Plan Your Escape

If you are in the habit of tracking your spending on a regular basis, you've no doubt noticed that food costs are near the top of your expense list. In fact, the average Canadian household spends about $7000 annually on food. Food expenses are tough to reduce since we all need to eat in order to survive. One thing that I've noticed since taking a closer look at our family's food expenses is that meat is one of the most expensive items that we routinely buy at the grocery store. Today I'm going to be looking at how we can reduce our food expenses by eating less meat.

The Raw Numbers

I first noticed that meat was a significant contributor to our food bill by scanning our grocery receipts occasionally. This was corroborated by hearing other people's similar observations. Since I haven't been specifically tracking our meat expenses separately from the rest of our food bill -- and therefore don't have any actually numbers to share -- I decided to do a bit more research to see if my observations were accurate.

It turns out that Statistics Canada tracks the average price of some common food items for use in calculating the Consumer Price Index or CPI. The CPI is used as a method for tracking inflation. Now the food items they track will likely not match your actual shopping list but it does provide us with a statistically valid method for making a rough comparison. Here are a couple highlights:

• The average price of the meat items on the list is $10.54 per kilogram (around $4.80 per pound).
• The average price of the fruit and vegetable items on the list is $2.27 per kilogram (around $1.03 per pound).

The meat items on the list included things like various cuts of beef, chicken, canned salmon, pork chops, bacon and wieners. The fruit and vegetable items on the list included things like apples, bananas, oranges, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, onions and celery. So we are looking at a decent mix across the board.

The key point that you should notice is that the average price of a kilogram of meat is over 450% more expensive than a similar amount of fruits and vegetables. Over the course of several years, this can add up to a lot of money.

Even though the difference in price is considerable, the decision to eat meat doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. If you aren't quite ready to cut meat completely out of your diet, you might want to consider some of the following options:

• Reduce the amount of meat you eat with each meal.
• Try incorporating a couple of vegetarian meals into your weekly menu.
• Eat less expensive meats such as pork or chicken instead of prime cuts of beef.
• Meats tend to freeze well so you can try buying it in bulk and freezing it in meal-sized portions.

As Always, Practice Moderation

The point is, we don't need a 12oz steak for every meal. We can get by just fine with a lot less. At the end of the day, you'll end up paying much less to feed yourself and your family if you allow yourself to warm up to a reduced meat diet.

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