DEVELOPING A SHOPPING STRATEGY

by eatwoo.com 16 May 2019, 22:12 1.3k Views

DEVELOPING A SHOPPING STRATEGY

A lot of “eating on a budget” plans look at each meal in a vacuum, without regard for space and time. They boil down recipes to their foundations, which have shockingly low and alluring price points. I’m pretty sure this “one-meal wonder” effect comes from a need to compete with fast-food restaurants that claim they can feed a whole family for less than $10.

But when we step back from the immediate low-price-point gratification, we can see this approach has its flaws. As we said before: No meal is an island.

Instead, we decided to strategically use and reuse both the ingredients we already had in our kitchen and the new ingredients we bought fresh every week. So we set the bar at no more than $5 per serving for each recipe. If you look through the recipes, you’ll see that most of them come in much cheaper than that, with almost all of them coming in under $3 and most servings coming in under $2.

We live in Brooklyn, New York, which a study by The Council for Community and Economic Research in 2013 named the second most expensive city in the United States in which to live. So we felt this would bode well for how our calculations per serving would translate to readers in other communities (i.e., it’ll probably cost you less to make these meals in your own neighborhood).

We also wanted to reinforce the fact that eating vegan and healthy is not notably more expensive than eating junk food or including meat in your diet. The idea that it’s wildly more expensive to eat healthy is based on several flawed studies done more than ten years ago that measured the cost of foods per calorie. Yes, you read that right. The studies that told us eating a meat- and dairy-based diet full of prepackaged meals and junk food was remarkably cheaper than eating a fruit- and vegetable-based diet were measuring by calorie content—not serving size or amount of food. But a new study done in 2012 by economists at the USDA took another look at this—and even with farm subsidies factored in, when food is measured by price per average amount consumed (i.e., per serving size), vegetables came out in a strong lead for the most economical.

And this makes perfect sense. Fire up your search engine and ask the Internet how to save money at the grocery store. Almost every article you find will say the same thing: Reduce or eliminate meat from your diet.

But for many people this raises the question: “If I don’t eat animals, where will I get my protein?” The answer, of course, is that beans, quinoa, tofu, tempeh, and vegan products like mock meat are good, healthier alternatives. But how does this translate into saving money?

Let’s look at one of the most commonly eaten meats in the United States: chicken.

According to PBS, the average meat-eating American eats more than 50 pounds of chicken in a year. While price points can go as low as Walmart’s modest $2.09/pound, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ average of $3.70/pound for non-organic or free-range poultry comes out to around $185 a year for one person. The price of tofu, on the other hand, can range from $1.00 to $2.50/pound depending on organic and non-GMO certification, making the same amount per year around $125 per person for organic, non-GMO tofu. And then there are beans. A can of black beans averages about a pound, and can cost anywhere from $1 to $2.79 a can, depending again on organic and non-GMO certification—making a grand total of around $140 per person per year for organic and non-GMO beans.

This might not be a huge savings you can appreciate every day, but over the course of weeks and months, it can start to show in your bank account. Plus, you’re eating better, kinder, organic, non-GMO food instead of factory-farmed chicken!

KEEPING IT REAL WITH FAUX
Vegan products like mock meat and vegan cheeses were where our goal of saving money got tricky. Those products can unfortunately cost about as much as cheap meat options and are often cited as the financial excuse many use for not eating vegan. So we had a choice: We could eliminate those options from our diet and produce yet another book that stripped recipes down to the bones to meet a low price point; or we could do something else… something new. We decided to continue using the amazing vegan options available on the market today, but move them into a supporting role where they could still be enjoyed in moderation. We also included recipes for how to create large batches of mock meat from scratch, for those who are more the DIY type. We’ve tried to create recipes that save money but don’t require you to sacrifice to the point where you lose interest or feel unsatisfied. That’s not a sustainable lifestyle and won’t save money in the long run.

We’d been vegan for years and years before starting this project to fine-tune our kitchen finances, so we were already reaping the monetary benefits from eliminating meat from our diets. The real work for us was in eliminating waste (i.e., throwing away food that has expired or otherwise gone bad), and we’re not the only people who have this problem.

According to a paper released by the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2012 citing USDA research, the average American household ends up throwing out 25 percent of the food it purchases. That translates to the average family of four losing between $1,365 and $2,275 worth of food to waste each year. There’s a lot of speculation as to why so much food is being wasted, ranging from more people eating out, larger packages of food with shorter expiration dates, lack of meal planning in the home, or just a general lack of awareness and undervaluing of food leading to spoilage.

This is a vicious cycle, much bigger than just our kitchen and wallets. So we set out to create a shopping strategy that would allow us to maximize every purchase into multiple meals.