We Pay Either Way

As most who read this know, I teach a class at Common Ground for free every month that I developed starting in January of '09 called, "Eating Healthy on a Budget" (EHOB). In the process of gathering the information from that class I learned a great deal and I've learned just as much if not more from the hundreds of people who have taken the class now.

With the community awareness of the class growing over the last two years, I've started to get requests to teach the class outside the confines of Common Ground. I've made forays into teaching the class in front of low income audiences full of folks who rarely if ever go to farmers' markets or natural food stores and I've bombed there. That's a very interesting story in of itself and one worthy of discussion, but not the one I'm planning to talk about today. Today I want to talk about the other kind of EHOB presentations I've done outside of Common Ground. I've put together a very abbreviated version of the class in powerpoint form that I can do as a talk in 25-30 minutes because I kept getting requests from University of Illinois groups, local churches, local environmental organizations and the like to do so.

One thing I've added to the presentation version of EHOB is more price comparisons. I already show folks in the full class a can of organic black beans and tell them the price, then make them guess how much the bag of dried beans I also have with me that would make the same amount of beans in the can would cost and the students are always pretty impressed with the difference. (It's around $2.00, by the way). But in need of a few more exciting visuals for the presentation version, I costed out a few things people tend to buy pre-made and what they cost to make from ingredients at the co-op. The results didn't surprise me *that* much at first, but they did make me curious. If it only costs $0.78 to make with all organic or local ingredients the same amount of lentil soup I get in a can at the store for $1.89 (conventionally, $2.49 organically), what about what it would cost to make favorite restaurant dishes?

I've not gotten around to in-depth costing I am ready to share in final form, but the process has already pointed out to me what a dramatic difference it makes to cook at home, even when you use the really "pricey" ingredients. We'll say to ourselves, "oh, that organic cheese is too expensive to use as our everyday cheese around the house!" but not blink at paying $7 at Panera for half a sandwich and a small cup of soup made from conventional ingredients in a factory and just heated up in a pan. We're not having an honest conversation with ourselves about food when we tell ourselves organic and high quality ingredients are too expensive but we then go out to eat several meals a week.

The truth is we live busy, busy lives. Sometimes, convenience is worth the price, just to have someone else make lunch or dinner. Thing is, we pay not only a lot out of our pocket books, we pay nutritionally too, are we really aware of that? Even when we get a big salad and some low-fat soup at the restaurant, the ingredients are from factory farms, shipped in plastic, full of pesticides, and often made months ago. And we pay far more for it than we would have paid to make the food at home with the very best, fresh ingredients.

And there's a reason prepared food costs more - because making food is work, time-consuming work. That's why we're often eating out in the first place, right? The salads you buy in the Common Ground deli can be made at home from the same ingredients for far less than you'll pay for a co-op deli salad and for good reason. Half or more of the cost of prepared food, in a restaurant or at home, is in the preparation. The preparation costs when you buy food out because people have to be paid to put in the minutes and hours of preparation we decided you couldn't afford (or didn't know how to) put into the food. At home, the time costs because we have to have it to put into the making of the food instead of other things. The cost of food is not just about the ingredients so, honestly, do we feel we its worth it to our health and our pocketbook to invest the time?

The answer isn't always "yes" for me. I work 40-60 hours a week depending what is going on at the co-op, right now, with a major expansion of the co-op looming, I'm working closer to the 60 end of the spectrum. My husband works 32-40 hours a week. We have a four year old son. Sometimes, despite my best intentions, I forget to coordinate the meals, make the meal plans, buy the ingredients. And sometimes I am just too damned tired and decide I don't want to make the food. I'm working to be honest with myself about this, about my choices, and to look at the real cost of them.

This weekend I am having one of my more food-ambitious swings. Despite a crazy long work week and having only one day off, I am feeling like making some food plans and executing them. So, today, I started with salad.



I pre-made these salads so they are ready to grab for lunches at work, already portioned out. All the ingredients are from the co-op.

I used:
- head of lettuce
- 3 green onions
- 1 medium carrot
- 1/8th of a head of red cabbage
- 1 pkg of baked tofu from the co-op deli
- 3 T of slivered almonds

This made 4 lunch portion salads. Without dressing, these are costing me $1.81 a piece, I am guessing 1 T of homemade dressing for each will cost me around $0.35, taking it to $2.16 a salad. A similar-sized salad at Common Ground's deli costs $3.95.

I turned the rest of the cabbage into homemade sauerkraut, but that's another post!

Next up, making a simple cold tomato and basil soup. That costs me about $1.22 a portion (1 cup, same as a "cup" at Common Ground's deli.) So lunch of a green salad with tofu and a cup of tomato soup from home will cost me around $3.50 with all fabulous organic ingredients, not attempting to use budget-conscious ingredients at all.

Is it worth the time? This week it is, to me. And it'll sure taste just as good if not better than the same sized soup-and-salad lunch at the restaurant around the corner from work that will charge me $7.99 and use non-organic ingredients. But, depending on what stresses next week brings, don't be surprised to see me at that same restaurant when you go out to lunch next Tuesday. We all do our best.