Reply to If you spend less than DCUM average on groceries

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[quote=Anonymous]I'll repeat earlier points that you save money by changing what you eat, not where you shop. The price differential between WF and most supermarkets is not that fundamentally different. If you're spending 400 a week on groceries at WF, changing to the Giant might bring that down to 350. And the quality goes down so you're not really saving money.

I do think we've lost sight of food frugality as an everyday norm in modern society. If you read old cookbooks and cooking magazines and even general pop culture observations up through the 1970s, it was the *norm* to be frugal with food. Middle class people were used to hotdog meals, basic spaghetti, bean chilis, canned soup and tuna fish, anything to make the budget stretch. You didn't eat like this every day but several days a week would be the cheap boring meals. And people did do things like a Sunday roast chicken with the leftovers the next day and then a chicken and rice soup later that week with the remnants of the carcass, with sliced bread and butter on the side. And potatoes. A lot of potatoes. Potatoes fill you up like nothing else and provide plenty of nutrients. Potato soups, potatoes with roasts, mashed potatoes, very cheap to make and very filling, which means you can have smaller portions of everything else. The trick is to start thinking in this mode and once it becomes a habit, then shopping and cooking frugally becomes natural to you. And your taste buds will change and adapt to the new reality.

It also doesn't help that today's food shopping scene is so much more glamorous and upscale compared to the past that the temptation to just spend is greater. It's not just the plethora of upscale groceries and delis and prepared foods, but things like berries, which used to be a luxury expense, are now commonly available in large quantities. Remember when blueberries only ever came on small little packages? So we fall into the habit of buying large quantities of imported berries for our breakfasts every day rather than as a special treat or seasonal treat. So the kids become used to having a cup of blueberries on their cereal every day when 30 years ago it'd have just been milk and cereal. [/quote]

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