Food prices — I don’t notice a change in my grocery bills.
I shopped for groceries today, and thought again about what I’ve been hearing on the news about the skyrocketting prices.
I haven’t noticed much, if any, increase in the things I buy.
For almost the past year, I’ve been trying to buy organic food, especially if I’m buying anything off the “Dirty Dozen” list. I also buy the expensive organic cereals, bread, and soy or rice milk. I don’t like the whole grain pasta, so tend to buy whichever conventional brand is on sale, and comes in a cardboard box instead of plastic wrapper. I tend to buy whichever brand of (non-organic) coffee that is on sale. I also like certain varieties of the Lakewood brand fruit juices — the ones that are organic and fresh pressed and not from concentrate, which also comes in glass bottles. My choice of peanut butter and jelly also tend to be organic and in glass jars. So that limits my brand choices.
In general, organic varieties cost more than conventional. And soy or rice milk costs more than milk from cows (or at least it did). Also, veg’n meat substitutes tend to cost more than real meat (or at least it did). Recently, as I hear little things on my radio news station, like “this might be a good time to go vegetarian”, I wondered if the time will soon come when meat and milk from cows will be comparable in price to the veg’n alternatives. If so, it might make people consider alternatives.
So, I might pay more for organic or veg’n alternatives. But in general, I haven’t noticed a rise in my grocery bill like people who buy regular groceries have. (I don’t particularly care if the cost of meat, eggs & dairy skyrocket. Maybe people will reduce their consumption of unnecessary animal products, like they’re reducing unnecessary road trips because of the cost of gasoline.)
And today I found “buy one, get one free” deals on organic rice milk, organic cereal, organic peanut butter, organic pasta sauce, where it was definitely a better deal to get those brands than buying comparable brands in the same display that were also on sale.I definitely felt I saved a lot on the peanut butter and the pasta sauce, which are generally much more expensive when I can’t get two for the price of one
If the cost of food was really a problem for me, I would definitely bring my lunch to work instead of buying it at work.
Tags: food prices, organic