By Adrie Roberts, Utah State University Extension :
- Bulk buying. Purchasing sale items or good deals in stores you seldom shop, in quantities to get you through to the next sale.
- A price book or system to keep track of prices between various stores.
- Elimination of non-nutritious foods such as soda pop, ice cream, and candy.
- Elimination of convenience foods (especially foods packaged in single-serving containers).
- Choosing less expensive food. This includes tuna, powdered milk, cheaper vegetables and fruits.
- Buying store generic brands.
- Vegetarianism. Cut back on meat and substitute dried beans and whole grains.
- Portion comparison. Instead of comparing boxes of raisin bran, compare raisin bran to oatmeal or pancakes or instead of buying steak when on sale compare portion price to that of chicken.
- Free food. Garden surplus from neighbors, wild berries, food obtained through barter.
- Preparing foods from scratch.
- Maintaining optimum weight. Since your metabolism increases the more you eat, reducing your weight can make a significant difference on your food bill.
- Waste nothing. This includes making sure that children finish meals, cooking a turkey carcass for soup stock, and eating leftovers.
- Eat fewer meat and potato meals. Casseroles, soups, stews, stir-fry meals, etc, are generally less expensive – and better for your health.
- Experiment making your own mixes. Instant non-fat dry milk in mixes makes the mixes very economical to use. Take one day or evening and make several mixes at once.
- Use your food storage. Change your thinking to using your “food supply” rather than your “food storage”.
- Shop alone after you have eaten. Statistics indicate that people buy more when they are hungry or accompanied by others, especially children. Stay on the outer edges of the store. Inner isles have pre packaged high fat foods that your body and checkbook can do without.
- Plan meals in advance according to grocery store ads.
- Use unit price data. Compare the cost of similar products of various sizes by weight, volume, or count. Check to see if larger quantities are more economical than small ones.
- Be a brand switcher. Different brands of the same product can be roughly equal in quality and nutritional value yet varies widely in price. Experiment with the products carrying store labels.
- Learn nutritional alternative. Study up on the nutrients essential for health and what foods provide them. Protein, for example, comes in many forms. A meal containing beans, rice, whet, corn, or milk can be as rich in protein as one featuring sirloin steak. Read labels, compare values.
- Try new meats. Grains for cattle feeding are expensive in relation to the amount of meat produced. Meat from grass-fed cattle and calves is less expensive and is more healthful since it has less fat. Since it is leaner, it shouldn’t be cooking too long or at too high a temperature.
- Try cheaper cuts. Learn how to cook these cuts. Though the taste is different, you might be pleasantly surprised. Try marinating a cheap cut instead of using the more expensive piece packages expressly for a certain dish.
- Buy the serving. Don’t ignore the more expensive boneless cuts of meat. Though bony meats are cheaper per pound, they yield less edible meat per pound.
- Get out of the rut. Get out the cookbooks and try something new. Consider making form scratch many of the things you habitually buy in prepared form.
- Attend cooking classes that are held locally for new ideas. Insist on freshness. The date marked on all perishable foods is the “pull date”, the last day on which the product can remain on the shelf in the store. It is not a spoil date. You may be able to get a discount on these items.
- Buy quantities you can use. Large quantities are often bargains, but only if they will keep safely until you can use them up. Store them properly.
- Buy fresh fruits and vegetables at their peak season, when prices are usually lowest.
- Consider group strategies. A neighborhood group might save by buying in build directly from wholesalers and farmers. Or a shopping club could check the ads for specials, then send members on shopping trips to different stores to buy for the whole group. Some stores will honor other stores’ sales or promotional items.
- Save on cereals and baked goods. There are two benefits in buying unsweetened cereals. They cost less than sweetened cereals, and you can control the amount of sugar you or your children consume.
- Save on milk and eggs. Nonfat dry mild commonly costs about half as much as the wet variety, and you can use it for cooking or for drinking. The distinct taste of nonfat dry milk when used in cooking is hard to detect. Determine which of any two sizes of breakfast eggs is the better buy.
- Drink more water!
Make your family more financially fit, and physically fit!
