Real Food Vs Fast Food Cost. Strech your money!

A few month ago I saw this image pop up in a social media feed and found myself highly entertained by the comments. “Um, maybe 20 years ago!” “Bull Crap! Where can you buy a pound of chicken for $1!” “This is ridiculous!” –as a couponer/poor bargain hunter I just laughed and commented something like, “Totally doable!”

Over the next couple days the thread was very active with people telling me I was nuts and discussion over what this graphic was truly saying, what was the argument, calories for dollars, healthy vs crap food –and I swore I’d write a blog about it, but I shelved it. Now that I’ve found Steemit and have some incentive to put in the effort, today seems like a great day to discuss these arguments and tell you how Real Food wins every time over fast food.

This is obviously an old graphic, watermarked by sparkpeople.com –I’m sure there was more context in the original post.

What was their argument?

-Your money buys you more food at the grocery store over the drive through?
-Your money buys you healthier food that what you’ll find at the drive through?
-If you only have $20 in your pocket, what can you buy to feed your family right now?
-Are we looking to buy one meal, or are we looking to stretch our money as far as we can?
-Are we looking for convenience? Maybe this person doesn’t have access to a stove to cook.
-What are we paying per calorie?

Spoiler alert, I already told you that real food wins every time –and yes, you can get that much food for the cost of a drive through meal.

Now, I’m the first person to tell you that Organic, Non-GMO food should always be your first choice. I could write a book on that so I won’t get into it here. Let’s compare apples to apples though –that drive through meal is no way organic or non-GMO. And if you are so broke that you are looking to make a grocery run with only $20 in your pocket to feed your family, maybe today isn’t the day to worry about Organic. (Not judging, I’ve been there.) EVEN still, if we’re just talking about ONE MEAL on $20, you could make it an organic meal.

Can you really buy all that with $20?
Yes.

First let me address that the average price for that 8 piece Family Meal at KFC is now $21.49 according to a quick web search. So yeah, the graphic is a few years old –don’t get hung up on the price of Chicken and Milk. Though, in the months since I first started this discussion I’ve often seen chicken on sale for $1 per pound, boneless and as low as 59 cents/lb for bone in pieces. Of course you are not going to find milk that cheap anymore, but you can make up the savings on other items and most importantly, milk is gross. Stop drinking it (that is a blog for another day ;) )
Also consider, sales vary and produce is seasonal. Right now it actually is peach season, so $1 for a pound might be doable, but not in December up North. Don’t be too literal here, you have to chase the sales and seasons.

Scanning my local fliers for this week, on August 26th, 2017 in my corner of Pennsylvania I came up with a comparable grocery haul for 7 cents less than the meal bucket at KFC. Let me share with you what I could go buy right now for $21.34 and then discuss it.

3 lbs of bone in Chicken Thighs/Drumsticks at 69 cents a pound for $2.07
5 pounds of Rice for $2.32
Head of Lettuce, Pint of Grape Tomatoes, pound of Cucumbers $3.62
Pound of Grapes 88 cents
Gallon of Skim Milk $3.22
1 Pound of Ground Turkey 79 cents.
36 ounces of Yogurt $2.64
42 ozs of Oats $2.48
2 lbs Frozen Peas $1.98
2 lbs Dried Kidney Beans $1.34

I made this list trying to keep true to sizes and categories of food and total amount spent in one shopping trip, using no coupons, from what I could find on sale in my local fliers or listed as the typical price on the Walmart website. If you let me use coupons or buy in bulk I could seriously lower the price per unit of food being bought.

I chose three pounds of bone in chicken because of the bone weight. But I could have bought boneless breast for 1.69/lb or bone in pork chops for 1.29/lb raising my cost slightly.
Potatoes at my local Save a Lot are OFTEN $3 for a ten pound bag, but not this week, so I chose 5 pounds of rice, still a starch and rice grows when cooked, whereas potatoes don’t. Comparable size? Close enough in my book. Feel free to argue in the comments!
Corn? It is corn season, locally we have lots of growers to include Amish who grow organic for cheap. $2 for a dozen is not rare, but I haven’t checked local prices lately and we already have a starch in this meal… the rice. Why not get more veggies in? I picked lettuce, tomatoes and cucs instead of corn.
Grapes over peaches because they were the better sale, for $1 more I could have got peaches.
Milk is gross. It’s for baby cows. It’s inflammatory to humans. I wouldn't buy it. But here it is to stay true to the challenge. Instead, skip it. Drink water and put that $3.22 toward ground beef instead of turkey, or peaches instead of grapes, or more veggies. Personally I’d buy a half gallon of Almond milk for $2.79 and buy another pound of ground Turkey.
Turkey over beef this week, 79 cents a pound is too good a deal to pass up! I've seen beef go as low as $2/pound locally.
Yogurt is often cheaper, but in this week's fliers I found 6 oz cups for 44 cents each. I've seen them as low as 33 cents.
The peas were spot on, at Aldi I can get a 1 pound bag for 99 cents any time.
Here we get an extra pound of beans than the original graphic and still stay in budget.
ETA: I forgot to mention the oats .. here you get 42 oz vs the 18 mentioned in the graphic.

The first two arguments are clearly won right here. Your $20 goes further at the grocery store. That fast food meal is just that… one meal for a family of three or 4. That grocery store haul is two full days worth of food for that same family, with some left overs. And does anyone really want to argue that the KFC is healthier? Looking to just buy one meal? A can of biscuits locally, 88 cents. $2.07 for more chicken than what you get in the KFC meal. $2.00 for pre-made Cole Slaw at my local store and $2.50 for some pre-made mashed potatoes, $1 for gravy… That’s $8.45 for the same meal. Want it crispy? Drop a couple bucks on some pre-made chicken breading. Heck, even if you don’t have oil at home and need to buy that you can make this meal cheaper at home. You can also buy ingredients to make any number of meals at home much cheaper.

If you only have $20 in your pocket –well, $21.50 in 2017 money, you’d feed your family for a couple days or longer if you need to make it stretch. You'd feed them real food to nourish you and yours and promote health and energy to get through the day. Hands down this is doable and real food is the winner.

Let’s talk about someone with no stove or refrigeration –and at this point I’m worried that I’m going to use up all my space in this blog so I’m just going to scratch the surface, as this too could be a whole other blog post. You can buy a Rotisserie chicken in most stores for $5. You could buy a loaf of bread and a small amount of deli meat, enough to eat in one sitting, etc. Pieces of fruit... It’s still cheaper to buy from grocery stores.

Calorie to Calorie? Seriously? The myth of calorie in, calorie out is dying. What makes the calorie is more important than the calorie itself. However, again, hands down... the grocery haul has more calories. There are about 4,290 calories in the KFC meal and there are twice as many calories in the rice alone. (675 cal in one cup of raw white rice. 2.5 cups per pound, times 5 pounds).

One organic meal at my local store?
$3.50 for a bag of organic sweet potatoes
$3.50 for a tub of organic lettuce
$2.00 organic frozen peas
$5.00 pound organic grass fed beef
$3.00 grass fed, organic cheese*
$2.89 Kerry gold organic butter*
=$19.89 for Shepard's Pie with Salad AND a couple meals of left overs.

*yeah, yeah, it's dairy, it's gross, it's inflammatory in humans... SHhhhhhh! ;) I have a problem. ;)

Please let's talk in the comments! I will continue to blog about deals and couponing in the future too. You CAN eat healthy/organic and benefit from couponing even though coupons tend to be only for crap food. I will teach you how in a future post.