It’s a common refrain that good food is not affordable food, and unfortunately, it’s often true. This is, however, the first time in human history that nutrient-depleted food is cheaper than nutrient-dense food. This is a twisted fact that stems from none other than the industrial revolution. Once machines could process our foods, we started having them do it in massive quantities. Why would white rice ever be cheaper than brown rice? It’s had more done to it! Volume. Industrial processing was what made sugar affordable to the average American family for the first time in about 1850. (That’s right, only 158 years ago. For the millions of years prior to 1850, we actually didn’t have cane sugar in our diet. Now we have an average of 170 pounds per American per year.)

Once machines could process our food, we stopped growing just food and started growing commodities. Commodity crops, you know, corn and soybeans, are subsidized by our federal government so that we wouldn’t run short of calories, and oh, has that worked. Of course, these commodity crops are designed to be processed. The food processing companies (like Cargill and Archers Daniels Midland) get the benefit of buying our tax-subsidized grains for less than it costs to grow them and then they whizz it into the least healthy calories available in the supermarket. This fun fact then contributes to peoples’ declining health when they hit tight economic circumstances. Of course you’ll pick something that is filling over something that is healthy if you can only afford one of them. Unfortunately our country also can’t afford the consequences of this when it manifests as obesity (overconsumptive malnutrition,) type 2 diabetes, heart disease, nutrient-deficiency-related developmental delays and behavioral problems in our schools and offices.

So how do you win? How can you eat well AND save money?

1) Better Time Management. The number one way to save money is to plan better and waste less. With a good time management system you can avoid buying convenience food. You are prepared enough to have a snack so that you don’t get so ravenous that you make bad choices (we all do that) and you don’t have to make extra trips to the store.

It’s so easy to say, isn’t it? Manage your time better! Hah! I’m such a hypocrite. It’s THE hardest thing for me. I’m terrible at it, but I’m really working on it. Here is the time planning exercise I’ve come up with to help me. I’ve always kept to-do lists, but this exercise forces me to rank how important my items are (A = need to do today, C = need to do sometime) and then plot which actual day I’m going to do it. It also yells at me to pack lunches and prepare work stuff the night before, as well as ponder tomorrow night’s dinner. The fact is, if you cleave to this type of structure, even if it’s annoying, you spend less money and you eat better food. Period.

2) Shop for nutrient-density. If you are buying white bread, you are wasting your money. If you think of your food as having a quotient of nutrients to calories, white bread has very few nutrients (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, etc.) per calorie. White sugar has NO nutrients, only calories. OK, here’s a practical example: say you have a recipe that calls for cous cous. Cous cous is basically a white pasta product with not very many nutrients per calorie. If you replace the cous cous in the recipe with quinoa, you have a MUCH higher nutrient density in the same recipe. Quinoa is about the same size and shape and color as cous cous. Quinoa is a South American whole grain, one of only a handful of whole grains that provides a complete protein (all essential amino acids.) Organic vegetables are more nutrient-dense than conventional ones grown in nitrogen-fertilized dust. (Email me and I’ll send you the study I’m referring to.) Unprocessed food is more nutrient-dense than refined food. You get the idea. THE most cost-effective, nutrient-dense food is in those bags of dried beans, peas and grains in the canned food aisle.

3) Buy bulk. I don’t mean just buying from the bulk bins, although that helps. I mean order a 25 pound bag of rice. I just did that from Fresh Off the Farm and spent $28 instead of $34 on my rice. I have also stopped buying chicken breasts for $5.79/lb (Mainely Poultry) and now buy local whole chickens for $3.79/lb. Do you ever have sticker shock at the organic beef freezer? Paralysis at paying $25 for a piece of meat that might feed two? You aren’t buying bulk enough. If you’d like reasonably priced, gorgeous, grass-fed, local beef, then you can get organized and buy a whole quarter cow and share it with your friends. When you become a serious bulk buyer, then the $250 investment in a chest freezer seems eminently reasonable. Our freezer is full of 10 lb boxes of local blueberries.

So anytime you buy tea bags instead of loose tea, boxes of raisins, single serve sizes of applesauce or small bottles of condiments or oils, just know that you are paying more than you really need to in order to have this food in your life.

4) Buy unprocessed food. This usually takes a few minutes to wrap your mind around the concept. I know a woman who doesn’t buy bread, she buys wheat berries. That’s right, she makes the flour and then makes the bread. (Who has time for that? See #1.) But yes, pasta, tortillas and bread are processed. I bought a bread machine at a yard sale for $5. I don’t personally mill my own flour (but you can do it in a sturdy blender) and at the moment, I’m trying to wend away from packaged gluten free bread mixes (I like Bob’s whole grain GF) and towards using the raw materials. Each step towards buying lower on the processing chain will save you money. And working with simple food is an automatic activity to do with your kids. (example: buy unpopped popcorn and get an airpopper at Goodwill for $3. Kids LOVE this.)

When I am organized, I do make up big batches of rice porridge (rinsed, roasted rice with sesame seeds whizzed in my blender) and we live on that in the morning. I am not currently organized. I just spent $4.39 on a box of rice porridge that contains what would have been about $1.15 worth of rice from my 25 lb bag. In fact I phase in and out of being organized, with an overall intention of just leaning into the wind that is my inertia. It looks like I’m moving when I look in the rear-view mirror, but it never feels like I’m moving at the time.

5) Join a buying club. Find one near you. The nearest one to us in Midcoast Maine is called Depot Street buying club and it’s in Waldoboro. You place your order from a catalogue (soon to be a website) for essentially wholesale prices of organic food, and pick up your order once a month. Every few months you have to kick in some labor to help receive and organize the group’s shipment. I just joined. I’ll let you know if it’s worth it.

6) Find Yourself a Farmer. Join a CSA. Yes, it’s an outlay of cash up front, but just like paying your insurance up front, you get more for your buck. Our summer CSA is Hope’s Edge Farm in Hope (beyond conveniently, right on our road.) Farmer Tom Griffin is a maestro of biodynamic vegetables and I am resolutely in his fan club. My 4 year old son knows him and is more likely to eat vegetables that he grows. It’s weird.

We just started our winter CSA and are so far very pleased with it. Beth Schiller of Dandelion Spring Farm is acting as a root cellar for those of us who do not have root cellars and the Rockland pick up (of dazzlingly beautiful, washed, local, organic fare) is once a month, not once a week.

Another way to Find Yourself a Farmer is to shop at Farmer’s Markets for farmer-direct prices. Here’s my MEAT SHEET which spells out all the places in our area to find local, conscientiously-raised meat and milk products. Farmer’s markets play a big role, and there’s a WINTER farmer’s market in Rockport.

7) Eat simple food. If your building blocks are whole grains, vegetables and meat and you are getting bulk enough amounts of each to make organic reasonable, then you get your variety from spices, oils, herbs and cooking techniques. This is the advice of MY health counselor, Willow Hall. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for her loving and unrelenting guidance. I am held accountable when my time management falls apart, then I am hugged and given a recipe and some inspiration. She’s the bomb. She grows lots of herbs and uses large amounts in most things she cooks, but always seems to be venturing in some culinary direction. Simple food need not be boring.

Join a Co-op. Call your local co-op to find out what discount members get and how much you have to work to get that discount. Find a co-op near you. The deals can vary. The Good Tern Co-op, for example, requires an $18 annual fee per adult to get a 3% discount on everything you buy. But if you also do 1-1/2 hours of work a month, your discount gets bumped up to 15%. That’s a huge savings on top of buying bulk, unprocessed food. The Belfast Co-op doesn’t have a work option. You pay a $60 equity fee, then $15 per year per adult to get a 2% lump sum returned to you every year. Members also get a sometimes deep discount on certain products all year round.

9) Stock up at sale time. At Fresh Off The Farm, ask where the sale rack is. There’s great stuff there! Teas, cleaning supplies, cereal, candles, all sorts of stuff. They also just had a sale on chocolate bars so I stocked up, but I’m not actually sure if that was a good idea. I may have to hide them from myself and from my husband.

10) Plan your travel foods. This is last, but not least. This one can have a huge impact on your food bill. We ALL make terrible choices when we are out in the world without snacks and then get ravenously hungry. Most restaurant and convenience food is industrial commodity food. I try to have 2 things with me: snacks/lunch and emergency food. My snacks are as simple as an avocado, or fruit. I have a camping knife/spoon and a travel salt shaker to go with my avocado. It’s good fat, fills me up and gives me time. My lunches are usually leftover dinner in a glass tupperware. My emergency food is either a bag of nuts or Lara Bars. I’m a big fan of Lara Bars. They live in my car or in the bottom of my bag til I have an emergency. Whatever it is for you, this one is worth making a list of things you can grab and go and make a point of stocking up on these things.

Have any more money saving ideas? Let’s hear them! Post your comments below.

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