Food Budgets 101
Sep. 6th, 2011 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daidoji_giseiThe USDA allots exactly $200 a month of food stamps* for a one person household, and so that is the amount of money I intend to spend on food groceries for the month of September.
Normally when someone starts a blog post that way they are intending on making some grand statement on (circle all that apply): the USDA, food stamps, people who use food stamps, the shopping habits of Americans in general. My motive is more personal and more prosaic: I am trying to figure how much I should spend in a month for food, and the USDA number gives me a place to start. One might think I could figure this out just from looking at my check register, but my check amounts are confounded by things like toilet paper, mouse traps and my unfortunate fondness for the fried chicken at Russ's deli counter. Starting this month I am trying to tease out what the grocery-only expense is.
This budget works out to about $46 a week for groceries,which strikes me as a lot of money. On the other hand I am probably an oddball among American shoppers, as I don't eat meat often and I like to cook from scratch as opposed to buying preprocessed foods. Some of this is due my age: I am of the generation who knows how to cook because I grew up watching my parents cook. Some of it is temperment: I just like making stuff.
I was a little worried about keeping myself supplied with fruit, as one of my personal goals is to eat as many peaches as possible. However this is the time they are in season, so I've been finding them at essentially the same cost as apples, my go-to fruit the rest of the year. (I try to eat bananas a few times a week because of their nutritional value, but they really aren't satisfying to me as a food. Too much squish, not enough chewing.)
The science nerd in me is currently excited about the prospect of coming up with hard numbers for part of my life. I hope it stays excited enough to keep up with the record-keeping.
*It's not called food stamps anymore, but I don't know anyone who uses the new name even among my acquaintances who are receiving the benefits. So I am going to continue to use the phrase in the interests of clarity.
Normally when someone starts a blog post that way they are intending on making some grand statement on (circle all that apply): the USDA, food stamps, people who use food stamps, the shopping habits of Americans in general. My motive is more personal and more prosaic: I am trying to figure how much I should spend in a month for food, and the USDA number gives me a place to start. One might think I could figure this out just from looking at my check register, but my check amounts are confounded by things like toilet paper, mouse traps and my unfortunate fondness for the fried chicken at Russ's deli counter. Starting this month I am trying to tease out what the grocery-only expense is.
This budget works out to about $46 a week for groceries,which strikes me as a lot of money. On the other hand I am probably an oddball among American shoppers, as I don't eat meat often and I like to cook from scratch as opposed to buying preprocessed foods. Some of this is due my age: I am of the generation who knows how to cook because I grew up watching my parents cook. Some of it is temperment: I just like making stuff.
I was a little worried about keeping myself supplied with fruit, as one of my personal goals is to eat as many peaches as possible. However this is the time they are in season, so I've been finding them at essentially the same cost as apples, my go-to fruit the rest of the year. (I try to eat bananas a few times a week because of their nutritional value, but they really aren't satisfying to me as a food. Too much squish, not enough chewing.)
The science nerd in me is currently excited about the prospect of coming up with hard numbers for part of my life. I hope it stays excited enough to keep up with the record-keeping.
*It's not called food stamps anymore, but I don't know anyone who uses the new name even among my acquaintances who are receiving the benefits. So I am going to continue to use the phrase in the interests of clarity.
