I'm embarking on a Paleo journey and I'm posting all of my thoughts and ideas to this blog. I'll have recipes, links, articles, and just general thoughts about the whole paleo lifestyle.
We're all trying to save money while eating paleo. Part of making your money stretch is making the most of the food you buy. My last meal was all about a delicious sauce and the good thing about sauces is that you can make a bunch of it on the cheap and most of the time, freeze it for the future. The problem is that if you freeze a bowl of sauce, you have to thaw the whole bowl and refreeze it each time you want some sauce. That's why I use my ice cube trays to help portion out the sauce. Try it out. You'll appreciate the saved time and money!
OK, so the pictures look a little ugly, but this sauce thaws just fine and should keep for a few months, meaning I don't have to dye the kitchen counters green again any time soon!
Let me start off this post by divulging that I was an accounting major for four years before making the switch to sports medicine. Organization of numbers and data is kind of in my blood, so the prospect of figuring out precise costs of meals excites me. Maybe I should change the name of the blog to Paleonerd.
Yesterday, I put up a post talking about the true cost of going paleo. After a storm washed out some baseball games I was working at, I got a chance to go grocery shopping a day early. This is probably the most excited I've been to go grocery shopping EVER. I was so excited to start putting real dollar amounts on the meals I'm making.
I do a vast majority of my shopping at Caputo's. I believe that it's a Chicagoland only grocer, but any checking around on Yelp will tell you all about the unbelievable produce they get and more importantly, the low prices they charge. The butcher at Caputo's is great as well, but you have to take advantage of specials and surplus sales. For the most part, you'll have to get most of your meat at farmer's markets, private suppliers, or online. I'll pick up meat at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods on occasion as well, but to be honest, ALWAYS getting grass fed meat can be tough. Sometimes you'll just have to offset poorer quality meat with some extra veggies and omega 3 in your diet. Always take advantage of sales on grass fed beef and freeze it for use later.
Get an idea of what you want to make for the week and by all means, make a list and stick to it! I usually prepare 3 specific meals a week and fill in all of my other meals with leftovers, eggs, and salmon steaks.
With money on my mind, I looked in the fridge before leaving and noticed that we had a tomato and a couple onions about to go bad. As opposed to throwing food and money away, I would much rather make something and at least squeeze out a couple meals (sorry if that phrase sounds gross). Onions and tomato make the base of a good chili and since I already have some ground beef and canned tomatoes on hand, I decide to add some peppers, mushrooms, and seasoning to the list to help salvage my produce.
2 hours and $76.94 later, I'm back home and ravenous for some chili. I'm not going to pretend that I'm the first person to come up with the idea of paleo chili. In fact, I bet the first paleo cookbook started with a steak recipe on page 1 and a chili recipe on page 2. Let's get into the real cost of a pot of paleo chili.
Starting at 12 o'clock going clockwise: 2 cans of sliced tomatoes (1.09 each), 1/2 package of button mushrooms (1.15),1 pound of ground beef (5.99), 2 jalapenos (0.17), chili seasoning (1.29), 4 cloves of garlic (0.10), 1/2 a yellow onion (0.30), 1/2 a red onion (0.30), and a roma tomato (0.40)
OK, that's a total of $11.88. Over half of that cost is the meat, so you can see how much taking advantage of savings on quality meat can save you. The next question is "How many meals can I get for that $11.88?" You'll have to wait until after I give you my super quick synopsis of how to make chili. As most of you reading this have made chili before and I'd hate to insult your intelligence, feel free to skip to the end for the per meal total.
To make chili:
Begin by browning the ground beef in a pan. When you can see a little grease coming off the meat, add chopped onions.
That lady isn't joking about washing your hands after handling a jalapeno. They say you should hum happy birthday to yourself while washing your hands to get rid of the capsaicin (a powerful anti-inflammatory), but I say you should hum Freebird just to be safe. Let the meat, onions, and peppers cook while you quarter the mushrooms. This time allows the water to escape the veggies, helping to make a flavorful base for the chili.
Once that starts to boil, turn the heat down as low as you can and let that go for about 10 minutes. Stir it a couple of times so that nothing sticks to the bottom. Feel free to eat it whenever your patience is up!
BAM! Labna is a dairy product with 1/2 a gram of sugar per tablespoon. I find that one tablespoon takes chili to the next level. This is one of those small compromises I make to keep myself happy. Give it a shot, I think you'll like it.
After eating a bowl, I measured out 3 more full bowls of chili from the pot. That makes 4 total bowls (those accounting skills really come in handy) at $2.97 per meal. I'll admit that chili is just cheap by nature, but still, $3 isn't too bad for a meal.
Let me start off by saying that I hope that you never accept a single thing anyone says as truth without putting it through your BS detector first. When I sat down to write this article, I found it difficult to nail down some exact monetary figures, so I write this full well knowing these numbers will not apply to everyone. I'm 28 and in good health, so for some of you, the numbers on health care may be different. What I would love to see is some people comment either via this blog or through twitter to let me know how close I'm coming to their actual costs.
Last week, a commenter on Primalchat was looking to get an idea of how to go paleo and still stay on a budget. It really got me thinking about how expensive going paleo is. At first it seems so daunting when you find some grass fed meat that costs literally double what grain fed meat costs. Then you go look at eggs and free range eggs cost triple. At that rate, you'll go from:
to:
Right?
I did some quick and dirty googling and found some monetary averages (from what I would consider reputable sources) online that when combined with my own personal averages can help put some numbers on the price of going paleo.
I had to make some assumptions to keep myself from going crazy trying to be precise.
1) I assume you are a citizen of the US
2) I assume you have health insurance (which you will have to have soon enough)
3) I assume everyone in your household eats the same amount (which we know can not be true, but we need to work on averages)
4) I assume your groceries cost about the same as mine do. (I live 6 blocks from the Chicago city line, so groceries aren't known for being super cheap around here)
The US Department of Labor issued a report outlining how average Americans tend to spend their money.
Holy crap that chart should be bigger (click on it for the full size). Anyways, we can see here that the average family of 2.5 spends $6,133 on food each year. This takes into account groceries and eating out. This makes for $2,453.20 per person or when divided by 52, about $47 per week.
Last week, my fiancé and I spent $120 (rounding up) on groceries. The week before, we spent around $85, but we went out to eat on the weekend, spending $30. Our grocery bills and budget for eating out over the past two months (the length of time I have been paleo) have hovered around $100 to $120 per week. To play devil's advocate, let's assume we're spending the full $120 every week. Obviously that would break down to $60 per person per week.
So far, it looks like going paleo costs $13 more per week or $676 per year (let's just call it $700). To me, that $700 per year is more than worth my health, higher energy level, and the narcissistic "looking better naked" factor.
Here is where a lot of hard core paleos argue that health costs would go down when eating paleo, thus offsetting some of the increased cost of food. OK, let's take a look.
Our humongoid chart says that the average family of 2.5 spends $2,853 or $1141.20 per person on health care (not including insurance) each year. This works out to about $22 per week.
Many paleos will argue that they never get sick. I can say that I have not been sick since beginning eating paleo, but I never really got sick before eating paleo either. Let's assume for argument's sake that you need to see the doctor a couple times a year. To avoid anyone yelling at me for insinuating they may actually become ill, lets assume at least one visit is for an orthopedic injury from Crossfit training. According to Blue Cross Blue Shield, the average cost of a doctor's visit is $60. Assuming you see your doctor once for an annual checkup and get sick or injured once per year, that would be $120 for office visits. If you're prescribed some medication or a brace, we should allot $140 (because it makes my math easier) for that. That comes out to $260 per year or $5 per week.
Current totals with health costs factored in: Paleo = $65 and Standard American Diet (SAD) = $69
I'll admit that I haven't accounted for every possible health examination. I didn't include a gynecological exam, x-ray, highly specialized diagnostic test, or an MRI which could swing the favor back into the SAD budget's favor, but I think I've shown that the costs of both diets are comparable.
What did I learn from this?
1) Anyone that tells you going paleo is cheaper may be onto something, but ask them to prove it
2) If they can prove it, ask them their money saving tips
3) Don't let money be your excuse to avoid trying paleo
4) It might seem more daunting at first, but the costs end up being comparable
I'm looking to do a follow up article on how to make your money stretch while going paleo, so please email me your thoughts on making your dollar stretch while paleo: paleotron@gmail.com
