Now is time to examine grocery bill

Every week, I’m shocked at how high my gro­cery bill is. Please share any tips you can on sav­ing money on groceries.

Actu­ally, agri­cul­tural econ­o­mists don’t expect the cost of food to rise dra­mat­i­cally because of the drought, although you will see some higher-than-normal increases in meat and poul­try, eggs, and milk.

That’s because the ani­mals that pro­duce those prod­ucts eat so much corn, and corn prices are increas­ing because of the drought. The U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture expects the cost of beef and dairy prod­ucts, for exam­ple, to raise just 1 per­cent higher than the 2.5 to 3.5 per­cent hike nor­mally seen due to inflation.

On the other hand, much of the pro­duce grown in the coun­try is irri­gated and likely won’t be affected too much by the drought.

The nutri­tion world is cap­i­tal­iz­ing on con­cern over higher meat prices and expected sta­ble prices for pro­duce: It’s sug­gest­ing that maybe now is the time to more closely fol­low MyPlate, which helps con­sumers meet the Dietary Guide­lines for Amer­i­cans, and boost intake of fruit and veg­eta­bles and reduce con­sump­tion of meat.

Try it: Plan one or more meat­less meals a week, or adopt a more Mediterranean-style diet by cook­ing small amounts of meat with a wide vari­ety of veg­eta­bles. It can help save you money and help bal­ance your diet.

Some other ideas to get more from your dol­lar include:

• If you don’t already, plan your meals and make a gro­cery list. Check for adver­tised spe­cials and plan meals around what’s on sale.

• Look for pro­duce that’s in-season. It’s usu­ally so abun­dant that gro­cery stores offer great deals on it.

• Look for smaller apples, bananas and other indi­vid­ual fruits. You’ll get more serv­ings per pound.

• Buy dry milk and use it in cook­ing instead of the more expen­sive reg­u­lar milk. It will last sev­eral months in a tightly sealed con­tainer, or you can keep it in the freezer in a reseal­able zip­per stor­age bag to last even longer.

• Check the gro­ceries at dis­count and dol­lar stores to see if you can save money on items you reg­u­larly use.

• Deter­mine how much you pay for convenience.

You could save a bun­dle by buy­ing heads of let­tuce instead of pre-bagged sal­ads, and reg­u­lar rice, pud­ding and oat­meal instead of instant.

Chow Line is a ser­vice of Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion and the Ohio Agri­cul­tural Research and Devel­op­ment Cen­ter. Send ques­tions to Chow Line, c/o Martha Fil­ipic, 2021 Cof­fey Road, Colum­bus, OH 43210–1044, or filipic.3@cfaes.osu.edu.

Posted by Martha Filipic on Jan 2 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.