Cost-per-serving: the story of eating cheaply

The basic premise–to lower cost PER SERVING of the foods you eat. Start by reducing your initial food costs—make and use a price book.

By buying and eating more sensibly, you’re taken a major step toward lowering overall cost of food and health care by boosting nutrition—this leads to lower incidences of sickness.

Break out your calculators and follow along if you wish.

Using the Food Guide Pyramid info as reference, determine how much of what foods constitute a serving, and then calculate how much each serving costs. For example, let’s say you’ve just bought a 2 pound bag of brown rice for $1.09. That’s 56¢/lb. dry cost.

$1.09 (price) divided by 2 (dry weight in pounds) = 55¢ (rounding up)

Next, you determine the amount of cooked rice that equals 1 serving (let’s say 1/2 cup). A 2 lb. bag of rice contains 4 cups uncooked rice, and 1 dry measure cup=8 oz. or 1/2 lb., so each dry cup is worth 28¢.

$1.09 (price) divided by 4 (cups in dry measure) = 27¢ (rounding down)

Since rice doubles in size, you’d only have to cook 1/4 c. dry rice to get the ½ cup serving size, which will now cost you only 14¢ per serving, since you now need half the amount of dry rice.

$1.09 (price) divided by 8 (cups in cooked measure) = 14¢ (rounding up)

Even if you dumped the WHOLE BAG into the pot, you would get 8 lbs. of cooked rice for only $1.09 and 14¢ per serving–enough to feed the neighborhood–1/4 cup at a time.

The same principle applies to pasta, beans, and other dried foods as well.

Our problem here in America is portion size–we eat too much per portion! By calculating out the portion size and cost per, the costs of feeding go down DRAMATICALLY, thereby enabling you to know your costs per meal, and to eat for a heck of a lot less than you are now. You certainly don’t have to live on beans, rice, and pasta to do it, either. This is what home economics was supposed to be all about.

For meats, there is a little different strategy: you need to determine the actual amount of meat versus bones and fat. A quickie overview–

For meat with no bone or fat = allow 4 to 5 servings per pound

For meat with little bone or fat = 3 to 4 servings per pound

For meat with medium bone or fat (like a chuck blade steak) = allow 2 to 3 servings per pound

For meat with a large amount of bone or fat (like a turkey) = allow 1 to 2 servings per pound

Meats with no bone or fat (boneless/skinless) tend to cost more, with the possible exception of ground beef. However, there’s less waste, so you get more servings per pound. Holiday turkeys, whole chickens, and other meats with hollow centers are the absolute worst purchases for cost-per-serving, because those hollow centers are essentially waste—when bought frozen, those cavities collect frozen water, making your purchase by weight more expensive. Why pay for ice? If those cavities were full of solid meat, they’d be a better buy. Suggestion: you might want to re-think your holiday meat purchases and switch to turkey thighs instead—one bone, lots of meat per piece, and little waste.

As for bony meats commonly used as meal-stretchers: chicken wings, legs, backs, and so forth—too much bone and too little meat equals a terrible cost-per-serving buy, no matter how cheap the price. If you were to strip the meat off these pieces and actually weigh it, you’d see that you paid way too much per pound AND serving for that little bit of actual useable meat. For soups and stews, you’re better off using one whole boneless chicken thigh, cut up, than several smaller, bonier parts (or a carcass) for the meat to boil away from. The amount in waste (bones) is greater than the amount in meat—this is not a bargain!

Looking at the Pyramid chart, I see that a serving constitutes 2-3 oz. (a little smaller than a deck of cards), and we should have 2 servings/day. To make your “deck of cards” go further, try chopping, shredding, or dicing your meat. Go half-and-half with some beans. Also, 1/3 c. of nuts counts as a serving, as well as 1/3 cup of reconstituted TVP.

Did anyone learn this in Home Ec? I certainly didn’t. Our class focused on learning to use that newfangled microwave thingie!

Cheap Ingredient recipe sites:
http://www.yumyum.com/fscratch/

http://www.miserlymoms.com/MOMfrecipes2.htm

http://frugalliving.miningco.com/parenting/frugalliving/msubfoodrec.htm

http://www.creativehomemaking.com/download.htm#Cooking (downloadable booklets)

http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/Pubs/Cookbook/thriftym.pdf (booklet w/portion info for family of four)

http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/DietGd.pdf Check out page 15 (booklet page), or page 17 (PDF page)–booklet page is located on the right side of the page images, the PDF page number is on the bottom left of the screen. The page will have the food pyramid on it, and underneath will be a list of portion sizes, titled “What Counts as a Serving”.

http://www.digsmagazine.com/nourish.htm

http://www.notjustbeans.com/

http://www.living-foods.com/recipes/ (vegan/living and raw food recipes)

http://www.stretcher.com/menu/topic-g.htm#groceriesandfood (scroll down to “groceries and food� section)

Meat Purchase Reference Sites

Cost per serving info for pork: http://www.hormel.com/templates/knowledge/knowledge.asp?catitemid=31&id=163

Better food shopping: http://ceinfo.unh.edu/Pubs/PubsFN/Labeled.pdf (PDF)

Butcher’s tips: http://www.pioneerthinking.com/butcher.html

Buying Meat By the Serving: http://ianrpubs.unl.edu/foods/g947.htm –I highly recommend printing out the chart and keeping it in your price books for handy grocery store reference.