Have you noticed how your grocery store is designed? If it’s like most stores, the are raw ingredients (dairy, meat, vegetables) are around the perimeter. If you want a frozen dinner, some cake mix, or a bag of Fritos, you have to venture the aisles. It’s the food in the aisles that I want to talk about today.
It’s widely recognized that many prepackaged foods earn a great amount of money for food manufacturers. It makes sense that they would charge more since they are often the most convenient (and often addictive) foods. Consumers realize that there is value in being able to quickly microwave some food or solve a craving for salt or caffeine. Everyone wins… except your wallet.
Last week, on CNBC, I watched the CEO of Hormel foods trumpet the success of their new Hormel Compleats product line. Yesterday, at the grocery store, I realized that Campbell’s Healthy Request Chunky Soups must be helping the company’s bottom line. At $3.29 for a 240-calorie can of New England Clam Chowder, it would cost me nearly $7.00 for lunch. The cost of that meal comes out to be 73 calories/dollar.
However, not all packaged convenience foods are expensive. There are some real bargains to be had. I found that General Mills’ Totino’s pizza can be purchased at my local Wal-Mart for $1.00. At 700 calories, the complex math comes out to be… 700 calories/dollar - it’s nearly 1/10th the price of Campbell’s New England Clam Chowder. It’s tough to match the Totino’s for a complete meal on a calorie/dollar ratio. If you are looking for something to augment a meal I’ve found that I can buy Ramen noodles (the great college standby) at 2500 calories/dollar. Lastly, the Banquet line of frozen dinners often come in at around 400 calories/dollar (depending on the variety). Some of them even score high on taste tests. It might be worth noting that with rising food prices, many of these cheaper foods have stayed the same price.
There is a price to pay for these cheaper convenience foods. They are packed with unhealthy ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and/or sodium. However, even some of the “healthier foods” like soup have much more sodium than a dietitian would typically recommend. Everything is a balance. If you are on a budget it might be worth thinking about how you might save money on packaged foods. And if you are going with packaged foods, you might want to make sure you spend more time at the gym.
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Lazy Man has been a lender at Prosper since February 2006. He is the author of the personal finance blog, Lazy Man and Money and the health and fitness blog, Lazy Man and Health.
