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[Editor's Note: Alanna Kellogg wrote this brilliant strategy post for saving money on food in 2008, predicting food prices would only get worse. Even though the post is a few years old, her tips are still spot-on, and I'm using them as I try to squeeze more out of my family's combined income. -Rita]
Food prices getting to you? Yeah, me too. There's no avoiding that just like it takes a full wallet to fill up a tank with gas, it takes a fat purse to fill up a cart with groceries. The bad news is, there's new concern that the Western world's relatively cheap food supply may be coming to a sudden, and unexpected, end.
Last week, the Canadian newsweekly magazine Maclean's published a story with a foreboding future, "Why Your Grocery Bill Is About to Hurt."
"The question now for the developed world is whether we're seeing a permanent end to an era of relatively cheap food — a shift that could force wrenching change in households across the western world. ... In short, food policy is shaping up to be one the 21st century's political battlegrounds — a fraught landscape on which poor countries backslide into malnourishment and wealthier ones compete for remaining pieces of the global pie."
~ Read Why Your Grocery Bill Is About to Hurt
On Sunday, the New York Times opinion piece "Priced Out of the Market" called the world's food situation "bleak" and pinned blame on a collision of systemic forces.
"Population growth and economic progress are part of the problem. Consumption of meat and other high-quality foods —- mainly in China and India —- has boosted demand for grain for animal feed. Poor harvests due to bad weather in this country and elsewhere have contributed. High energy prices are adding to the pressures. Yet the most important reason for the price shock is the rich world’s subsidized appetite for biofuels."
~ Read Priced Out of the Market
The result is that more and more of us will be looking for ways to stretch our food budgets further, for ways to save money shopping for groceries, for rethinking our food consumption habits, for calculating the very real costs of our seemingly insatiable demand for convenience.
As the daughter of a woman who grew up poor and remained thrifty to her core even when finances were comfortable, I've spent my life watching food prices. In my 20s, I calculated that a sack of groceries cost about $10. In my 30s, I realized that my morning coffee 'n' bagel ritual was a $1,000-a-year habit. In my 40s, I watched in horror as the price of a dozen eggs jumped from $.99 to $2.79 and my favorite cottage cheese from $1.78 to $3.35, even if it goes on sale occasionally for $1.99.
So when BlogHer invited me to take on the subject of "frugal grocery shopping," I was happy to take on the challenge, writing down, for the first time, the direction my internal shopping compass points week in and week out.
Four points before starting:
Please know -- I do not intend to tell someone how to live her life, nor do I pretend to understand the challenges and circumstances that guide each person's decisions. Even so, some of my ideas that follow, even to me, sound a little more than "preachy." I use stark "do this" language in order to challenge the conventional wisdom, to get us all to think, me included.
Please know -- I think the modern food distribution system is a marvel, one that delivers fresh, safe food 99.99% of the time, mitigates the risk of regional food shortages, and provides consumers with so many food choices. In many of the money-saving tips that follow, supermarkets sound like the "enemy." They're not. But as consumers, we must vote with our dollars and our feet -- and yes, as here, with our voices -- what we want from our stores. Grocers are good marketers, they'll adjust.
Please know -- you'll see no mention here of "buy local" or "buy organic" for the very reason that this entire post is directed at saving money for individual households. In 2008, most "locally produced foods" and "organic foods" remain more expensive than their grocery-store counterparts because demand is larger than supply and thus prices remain high. If your food budget allows, and local and/or organic food is part of your value
