finance

Reflections on the food prices poll results

maki — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:43:50 +0200

The food prices poll has just concluded, and the results show that 43% of the people who votes are ‘very concerned’ and 45% are ‘a little concerned’ about rising food prices. That is quite a lot indeed.

I’ve been thinking of ways in which our household food budget can go on a diet. Given that we are rather passionate about good food around here, there are compromises we are not willing to make. But there are lots we can do without feeling like we are depriving ourselves too.

Eat out less. This is an easy one really, because I feel that we can eat better food at home both taste wise and health wise. So no more eating out for eating out’s sake. We don’t want to give up going to really good restaurants, but we’ll put them in the “entertainment” column, not within the “food” column.
Stop impulse buying those tempting ‘gourmet’ treats. This is a bit more difficult for me - I find it hard to resist that jar of extra special preserves or mustard, not to mention all those delcious looking cheeses and hams and such that are on offer at speciality markets. I feel rather guilty when looking at all those barely opened jars in the fridge though.
Don’t buy prepackaged supermarket foods. This is also easy - most premade food is less than stellar.
Buy food that is as close to its original form as possible. The most food is processed, the more it costs. A box of cereal costs far more than plain oatmeal. Flavored rice mixes are way more expensive than plain rice.
Less meat and fish, more vegetarian proteins. I don’t want to compromise on the quality of the meat we get (for instance, we like to get Poulet de Bresse or at least a St. Sever quality chicken for roasting, which is about twice the price of a regular chicken), but I’m happy with eating less of it and using more vegetable proteins like beans.
Buy only what we really need. This is the most important thing - too often I buy too many vegetables or something, and some of it ends up going bad and getting thrown out.

What things can you think of doing, or are doing already, to painlessly cut down on food spending?

New poll: Rising food prices and you

maki — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:38:56 +0200

(Skip the rambling and go directly to the poll)

The news is quite disturbing these days. Soaring food prices, food riots in Haiti, rice hoarding by some exporters of rice. Do you worry about rising food prices?

We eat a lot of rice at our house as you might expect, so news like rice prices hitting an all-time high today are a bit disturbing. We’ve already seen bread getting more expensive.

Still, I’m not getting overly worked up about it, because I know that we can afford rice even if it doubled in prices, and the same for bread or butter or whatever else is affected. It may make us adjust our eating patterns a bit though. If things get really out of hand, I may implement one or more of the following:

buy less processed foods (though we don’t buy much anyway)
eat out less (ditto)
eat less meat and fish, eat more vegetable proteins
watch out more for sales at the supermarkets
buy less snacks (especially the bane of my existence, milk chocolate)
deal better with leftovers!
reduce amounts (our waistlines could use it anyway…)
economize elsewhere

Being a household of two working adults / no kids though, I know that we have it way easy, and chances are we won’t have to economize that much.

What about you? Are you concerned about food prices? Do you plan to do anything? Take the new poll….

(Related: Slate has an article today about how, despite rising food prices all over the world, a “happy hedonism still dominates the food media”. This is pretty true. I think this is because the Food section of most major papers is lumped into the Style category, together with fashion, interior design, travel and so on. Most articles in mainstream media outlets about food are about dining out at restaurants, exotic and (more often than not) expensive ingredients, and the like.

The writer is rather mixing up her apples and oranges though.
On the one hand she focuses on how newspapers focus on the luxury end of the food market, but brings up several books from the past about frugal and budget eating. Those still exist, and magazines (especially those aimed at women) often feature money-saving tips.

Be that as it may, I have a feeling that people who like to read about food are divided into two camps: those who like the fantasy and luxury aspects of it (fantastic high end restaurants, exotic and rare ingredients, travel to far-flung places to taste ‘authentic’ fare) and those who want to know how to cook new things, improve their skills or their health, and so on. (There are also a lot of people who just like to collect recipes, rather like hoarding baseball trading cards, whether they actually use them or not.) Major newspapers mainly cater to the first type of people I think, with a nod to the second type. And, the first type of people are the ones that the advertisers love, a fact that the author of the Slate article does bring up. Food blogs also cater to one or the other camp mostly. I think Just Hungry and Just Bento cater mostly to group no. 2, with occasional forays into no. 1. That is mainly a reflection of my/our interests.

Wow that was a long digression!)

Poll: Do you worry about rising food prices, and how to deal with the situation?

maki — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:37:06 +0200