I just discovered this interesting food blog. A vegetarian ( not vegan ) Brooklyn couple documents their attempts to live off of $30 a week in groceries……..not counting their occasional restaurant visit ( it is New York ).
You can find their RSS URL here
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I buy organic so long as it is reasonably priced. The way I see things, it doesn’t do any good to support a business that can’t produce a product so as to make it practical for consumers.
If you want *variety* in commercial produce, good quality and a better price check out Asian markets. Check out other ethnic markets too.
I think those populations will not accept high produce prices so the owners of those stores shift their markups elsewhere.
Don’t let anyone make you feel bad because you don’t organic all of the time.
I envy some of those prices too. But I also feel grateful that I can afford to spend more than $15/week (since I’m only feeding one person, not two) on food.
I think they spend $30, each, a week on groceries. What they spend on restaurants and wine is not part of that budget.
This makes it sound like it’s $30 for two: http://thirtyaweek.wordpress.com/about/ But the things listed on that receipt don’t look like they’d be enough food for two people for a week – it’s hard to tell.
Well, my theory is that markup is shifted to OTHER things to keep produce low. So, aside from soy and other staples you will not get the best price at Asian markets.
I recently discovered two that have vegetables I have never seen in other markets, only read about. Their prices on standard vegetables was incredible. Broccoli crows for 90 cents a pound versus $1.85 in the regular supermarkets and for commercial produce the quality was great.
Yah, ditch the guilt trip about organics. I’m all for supporting better things, but I am not for supporting things that are not better but fit an ideal people say I should support.
A few years ago friends gave me shit for using netflix when there was an independently owned video rental in my town. Netflix has more videos, including “alternative stuff”. I can browse Netflix from any computer. Netflix delivers through a mail truck that comes to my house anyway versus me firing up the global warmer to get and bring back the video. Netflix is thus greener. Netflix also employs people. The local video store has none of these things and at the time I used it, rude, pretentious help.
So, I asked myself, “so what if it is local business, what I am supporting aside from that fact”. I didn’t have an answer.
Supporting a local business is only worth it if you don’t get the same things from a non-local business.
In the same vein supporting organic produce only helps the Earth if it can be delivered at a price where most people can afford to buy it.
If it costs me a dollar or two more, I buy the organic version. If the price is ridiculous I don’t. IMHO, that also supports the Earth because it sends a message that their prices are too high for their business model to work in terms of getting the majority of people to buy better raised produce.
A general truism: The more people buy organic, the more prices will fall for everyone.
“Organic veggies will not stop being sold, but if no one purchases them due to unnecessary and outrageous pricing, those prices will eventually come down.”
not so- it’s all simply supply and demand. the only reason the prices go down during a sale is because the store needs to offload inventory- their supplier isn’t going to see any reason to decrease their prices (they might go up, since the store might not order as much in the future, and the supplier of the organic produce won’t make as much $). likely as not though, the store made enough of a profit from the combo of selling the produce at full price and then more at a discounted price (i used to work in retail/ sales).