I can completely identify with this post. I am just buying for one, but regularly spend $300-400 for just me. I've had months of maybe squeezing under $300, but I was eating from the freezer mostly. I do live in a small mountain town in CO, very HCOL, very few options. I stock up at Costco, Sprouts, etc when I'm on the Front Range...but I do think prices in general are higher in CO, than maybe in coastal states such as California, Washington, etc...especially for produce!
I also don't buy the cheapest meat I can find, the cheapest milk, eggs, etc because it's important to me to know where my food is coming from. Especially in a farming heavy state like CO, it makes sense to me to purchase eggs, meat, etc from farmers that are close by, and raising animals with good practice. It's usually decently inexpensive as well, if you find small farmers who aren't selling their meat to health food stores, etc already. I realize the meat/egg quality is more of a personal issue for me, but it does keep my expenses a little higher.
On quantity of food, some of the meal posts I've seen here on MMM are pretty small. I am super active, mountain bike racing, hiking, running, skiing, etc and just a tall, fit person, and I eat a lot! Sometimes I exercise for 5-6 hours a day when I'm training. A family pack of chicken will feed me for maybe 3-4 meals...I make salads with a whole head of romaine, a whole cucumber, half an avocado, two chicken thighs, etc...which is like double of most of the meals I see quoted. It's important to me to nourish my body with enough good calories, as I've had issues with not eating enough in the past. I can't eat gluten, or dairy, and so it's not like I can just eat a bunch of Greek yogurt, or make a big sandwich. My meals are super veggie heavy, with good fats (avocados, olives, olive oil, etc).
I'll throw out my opinion, which is that I just wouldn't worry about it too much. I bet that you can reduce your grocery spending down to about $600 with some careful tracking, and less purchasing of $2.00 energy bars, etc...but beyond that, if I was feeding two of me, I think I would be right up there in the $600 range, and that is about where I need to be healthy. But, I think I'm probably a lot different than many of the MMM forum posters, in that I would rather spend the money on my food and health, than on pretty much anything else, so take my advice with a grain of salt!
I agree with the above poster. I am consistently shocked at how low some peoples' food bills are on this site, even though I can identify areas that we could reduce. But not THAT much. Consumables are the single biggest struggle in our budget.
We are two people (one average-size and fairly active/one twig-like and moderately active), and our total grocery bills (NOT including DH eating out, which burns a lot of money; or booze, which we have managed to reduce cost on), regularly runs 500-700$ per month. And that's with me (the twig) eating only two meals per day.
After several years of tracking, price comparing, and making some effort to shop meat sales, I did manage to reduce it a bit, so it tends to run more on the 500-600 rather than 700 range. But still, there are months where it shoots up shockingly. This December we spent 809$!! for two of us + one expensive holiday dinner for 3, not including eating out or alcohol or pet supplies (another 160$).
So I feel your pain.
In our area, Walmart and Target are the cheapest options for most things. Walmart makes my skin crawl, so NOPE that's out. Target is fine, but out of the way...so I go only about every 2 months. If I go more often, we do save more money. Sprouts is right in our regular driving line and is fine for on-sale veggies or meat, but murder on the wallet for everything else. It's too easy for us to 'go to Sprouts for the 1.77/lb chicken breasts and sale produce', and end up also throwing in grassfed beef or bison, a few packaged items, etc., all markedly more expensive than at regular stores.
Tracking my receipts over the past few years, there are really only a few areas that act as giant money sinks...
Flash frozen Pacific salmon, about 5 meals/month at 10$ per package = 50$/month
Godiva or Lindt dark chocolate for after dinner, two squares each = 1 bar/person every 4 days = 30-50$/month FOR CHOCOLATE ALONE.
That's almost 80-100$ month spending on TWO items, neither of which we are willing to give up.
Supplements/medications. In the past few years as I struggled with health issues, I tried a bunch of different vitamins thinking they might help. Turns out most didn't and a few made the situation worse. However, I do buy expensive probiotics (20$/month), and a few supplements that I do actually need (~25$ month).
I also don't eat much gluten or dairy, but ended up subbing in slightly more expensive substitutes, which probably accounted for another 20$/month additional spending.
I struggle to gain weight as well, and had been upping protein and fat intake the past few years. I've also been trying to increase my intake of grassfed red meat because my iron is running low. However, I have had limited success with these strategies and am thinking I'm going to stop trying so hard. It's too damn expensive to glop nut or olive oils on everything, or make sure I eat eggs or meat with every meal, or pay for grass-fed burger every week.
Etc etc.
Essentially, what I've found is there are some spending elements that account for very large chunks of our monthly budget but that we just aren't going to to change. There are others (meat sales) that really do make a difference when I pay attention to them. Still others we definitely could do better on (less meat overall, eating produce according to what is on sale rather than by our rote meals of what we like).
It's a continual struggle, and I don't foresee ever approaching the low grocery costs touted on this forum. And that doesn't even take into account DH's eating out, which accounts for another 200$/month. That I/we could definitely fix if we packed lunches or bulk-cooked. I wish I didn't dislike cooking so damn much.
Maybe this year. :sigh: