Food as a Percentage of Family Expense

"Food for all is a necessity.
Food should not be a merchandise,
to be bought and sold
as jewels are bought and sold
by those who have the money to buy.
Food is a human necessity,
like water and air,
it should be available."
Pearl Buck (1892-1973)

Many years ago I was raising two young daughters and collecting food stamps. The monthly allotment of food stamps totaled about $200. It didn't take me long to realize that I could squander the food stamps if I wasn't extremely careful. I learned to shop one month at a time. When I eventually went back to work and was able to establish my own grocery budget, I kept it at the $200 level as established by the welfare system.

Each month I shopped according to the food groups and nutritional advice I had learned of in school. Unfortunately, for my children, junk food was not a food group. I eliminated chips, packaged cookies, soda pop and candy. I also avoided snack items like fruit roll-ups and box drinks. I realized that I was paying for the hype and convenience. It wasn't untiI many years later that I discovered that many of those foods were actually harmful to our health. I agree that junk food and convenience foods are not necessarily synonymous but in many respects they are.

"Food, one assumes, provides nourishment;
but Americans eat it fully aware
that small amounts of poison
have been added to improve its appearance
and delay its putrefaction." John Cage

According to research, many convenience foods are manufactured from almost inedible agricultural products and are high in fat and calories. These facts weren't widely known when my children were young but I was a label reader even then. I recognized the overuse of preservatives and chemicals in most of the snack and convenience items on grocery store shelves. On a restricted food budget, these items were the first to go.

Convenience foods were a waste of our limited budget. I supposed that convenience foods were created for households where no one had the time to prepare meals. As a mother receiving welfare assistance, all I had of my own was time. I could not work outside the home without forfeiting the assistance I received. While other kids were taking juice boxes and fruit rollups to school, my kids had to settle for boxed raisins and reusable storage containers of juice.

"High-tech tomatoes.
Mysterious milk.
Supersquash.
Are we supposed to eat this stuff?
Or is it going to eat us?" Annita Manning

While on foods stamps, we became accustomed to eating fresh produce only one week per month. This was one of the downfalls of my system. We would only buy as much produce as we could consume without threat of spoilage. Bananas were pretty cheap and plentiful then, but we could demolish a three-pound bunch of bananas in one sitting. I tried to hold on to a few dollars of the food stamps just to purchase fresh produce, fresh milk or fresh bread later in the month. It seemed that although I could always get milk and bread in the third or fourth weeks, I never had enough to spend on produce. I would find myself running out of essentials that had to be replaced. We always ran out of cereal before the month ended.

By the time my children entered school I was off of the welfare system. I continued to allocate the same monthly budget for food as I had with the food stamps. I also followed many of the same habits, purchasing food once a month, avoiding fresh produce and junk food. I got more help from the state though, while children were in school, as they enjoyed the school lunch program. This helped me keep the tight grasp on the grocery budget. I did, however, add a new budget item for spending on fast foods. My children were never deprived of McDonalds Happy Meals and corn dogs at the mall.

To keep your family's food expenses in check begins with establishing a budget. Depending upon where you live food costs should be about 12 to 15 percent of your family's basic expenses. Take the time to figure out how much money your budget allows for food each month. To calculate an appropriate monthly food budget, one would take their total expense amount and multiply by 12 to 15 percent. For example, using the national average amount of $32,000 for family expenses would result in a monthly food budget between $320 and $400. Divide that monthly food budget by how many times you shop each month. Get cash for the budgeted amount and only take that amount to the grocery store. This will assure that you only can spend what you budget.

"'When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,'
said Piglet at last,
'what's the first thing you say to yourself?'
'What's for breakfast?' said Pooh.
'What do you say, Piglet?'
'I say,
I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?'
said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
'It's the same thing,' he said."
A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner