Grocery Shopping Debate: Healthy vs Unhealthy $$$$

So I'm vegan and I have like 125-150 dollars a month in groceries, which I think is really cheap (at least according to the last FDA stats I saw). Cheap for a non vegan maybe even.

Here is a lot of what I buy at Aldi, which is much cheaper than wal-mart, on my once every couple of months grocery trips:
-Like 35 cans of beans. I drain them, put some seasoning salt, garlic powder, and lots of margarine on them and stick em in the microwave for a delicious no spoons meal. Bean cans are like 50 to 75 cents, so I don't know where this "expensive vegetables" deal comes from. Maybe they cost more outside of Iowa?
-A ten pound bag of potatoes. I've seen it anywhere from 7.00 to 2.50, either way, that is less than a dollar per pound which is pretty cheap if you ask me. No expensive vegetables there!
-Like 10 avocados for 80 cents each. This is the only thing I buy that really rots within two months. I don't like buying a ton of stuff that goes bad because I'm bad at remembering to eat in order. Aldi avocados are bigger than the ones I see at Walmart or the coop, which is nice.
-Three loaves of bread and two loaves (is that the right word?) of bagels. Bread is 89 cents a loaf and the bagels are like a dollar a loaf. Great with margarine or vegan cream cheese.
-Spaghetti and sauce. Pasta costs like 2 dollars for a huge box that lasts the whole two months but I splurge a bit to get the nice sauce from Wal-Mart
-Frozen bags of Brussels sprouts. I think they're like a dollar and each bag is meal sized.
-A ton of soup. Tomato soup is 50 cents a can so I get like 10. Minestrone, lentil, bean, and split pea are like 80 cents so I get like 15 total of those combined.
-All the garlic hummus currently on the shelf. It's like 1.25 a package and they taste so good. Oh man I love hummus.
-A couple boxes of couscous and cans of peas. Peas are like 50 cents and couscous is like a dollar and they go great together. Each couscous box has three or four meals in it, probably more if you're not a big eater.
-Two giant bags of pretzels for snacks. Yum, goes great with hummus! It's like 1.25 for a giant bag that lasts days even if you're eating a couple of pretzel meals because of spoonlessness.
-Four cereal boxes. It's enriched with B12 which is great. Like a dollar a box.
-Three cartons of soy milk. They're like a dollar a carton.
-A few cans of spinach for I think 60 cents a can.
-And then there are things I only get one or two of, like tortillas and applesauce and frozen broccoli and tomatoes and fruit snacks.

At Walmart and the local coop, I get some special vegan stuff like tofurkey and veganaise and fake shake cheese. That stuff is indeed expensive, but it's the minority of my diet and the amount I save at Aldi makes up for it.

I assume I will buy rice at some point but I've been working my way through a 17 pound bag for months so while it's part of my diet it's not part of my budget.

Maybe I can find some receipts to scan.

I have no idea how healthy this is so if I'm missing an obvious nutrient feel free to point it out. I do take B12 pills when I can remember.

 

wow, that's really good for groceries. especially compared to what my family spends on groceries, and I had no idea you could be vegan for that cheap.
it looks pretty healthy to me--I think I'm gonna have to check if Aldi exists where I live, for when I (eventually) move out.

 

A lot of the time people also mean 'fresh vegetables' by 'vegetables' and bitch about how buying tinned/frozen/etc vegetables isn't good enough, which is probably where a good part of that comes from. (Potatoes are great but don't give you vitamin C or count towards the whole '5 servings of fruit and veg per day' afaik, which makes me Sads. But they are great for cheap flexible carbs.)

(Some of it's also probably regional: most non-root vegetables and all fruits are expensive here, because it's fuckin' cold and inhospitable, so nothing grows.)

 

Fresh vegetables rot and some of them take more effort to cook. Also I actually like canned spinach better. It goes well with vinegar in the microwave. The thought is making me hungry and I'm going to eat some right now.

Currently I'm shopping with my parents' money but I figure it's good to build frugal habits as soon as possible. It's not even like the food at Aldi is worse for being cheaper. The six dollar couscous at the coop has many of the same graphics as the Aldi stuff, only moved around and recolored. It lends credence to the whole "it all gets made in the same factory then gets put into different boxes for different stores" thing.

I just plain don't like most fruits. Too sweet/the wrong kind of sweet. I don't like most candy for the same reason. The only fruits I buy regularly are avocados and tomatoes, neither of which are the typical fruits that belong in a fruit salad. I have more of a salt tooth than a sweet tooth.

 

man, i wish groceries here were that cheap. i'm jealous. while I'm not much for canned veg (texture squicks me out), frozen veg and fruit are GREAT. they're allowed to have more mold in them than fresh veg, but i've never had an issue, and they're fresh-frozen so it's still great food and most of the nutrients survive just fine. freezers ftw.

for comparison, up here in Manitoba (i've converted everything to imperial and to USD - also, these are low to mid-range prices, not the absolute cheapest):

can of beans: $1.40
10 lb potatoes: $10.50 ish
avocado: $1.40 each if lucky, usually closer to $1.80-2.10
bread: $3.50-7.00 a loaf
bagels: $5.60 for probably 6?
box of pasta: $2.80-4.20
can of tomato sauce: $1.40-2.150
bag of frozen veg, around 2 lb: $4.20-8.40, depending on type/size (peas are cheaper, broccoli and cauliflower more expensive)
bag of frozen fruit, around 2 lb: $8.40-14
can of simple soup (tomato, mushroom, ~1 cup): $1.40-$2.10
can of meal soup (~2-3 cups): $4.20-9.75
packaged hummus: $4.20-7
couscous (1 lb): $7
box of cereal (1 lb): $5.60-12.50
carton of milk (4 pints): $5
frozen spinach (1 lb): $3.50-4.20
8 tortillas: $3.50
applesauce (1 pint): $2.10
tomatoes: $2.80-5.60/lb

and we're meat-eaters in the house, and meat runs from $3.50 to $14 per pound. (we eat a hell of a lot less meat since the loonie plunged into the abyss, let me tell you ... )

OH and i make my own bread. i get a hell of a lot more loaves out of a $7 bag of flour than a $7 single loaf.

 

Afaik Aldi is the absolute cheapest, not midrange. Like Walmart is a lot more expensive than Aldi, for comparison. The "di" in Aldi stands for discount (actually diskont since it started in Germany). Though I've been considering looking into restaurant supply companies because I've heard they're even cheaper if you're fine with getting the whole year's worth of bean cans at once.

Those prices are wow. Seven dollars for a loaf of bread? Hummus too? Holy shit. Sorry it's that expensive where you are. Aldi frozen veggie bags are only one pound, but half your 2 pound cost is still more. I do pay (I think?) 2.00 or 3.00 per can of tomato sauce, though. Classico garlic spaghetti sauce has my brand loyalty because the stuff at Aldi is barely edible. I also buy soy sauce for 3 or 4 dollars a bottle because anything but kikkoman grates on my buds.

I get the kids' snack type applesauce that comes in several small containers rather than one big one. It's for eating between classes (I'm in college).

How cheap exactly is it to make your own bread? Could I beat 89 cents a loaf?

 

Are beans considered veg in North America? They'd be pulses, here.

@Kaylotta that is really expensive! London is famously expensive for groceries and living costs, but I think I'd expect to find everything on that list apart from meat and avocados cheaper. Though I do usually buy the cheapest possible, unless there's something I don't like about it (e.g. I can get canned beans in the big Sainsbury's near me for $0.50 converted, but if I go to the smaller stores the cheapest is $0.60 and it's in salted water, which I'm not that keen on.)

 

It's kind of wobbly - for nutritional purposes, they're considered either a vegetable or a protein, based on where you get the majority of your protein from in the first place. They're a veg for omnivores, a protein for vegetarians and vegans. And potatoes are considered to be a starch for nutritional purposes.

I would kill for 80 cent each avocados. Uuugh, they're so expensive in Finland, especially in the winter. But winter has clementines super cheap (my last bag of them was under 2€), so it's not all bad.

@Kaylotta I am WEEPING at your bread and milk prices. They're all awful, but those two strike me as the worst - especially since they're worse than the prices were when I lived in the SF Bay area, or the prices I saw when I visited Aud in Bellingham, and those places were ridiculous.

 

Makes sense. I don't think they'd count here as a vegetable for 5-a-day purposes, but considering how much fibre and vitamins they have that seems like a fairly arbitrary exclusion (and probably a political one).

I was trying to work out recently if I could save money by buying more tinned and frozen veg. Considering that I cook just for myself and I don't particularly mind eating the same thing every day until it's finished, as far as I can tell it comes out about the same price gram-for-gram. Especially since to get cheaper frozen veg I have to go to a big supermarket, where they also sell cheaper fresh produce. That's just here, though.

 

The issue I have with the Northern UK is that in order to buy fresh fruit/veg, I have to buy only a small amount at a time, since it goes bad within about 2 days. So I either have to pay extra money (and make many more grocery trips!) to buy things a little at a time, or buy in more bulk and let half or more go bad. (And that's even worse with fruit, since most things around here come in bags or boxes, so if I want, for example, nectarines, I have to buy about eight, and watch six of them go bad (or eat four per day, which would be terrible.)) This is much lessened when I have my partner living with me, because suddenly the fruit/veg consumption ability is increased enough to make it possible.

(there are of course other issues re: price, accessibility, etc, but this is a relevant one)

 

True. Have you seen the Co op's ad campaign is "Little. Often."? I find it inexplicably infuriating. Stop trying to make me spend more money more frequently. >:(

 

From Berlin/Germany here, have reliable access to a SHITTON of fresh produce for REALLY cheap.
however, because of washing and cutting and spoiling I personally prefer frozen. Frozen vegetables have a high likelihood to actually be FRESHER than any non frozen produce in the stores, since they get frozen pretty much straight off the field so honestly debating they are unhealthy is bullshit.
With canned veggies its a biiiiiiiiiit different? but idk.
Aldi, and other grocery discount stores for that matter, is a godsent. Seriously.
Personally I can say that here, convenience meals like frozen and prepped pizza, pasta or fast food meals are a LOT more expensive than homecooked meals when it comes down to it. I'm not judging, i know why people need them, but veggies and fruit here just aren't that expensive.
Meat and fish can be hella expensive if you want to go cruelty free and ecofriendly basically? it doesn't ahve to be, but it can probably tally up to a big chunk of the grocery budget if people eat meat more often than the recommended twice weekly? on the other hand, vegan meat substitutes can be stupidly expensive too, like way worse than meat prices.
Milk and milk products are PRETTY cheap? but vegan milk substitutes, again super expensive.
so it's probably possible to live healthy on the cheap if you are somewhere that has a good produce selection and decent competition forcing prices to be reasonable. But Germany is fucking blessed with food supply, since we have our own agricultural sector producing a lot and then the entire EU we can import tax free from sooooo

 

...You know, I've been reading this thread wondering why I don't buy frozen stuff or freeze stuff myself, knowing there must be a reason, etc. (Apart from the appalling freezer burn frozen peas had growing up, which could probably be ameliorated with better freezing habits.)

I just now remembered I don't have a freezer. -facepalms-

 

K so

@BPD anon I suspect with your cheaper ingredients you could get damn close to beating 89c a loaf. For me a loaf of bread costs roughly 1-1.50 CAD (on phone, can't convert, just multiply by 1.39), with $1 being most basic (oil, water, all purpose flour, yeast, sugar, salt, soy protein), and $1.50 being fancier (butter, milk, white and/or whole wheat flour, maybe some 12-grain cereal, yeast, honey, salt). A 22lb bag of flour costs $5-6 on sale ($7 ish not), and that'll do roughly 40 loaves? I have more specific numbers at home...

@erryone: yeah food prices are dumb. I suspect a lot of it is just import/transport costs - I don't think there's any shipping on the Red or Assiniboine Rivers, so almost everything is trucked in. *maybe* by rail but not usually. And that also extends to local food, because something always has to be shipped. However, it is also midwinter here, and food is more expensive in general, because anything fresh has to be brought in. Prices do go down in summer. Also, like I said, those aren't the dirt cheap options. They're low to mid. I could probably shave off a semi-decent amount (like storebought bread for $2.50, that sort of savings) if I shopped at WalMart, but the quality of a lot of things really does take a dive, and I have to be careful of things like cholesterol and sodium fot health reasons. :|. I really really wish Aldi was in Canada - I don't think it is at all, but it's certainly not here in Manitoba.

also, our dollar is the lowest it's been in literally a decade, I think. Several years ago we were almost at par with the US dollar, so my prices would be closer to @BPD anon's (probably 10-50c more?)

that's not to mention how bloody expensive it is up in the ACTUAL north. A small beef roast would cost me about 20-25 bucks - up in the north it would easily cost $75.

oh and about beans. I consider them a protein, personally, but they do kind of fall into a gray area. This is agriculture/ranch land: pretty much no one who's been here more than two generations was likely to be raised with vegetarian meals. It's slowly becoming more prevalent, but it's a process. Potatoes are definitely a starch.

imma complain more because why do I live here. I'm not fishing for pity, no worries :)

another example...I went grocery shopping yesterday. These are in CAD as close as I can remember...
12 eggs - $4?
2L milk - $3.50
800g cheese? - $10
4 apples - $2.50
6 bananas - $1.40
450g ground chicken - $5 (on sale from $7)
400g beef strips - $4.50?
450g pork stew cubes - $4?
6 x 156g cat food - 6x60c
600g deli meat - $10

$50, and most of it will be consumed within the week. Uuuuuuugh why does our economy have to be SO SHIT rb. Seriously mr idiot Harper why did you put EVERY SINGLE DAMN EGG in the oil and gas industry basket you blithering twit. Now J's getting his hours cut because the West is tanking (ha) and food is even more expensive. >:(

 

oh my god poor you that's some attrocious prizes.
i gather the cheese is relatively simple and not a super fancy one right? bc... Like i've paid 20 bucks for this amount fo cheese... when i bought roquefort for a fancy dinner. People who don't have ridiculous standars for cheese should be able to get it way cheaper D:

 

It's just a block of marble. A similar size of cheddar or mozzarella would cost about the same - moving up to Gouda or Edam or Swiss would add a couple dollars. I would pay about the same for half as much of a gourmet cheese - Brie is a little cheaper (maybe $7-8 for 600g), but anything else is expensive. Cheaper cheese is...processed cheese product. You can get better value if you buy a large block (like 2.5kg? I can't remember now) but it's like $25. It usually ends up being about a dollar per 100g...

 

processed cheese product isn't real cheese :/ (i... am picky about cheese)
I was a bit confused for a second because cheddar is moreexpensive than gouda here but uh lol european cheese preferances and stuff

 

So, prefacing with the fact that Moony is allergic to wheat + lactose intolerant + a celiac who has issues with frozen veg, and I have A Thing about citrus/green beans/apples (I'd call it a food aversion to the fruits, but green beans will make me violently ill. They're also pretty much the cheapest canned veg we can find, other than corn) and both of us run hideously short on spoons by the time dinner rolls around. Our bill usually runs around 300-350 for the month, but we also don't shop every month, so sometimes that expense is us replenishing the emergency supply too.

Since we're gluten free and already losing out on a lot of cheap options b/c of wheat being a filler, it's astronomically expensive to eat vegan. Vegetarian isn't too bad in our area, and all things considered we have a ton of gluten-free options, but once you tip over into "no animal byproducts at all", things get pretty pricey. Canned veg + frozen meals aren't too hard on us, and we supplement with beans, but most of our meat these days is sausage (it goes in everything! it's cheaper than a pound of ground beef!) and deli cuts, since they're both low spoons quick fixes for protein issues. Pretty much all of our meals involve rice at some point.

On the bright side, we've got a Korean/Japanese grocer within about an hour, hour and a half's drive. Even making the trip around once every 2-3 months, we save a ton on sauces and these huge bags of rice, which run us around less than a dollar a pound when we buy straight from her. Adding in the other things we get (seaweed, beans, pickled radish at one point, rice seasonings, and pounds of miso), that accounts for a good chunk of reliably gluten free food that we can make fast and easy.

I know for a fact that I can't subsist on a vegan/vegetarian diet, and neither can Moony. They ended up in the hospital last time they tried, and the few occasions I've gone without meat for money reasons, I get sick as a dog and my sugar crashes pretty much every hour on the hour while I'm desperately trying to find a different protein to sub in.

When I used to live in NorCal with my stepmom, we shopped at WinCo, which is a lot like a grocery specific CostCo. Fabulous fucking place. The fresh veg was shit, but you could load up on four pound rolls of ground beef and thirty piece chicken breast packs for pennies, and the canned food was even easier. Feeding a family of five, we mostly did with frozen/canned veg, hamburger helper (or some chicken/beef variant with a spice pack) and rice. Monthly bill there ran about 300 again, and that was with two entire grocery carts filled to the brim. It would have cost more to go vegan, because the meat prices were so negligible that it was the thing we worried about least when picking food up, and there were a few months where we'd be scraping by on cup noodles and water because we were running low on money.

Whether that was healthy? Ehhh. A lot of "healthy" food diets are really low in calorie count I've noticed, and two teenagers and a rapidly growing ten year old just can't subsist on low-cal food. I'd say we did pretty well, since both of them were healthy sports kids and I didn't pass out from sugar crashes.

 

I understand that many people cannot eat vegan for various reasons. I just wanted to brag a bit about how cheap I can buy my groceries.

 

which is totally a thing you can brag about! grocery shopping at maximum efficiency is super hard @_@