t cheaper to eat, nutrient-dense, local food…BUT!!! And a big one at that: BUT! After slowly transitioning to a good diet, making kitchen-lifestyle, eating-lifestyle changes you get darn close.
I can drink a gallon of commercial milk in half a day. We can down 2 grilled burgers with lots of frozen fries and iceberg lettuce-salad without blinking, and on and on it goes. But you start paying $10 for thick, creamy raw milk? You make burgers with $3.30# grass-fed beef? You start making your own organic-grown taters for fries? YOu appreciate it more and you end up wasting less on your plate or in your cup. Your portions get smaller, like you said. You learn to spread it out, become more efficient in how to use leftovers and …
…lookie there! The total food bill for the month seems to get smaller! I think where the $$$ challenge is, is int he upfront cost. Buying the milk shares, the 1/2 or 1/4 cow, the bulk grains, etc. Sigh…you take baby steps and let the change change you, you know? I love this post and am so glad I figured our Google Reader so i didn’t miss it!Reply
Shaye ElliottTotally agree, Sally!
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I agree with this post. When I first started eating both locally and organically, I was shocked at the prices. But as the months went by, I started to notice something. At the end of each month, a large portion of the money in my food budget was left. I started thinking about how often I actually went to a store, and realized that whereas I used to go to the store twice or more a week, I hardly set foot in one anymore. I just don’t need to! Not going to a store means I’m also not throwing all those little “extras” into my cart that I used to. It means that although I spend more upfront to buy real food, I spend less in the end.
Something to think about. 🙂
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This was just what I needed to read. We don’t eat out much and when we do we are very picky…doesn’t mean the food is “good” but better than some other places. Anyways, a friend told me about your blog. And I am so glad she did. My husband and I have three kids with another on the way in July. Our grocery budget is VERY high. We have been eating the Sally Fallon way for almost 2 years but haven’t figured out how to do it cheaply…mostly because I haven’t made time to. Between having 3 kids in 5 years, moving every year or less since we married 8.5 years ago (don’t ask), student loan debt, homeschooling….well you get the picture. I’m busy trying to do everything and this post has opened my eyes to how easy it would be to save money and still be eating the way we do. I am so excited to some research and find all the things in bulk, a great butcher, and start our first BIG garden. We don’t have plans to move and our current rental is on half an acre! I can do so much with that … I hope. Sorry for the novel but you’ve given me so much hope. Thanks!
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- Anonymous
Thanks for sharing these details, and how you source everything. I’ve been trying to get grass-fed beef and found two places within driving distance, but both are sold out until they butcher again after peak grazing this Summer or early Fall. So, will need to just order 12 months worth at that time. Takes planning, right? Good post.
brenda from ar
p.s. The other night I sourced some very fine poke from an area where I’d disturbed the soil beside my tiny garden. Soon, I should have some lambs quarter to add to that.
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Love this! Even with buying healthier convenience items (like premade bread and yogurt), McDonald’s still loses most of the time! We’re a family of 3 and we eat a whole foods diet for right around $400 a month too! And that’s with a growing preteen boy!!!
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- malita
I know people say it’s cheaper to eat “cheap” food – but I really think that they mean its easier – you can drive through and get what seems like a fairly cheap meal at the moment – or you can plan, prepare, cook, clean and repeat – and I won’t even get into the why’s of people doing the first over the second – but I do think the “cheap food isn’t cheaper” rhetoric has had its say in court and the jury has nodded and nodded – they agree! So now let’s tackle the REAL issue – why don’t people want to plan and prepare meals – and we can’t say we don’t have time – that may work for SOME but hello we are on a blog, we are on facebook, we are watching TV – so what gives?
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I think, and I say this as someone who avoids fast food, eats organic, and cooks as much as possible…I think we are mentally drained when we get home. I work during the day. My workplace is stressful. Several of my coworkers are crazy. I am under constant threat of getting laid off…and you want me to come home and bake bread?! Don’t get me wrong, I do make dinner, but if I had kids, I know for a fact that my brain would be a mess when I got home, and buying crap for them to eat would definitely seem tempting.
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Agreed! I feel disheartened by these types of articles–and I see a lot of them lately. I scratch cook, buy local and in bulk, buy farm direct and in season, bike to the store, grow a garden, etc. I also don’t have cable TV, an extra vehicle, or other superflous expenses. It’s terribly expensive to feed a family of four organically or otherwise. My kids need me to feed them healthfully, but they need more from me than just that….gleaning, prepping, and freezing fruit is incredibly time-consuming and many parents HAVE to work for their family’s to subsist, even if they aren’t living luxuriously. I feel that the problem is with the system, not people’s lack of concern, or willingness to put in the work to care for themselves or their kids! While I appreciate suggestions for saving money, the reality is that it’s impractical for many families to produce large amounts of their own food. Our energies would be well put to use if we were all demading change in the food system, rather than asking more of our own already over-taxed time and resources.
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- See AlsoPicture And Write It, Part 4
Hurrah! Good for you – what a great tutorial on eating well. I’ve been shocked by my current visit to the US (first time in 16 years) seeing how little cooking the average American does at home, and usually what that entails is putting ribs on a BBQ and opening a bunch of packets and frozen food bags. Staying at other people’s houses I wasn’t served so much as a lettuce leaf or a bean – the only veg I got was a garnish of tomato and avocado in one place, and a corn cob in another. I live in a remote village in the Carpathian Mountains and although I don’t make my own bread (I have cold hands and my bread’s lousy) I get raw milk from the neighbour’s cow and organic eggs from her chickens, and always cook from scratch. It’s one of my great pleasures each day, especially when I can eat herbs and salady things straight from my garden. I use a lot of ‘weeds’, too – wildflowers like goosefoot, sorrel, nettle, comfrey flowers etc – in salads, which is as healthy as it gets. Organic, local, seasonal and free… Obviously it is harder to do this in the city, but not impossible. Window boxes can yield a surprising amount, and more and more cities are encouraging allotments and gardens in unlikely places. btw Do you know about Slow Food? If you don’t, you’d love it. Have a google. It’s a foodie org based in Italy with branches everywhere. You fit right in!
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- Shaye Elliott
LOOOOVE Slow Food! 🙂
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- dfworganicdiva
I love this. I am going to share it with my network as well. Thank you for writing it. It is an obstacle I come across all the time.
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- Carrie
I WISH we could find grass fed beef that cheap in our area 🙁 The lowest is 7 bucks a lb! I aspire to live like you one day though!!!
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- Shaye Elliott
Carrie – keep looking around! Sometimes you can find a farmer who doesn’t sell really to the public but is willing to sell to you. For example, the rancher I buy from now also sells to the health food store. From the store, it costs $6-$7 a pound. When I go to his ranch and buy directly from him, it’s more like $4 a pound. It pays to ask.
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- Windy
I’m with you Carrie. The cheapest grass-fed ground beef I can get is $6.50/lb and that’s 20% fat and not local. The cheapest pastured eggs are $5/dozen, I can’t get raw milk although I keep trying. The pasteurized, non-hom*ogenized whole milk is $10/gal and the pastured chicken around these parts (Northern New Mexico) is $5/lb at the least – I splurged and paid around $18 for a 3.5lb chicken last week, we got 2 meals out of it plus stock. Any sort or grass-fed beef that isn’t ground is over $10/lb. I realize I could buy 1/4 of a grass-fed cow for around $700, but then I would have to buy a freezer which I don’t have the money for nor do I have the room in my little house. Eating well is a top priority and it needs to be for more people, but the prices seem to be location dependent. I spend $600/month for two of us on groceries.
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- Yasmin
I agree with Windy. I think it’s a different story in major cities and for some people, bad food is cheaper. I’m in the suburbs of DC and have lived in Philadelphia as well as Baltimore recently. The prices here (even 30 miles north of DC) are as follows: local grass fed meat $14-18/ pound, eggs are $5-7, and similar to what you paid for a pastured chicken. CAFO beef at the grocery store is $3.99 a pound! Trader Joe’s has 85/15 grass fed beef from Australia for $6.49 a pound. Farmer’s markets here are not significantly cheaper than the grocery stores but of course it tastes better because it’s local. I’m sure I could feed myself cheaper at McDonalds in this area! I spend about $50-60 a week for myself on a primarily vegan diet. Every now and then I’ll splurge on animal products. I’d rather go without than consume the factory stuff.
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- Emily C.
Agreed. We’re in NYC and it’s unfortunately just not possible to go to the farmer 🙁 animal products are just SO expensive.
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- catherine
I am amazed by those prices too! We eat all local/organically (shop at farmer’s markets, etc) but it costs us more like $1000-$1200 a month. Now we don’t eat grains which means our meat bill is very high, but we but bulk (the lowest price we can get grass fed ground beef is $6.50/lb. All our eggs are $5/dozen. Luckily our raw milk is only $6/gallon. But still…those prices you are giving are amazing!
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- Don
Wow good article. And you go on wit your bad self gurl LOL! Your right you get used to it. I never use a microwave, ever, and I don’t miss it. I use a toaster oven until I get one of the cool microwave replacements that are healthy.
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- Ginger
I LOVED this blog post!! You seriously hit this issue right on the head!! Thank you!
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- Jen
I love this post, but your organic meat costs are ridiculously low – we have no hope of buying meat and eggs that cheaply here. 🙁 Thankfully, though, my raw milk is cheaper, but the meat and eggs wld save us more
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I’m a Beginner! Started planting a garden a couple years back. I would like to change, add and perfect things for a completely healthy lifestyle! Very inspiring and motivating! Thank you!!!
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- brista
– Grass-fed, local beef, $3.30/lb. This usually lasts us for 10-ish months, or about $45 per month.
Where do you find this!? Any grass-fed beef I’ve seen costs an arm and a leg!
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- Karen
Thanks for sharing some of the ways you save money on healthy food. I need to get back to soaking and cooking my own beans, they taste so much better. Do you know how much you save on a loaf of bread or yogurt by making it yourself? I have to buy certain breads (unbromated wheat) to avoid symptoms, and that bread isn’t cheap. Also, I have never made yogurt, do you need to use raw milk for that? I grew up on a dairy farm, so we definitely had “unprocessed milk”! I should make salad dressings too, because that is an item I don’t want to do without.
I couldn’t find cheap steel cut oats forever, but recently I found that the local food co-op sells steel cut oats for a very reasonable price, so yummy!Reply
Fan-tastic! thanks for writing this!
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This is great! We do pretty good on produce, but it’s hard to find pastured meat where we live that isn’t $10-$15+ per pound.
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- Oh Lardy
Would you mind sharing your bread recipe?
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- Shaye Elliott
Wow – sorry this took so long! https://theelliotthomestead.com/2012/08/traditional-soaked-whole-wheat-bread/
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- Siobhra
The only time I eat “fast” food is when I am on the road. But my normal diet is not much better. Packaged meals like Lean Cuisine or Weight Watchers ‘Smart Ones’. I rent a room. I get to share the kitchen but it is small and the rest of the house is all in there trying to use the same oven and/or microwave.
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- Melissa
Where do you live, so I can move there, too? 🙂 Prices go up a lot whenever you live in a hot, dry climate like I do. While I can usually do pretty well on organic fruits and veggies, organic, air-chilled chicken is $10/lb, and grass-fed beef is $7-$10, depending on the cut. I can buy packets of grass-fed ground beef for $5, which is the cheapest I’ve ever seen it. The prices you list – those are the prices for regular meat in our area.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts on jual. Regards
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