COST OF FOODS
Many students tell me that it is too expensive to eat healthfully. I would like you to explore that concept in this Assignment. There is an answer sheet that goes with this.
Step One:
Decide if you are going to be using just yourself or a family unit as the example. Write this on the answer sheet and explain the composition of the people. One college age student – female or Family composed of one parent and three children (ages)
Step Two:
For five days (do not have to be consecutive) keep track of how much money is spent on food away from home. This will include bottled water or other beverages, snack foods, restaurant foods, etc. Please do not use special, high expense meals unless they are fairly regular for you. Instead imagine a regular meal you might eat and substitute it. If you seldom purchase anything away from home, you could keep track of your own over a longer period of time or please ask someone else in the household to keep track of their expenses. Use the chart on the answer page or make up your own to show what was purchased, its price and how many it served. Keep the items with a meal together (maybe color coded) Example:
| Vitamin Water | $1.39 | One |
| Burger King dinner | $14.56 | Four family members |
| Bag of chips | $0.99 | One |
Step Three:
Add up how much was spent on foods/beverages away from home.
Divide this into how much was for meals (including the beverages at that meal) and how much was for snacks and beverages (outside of a meal). Put an * next to each food/beverage that you included in the meals.
Figure how many meals/person were eaten away from home. For our example we are using a family of four. Say there were three family meals eaten away from home so that would be three meals x 4 people so 12 individual meals. Also, 5 times a member of the family ate out on their own. 12 + 5 = 17 individual meals eaten out for the household. Divide the total cost of meals (not including the loose beverages/snacks) by how many individual meals were eaten. In the example we are using this family spent $68 dollars on the 17 individual meals so 68/17 = $4 per meal (per person).
Step Four:
Plan two meals for this person/family that come in right about or under the amount they spent per meal. These meals are to be what you could prepare at home (not less-expensive restaurant food). This could be one lunch and one dinner, or two dinner meals. Think of what we have learned about healthy meals and follow the MyPlate suggestions. It should contain a lean protein source, a grain, 2 servings of produce (fruits and/or vegetables). May include milk or soy milk or a non-sweetened beverage or, of course, water. The grain should be whole grain. Give the foods description – ‘vegetable’ is not sufficient – instead ‘steamed broccoli’ is. Each item in the meal is to be costed separately (excluding spices and other small items). An example is right below. You do not have to purchase these meals you are just evaluating the cost of eating a healthy meal. Costing information is found below Step Five.
| Chicken Breast grilled | 3 ounces | 4.59 per lb. or 0.29 per oz.
=$0.87 (87 cents for 3 ounces) |
| brown rice | ½ cup (4 ounces) | 1.09 for 16 oz. or 0.07 per oz.…..4 ounces *0.07=$0.28
(28 cents for ½ cup) |
Step Five:
Describe your reactions to the cost of eating out. Could this money be better spent? How easy/hard was it to plan a decent meal that was not expensive? Hopefully, the meals you planned were of better nutritional quality than what was eaten away from home. You can also think of other foods that are bought to eat at home, but which are of little nutritional value, such as sodas and snack foods. How much more money would your family have to spend on healthy foods if you stopped buying these unhealthy foods or even bottled water? This should be at least 200 words.
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How do you go about costing this? Take a calculator and pen/paper to the grocery store. Note the price of the food and figure how many servings you need. Use the Nutrition Facts Panel to tell you the serving size and how many of those there are in that box, container, etc. Decide how much of that food your person/family will eat. Remember that grains like rice expand almost quadruple. Beans expand about double if cooked from dry. Look for whatever fruits are least expensive.
Bread: pick a loaf of whole wheat bread, look for how many slices in bag. Example: $2.89/16 = .18 so 18 cents per slice. If two slices for a sandwich then 36 cents.
Fruits: Look for the least expensive. Example: 3 pound bag of apples = 10 apples for $2.50 so 25 cents per apple. You can weigh in the scales in the produce section.
Meat: Sold by the pound so divide by 16 to get price per ounce then decide how many ounces in meal – suggest 2 ounces for a sandwich and 3 – 4 ounces for dinner
Vegetables: You can weigh in the scales in the produce section. One head of broccoli could serve about 4 people. You would have to do some guessing. Easy to use one sweet potato or such per person.
Grains: Rice – My bag of rice says that ¼ cup dry will make almost one cup and there are 19 servings in the bag so $1.89/19 = 10 cents per cup of cooked rice. Decide how many cups of rice are eaten.
Whole wheat spaghetti noodles – A box of noodles may say that the serving size is 2 ounces dry (may be ~1/2 CUP cooked) and there are about 7 servings. Family of four could probably eat the whole box.
Dairy – easy to calculate – a gallon of milk is 16 cups, cheese comes by the ounce – divide cost by number of ounces.
Generally speaking, the more a food is processed the more it costs. The more preparation you do the less it costs. Roast your own chicken instead of buying it already roasted is an example.
