Author Topic: Food costs chart  (Read 4943 times)

Richard Jones

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Food costs chart
« on: May 27, 2017, 11:54:30 AM »
Hey Y'all,

I'm a longtime MMM reader, but this is my first time posting in the forum. As part of a blog post I wrote (which I won't link to, per the anti-spam rules; you can find my website in my signature), I gathered a bunch of data about how many calories per dollar are provided by a whole bunch of foods and I thought it might be handy for my fellow Mustachians. So here's the chart:



Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-fhE764vXGU2R4qMcXvoXhusGB4zpGoRrCIIeWtNv74/pubchart?oid=1433310807&format=interactive

Here are my takeaways from going through all of the numbers:

1. If you want to feed yourself on the cheap, then grains, starches, and oils should comprise a significant portion of your diet.
2. Meat can be surprisingly cheap, despite it's reputation, especially chicken (and eggs). Even ground beef isn't too bad.
3. If you are not lactose intolerant, milk is a total life hack, especially for growing children. It's cheap, available everywhere, and it contains carbs, fat, and protein in a proportion that is optimized for growing mammals. Doesn't work for a low-carb diet, though.
4. For fats, you should be looking at oils, butter, and cheese.
5. Fruits and non-root vegetables are a luxury. Consume accordingly.
6. Eating berries and seafood is like lighting money on fire.

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And here's a link to the Google Sheet that I created to generate it, in case anybody wants to dig into my methodology (some of the formulas are pretty advanced, so feel free to ask questions):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-fhE764vXGU2R4qMcXvoXhusGB4zpGoRrCIIeWtNv74/pubhtml#

I should note: all prices were gathered from my local Fred Meyer in August 2016. I heartily encourage you to gather numbers from your local grocery stores. Using the nutrition facts on the label, the basic formula is: Number of Servings, multiplied by Calories per Serving, divided by Total Cost.

Here's a (real) example (Tillamook Cheddar cheese):

Number of Servings: 80
Calories per Serving: 110
Total Cost: $18.79

So: 80 servings * 110 calories per serving = 8,000 total calories per block of cheese / $18.79 cost = 468 calories per dollar

---

Let me know what you think!
« Last Edit: May 27, 2017, 12:13:17 PM by Richard Jones »

The Money Monk

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Re: Food costs chart
« Reply #1 on: May 28, 2017, 12:02:41 AM »
Whole rotisserie chickens are marked as having roughly 2400 to 2600 calories, but you list them at 1250 per dollar. Where are you getting a whole chicken for $2?

Monkey Uncle

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Re: Food costs chart
« Reply #2 on: May 28, 2017, 09:59:01 AM »
I appreciate your effort, but a simple calories per dollar graph doesn't tell anywhere near the whole story.  If all we needed was calories, then we should just mix up a batter of wheat flour and water and fry patties of it in canola oil.  You don't eat vegetables for the calories, you eat them for the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber, etc. that you can't get from other foods.  Of course they're going to look crazy expensive if you compare them to fats on a calories per dollar basis.

A family of charts that compare meats to meats, starches to starches, mono-unsaturated fats to mono-unsaturated fats, sugars to sugars, on a calories per dollar basis would be more useful.  Dairy products would have to be compared on a cost per unit of calcium basis.  Vegetables would be nearly impossible to compare due to the wide variety of nutrients that are available from different types of vegetables.  You need all of those nutrients, so you'd have to have at least a dozen or so charts just for the vegetables.

Abe

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Re: Food costs chart
« Reply #3 on: May 28, 2017, 08:17:24 PM »
Interesting data, thanks for preparing the chart. I'm surprised how cost-inefficient fish is. At least it tastes good!

Richard Jones

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Re: Food costs chart
« Reply #4 on: May 28, 2017, 10:53:00 PM »
Whole rotisserie chickens are marked as having roughly 2400 to 2600 calories, but you list them at 1250 per dollar. Where are you getting a whole chicken for $2?

This is a good question. There are a bunch of foods which are priced by pound of weight, mostly produce and meat. Whole chickens are one of them. This is actually an item that stood out to me as well, because something felt wrong about a whole chicken being cheaper per calorie than BOTH chicken breast (usually the most expensive part of the chicken, per calorie) and chicken thigh (usually the least expensive part). Logically, it should be somewhere in between those two.

Well, the whole chickens were on sale when I initially gathered data at $0.77/lb (as a point of comparison, chicken thighs where $1.25/lb, so that's almost 50% less per pound for the whole chicken). So I went back about three weeks later and, lo and behold, the whole chickens were on sale for $0.77/lb. So, I basically chalked it up to whole chickens being commonly available at that price. And at that price, a 3.5lb chicken costs $2.69, which is near the number you arrived at.

Now, there is one way that the calorie calculation could be off. For items that are priced by weight, I am using the USDA nutrition information to calculate the cost/calorie (rather than going by the nutrition facts label, which is not available for produce). There is a possibility, though, that I'm using the wrong USDA item for whole chickens and that is affecting the cost/calorie for this item. The one I'm using is "CHICKEN,ROASTING,MEAT&SKN&GIBLETS&NECK,RAW", which seems about right to me...

But I believe most meat has a nutrition facts label on the packaging, so I'll stop by that grocery store in the next few days and see if the nutrition facts label on their whole chickens agrees with my previous calculations.

I'll let you know what I find.

Richard Jones

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Re: Food costs chart
« Reply #5 on: May 28, 2017, 11:05:41 PM »
I appreciate your effort, but a simple calories per dollar graph doesn't tell anywhere near the whole story.

Oh yeah, I don't at all mean for this to be the only tool you need to buy food intelligently. But, by definition, you need to know how much stuff costs in order to optimize on cost, so I thought this might come in handy as a reference. I know that it has been useful in steering our family toward more cost efficient meals.

A family of charts that compare meats to meats, starches to starches, mono-unsaturated fats to mono-unsaturated fats, sugars to sugars, on a calories per dollar basis would be more useful.

Sounds like a challenge! I'll see what I can whip up in the next little while. Comparing foods within a food group will be easy with the data I currently have. Breaking things down by source of carb/protein/fat, not so much, since I didn't gather that data. I am planning to write a blog post in the future that will require gathering more detailed information and which should necessitate some new graphs. I'll share when I do.

Goldielocks

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Re: Food costs chart
« Reply #6 on: May 28, 2017, 11:16:28 PM »
I appreciate your effort, but a simple calories per dollar graph doesn't tell anywhere near the whole story.  If all we needed was calories, then we should just mix up a batter of wheat flour and water and fry patties of it in canola oil.  You don't eat vegetables for the calories, you eat them for the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber, etc. that you can't get from other foods.  Of course they're going to look crazy expensive if you compare them to fats on a calories per dollar basis.

A family of charts that compare meats to meats, starches to starches, mono-unsaturated fats to mono-unsaturated fats, sugars to sugars, on a calories per dollar basis would be more useful.  Dairy products would have to be compared on a cost per unit of calcium basis.  Vegetables would be nearly impossible to compare due to the wide variety of nutrients that are available from different types of vegetables.  You need all of those nutrients, so you'd have to have at least a dozen or so charts just for the vegetables.

This is really a cool way to look at it.  i think MMM did it this way in the early days.

For the debbie doubters, you could consider this -- to reduce costs,  plan your calories around 1800 from the starch / oils, then eat the rest from your veggies, starting with low cost items (frozen spinach comes to mind, here).

Someone put out a call for low cost, high calorie recipe contest.   I was surprised how a "Beef pot pie" or a "Potato and egg pie" ranked on the scale, when made with lard based crust.

HipGnosis

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Re: Food costs chart
« Reply #7 on: May 29, 2017, 07:30:41 PM »

This is a good question. There are a bunch of foods which are priced by pound of weight, mostly produce and meat. Whole chickens are one of them. This is actually an item that stood out to me as well, because something felt wrong about a whole chicken being cheaper per calorie than BOTH chicken breast (usually the most expensive part of the chicken, per calorie) and chicken thigh (usually the least expensive part). Logically, it should be somewhere in between those two.

Well, the whole chickens were on sale when I initially gathered data at $0.77/lb (as a point of comparison, chicken thighs where $1.25/lb, so that's almost 50% less per pound for the whole chicken). So I went back about three weeks later and, lo and behold, the whole chickens were on sale for $0.77/lb. So, I basically chalked it up to whole chickens being commonly available at that price. And at that price, a 3.5lb chicken costs $2.69, which is near the number you arrived at.
But...  a 3.5 lb whole chicken doesn't have 3.5 lbs of meat.   Google says 62% of a whole chicken is meat.

Goldielocks

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Re: Food costs chart
« Reply #8 on: May 30, 2017, 12:11:55 PM »

This is a good question. There are a bunch of foods which are priced by pound of weight, mostly produce and meat. Whole chickens are one of them. This is actually an item that stood out to me as well, because something felt wrong about a whole chicken being cheaper per calorie than BOTH chicken breast (usually the most expensive part of the chicken, per calorie) and chicken thigh (usually the least expensive part). Logically, it should be somewhere in between those two.

Well, the whole chickens were on sale when I initially gathered data at $0.77/lb (as a point of comparison, chicken thighs where $1.25/lb, so that's almost 50% less per pound for the whole chicken). So I went back about three weeks later and, lo and behold, the whole chickens were on sale for $0.77/lb. So, I basically chalked it up to whole chickens being commonly available at that price. And at that price, a 3.5lb chicken costs $2.69, which is near the number you arrived at.
But...  a 3.5 lb whole chicken doesn't have 3.5 lbs of meat.   Google says 62% of a whole chicken is meat.
  And 50% of a chicken leg / thigh is meat..

Goldielocks

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Re: Food costs chart
« Reply #9 on: May 30, 2017, 12:20:57 PM »
I just made my own greek yogurt.   From this chart, I realize that home-made dairy foods are pretty much the same cost per calorie as whole milk.  Now that's a win.

Looks like a homemade donut would be the winner, though.

Also, local avocados here are 80 calories per dollar, and apples are 72 calories per dollar (on sale), green leaf lettuce right now is 21 calories per dollar. ..  Gosh dang it,  fresh veggies should be getting cheaper by now!  Is there another drought somewhere?  Skyrocketing fuel costs?