The goal isn't to maximize savings, it's to look at the true cost logically, which helps you make informed purchases that give you the most happiness. So you obviously have to evaluate flavour as well. When budget constrained, YOU WANT TO MAXIMIZE BANG-PER-BUCK, you don't want to minimize cost and disregard everything else. Even if you want to spend all your money on food and have no savings whatsoever, this is the right way to evaluate the dollar cost of food.
Dried split peas, dried lentils, dried chickpeas, and rice end up with the best bang-per-buck for me. They're very cheap because they don't have to transport all the water along with the food (takes up less transport space and weighs less). You just soak them the night before cooking them with (much more efficiently transported) water from your kitchen tap.
Let's say you're interested in protein. The easiest way to do the calculation is to look at the grams of protein per 100 grams of the food, let's say 25 grams. Figure out how many times 100 grams fits into the total weight of the product, let's say it's 2 kg, so that's 20 times. Then multiply the 25 grams by the 20. That's 500 grams of protein per 2 kg item. Then divide the price of the item, let's say $8, by its total protein. So that's 1.6 cents per gram of protein.
Make an Excel spreadsheet to make it easy.
August 18, 2021 at 02:08AM
