This is a tough one.
Good food costs more money. Not in the long run, when you factor in doctor visits, drugs and stents, but at the grocery store organic eggs cost more than conventional ones and grass-fed beef costs more than corn-fed beef. Why this is so is a subject for another post. But it is a reality that keeps many people from eating a healthier diet.
I have gone through periods where I try to save my family money by practicing the uniquely American hobby of cutting coupons and combining them with sales. But as many others have pointed out, most coupons for food products are for just that food products and not food. Crackers and cheese-puffs, juice drinks and sodas. A typical example are the coupons offered by Con-Agra (do I even need to say more?) here — a choice selection of microwavable (in plastic) meals, egg substitutes, fake butter and peanut butter rife with vegetable oils and sugar. Yum! You can find coupons for organic offerings, even salads-in-a-bag, but they are tougher to come by. And of course you can save money on non-food items such as baking soda and vinegar. But it often seems the choice comes down to cheap vs. healthy.
Today I heard a mother speak admirably of a family of four whose food bill was less than $100 a week. I’ve read about families who spend that a month. We spend slightly more than that a week, some weeks more than just slightly. But it got me thinking about why we want to spend as little as possible on food. Of course, saving money is admirable. Frugal is good. And you shouldn’t spend beyond your means. If you cannot afford to buy organic, you can’t afford it.
But Americans spend much less on food than those in other countries. Spending $100 for a week for a family in four, for example, in France would be very tough. While Americans spend less than 10 percent of their disposable income on food, the French spend 16 percent. I know when we lived in France our food bill seemed huge and very difficult to cut down — there are no coupons or “deals” in France. Of course Americans spend almost twice as much on healthcare than the French do.
Interestingly enough, Americans spend less of their disposable income on food than they did 30 years ago. What are they spending money on? Well, porn is a $10-14 billion a year industry. Plastic surgery claims a cool $12 billion a year. But the mother of all expenses seems to be weight loss programs! More than $33 billion a year. I have an idea, it’s based on the old-fashioned notion of pennywise and pound-foolish — buy quality foods at the front end and you might not need to spend your cash on losing weight, liposuction and blow-up sex dolls!