Need Help: Buying on Budget

[Fermenter Zym]

Hey all,
     I've been trying to eat more RPD lately, largely eating raw grass-fed ground beef and raw egg yolks, but unfortunately I've found it to be getting quite expensive. I've been eating about two pounds of $4.00 grass-fed ground beef a day and supplementing it with eggs at $4.00 a dozen. I can't sustain those costs unfortunately.

I was hoping some of you could look at the product list of my local farm and give me some advice about what is the best to buy while trying to pay ~$50 a week on food. Here is a google doc of my local farm's products and prices:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1sh0c8OS4veuGzvf0kCEsERBMLKOJg7CqqUFCJceq81_cZXoKNn19uXryoOoQ&hl=en&authkey=CLnn36MK

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[RawZi]

    Hi Fermenter,

    Pork, chicken and organs are less expensive.  If you ferment the meat, you get more nutrition out of it for the money.

    Good luck and good health to you!

[KD]

I think this kind of post comes up on every health forum I have ever been on. $50 is just way too unrealistic for healthy food. 300 calories of organic beans is $2. $50 can't even get a pack of cigs a day anymore. That said, the only way it would be remotely doable/healthy is with high animal fat diets which luckily can be healthy. Basically this would involve getting massive amounts of free or inexpensive fat and eating it raw or rendering it, then then spending the remaining amount on ~1 lb of muscle meat or ground beef per day with the rest whatever you fancy, forage, or can afford in vegetation or other meats. Whether this is a sustainable diet I do not know.

if 50$ is seriously your limit, I would buy a range of organs from beef or lamb, ground beef and marrow bones, and ask about fat from them or another source.

I wonder what "CowPie" cheese is? sounds appealing

[TylerDurden]

KD has a point, though rendering is pointless. Other ideas include doing alternate-day fasting as Intermittent Fasting has shown great benefits, and alternate-day fasting means you will probably be only eating c. 3/4 of what you ate before, overall. I also have found that raw wild game can be far cheaper than 100 percent, grassfed organic meats, and far higher in quality.


In the past I have sometimes had weeks in which I only bought 3 raw wild hares every week, plus 3 bunches of bananas or equivalent in other fruits, and that worked fine for me. The 3 raw wild hares cost me 39 UK pounds sterling and the cost of fruit wasn't more than another 11 pounds, so c. 50 UK pounds sterling  a week in all. From the prices I've seen in the US, 50 US dollars buys the same amount of high-quality foods in the US as 50 UK pounds sterling does in the UK, due to the US's greater economies of scale.

[goodsamaritan]

My driver is dirt poor and he's been sick lately UTI and spent a load of his money on his doctor MD who gave him expensive antibiotics for 30 days with nothing to show for. 

I'm now advising him taking into consideration his budget.

He's doing liver cleansing with egg yolk liver flushing.
So he just needs eggs and some calamansi.
Eggs are cheap, right?

Then I got him some cheap raw fatty beef cuts.  He should be happy with some raw beef, eggs, and water for now.

[laterade]

I spend about 80-100 dollars a week on food.
Keep in mind I have been putting on muscle, so I think this is a good number.
Organ prices help, so do eggs.
Buying things like honey in bulk is also great.

[miles]

I spend about £25-50 per week on food in the UK. Just animals.

[Josh]

I agree that roughly $50 seems about the lower limit of what you can spend from that list.

You could consider leaving out the eggs. I have been eating ground beef with no extra fat and felt good so far. Lex reports having similar health markers doing this so it's not clear you have to add fat.

You could also eat some organs for variety as they're the same price.

That list had an offer: Ground Beef Special: 50lbs of ground beef in 1lb packs
$3.50/lb

I eat non organic fruit and veg at the moment to save money as I don't have any real problem. You can go for low pesticide ones like melon and squash. In the UK I get it from normal street markets and £1/bowl sellers which saves money.

[donrad]

Substitute time for money. Plant a garden and fruit trees. Raise rabbits, ducks, chickens. Forage in the wild. I've lived on $5 a week.

I have my butcher grind grass fed heart at $1 per pound into the ground beef. I eat grass-fed liver at $1/lb twice a week. I was able to find a butcher that also does slaughter. He sells scrap to a wholesaler for almost nothing & sometimes has to pay to have it picked up. I negotiate for marrow bones, heart, liver, feet for soup, brains, suet, etc. I plan to contact the area venison processors.

Take up the sports of hunting and fishing. You can get on a list to be called for venison road kill pickup, it's free. Lean how to skin and butcher an animal. Very Paleo.

Not only did our Paleo ancestors have superior nutrition, they also got superior exercise hunting and gathering. Both are mandatory for optimal health.

You will actually save money with lower health care costs and won't need to join a gym.

Getting out of the city helps a lot. Even in the city you can convert a yard to a garden. Or join a community garden.

Barter goods or labor with farmers. They love it. Saves taxes. Many are desperate for help during the growing and harvesting seasons.

Pigeons are called "Squab" and sell at high prices in upscale restaurants.

[sabertooth]

I am on a high fat diet and get my meats in bulk and still spend about 75 dollars a week for my food. Beef prices keep going up and store bought free range eggs can be over 4 dollars a dozen.

My beef suppliers prices have gone way up and he is constantly trying to find high quality pasture meats. I get a case of 40 pounds of beef for 120 dollars. That last me about three weeks, I also get an unlimited amount of lamb fats. So I get most of my calories for about six dollars a day.But by the time I calculate for marrow bones. eggs, sea food, lemons, organ meats and coconuts/coconut butter then things start to get pricey.

75 dollars is average, sometimes I get a good road kill and spend much less, while other times I will buy a whole lamb or eat extra coconut butter and spend up to 100 dollars.(and feast like a sultan)

[Rawhanna]

If you can't grow and harvest your own, you can find as good and sometimes greater savings on meats and all foods if you travel to their source, or at least farther up the supply chain than your local market:

I've harvested wild bison from a friend's ranch here in Texas.  He also provides his bison meat for commercial (farmer's markets, restaurants and specialty grocers) purposes, but doesn't butcher onsite; so, my carcass was USDA inspected and went directly to a licensed meat processing plant. They hung and butchered it into the cuts I wanted, including marrow bones, etc. and I picked it up directly from the plant a few days later.

Point is, when I was at the processing plant I noticed they had a counter and blackboard where anyone could walk up and buy many other varieties of meats and game available--all for sale at significantly cheaper prices than what I would pay for the same meats anywhere else.  And they had stuff that I couldn't find anywhere else--like backstrap, ostrich, etc.

You could also explore paying or supplying a rancher for an animal that they raise for you, or even get together with others and buy fractional shares, etc.  You'll find lot's of other options if you get out and start talking to local folks and making friends with like interested people...

[MaximilianKohler]

Hey all,
     I've been trying to eat more RPD lately, largely eating raw grass-fed ground beef and raw egg yolks, but unfortunately I've found it to be getting quite expensive. I've been eating about two pounds of $4.00 grass-fed ground beef a day and supplementing it with eggs at $4.00 a dozen. I can't sustain those costs unfortunately.

I was hoping some of you could look at the product list of my local farm and give me some advice about what is the best to buy while trying to pay ~$50 a week on food. Here is a google doc of my local farm's products and prices:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1sh0c8OS4veuGzvf0kCEsERBMLKOJg7CqqUFCJceq81_cZXoKNn19uXryoOoQ&hl=en&authkey=CLnn36MK

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Wow $4/lb for organ meat coming straight from the farm is really expensive... I get organ meat & fat from grassfed cows for $1.50/lb

I would keep looking for more places for grassfed meat. But for now if you went with the whole chicken instead of beef it would reduce your costs a bit, & if the organs are included in the chicken then all you'll need is some extra fat or fruit.

[Sitting Coyote]

I think learning to hunt or scavenge (on road kill) is the key to keeping costs down while eating well.  I hunt, gather roadkill, and also get lots of waste from local game processors, and end up with 150 pounds of free wild venison each year.  If I shoot a deer, I end up with even more (a 150 pound deer yields about 100 pounds of food) although hunting takes a lot of time so it's tough to call that meat "free".  You work for meat you hunt.

I probably spend $25 per week on food, though if I were to spend more time gathering I could get that down to almost nothing.  I'm really busy right now with school, so spending a little money on food to free up time is worth it to me.

Buying organs is a good way to stretch your dollar.  I get grass fed, grass finished beef, lamb and sometimes goat organs for $1 per pound, a reasonable price.  I occasionally buy eggs, but can't find them 100% pasture raised this time of year her in Vermont.  Price is $4.50-$5.00 per dozen right now, but that price will go down once summer comes so I'll just wait.