What is your food budget?

If you think gasoline is expensive, you should check out the price of a gallon of milk! In our store, the current price for one gallone of milk is $4.19. I filled up the gas tank in my Honda van today, and paid $2.97 per gallon. Gasoline prices are effecting everything from FedEx Shipments to Herb Cooperative deliveries. There is no surprise at all that food
is becoming one of the most difficult things to obtain for the average American family. Poverty is on the rise and everyone is counting their pennies at the grocery store check out.

I was recently looking at a poll on a parent website and the question was "Approximately How Much Does Your Food Budget Translate To Per Person, Per Day?"

The results of the poll:

Per eater, per day average grocery cost?

How Much / Number of Voters

Under $1 0
$1 - 1
$2 - 10
$3 - 20
$4 - 19
$5 - 14
$6 - 7
$7 - 6
$8 - 1
$9 - 1
$10 - 2
$11 - 0
$12 or more - 3
Voters: 84

So out of 84 voters, most of the voters said they spent approximately $3.00 per person, per day. My family of four definately eats more than $360.00 of food per month. I would say our grocery costs compare to $4.00 per person, per day, and possibly $5.00 per person, per day.

For a better comparison, the voters should have told us what age their children were. I have an 11 year old boy, and he eats and sleeps, rarely doing anything else! We had Taco Bell for dinner the night before last, and by the time we reach home (15 minutes later) he wanted to know what was for dinner! He could eat as much food as I could give him. I am always amazed by how much milk, hot oatmeal and peanut butter and jam sandwiches that he can consume in a few short hours. He gets on an eating jag, where he wants the same food, and all macaroni and cheese all day just can't be that good. He craves certain foods.

We have three stores where we shop to fill our pantry and frige. Kroger has all the $10 for $10 specials (waffles, bread, crackers, pasta sauce and such) and I tend to get about 40 items. I also shop for our dry legumes (black beans, pintos and chickpeas) at Kroger. I shop at Wild Oats (recently taken over by Whole Foods)for our favorite Stoney Farms yogurt, Kagome juice and any organic veggies and fruit that we don't buy at the vegetable market. We got to our local veggie market to buy the bulk of our fresh veggies and fruits, and sometimes the local cows milk.

When I think about how much I spend on food alone, I wonder how I can lower our food bill, without lowering the quality of our food. I have considered purchasing only the lowest cost food, skipping Wild Oats, and using all the coupons I could possibly gather up, but I have heard that you pay now or your pay later. If I don't focus on our health, we will be sick in the long run.

One of the ways that I hope to reduce our dependancy on grocery store foods, is to grow a garden starting in the spring time, and purchasing other foods we don't grow, locally, and seasonally. The Farmer's Market scene in our city is good. There is an organic farmer's market that runs from mid-spring to late summer, and not only are the veggies and fruits reasonable, but it supports an alternative food community. Shopping in the major grocery stores only encourages our dependancy on shipped in foods.

One of my favorite websites that covers topics on self-sufficiency , postage stamp gardening and urban homesteading is Path To Freedom.

So what is your food budget? Feel free to share.

Jyotsna