This video is for people who hate to go grocery shopping.
People like my dad, my husband and my boss.
Grocery shopping is an acquired skill, at least for some.
For others, it's a miserable chore putting you in competition
with other shoppers looking for the ripest avocado.
But it is how we put food on the table.
Beth Moncel started the cooking blog Budget Bytes after the 2008 recession.
I had nothing left that I could cut back other than food.
So I started
really breaking down the costs of the food that I was cooking and eating.
She has a lot of advice on how to navigate shopping at the grocery store,
where prices fluctuate and always seem to be getting higher.
It's a really easy way to save money or manipulate your budget is
just based on what you choose to buy and what you choose to cook or not cook.
It's not the highest we've ever seen, but it's certainly
the highest rates of food price increases we've seen since the late 70's.
Jayson Lusk is the head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue
University.
He says there are many outside economic factors that affect the price
of what you put on your grocery list.
The other thing that's really been important is demand.
There's been strong demand for U.S.
food and agricultural items.
But what's going on right now to make these prices so painful?
Fuel prices have been higher.
Feed prices have been higher for animal products.
Increases in transportation rates and labor has been a big issue.
Finding enough workers to get our food produced, packaged shelved.
And then even when you can get enough labor, we're having to pay that labor more
to accomplish the same task.
So we've got a lot of extra costs that are in the system that weren't there
a couple of years ago.
That all led to a 12% increase in food prices last year.
Consumers incomes, by and large have not kept pace
with the increases in food prices that we've seen.
So the consequence of that is people aren't able to afford
as much food as they did a year ago.
Lusk says people aren't weathering the price increases
like they were in 2021 when prices also went up.
Now they're actually changing their grocery habits.
Consumers are becoming more price sensitive.
They're cutting back
more dramatically than they did in the past, when prices increase.
Moncel has a few other suggestions on how to save when you're food shopping.
The first step happens before you even leave your house.
First, I'll go to my kitchen and see what ingredients
I might have on hand that need to be used up.
The second step would be to go to the store sales fliers
and see what's on special that week so you can take advantage of those sales.
She recommends
downloading a free app called Flipp that aggregates fliers in your area.
And then once you have your completed grocery list, that's when I go to
the store.
Now, when it comes to coupons, Moncel avoids them.
She says that all of this work, though, is in the name
of reducing your environmental and financial footprint.
And it really does add up quickly.
I don't think a lot of people realize
just how much money they waste every week when they're throwing away food.
Moncel says comparing prices is a major way to save.
She says to always look at the sales tags, but more importantly,
the price per ounce.
And luckily, a lot of grocery stores now will also include a price
per ounce on their shelf tags.
So that's a really great way that you can compare prices.
Most people know that for things like spices or canned vegetables,
it's almost always going to be cheaper
to buy the generic brand rather than the name brand food.
And then there's the food that takes a little bit more work.
For example, a pre shredded bag of cheese is not going to be
as good of a deal as a block of cheese that you shred at home.
Processed foods you are paying for convenience it's already prepared.
There's no work on your end that needs to go into it.
Maybe except for microwaving something.
Yeah, that is the one.
Trade off when you are cooking on a budget is you're going to have to put
in a little bit more work.
If you have food, you think is going to go bad before
you can eat it, Moncel says You can put it in the freezer.
I freeze almost everything I can.
You can put things like meat, cheese
and even bread in the freezer just to name a few.
All of this information, Moncel says, is a way of saving money
at a place where there are so many opportunities to do so.
So I think food is starting to become a stressor on people's budgets.
It's a necessity.
People have to eat.
So it's not something you can go without.
In something like chili or lasagna, I might cut back
half on the meat and replace that with something less expensive like beans.
I like to bulk up recipes with less expensive
ingredients like cabbage, you know, carrots, potatoes.
From the grocery store to home.
food is a universal truth in all of our lives.
And Moncel
says it's important to remember the role it plays outside of just costing money.
It is important to treat yourself every now and then
because food isn't just for sustainability.
Food is such a big part of everyone's culture, you know, It's how we communicate
with each other.
It's how we see ourselves it's how we say, I love you.
So, you know, make sure to leave room in your budget
for something a little extra special every now and then.
For Moncel., that's fancy cheese for me.
It's all olive oil.
And for the PBS NewsHour, I'm Casey Kuhn.
My salami!