Note: I originally posted this on one of my now defunct blogs (Thrifty Living) back on 9/16/2010. I was looking through the past posts this morning, and I realized that the points I made then are still valid now, almost 5 years later. The only difference is that I have two kids in college now, and don't feed 5 of us at dinner on a daily basis! That pot of spaghetti sauce I talk about at the end goes a lot farther now, and I frequently end up freezing the extra sauce to use later. :)
Mmmm... spaghetti sounds good, doesn't it?
So, what exactly is the difference between ingredients and food?
When I think food, I think of meatloaf, cake, pies, hamburgers, and
salads. You know, tasty foods placed on a dinner table, waiting to be
eaten. When I think of ingredients, I think of the things that I need
to make that food: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, ground beef, apples. Do
you see the difference? Ingredients are used to make food. Food is the
prepared, finished item that is ready to be consumed.
Now,
think about your local grocery store. When you walk into the store, do
you see more food, or more ingredients? Walking up and down the
aisles, looking at the boxes on the shelves, in the freezers, and on
display, do you see more food or ingredients? Think back to your last
trip to the grocery store. Was there more food in the cart? Or more
ingredients?
Why does this matter? Three reasons:
Firstly,
prepared food is more expensive than ingredients. A box of a hamburger
meal plus the cost of the hamburger meat is still more expensive than
the cost of the hamburger meat, the tomato sauce, and the macaroni.
Additionally, when you buy the ingredients yourself, you will be making
more food. This means more servings. If you have a large family with
hungry teenagers, it means that they will eat well for less money. If
you are single or a smaller family, then you will have leftovers which
can be frozen and taken to work for lunch later in the week or reheated
for dinner on another night.
Secondly,
the caloric intake. There is much argument in nutrition circles that
the cause of the obesity epidemic in this country is caused by the
consumption of these prepared foods. The food manufacturers are trying
to make a quality product, for minimal cost, and still turn a profit. I
am always curious as to what things are going into those meals.
Malodextrin. Soy Lecithin. High Fructose Corn Syrup. What exactly are
those ingredients? Where did they come from? Are they a natural
product, or are they man-made from something else? If you create the
meal yourself from ingredients you bought, you are controlling
everything that goes in. You control the sodium. You control the
sugars. You control
everything. Do you need to stretch the meat
out a little bit more? Add a few beans to the meal. It's a healthy,
inexpensive way to stretch the meal.
Thirdly,
you control where the food comes from. I know I harp on this a lot,
but I can not stress enough the importance of knowing where your food
comes from. Support your local farmers. You can buy it from the
farmer's market, or you can grow some of it in your own yard. Your
local farmers most likely use sustainable agricultural methods. The
food has been picked within the last few hours, while it was ripe. Go
ahead and ask the farmers about their farms. Ask them about their
sustainable methods. If you are at an Organic Farmer's Market, chances
are they will not only tell you about their farm, they might just pull
out a photo album and show you the pictures of their farm. Many organic
farms sponsor an open house for their customers to come out and visit
the farm in the fall.
Check out those labels on your
foods at the grocery store. Just who are you supporting when you buy
produce from Argentina? Do you know what kind of pesticides they used
on their food? Do you know what methods they used to grow those grapes
you are thinking of putting in your cart? When you buy something from
another country, what exactly are you paying for? My guess is that much
of the cost goes to cover the transport and shipping of that product
from Argentina to the United States. Have you ever wondered just how
green that produce is when it is picked and shipped to this country?
I can hear you thinking in your head now
"But what about coupons?"
Make no mistake, coupons have their place in the world. I do use
coupons, but I don't use them to buy finished food. I use them to buy
ingredients. Beans, flour, tomato sauce, pasta, rice... well you get
the idea. I won't bore you with the math, but I sat down and figured
out the bottom line years ago. For the cost of two jars of spaghetti
sauce, we can make one pot of spaghetti sauce from scratch. Two jars of
spaghetti sauce will serve us for one, maybe two spaghetti meals. One
pot of spaghetti sauce will serve us a spaghetti dinner one night. Make
2 pizzas another night. And, it will make two pans of veggie lasagna.
One for us to eat the night I make it, and another to wrap up tightly
in foil and save in the freezer for another night. One veggie lasagna
serves us dinner for one night, and we have leftovers that we wrap up
and take for lunch for the next couple of days. That's at least 4 meals
from a pot of home-made spaghetti sauce as compared to 2 meals from jar
sauce - and it's the same cost, or less.
If you really want to do what's best for your health, and your wallet, start buying more ingredients at the grocery store.
