As I am sure you can imagine, feeding our house guest has increased the grocery bills a great deal. Instead of spending between $200 to $250 a month we are now closer to $350 and probably more.
What brought this to mind was a video I just watched about couponing, the shopper went from spending well over $100 to just a tad over $6. Of course I was intrigued being the frugal person that I am. Much to my dismay what was purchased (other than many tubes of tooth paste) was either already prepared and more than likely not healthy. The more I thought about it the more I wondered can you feed your family a healthy, well balanced diet this way? How much do these couponers really spend to actually feed their families?
I think you might be overestimating the general quality and type of food eaten by the average American family.
ReplyDeleteThey aren't having fresh veggies. They aren't eating quinoa. They don't care if their meat was breaded and cooked before being frozen and stored in their freezer. Heck, most of them don't eat any veggies at all.
Their idea of "healthy" is probably using low-fat margarine on the frozen, prepared mashed potatoes.
Speaking of veggies, I cannot wait until I have a kitchen again. Even if, to start, it's just two or three ring gas stovetop.
No way can these folks be eating healthy stuff. It's funny that you just posted this, because I just went through a backlog of coupons from the Sunday papers--and I only cut 4 out! One coupon was for sour cream, the rest were cleaning supplies (paper towels and dishwasher soap). None of the other coupons were anything we eat.
ReplyDeleteInteresting...we belong to an organic CSA, so veggies come from there or my own plants or from Sprouts; dairy comes from Trader Joe's...Farmer's markets--at least here--take WIC, etc., so it's getting a bit easier for those on low incomes to get fresh veggies--a step in the right direction! It's complicated, isn't it?