Our Ever-Rising Grocery Bills and the Cost of Convenience
One of the reasons why our grocery bills are getting higher is our increasing reliance on convenience and pre-packaged foods. Yes, I get that they can be, well, convenient when we’re busy but let’s face it, we get lazy and unprepared and often they’re the first things we throw in the cart.
The problem with grocery stores is there are too many temptations. A whopping 23% of Canadians’ grocery bills goes to something StatsCan call “non-alcoholic beverages and other food products.” That’s a lot of money for things like pop, chocolate bars and prepared dinners.
Cutting back on prepared meals means spending more time cooking your own food, but the effort is worth it for both your wallet and your waistline.
Learn to cook and make meals from scratch
Making your own meals from scratch is one of the biggest ways to save money. The more prepared the food is, the more it usually costs. Pass on the cookie or cracker snack packs, cut-up pre-washed fruit and vegetables, already-seasoned meat, and grated cheese. You can do this yourself.
One of the best things you can do is invest in a comprehensive cookbook. My go-to for decades has been good old Betty Crocker but there are many others. These books are like kitchen bibles. They describe everything from what you need to stock your kitchen to the basic things like how to cook vegetables and prepare different cuts of meat. That way you’re not throwing away produce you don’t know what to do with or buying an expensive beef tenderloin to cut up for a stew.
There are lots of online recipe sites. Find some budget friendly recipes like pasta and rice dishes, soups and stir-fries.
Don’t choose elaborate, multi-ingredient recipes. Why go out of your way to find some costly ingredient or something you’ve never heard of which you’ll probably never use again? You know you’re not going to follow through and you’ll end up throwing the food away.
Plan your meals
Saving money on groceries and shrewd meal planning go hand-in-hand. Enlist your family’s help in coming up with a number of meals you like to eat. For inspiration search for budget food bloggers who share their tips on frugal eating.
Base your grocery list on sales in store flyers, your meal plan, and what you already have in your fridge and cupboards. This prevents you from coming home with the third bottle of ketchup you forgot you had already bought on previous shopping trips. It also prevents those quick trips to the store for a single ingredient you need for your meal, which inevitably turns into a mini-shopping spree.
If coming up with your own meal plan each week sales feels too overwhelming, you may want to check out an online meal planning service such as eatrightontario or mealplannerpro which offer a variety of different weekly budget-friendly meal plans. Some are paid services while others are free.
Plan for left-overs
If you can, try to cook more than you need immediately and then freeze the leftovers, or take them to work for lunch the next day. Freezing meals can help you save a lot of time and can make cooking meals from scratch more realistic for busy people. If you know that you’ve got food ready at home, it’s less tempting to eat out.
Final thoughts on ever-rising grocery bills
One of the worst things you can do is shop on the fly. When you’re roaming aimlessly through the grocery store aisles trying to remember what your family needs you don’t even bother to notice the prices and often end up making a lot of impulse buys.
Take stock of what you already have and plan your meals around those items before you head for the supermarket. Write up a list and don’t deviate from it unless you see an exceptionally good buy on something you use often.
Learn some basic, budget recipes and don’t forget to try something new once in a while. Batch cook ahead of time and freeze those extra meals for later.
You’ll not only save money, you’ll be eating a lot healthier too.
Several years ago, my wife and I decided to control our food spending by reducing the food we were throwing out. We would freeze it before it expired and then later make freezer-trash soup and other meals. For us, reducing what we throw out is the best way to reduce food costs.
I love the term freezer trash soup! lol
Also, when shopping go around the out side of the super-market; as more junk food is down middle isles.
Don’t shop when hungry !
We cook at home, using only healthy ingredients that are either fresh or dried (beans, lentils, etc.). Very, very rarely do we purchase anything packaged or processed. Rarely “pop” or alcohol. We have switched to mostly buying frozen fruit because our children eat berries like they were free or something. We meal plan, we freeze leftovers. We’ve tried all the tricks. The fact of the matter is that food prices in Canada are exorbitant. After the mortgage and daycare, it is the highest expense in our monthly budget. When you want to eat a well-balanced diet that includes fresh vegetables, fruit, nuts, avocados, meat once or twice a week and dairy occasionally, it is going to add up. We can keep our bill to around $500-$600 for our family of four if we eat primarily pasta, rice, beans and squash. Otherwise, we typically spend between $800-1000. These days it is more like $1000 on average, and that doesn’t include any eating out (which in our case, is very rare anyway).
I totally agree. We are a family of four. We make a weekly menu, buy in bulk when things are on sale, avoid convenience and processed food, and we still spend a LOT of money on food. One of the big expenses is fruit. Our youngest isn’t even two yet, but she has had an impact on the average weekly grocery bill for close to a year now.
We noticed an immediate jump in our food bill when the new minimum wage came into effect in January (we’re in Ontario).
I think it’s worth acknowledging that it costs money to eat a healthy diet of meals made from scratch.
I agree with Anne who commented on Mar 21,2018. Food price in Canada is expensive, forget about going out to eat or prepackaged food.
I seldom buy prepackaged food. Mostly fresh veggies, dried legumes frozen fish, (when on special) chicken, very rarely beef or pork. Yet I have seen the cost of food rise over 32% in the last 3 years. One reason I suspect is the home delivery costs (fuel 43% in the past years alone) being passed on to all food shoppers not just those using home delivery
I have a hard time understanding when people don’t like leftovers. You have a dinner already prepared! This is great! I do like leftovers, so that helps us not waste much food. I say ‘much’ because we have a toddler and what she will eat one day, it’s very possible she might hate the next day.